Fenway Park Tour Sparks Desire

One of the fun things about my day job is that I work for a non-profit housed in a big, old townhouse on Beacon Hill with sweeping views of the Massachusetts State House. With just 25 employees, collegiality and friendship count for a lot. So when I became part of a small committee charged with planning our annual summer outing, I felt I should “just say yes” to a tour of Fenway Park.

The tour of something even more iconic for Boston than trolley cars and the Green Line had some appeal even for a woman whose knowledge of baseball is limited to an interview long, long ago with the author of Say It Ain't So, Joe: The True Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson. Never mind that Dennis and I live practically within walking distance of Fenway Park, and pass it every evening on our drive home from work. 

Of course the real purpose of our annual summer outing is to foster collegiality among a group of people, many of them recent college graduates, and others who have worked together for years. So I can understand why my boss vetoed one committee member’s suggestion of lunch and a movie, on the grounds that there wouldn’t be enough opportunity for people to get to know each other.

In retrospect I’m glad he did. The tour of Fenway Park proved thrilling even for a woman with little interest in baseball. Many of us had cameras with us, and I longed for a fisheye lens that could capture the huge vista of green grass, the famous Green Monster, red seats, and a sky blue enough to render PhotoShop unnecessary.

As we wended our way to the top of the park, I lost the paralyzing fear of height that plagued me when I visited Shea Stadium to see the New York Mets play during my high school years. I felt that same fear when I accompanied Daphne, her Dad, and nine of her friends the year she celebrated her ninth birthday at a Red Sox game. 

The price of Red Sox tickets notwithstanding, I have regrets about not returning to Fenway Park for a game. At the risk of branding myself an outcast, I confess that I have difficulty following any professional sporting event other than boxing.

Still it’s a little late in life to blame my problem on Dad leaving me home with Mom when he took my older brother to a Yankees game some time back in the early '60's. I even work with a young woman who says she will explain the game to anybody willing to provide her with a ticket.

Daphne now lives in Atlanta with her husband, Etan. She will be in Boston around the time of her birthday in August. Should I ask her if she’d like to join Dennis and me to see the Red Sox play the Angels? It’s never too late for me to learn, is it?

Too Many Interests, Too Little Time

The morning after Dennis and I got home from Cape May, I got an email from Etan, urging me to sign up for yesterday’s Worldwide Photo Walk USA. When I opened my son-in-law’s message, I was surrounded by two open suitcases on the floor of our den that were yet to be unpacked, and a large purple bag from my husband’s dry cleaner -- filled with all the dirty laundry I'd generated during a week at the Jersey Shore.

Dennis’s dislike of clutter required that he unpack the minute we walked into our home. Rationalizing that at 8:30 p.m. I was too exhausted to unpack, I began downloading some 900 vacation pics, all files of at least two megabytes, to my iMac. Images of pink and white beach umbrellas in the foreground, and the roaring surf and a deep blue sky in the background told me that I should feel genuine gratitude for having gotten to take this trip, and stop whining about probably not getting to spend a week at the beach again before July 2011.

At the time Etan’s email came, I told myself that I also needed to prepare for a phone call with a financial planner from Vanguard who was going to help me rebalance my portfolio after I began having misgivings about an asset allocation that could be considered aggressive for a boomer. Or at least bother reading the alternative plan she had emailed me.

Taking advantage of the fact that this was a Friday, and I don’t return to work until Monday, I had also scheduled a one on one tutorial at the Apple Store, just so that I could reassure myself that I was making full use of the new functionality of my iPhone 4. (If you don’t really know how to use some of the new apps, like the one that will guide you back to your parked car, you begin to feel defensive when people who don’t have an iPhone 4 needle you about dropped calls and poor reception.)

The sense of time famine hit me hard. For one thing, when I clicked the link Etan sent me, I realized that of the three Worldwide Photo Walks happening in Boston, two were scheduled for the late afternoon, conflicting with our plans to meet two very dear friends for dinner at Oleana, a deliciously trendy restaurant in Cambridge with patio dining.

The third photo walk ran from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Hingham, Massachusetts at World’s End, conservation land containing tree lined carriage paths designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and beautiful views of Boston Harbor. I had no idea what to expect, but there were 50 serious amateur photographers fanning out to capture unique images, led by Larry Fay, President of the South Shore Camera Club. 

