Haters gonna hate, but I gotta tell you, it is fun to root for a winning team. Over the last couple of years, I have become quite the Patriots fan, political bedfellows aside.

I grew up in a household with a father who watched football, baseball and golf constantly, then I married a huge sports fan, so I’ve been surrounded by televised sports my whole life. Guess sports crept into my psyche through osmosis.

I always enjoyed going to my high school football and basketball games, but the teams were awful, so that was largely a social event. At Brandeis, we had no real football (for a while we had club football and I attended those games). I loved going to the basketball games. As I confessed to a ball-playing classmate, a well-played game was a little like watching a sporting version of ballet, as the game ebbed and flowed across the court. I briefly dated one of the star players and was friendly with lots of others, such was my attraction to the game. I can still hear the announcer calling the games. That was more than 45 years ago, but he had a distinctive style. I lived with a few of the cheerleaders (at a time when this was distinctly uncool during the great social upheaval of the day). Once, when a petite one was sick, I suited up and sat on the bench in her absence. I was always a rah-rah sort of girl.

The first Boston team I followed closely was the Celtics during their glory years. With work friends, we had a piece of a season ticket, lived right in Boston and walked to the old, non-air conditioned Boston Garden. We loved those days. We were true fans and it was easy to love the genius of Larry Bird and the fabulous players who surrounded him. I remember wearing a tank top and sitting as still as I possibly could, so as not to sweat buckets during a play-off game during the winning 1984 season.  In my seventh month of pregnancy, I cried my eyes out when we lost the championship in 1985. To soothe myself, we went out after the loss for ice cream, ran into a raving Lakers fan who mocked me. I nearly tore his throat out. Chalk it up to hormones…or not. We were there at the opening of the new Garden and the dismal era of slick Rick Pitino. By this point, we had our first child, Dan traveled constantly, getting babysitters was difficult and we had moved to the suburbs. Tickets were very expensive and eventually, our whole group gave them up. Between babies and travel, we stopped watching televised sporting events except Patriots games and golf.

At the beginning of the Patriots franchise’s life, they were a truly awful team. Robert Kraft bought them, brought on some great coaches and built them into a much-hated dynasty. Bill Belichick, with five Super Bowl wins to his credit, will go down as one of the greatest coaches in the sport. And Tom Brady, still going strong at 40, defies any description besides Greatest Of All Time. No, I am not happy with their politics. My stomach turned when I saw the red trucker cap in Brady’s locker. Gisele was smart enough to get Tom to remove it and shut his mouth about anything political. She claims to be environmentally concerned, so she must hate what’s going on right now. I was furious when the Orange Monster read a letter from Belichick at a rally in New Hampshire the night before the election. The famously laconic coach said it had nothing to do with politics; they are just golfing buddies. I’ve been in Bob Kraft’s house. His late wife, Myra, was a Brandeis trustee and hosted a few events for donors there. She wouldn’t have put up with this nonsense either, but Kraft said Trump called him every week after she died and was a true friend. Nice that he cares about his billionaire buddy. Too bad about our country.

Putting the above aside (and sometimes it can be difficult to do that), the Patriots are fun to watch and great champions. The team the rest of the country loves to hate and thinks they cheat. Belichick knows every rule (his father was a great coach at the US Naval Academy) and will push just up to the edge, use every advantage he can get. Yes, I know…first there was Spygate, for which Belichick and the team were duly punished; very harshly at the time, but the other owners sought more which led to: Deflategate. For anyone really paying attention and not pre-determined in your thinking, you know that this season, another team was caught with under-inflated balls and NOTHING happened at all. Other quarterbacks confess that they routinely tamper with balls. This whole crazy mess was Roger Goodell flexing his muscles and, due to the collective bargaining agreement, Tom Brady was powerless to do anything. One very cold day last winter, my car tire pressure warning light came on, as the tires deflated, then were fine once the car warmed up. It happens to car tires and footballs. The whole thing was a sham, pay-back because the rest of the owners wanted blood, plain and simple. Move on. Notice who won the second half of that game with regulation balls.

