The interposing medium

Our worldwide readership appears to have concluded that a fortnight’s caesura signaled the death of this blog and perhaps of its heroes. Last week’s post, unusually brilliant even by our standards, elicited a measly three comments. We are all in an uproar and confess to have entertained thoughts of a strike, a press conference, a benefits concert, or perhaps a campaign for the presidency (everyone else is doing it); but, in deference to the faithful few (you know who you are) who did not fling themselves over the sides of the good ship CFA at the first adumbration of troubled waters, cooler heads have prevailed. As Pompey cried upon hearing that Caesar had crossed the fateful Rubicon, “The Blog must go on!” (Caesar won, so history has preserved his epigrammatic utterance on the same occasion.) We proceed.

Monday (February 19): With Grandma Patti still in town there was only one thing for the girls to do—shop—and only one place whereat to do it—Costco. If Costco stands for one thing, it is self-imposed and customer-borne transaction costs, and if it stands for another, it is purchase à la bulk. And buy in bulk these ladies did, graciously forwarding the bill to an unsuspecting Grandpa Bruce; Julia preemptively softened the blow to the financial assets of that lapiphilic gentleman by sending him a conciliatory rock with this note appended: “Grandpa, you are like a fine stone: You get older with age.” In a further instance of liberality with her husband’s fortune, Grandma kindly offered to take us to dinner. After conscientious study of The Menu—a comprehensive guide to New Haven cuisine, complete with rankings, prices, and unflattering references to the junior senator from New York—Grandma and Lia opted for “Lou’s Big Top,” which rated high marks indeed as providing more bang for one’s proverbial buck. The Bull was somehow more aerodynamic with all five of us in it, and after barreling inexorably down Whalley Avenue, we arrived at the eating establishment of the famous Lou. The sight was uninspiring. What did inspire, however, was the presence of an elegant looking Tuscan restaurant next door. We looked at Lou’s; we looked at Carmine’s; at Carmine’s and again at Lou’s. “But I worry about the price,” protested Lia. “Grandpa could pay for it,” chimed Eli. To Carmine’s we went. The ambience was elegantly familiar; the food exquisite; Justin’s urge to show off by speaking to the proprietor in Italian irresistible. And so we passed a lovely evening, though Julia was observed to cast a regretful glance to Lou’s across the way.

Tuesday (February 20): Grandma left this morning to visit Pennsylvania and the organic tank that is our nephew Andrew. Julia was inconsolable; Eli, determined to bear this hardship philosophically, nonetheless insisted on wearing black. Only the promise of a bath persuaded her to cast off her nighted colors. We loved having Grandma with us and were sorry to see her go. In the evening Lia, burdened by a day-long chorus of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, fled to the church to play the piano for a Young Women’s activity that featured the latter-day incarnations of such medieval morality players as Ms. Materialism, Ms. Self-centered, Ms. Perfect-10, Ms. Gossip, and the apathetic Ms. Whatever (the astute among you will recognize these as caricatured inversions of the Young Women values). Back at home, Justin lost to Julia at the farm game, miserably, for the seventy-third time in a row.

Wednesday (February 21): Lia scored the triumph today of quashing forever Justin’s quixotic plans of pursuing a JD/Ph.D. at Yale. We shall not tell you in what the winning argument consisted; suffice it to say it was incontrovertible. Lia left early (just after 6) to go to the gym with her friends. Eli sensed her mother’s absence and felt sure that waking up would effect her return. The hapless Justin tried hard to walk and sing her back to sleep, but Eli responded by periodically gazing into her daddy’s face with inexorable brown eyes until at last he surrendered. At this point Eli’s co-conspirator, one Julia, also awoke. Soon all the lights in the house were on, all the toys in the closet were out, and all the songs in Julia’s tuneful head floating loudly across the still-sleepy air. Lia took her first French test in the afternoon. She aced it as a matter of course, and only because she checked her answers was she not the first in the class to finish (as it happened, she was third). Home-made corn dogs for supper.

Thursday (February 22): Eli donned her favorite hockey jersey in honor of the 27th anniversary of the U.S. national team’s upset of the Soviets in the gold-medal match of the 1980 winter Olympics. It was a longish sort of day, marked by a persistently drizzling rain. The ladies of the household, together with Addie and Callie LaDuke, embarked on a wild goose chase downtown for special Dino Days activities. Alas, they had been misinformed about the event’s location. It was held at the Peabody Museum; the intrepid band missed it entirely. In the evening Justin was sent upon an errand to the New Haven Free Public Library (we’re extravagant fans of the gratuitous adjective in this title) to fetch the children’s epic, Franklin is Lost. After a spectacular parallel parking success (no mean feat in the Bull on an icy evening), our hero marched resolutely into this palace of books. The library computer system’s explicit assurance that the sought-for volume was “ON SHELF,” Franklin is Lost was conspicuously not on the shelf in the children’s section where common sense and the ghost of John Dewey said it ought to have been. “Bother,” thought Justin, “I’ll have to ask the librarians.” This was done. The librarian helpfully marched over the shelf Justin had just checked and, quite mysteriously, the book was still not there. The sage librarian then commented fatalistically, “The Franklin books are so popular. We lose them with monotonous regularity.” Justin consoled himself by pulling Franklin’s Holiday Treasures from the shelf and heading downstairs to check it out. But somehow this wasn’t enough consolation, so he thought he’d quickly—very quickly—grab a book for himself. He stood paralyzed for some time, weighing Robertson Davies in one hand against Henry James in the other before finally opting for the latter. But he evidently hadn’t dithered long enough, for when he returned home the Joy School planning meeting he sought scrupulously to avoid was still proceeding apace. The business of the meeting was to divide the diminutive band of scholars into two more manageable groups. The issue was to be settled democratically, which it effectively was, though Lia later worried that her innate powers of executive persuasion had shaped the vote—that she, vowing she would not direct, directed. Justin sympathetically advised her to calm her troubled heart and jumped with a will into the opening pages of Washington Square.

Friday (February 23): Julia went to Joy School in the morning and sang the Joy School ditties with tremendous gusto and at quick intervals for the rest of the day. In the evening, we went to our ward chili cook-off. Knowing that there is no finer introduction to Mormonism than vast quantities of chili, we invited our neighbors, Marfisa and Eduardo Rodrigues, and our friends, Sander and Bianca Daniels. These four rode in the Daniels mobile which followed behind the Bull as it trod its steady way toward the Woodbridge stake center. A cavalcade lead by a vehicle driven by Justin was predestined to get lost, but our digressions were limited to a single wrong turn which was soon corrected. The chili and the company were worth the drive. The Portuguese-speaking returned missionaries were very welcoming to Marfisa and Eduardo (Bianca also speaks Portuguese and Sander pretends to understand it) and we all had great fun. Julia had the most fun of all, racing around the gym with her friends like so many unstable electrons. At one point, they all donned the cowboy hats that had theretofore served as table pieces. No pictures, alas.

Saturday (February 24): Lia went visiting teaching in the morning and then to Enrichment for some invaluable lessons in emergency preparedness. Justin and the girls stayed home, where Eli took a nap and Julia insisted repeatedly on having her panties changed. Justin was vexed but powerless before such dogged irrationality. In the afternoon, while Justin read of lofty thoughts ploddingly expressed in the library, the ladies received a visit from a mother and eighteen-month-old daughter from the Yale community interested in an occasional babysitter (for the daughter, that is). The evening was a quiet one, ending for us, like this blog for you, in the sweetest silent slumber.