Since I know Larry will have better photos than mine for submission to the Worldwide Photo Walk USA competition, I’ve decided to use my own favorite shot for this blog. Today I made up the Zumba class I ordinarily would have taken on Saturday morning, and tomorrow at 5 a.m. I will head to the Charles for 7.5 miles of rowing. (At this point in the rowing season, I’ve logged in enough trips that I’m at no risk of getting kicked out of my boat rack for inadequate usage.)

There comes a time in life when it’s o.k. to break out of one’s routine. Since yesterday’s photo walk, I’ve joined the Boston Camera Club in hopes that they, too, do photo excursions. But for now, I’m overwhelmed with guilt about not finishing the book on my Kindle, Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, a vision of the communications revolution made possible by social media. Despite my best intentions of finishing Stephen Baker’s The Numerati, a book about the dangers of data mining, it remains on my night table.

Have my efforts to become a Renaissance Woman rendered me a dilettante? 

Coming Home

After five days in Cape May, Daphne and Etan flew back to Atlanta on Monday afternoon. His job at CNN International comes with a good amount of vacation time, but there was a meeting at work on Tuesday that he just didn’t want to miss. My daughter has come to enjoy the flexibility of free-lancing -- filing stories from a variety of beach venues this summer -- but she too needed to attend to business back home.

I would have told Daphne how much I miss her when she called yesterday, but for an iPhone4 on a balky ATT network. The Wi-Fi connection at the Congress Hall Hotel, usually decent, failed, essentially rendering me incommunicado. Admittedly, my connectivity complaints sound like sour grapes – knowing that Dennis and I will be returning to Boston late tomorrow morning.

Had Daphne put Etan on the phone, I would have told him that I can’t wait to see the movie he made on his iPhone4 of our excursion to Ocean City, a place with a boardwalk and an amusement park that my friend and fellow blogger, Dan Cirucci, has labeled honky-tonk. My own take of Ocean City is that it’s a place where real people can come for the day trips that build memories for their little ones.

Etan and Daphne took me there because they wanted to indulge my love of documentary photography. No Diane Arbus, I love taking pics of the grotesque looking folks on display in Ocean City. My daughter cringes when she sees me snapping shots of tattooed men with beer bellies pushing carts bearing beach chairs, coolers, boogie boards, and sand toys. She believes my shots of people waddling along as they lick their ice cream cones are downright invasive.

Ocean City is an extreme version of the Jersey Shore – at least a light year or two away from Cape May with its Victorian homes painted in soothing pastels and its skee ball arcades and salt water taffy shops confined to a tiny sliver of the promenade lining the beach. Ocean City offers what seems like miles of eateries featuring junk food, a paradise for people who look like they can least afford to be eating the stuff. Cape May offers a stark contrast, where the waiter at the New York Times recommended Frescos pouts when the expression on my face suggests that I’d prefer to order without being subjected to his recitation of the specials.

Having grown up in Philadelphia, my son-in-law is an expert on what to eat and do in any town on the Jersey Shore, including Ocean City. He steered me to Johnson’s Popcorn, and after my telling him that the particles catch in my teeth and irritate my gums, I purchased an enormous tub of caramel corn. According to the container, a one-ounce portion is just 150 calories. But who can stop after just one ounce of the stuff?

Back in Cape May, Etan steered me to the Original Fudge Shop. Ostensibly there to purchase chocolates for his Aunt Vicki and Uncle Joel – who were nice enough to invite us to a barbeque at their beach home just minutes from our hotel – I lost any semblance of self-discipline.

Fortunately Cape May has enough in common with Ocean City that I’m able to spend each day in a swimsuit. The big white beach towels make the perfect sarong as I leave my chaise lounge to head for Hot Dog Tommy’s a couple of blocks away. Made from Angus beef, these hot dogs, swathed with mustard and cole slaw laced with dried cranberries – washed down with a bottle of diet root beer – are just too delicious to pass up.

As if that weren’t bad enough, I return to the fudge shop, where I’m dying to try the mint chocolate fudge and also the pistachio fudge, both made with the green food coloring that takes me back to the happiest moments of my childhood, high on sugar. A woman persnickety enough to hate anything sticky, I wipe my fingers on my “sarong,” exchanging it for a clean one on my return to the hotel pool.

Earlier this week, I saw a Facebook posting from my friend, Patti. She said she’d taken her three year-old grandson to the beach. When it was time to return home, she had to bribe the child with ice cream before putting him into the car.

When Dennis and I leave the beach tomorrow after seven days of perfect hot, hazy weather, I too will need to be bribed -- with visions of a return trip next summer.