I’ve been watching the team closely for three seasons now…a great time to tune in with two Super Bowl wins in our column. I’ve learned about the players and positions, OTAs, passing up the seam, protecting the pocket, and other terminology. I always understood the basics of the game. Now I am learning strategy, clock management and other important points. And my husband is tickled (his word).

I have my favorite players (not who you might think). I loved Martellus Bennett this past season. I follow him on Twitter. He’s a hoot. I loved that immediately after the big win, he announced he would not go to the White House, saying, “I am a black man today and will be a black man tomorrow.” ” I also have a wife and daughter”. Bravo, Marty. He wrote a children’s book and goes to hospitals and schools to read to kids. He has already signed with Green Bay (one of our hated competitors), and I will miss him, but he says he’ll still come back to read at Children’s Hospital.

I also like rookie wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell. Not only did he play his heart out, he did several interviews on TV and in the Boston Globe about going to college in Georgia, having only 8th grade reading skills, but knew he wanted to do better than glide by on his athletic ability. So he worked hard at his literacy, even joining a women’s book group outside of Athens, GA. The TV show visited him there, with a bunch of middle-aged Southern white women, talking about the book they read that month. Those Georgia women are now Patriots fans too. It was awesome. Now he, too, has written a children’s book, goes to schools, reads to youngsters and works on literacy programs. In addition to being great athletes, these guys are really making a difference in the community. So sometimes, athletes can be more than knuckleheads. And that makes the game even more enjoyable for me to watch.

————————————————————————————————————-

The above essay was written (and shared on this site) months ago, but the Patriots are back in the Super Bowl. This year they battle against the Eagles, whose owner is from Newton, MA, has a home on Martha’s Vineyard and has a PhD from Brandeis…the world is so small. Martellus Bennett left the Patriots, but came back mid-season, played in a few games, was injured and out for the remainder. Malcolm Mitchell has been out with a pre-season injury the entire season. But Belichick and Brady continue to break records in their 16 seasons together. Love them or hate them, there can no longer be any doubt that they are the best at what they do. They have pulled out many a game in the last few minutes, causing their fans agita and delight, and the rest of the country some respect mixed with hatred and envy. Injuries, including the dreaded concussion have plagued the team this year. And Brady launched his own fitness brand: “TB12” with his guru and trainer, Alex Guerrero, stressing “pliability” instead of muscle building. It has kept him going at the age of 40, but there are rumors that it has caused a rift between him and Belichick. We’ll see what the future holds and how long this franchise can keep going at this incredible pace. I am not a soothe-sayer. Time marches on.

 

Seeking motivation, the author opened his current lit file and scrolled past folder after folder, doc after doc. Jesus, he thought, this is one big pile of writing, all these little black characters wiggling across a white screen. He recognized travelogues from Cuba, some published, most not; sketched-out narrative postcards about growing up absurd in McCarthy’s 1950s; a drafted novel about a runaway anarchist who seeks shelter in a Rocky mountain town full of draft resistors, hippies, libertarians, nasty sheriffs, agents provocateurs, and a case of stolen dynamite.

He flipped through a screenplay that pitted a crumbling corporate dystopia against a multispecies tribe of utopian scavengers. The tribe won the war, the script won awards, but every studio meeting ended with “I want to be the first to read your next story!”

A Saturday sun chuckled through the windows of his airborne office. “Come on out, fool,” the sun said. “Get with the people, let my wind blow between your ears. You know you need it. Look at your skin. You look like a mushroom.”

He closed down the files and rose from the desk, knees aching. Right, he thought. You gotta get out more. He opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of spring water and chomped on a chunk of chocolate his partner had left wrapped in tinfoil.

*

Negative emotions are often caused by the stress of choice. In the here and now, when all is one, there is no need for choice.

*

Determined not to lose momentum, he slammed the door closed and tripped down the stairs, out into the big blue Saturday, hiking downhill to the local scene, a two-block oasis in the L.A. sprawl, the sidewalk crawling with film students, actors, kids from the Valley. Bearded guys in black jeans and pork pie hats slouched at café tables, sipping gut-wrenching espresso and pecking at laptops. Write on, he thought. I wish you well, but right now I want a good Belgian beer, no regrets.

Inside the local bistro, he slid onto a bar stool. He ordered a Chimay and glanced at the screen angled above the bar. Ice hockey, CNN. He snarled at the lineup of pundits mouthing words, words, words. He wanted nothing of consumption, swallowing the news tube’s spoon-fed agenda.

Words. Maybe my writing days are over, he thought. He sipped his beer. A guy sitting at the end of the bar transmuted into a hawk. He perched on his strategically placed bar stool. His hair molted into a hawk’s sweptback feathers. His eyes leapt from person to person as if he was looking for prey. At any moment he might spread his wings, swoop across the room and land on a burger, or the tender shoulder of a tank-topped damsel.

The writer looked away. Take a deep breath, he told himself; and ordered another Chimay. This will bring me down, he thought, but from what? From his perch, the hawk darted a black-eyed glance his way. He could feel talons sink into his neck and shoulder. He swallowed the rest of Chimay number two, paid up, and left without waiting for change.

Back on the avenue, he cruised past a line of kids waiting to file inside an improv comedy club. Five bucks a show, bring your own drinks, 50 minutes of raunchy laughter, grab a stack of three-buck sushi to go from the joint next door, and saunter back to your pal’s apartment, perchance to sleep, perchance to get laid. Kids have all the fun. He remembered youthful misery and corrected: No, kids do not have all the fun.

*

“I take very small doses regularly against depression and against indigestion, and with the most brilliant success.” — Sigmund Freud

*

He edged past the comedy queue snaking along the sidewalk. Elephant trunks, tails, and other fleshy appendages mushroomed out of young faces and torsos. A slim, bearded kid turned simian. The features on a grinning, red-faced boy morphed into a pig snout. Maybe it’s the heat, he thought, but the air was perfect.

One transmogrifying human hawk he could understand but — as when the second airplane flew into the second tower, two episodes in sequence demanded analysis. Rows of kids sporting rhino horns and elephant trunks? No, thank you.

Leaving the grotesque crowd behind, he fled down the sidewalk to familiar territory, a comforting used book and record store. I need to think about this weirdness, he thought. No one else was taking notice of hawks on bar stools or elephants in a ticket line. Why am I seeing this this way? Who’s doing this to me?

*

Facial features appear to change shape and color and eyes often appear to stare at the client.

*

He pushed through the bookstore doors and proceeded straight to the vinyl rack full of old albums, many from his vintage years. Bo Diddly, Neil Young, Martha and the Vandellas, Creedence Clearwater, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmie Hendrix stared up at him from their worn album covers. His war, his resistance, his music, his reason to write.

He stood at the vinyl rack, flipping though albums. Nobody would suspect he was freaking out. No one must know, he said, trying to measure his paranoia. Weird, he thought. Usually disorders run along genetic lines. His old man had suffered manic depression, but the writer’s current state seemed fantastical, schizoid. He felt as if this Saturday carnival was designed to jog his spirit. There are no coincidences. Who — or what — dispatched that barroom hawk to drive the writer into this bizarre wilderness?

*

The client is encouraged to identify and evaluate what is of higher value versus what is of lower value within his or her personality and value structure.

*

Stabilized by the vinyl and his clever ruse as a browser, the writer dared lift his head. Long, straight lines of bookshelves warped under the weight of their payload — books, books, thousand of books, all shapes, sizes, thicknesses, books written, rewritten, published, reviewed or not, books from the millennia, books from now. Hard cover tomes leaned against broke-spined paperbacks, rows of titles, authors, words, so many words, so much effort for what?

He tried to connect his diffused but still-urgent mission, those kindred authors who write to speak out, to express their thoughts and emotions, to change the world, to share their experiences. The authors’ imaginations and resolve, visions flowing through fingers to the keyboard, revised, proofread and corrected, agented or rejected, wired to the designer and printer, published, ordered, packed, shipped, purchased, read, ignored, stacked to gather dust on brick-and-board shelves, thrown into cardboard boxes and brought here to languish or illuminate, myriad destinies resigned to the fate perpetrated by browsers who pulled out titles, perused, recognized the edition of an old favorite, or, unimpressed, slid the title back into its neon-lit crypt.