Taking Stock at 60

Life is good. Dennis and I are staying at the Congress Hall Hotel in Cape May this week. The fluffy white towels are plentiful, and when the tissues in the holder go from white to peach, housekeeping does the right thing without my needing to pick up the phone.

I feel blessed that our week at the beach coincided with my 60^th birthday just two days ago. Daphne and Etan -- staying less than half a mile away at the home of his Aunt Vicki and Uncle Joel – have been able to join us for at least a few meals, and for my birthday dinner.

We gathered at the Ebbit Room, a small, intimate venue with crystal chandeliers and banquettes, and enough space to open my birthday presents. My daughter and son-in-law surprised me with a Kindle and a Cole-Haan leather Kindle cover.

Before we left for dinner, Dennis suggested that I unwrap the blue Tiffany’s box with white ribbon, and put on the gold dangly earrings I’d seen online and he’d been generous enough to purchase. Since my marriage to this kind and gentle widower, I’ve accumulated enough beautiful gold jewelry to pray that Daphne gets cured of her gold allergy before my passing.

Lest you dismiss me as an over-privileged bobo, whose life has involved no heavy lifting, I need to report a conversation Daphne and I had this morning as we walked along the boardwalk, while Dennis and Etan occupied themselves with the Sunday Times. My daughter told me her husband queried whether I would be a very different person had I not been widowed at 39.

She said Etan was referring to stuff like my membership in a rowing club, and having my own racing shell that I row on the Charles. Daphne wanted him to know that I learned to row before the death of my first husband, Jerry, and that before I took up rowing, I was a lap swimmer.

Were I asked directly whether being widowed at a relatively young age changed my life dramatically, I’d likely respond that I hold the public relations post I held when Jerry was first diagnosed with lymphoma in August 1989. But I’d be lying if I told you the loss hadn’t changed my life.

It’s unlikely I ever would have taken jitterbugging and other dance lessons. Consequently it’s unlikely I would feel confident enough to do Zumba now.

But the real change that came from being widowed was a heightened sense of perspective. On that note, I’ll share with you five things for which I’m grateful at 60:

1. I have a daughter who makes me proud. Daphne is pursuing her passion, which is writing about animals, and writes for AOL’s Paw Nation and WebMD. She cares about both the animals and the people who own them, and this week she’s been talking about a little boy with a very serious illness who’s about to receive a dog trained to help him in the activities of daily life, but most of all be his special friend.

2. Daphne married a smart, good-looking guy from a really sweet family. Yesterday we had lunch with Etan’s parents, older brother, and sister-in-law. Aside from the fact that Etan’s dad, Don -- headed for a soccer game in Philly with his younger son – seemed irritated by the Vuvuzela app on my iPhone, we were all genuinely delighted to see each other.

3. I had the good fortune to meet Dennis in 1995, and get remarried in March of 2000. The dad of three grown kids, and the grandfather of three, Dennis lives for two things: his family and his painting. He has a lot more patience than me, and is extraordinarily gracious about waiting for large groups to assemble – even it later turns out that he and I were ready 15 minutes earlier than everybody else.

4. Despite my worries about the stock market having plummeted once again, and my beating myself up about not switching out of that target date retirement fund before the market took its latest hit, the fact is that I’m able to spend this vacation at the beach. I’ve also planned a week in Paris with Dennis in November. Daphne says it could be rainy then, but that won’t stop my husband and me from visiting a different art museum each day.

5. Yesterday morning, as I sat in a sand chair – feeling each wave wash my legs – I saw a boy of perhaps 10 or 12 in the water. Unlike the other kids splashing about, he had no hair. Nearby, I could see his parents sitting on chaise lounges shielded by a white and coral beach umbrella. I had one thought: this beach vacation is a respite for an entire family who’s accompanied a loved one to chemo, but not a respite from the fear that he might not make it. Since the loss of Jerry, I’ve never taken my own good health or that of my loved ones for granted.

  

Feeling the Pain of Upward Mobility?

Earlier this week, Daphne sent me an email with a link to a story in the New York Times Style Section about a study saying that frequent moves during childhood can result in emotional problems later on in life and maybe even a shortened lifespan. I clicked through to the academic study on which the article was based -- reading everything that Professors Shigehiro Oishi and Ulrich Schimmack had to say on “Residential Mobility, Well-Being, and Mortality.”

My daughter, who lived in the same house in Chestnut Hill from the time she was born until she left for college, knew the article would resonate with me. I’d always told Daphne how much I hated the fact that my family had lived in four different homes by the time I was nine.