Why would he want to rejoin this effort, to once again experience this painful charade, stained by hope and frustration? Yeah, the idea that he’d never write again did cross his mind but this journey extended beyond the cliché of writers block. No. Over the years, through periods prolific or empty, he had changed. His writing embraced deeper realms, his psyche and spirit had changed with his body. Without trying, without awareness, his world had undergone a paradigm shift.

*

Digestion turns mushrooms’ active ingredient into psilocin, a psychedelic that causes hallucinations. It’s chemically similar to the neurotransmitter serotonin, whose receptors are found throughout the brain, especially in the visual cortex.

*

The spell dispersed; he began to think clearly again, but who could predict what would happen next? The country continued its collapse under the weight of inequity, the rich, the poor, dumb believers in profit, uncharted tracts of poverty-induced wasteland breeding rage among the people. So it was time for him to recognize that he didn’t know what was coming next or how he would react, or even how to analyze it.

*

Melt the chocolate. Grind the mushrooms into a fine powder. Mix the powder into the melted chocolate and pour the combined ingredients into molds. It is often difficult to calculate the strength of the potion until ingested.

*

The world had changed at every level and — although it had been building for decades — the symptoms of collapse reared up quickly, an apocalypse. Everyone noticed. The changes descend quickly, overturned rocks exposing blind, wriggling courtiers, arrests, thrusting people out of their lives until they realized with the shock of recognition, that they would pay for their health with their lives.

That’s what he needed. To fold into himself, feigning ignorance. Clearly the outside world wasn’t happening for him, and — before new visions assaulted him, he would climb back up the hill to his airy studio, far from the madding crowd. New stories will emerge from his dilated cerebrum, stories that will change the world.

# # #

I closed my eyes and saw ghosts running toward me. My fingers twitched on imaginary keys.
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We know your passion for trucks, and so / We come to the park bearing trucks.
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When I was growing up, my family had a ton of board games, and a finished room in the basement where we kept them all and played them with our friends or with each other. Chiefly I remember Sorry and Chutes & Ladders when I was really young, and then Monopoly and Clue when I was older. I still like Clue, perhaps even better now after thirty years of practicing law.

But it is the game of bridge that stands out the most in my memories. When I think about things that my parents did together in my childhood — and there weren’t many, because my father was always working — my strongest memory is of bridge games. They would invite another couple over after dinner on a Saturday night and play all evening. They were never partners with each other though, it would always be the two wives against the two husbands. Apparently this prevented marital discord, since my father was a perfectionist in his bridge playing like everything else (he was a Virgo, after all), and would yell at his partner if the rules for bidding or playing were not followed exactly. My mother didn’t want to be the one he was yelling at.

They played at the kitchen table, which was round. I don’t know why they didn’t have a card table. I often used to sit and watch until bedtime, and as a result thought I understood how to play the game. I never actually read the rules though, or had anyone explicitly explain them to me. So when the cool kids at my high school started playing bridge, and were looking for a fourth one day, I volunteered. On the first hand I was dealt I had the king, queen, and jack of a suit, so I figured that was my strongest suit. Unfortunately, those were the only three cards I had in that suit. I didn’t realize that length was more important than strength. So I bid the suit, and my partner took us to game, and when he saw my hand, he said “oh no, sweetheart,” or words to that effect. We lost the hand calamitously, and I was out of the game. After that I learned the rules, and then came back and played pretty regularly through the rest of high school.

Sophomore year of college, my best friend and I were dating two guys who were also best friends. This made it very convenient for us all to hang out together. We spent an inordinate amount of time getting stoned and playing bridge. I actually felt like I was a much better bridge player when I was stoned! That winter and spring, we spent so much time playing bridge, and so little time doing schoolwork, that it is probably the case that if Nixon hadn’t invaded Cambodia, precipitating a student strike for the second year in a row, which resulted in a credit/no credit option whereby you didn’t have to take final exams, we all would have flunked that semester.

(As an aside, over spring break that year, the two guys were hitchhiking from Cambridge to D.C. and stopped to see me and spend the night at my parents’ house in New Jersey. My mother was not very friendly to them, which was unlike her, and it took me years to figure out why. Each of my sisters had gotten married after her sophomore year of college. Here was my sophomore year boyfriend, meeting my parents. She was probably afraid I was going to marry him. Nothing could have been further from the truth!)