Then I flashed back to a session with a Dutch psychoanalyst named Suzanne van Amerongen. At the time I was 25, pregnant, and finishing up a master’s degree. She saw herself as the gris eminence of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, with an office in her townhouse on Mount Vernon Street.

Dr. van Amerongen, author of numerous academic studies on children’s mental health, seemed to dismiss my anxiety about an upcoming move -- from the duplex my husband and I had been renting in Brookline -- to the house in which we ultimately raised Daphne. I’m not sure how much credence she would have given to the findings of Professors Oishi and Schimmack.

All she could do was remind me that I was upgrading: “Mrs. Sashin, you make it sound like you’re about to be put out on the sidewalk with all your things. You’re moving to Chestnut Hill!”

As Daphne knows, I have vivid memories, often painful, sometimes not, of those four different homes in Queens:

1. The pre-war building on 81st Street in Jackson Heights. Our neighbors, Joe and Erna Kalter, were Holocaust survivors, close friends of my parents, and a great source of hard candy. Their gorgeous teen aged daughters were my favorite baby sitters -- in contrast to Marie Rumbo, an old lady with a heavy French accent who vowed not to vote for Ike. But when one of the daughters broke her leg in a skiing accident, the cast on her leg terrified me for reasons I still don’t understand.

2. The Co-op Apartment in Kew Garden Hills. I only attended kindergarten there. But I still remember a woman asking me to deliver her son’s forgotten lunch to his classroom. The boy’s teacher screamed at me for interrupting her lesson, and all I could feel was abject terror. We lived next to a little playground, and once a week in nice weather, a man would pull up in a station wagon, selling shoes to the moms watching their kids play. Grace, a pretty young woman with a toddler and a severe ingrown toe nail, bought sandals.

3. The nondescript apartment building at 77-10 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights. A teenaged boy -- not quite right in the head -- tried to lure me into the basement of another apartment building with an offer of a dime. A second grader at the time, I was smart enough to run. From the window of our apartment I could see the playground across the street. I lived for that day in June when the wading pool fountains got turned on. 

4. 108-28 64th Road in Forest Hills. After what seemed like months of house-hunting, Mom and Dad bought a row house with a huge, red enameled stove, three bedrooms, and one bathroom. Transferring into P.S.196Q as a fourth grader was rough on my self-esteem. To think that I allowed Mrs. Hamburger to humiliate me in front of the entire class as I struggled with learning to tell time on an analogue clock. Or that I cried because I didn’t know my own address, information necessary for guiding me to the correct bus for the trip home. Ultimately it was on to Forest Hills High, where the academics were excellent and the lessons in learning how to dress, if painful for a kid with an unstylish mom, were priceless.


The academic study says moves are most painful for introverts. Here I am!

iPhone 4 -- I Simply Had to Have It

(Photo Credit: The iPhone Blog.com)

Some weeks ago, my son-in-law, Etan posted on Facebook a profanity laced, hilariously funny YouTube video produced by a young man employed by Best Buy -- until the company fired him for making the video. The video, an animation, depicts a consumer electronics salesman with no iPhone 4’s to sell, growing more and more exasperated with a female customer who insists she has to have the item -- with no real knowledge of what this latest consumer tech gadget actually does. I’m ashamed to tell you I could be the woman in the video.

To say I “broke down” and upgraded from the iPhone I purchased just before Daphne married Etan in November 2008 would be a lie. My nearly two year old iPhone was actually working just fine. Without any evidence that the battery was nearing the end of its life, I decided some months ago that whenever the next iPhone was announced I would make the purchase -- just to avoid the unpleasant surprise of having something stop working at an inconvenient moment.

Daphne tends to be frugal and thinks purchases through before she makes them. So by the time she bought her first iPhone, it was a later model than mine. She told me hers contains a compass. She said she liked using it to navigate it when she and her Etan were traveling in Europe last year. I think she also liked the idea of having a later model than her husband, the consummate early adopter who purchased his iPhone when they first came out.

Shall I blame my irrational behavior on trying to keeping up with Etan? My son-in-law is still on a waiting list to purchase an iPhone 4 from the Apple store. In the meantime, with a new house and its concomitant expenses, and a car that unexpectedly needed to be replaced this spring, he’s thinking whether it makes sense to spend the $300 it would cost to upgrade.

Thank goodness I haven’t spoken with my father this week. At 84, he’s probably mellowed a bit from the days I lived at home with him and mom in New York. But here’s what I imagine him saying: “Schmuck! You spent $300 on something you don’t even understand?” 