Once the strike happened, I broke up with that boyfriend because his idea of how to take advantage of the cancellation of classes was to go up to his house in Maine to party. I wanted to get serious about antiwar activity, which was the whole point of the strike. So we went our separate ways. I also stopped playing bridge.

Many years later, after law school, I joined a bridge group that played once a week rotating among the members’ houses. I liked it, probably more for the food and conversation than the bridge games, although they were always lively. That was fun for a few years, but once I had my first baby, 32 years ago, I no longer had the time or the interest, and in fact never played again. Friends who play now tell me the game is very different from how it used to be, but I haven’t been motivated enough to find out what changes have been made. The game I now play on a regular basis, every Monday afternoon, is Mah Jongg . . . but that’s another story.

 

 

This time, the only thing missing is the piglet.
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Decades of slow progress towards gender and racial equality seem to screech to a halt, leaving ugly orange skid marks on the potholed highway to equality.
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The general store in Charlevoix of 1959 seems so quaint when I think back on it now; the wide floorboards, the glass display cases and large open shelving. I wonder if my Sarason grandfather’s store in turn-of-the-century St. Louis was similar. We vacationed in this northern Michigan resort destination for five summers and the morning walk into town while Dad played golf was part of the ritual with my mother.

This particular morning, as I browsed the toy aisle, I discovered a treasure. Barbie was all the rage and there she was on the shelf. I had begged my mother for one. She finally obliged and the blonde bombshell was mine! I was 6 1/2 years old, a shy child, prone to fantasy. I made up stories with my dolls at the center. Now I needed some clothes with which to dress her. Then my best friend, who lived next door, and I met every Saturday and played grown-up games of what life would be like, acting it all out with Barbie.

I didn’t care that her dimensions were impossible, that in real life she wouldn’t be able to stand. None of that meant anything to my almost 7-year-old self. Birthday and Chanukkah presents were easy for years to come: always more clothes for Barbie. One friend gave me a brunette Barbie and fancy case for my birthday that year, a Ken doll and case the next year.

Her official title was “Barbie, Teen Age Fashion Model”. Each outfit came with a booklet describing all available outfits and accompanying accessories. I kept those booklets all over my house – bathroom reading material. I had a prioritzed wishlist of outfits. I knew my parents had bought many and put them aside for various occasions. So when I had teeth pulled under anesthetic, I awoke and was rewarded with the ballerina outfit…very high on my wishlist. I loved dressing her up and making up stories about what she was doing, where she was going, who she was meeting. My parents protested about the number of outfits I wanted; said that I would outgrow the love affair with Barbie at some point, but I protested. I said when I had a real boyfriend, I’d act out my dates with my Barbie doll. I really did live in a fantasy world.

I never had any of the other Mattel add-ons that came after the originals, no Bouffant Barbie. I had no use for the Malibu Dream House. I created my own objects to surround my Barbie. My teacher told my mother that my manual dexterity was poor, so my mother taught me to knit. The little knitting samples became the rugs in her home. Opening her clothing case became her walls. She didn’t need a best friend or sister. I was that for her.

Eventually, I did outgrow the desire to play with dolls of any kind. The last time I dressed up the dolls was in 8th grade. We studied the Civil War. I read Gone with the Wind on my own, for pleasure, but for my project at the end of the unit, I went to my sewing machine and created dresses for the two Barbies, representing the North and the South. Of course, the dark-haired Barbie was the South, like Scarlet O’Hara, and I dressed her in an approximation of the dress she wears in the barbecue scene. I used the little bands from my braces to put their pony tails up in a bun. You can see how I dressed Blonde Barbie in the Featured Image, as I put her away all those years ago, still dressed in her Civil War finery.

I still have every piece of my Barbie collection, from shoes, sunglasses, purses, catalogues, even a book published to mark her 40th anniversary. I don’t know what it is all worth. I used to joke that I could send my kids to college if I ever sold it. I don’t think it’s that valuable (I did play with it, after all – no original box, not in mint condition). But the memories for me make it priceless.