After saying that, he might be sympathetic if I told him that I experienced nearly 14 hours of anguish in making the transition from the iPhone I had to my iPhone 4. The guy at the AT&T store at Boston’s Downtown Crossing told me to back up my old iPhone on my iMac at home before picking up the iPhone 4. 

What I recall him saying is that when I got home all I needed to do was connect the iPhone 4 to my iMac, go to iTunes, and hit “restore” when prompted about my iPhone. Supposedly this would then transfer all the data on the old phone to the new one.

As it happens, something got “hung up” -- with the iPhone 4 reading “restore” and the iMac telling me it was not o.k. to disconnect some 12 hours later. By the time I realized something was wrong, it was 4 a.m. and Apple’s tech support hotline indicated that it was only open during “normal business hours.”

My husband, Dennis, loves me enough to have insisted that I forget about my iPhone 4 and go rowing on the Charles. Mary, one of my super tech savvy rowing buddies, told me about the possibility of the thing getting “hung up.” In her most soothing of tones, she told me everything would be o.k. once I got through to Apple tech support.

Mary was correct. Once I got to my office, my friend, Heather, configured the email exchange settings that never got restored, and I hugged her. She told me I looked like I’d been put through the ringer, and that’s how I felt. 

I’m using my old iPhone as an iPod for when I run or exercise -- sans headphones. Meanwhile I remembered that I had paid $125 for one on one tutorials at the Apple store when I bought my iMac several months ago. So I’m signed up for my first tutorial this afternoon. Hopefully I will find out what cool things I can do on my iPhone 4 that I couldn’t do on my old one.

It’s o.k. to imagine my father calling me a schmuck. But it’s not o.k. for Daphne and Etan to think I really am a schmuck when we all meet in Cape May later this week.

Visiting Day

The royal blue vinyl raincoat from Talbot’s that goes down to my ankles still hangs in the closet. It’s a remnant of camp visiting day the summer Daphne turned ten. I can’t even remember whether I actually needed it that Saturday in mid July when her dad and I headed up to New Hampshire with bags laden with candy our daughter promised she’d be sharing with bunkmates.

Recently I acquired a super light weight Marmot raincoat for summer downpours. The reason I can’t bear to toss the old one is that it evokes memories of a little girl running toward her parents as they passed through the visitors’ gate at Camp Robindel for Girls.

Visiting day is fast approaching. But it won’t be at camp. Daphne married Etan nearly two years ago, and they live in a lovely home in Atlanta. We’ll be meeting at Cape May, New Jersey. Visiting day will stretch into a week of meals out together, and hours of beach reading interrupted only by my questions of whether anybody is hungry or thirsty or wants to go for a walk.

It’s hard for me to relinquish my mothering role even though it’s been more than a decade since Daphne has lived at home. Hopefully Etan’s parents will join us at the beach, and then his mom, Daphne, and I will do the walk together. Janice and I talk about what women always talk about in the absence of men -- our kids, our siblings’ kids, our parents, who’s on the outs with which family member, and why.

Assuming that both Etan and I have taken delivery of our iPhone 4’s by the time each of us leaves for this trip, he will no doubt have lots of nifty new applications and tips to share with me. Daphne loves the fact that he and I have a special friendship, and I love his willingness to allow space for the mom-daughter relationship.

As at camp visiting days of yesteryear, I will be bringing my Nikon SLR along. Photos to be cherished long after visiting day has passed are essential for soothing the pain of mother-child separation. Daphne would complain that I was taking too many pictures of her playing tennis and softball, swimming and water-skiing, talking with her friends, and doing gymnastics. But she still likes looking at the albums I made during her camp years.

This year I’m planning to make a book of our “visiting day” photos on my iMac. Having recently picked up my old hobby, shooting documentary pics of odd-looking people I don’t know, I’ve asked Daphne if we can go somewhere tacky, such as Ocean City. She’s upped the ante, suggesting that we drive to Atlantic City.

But I also want to make sure that we document my birthday dinner, the cake and ice cream birthday party I share with Etan’s dad, pictures of us sitting under beach umbrellas, and breakfast at the Bella Vida Garden Cafe. These pics will help me deal with my return to Boston, where I can await Daphne’s visit in late August.

I feel lucky my home happens to be on the route to her reunion at Camp Robindel for Girls. Please, Daphne, post the pics from that event on your Facebook page -- just so that I don’t feel too left out.