On an early Sunday morning

Sometimes, like this morning, I find myself thinking about how the world has changed these past almost five months. When Michael and I left NYC that mid-March day, we never imagined how the different the future would be. This week, we would have been in Ireland, one of my favorite places, where for six years I’ve taught and laughed and been with friends old and new. As someone who really does not like hot weather, when I step off the plane in Ireland, the cool air, even the rain, greets me and I smile big. Our week in Dingle has become a tradition, and this morning I am missing the wild ocean there, the green fields of sheep, dinner at the Chart House, Dingle gin and tonics, the pubs and the colorful buildings, visiting the folks at Dingle Crystal, Guinness, the little cheese shop, fish and chips, dinner at World Village, Murphy’s ice cream, friends...I could go on and on. If you’d like a glimpse of this special place, read Michael’s article about it in Saveur. He captures it beautifully.

It’s easy to fall into thinking that in these uncertain times, I may never be in Ireland again. I confess, there are moments when I do think things like that. The happiness of being in Ireland and Tuscany and Mexico and all the places I return to every year can feel far away, even impossible. The excitement of seeing new places—we were going to Ecuador at the end of the summer, planning a long dreamed of visit to St. Petersburg, Russia—seems almost too hopeful to allow myself to dream about.

But usually, usually, I instead take quiet times like this morning as everyone, even the cats, are asleep and the hot summer sun is peeking through the shades and the ceiling fan spins above me, to walk the hilly streets of Dingle in my mind. There is a light rain and a crowded pub with music playing. The air is cool and fresh. The ocean is right over there. My gin and tonic has a slice of orange and juniper berries. I’m there.

On other mornings I may walk the rocky path to dinner at Spannocchia in Tuscany, past centuries old stone buildings, black and white pigs, cypress trees. I can almost taste the local wine, the pizzas hot from the pizza oven. We roast chestnuts in the hearth, drink liqueur made from walnuts that grow outside our house.

Or maybe I walk the streets of a small Mexican town hand in hand with Michael. We stop at the mezcaleria, or for street tacos, or the best mole. We look at art and wander local markets, travel back roads to visit weavers or painters or agave farms.

What will our world look like in another five months? Will I spend a glorious week with writer friends in St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia!) teaching and eating cheeseburgers, staying up too late in our pajamas, hearing readings that make us laugh or break our hearts, surrounded by the warmth of old friendships made deeper and stronger over more than decade there?

Will we sit in Manhattan restaurants, Broadway shows, our favorite movie theatres? Have our friends over for whiskey sours, my students crowded together for posole in our tiny apartment? Will we board an airplane and take off for someplace new, feel the excitement of stepping into a city we’ve never wandered before? Or the comfort and joy of one we know and love?

This hot, humid July morning I dream of all of those pleasures returning. I dream of Ireland and Italy, of Mexico and Manhattan. I dream new dreams.

The cats are awake, nipping my toes, urging me out of bed to feed them. The Sunday NYT is waiting downstairs. Later I’ll struggle over the sweater I’m knitting, finish Maggie O’Farrell’s gorgeous new novel HAMNET, bake blueberry muffins. I hope you find time in your day, every day, to dream. To remember the streets you love to walk, to smell the air there.

Fourth of July

A Fourth of July without family cookouts and fireworks is upsetting to a lot of people. For me, I'm grateful. You see, the Fourth of July is one of those holidays that kind of tears up my heart.

My father, love of my life, was born on July 4, 1929. For much of my life, the Fourth of July was about celebrating him, with a nod to Independence Day. Dad was a patriot, and as such felt truly proud that he was born on the same day as the United States of America.

As a kid, I would wake up on the Fourth of July to the sounds of John Phillip Sousa march music playing loud in the back yard. From my bedroom window I could see Dad in the backyard, already at the grill with a cold beer in his hand. I'd call Happy Birthday! down to him, and he would grin back up at me. My father had the widest grin, the bluest eyes, the blondest hair, the softest beer belly, and the biggest heart.

Way before noon, people started showing up. My mother did not like parties, drinking, or people acting foolish, so she did not love the Fourth of July. She left it up to Dad to grill the food and refill the cooler with ice and beer and party away. It was hot in our scruffy back yard, but soon enough the party spilled onto the front sidewalk and into the street. One year, the WW II vets among us put pots and pans on their heads, grabbed mops and brooms, and marched around the block singing. Illegal fireworks filled the sky with smoky red and blue from Roman candles and sparks of light from sparklers. In other words, anything could and did happen on the Fourth of July at 10 Fiume Street.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, after I'd made some money as a writer, I rented beach houses for my family every summer at Scarborough Beach in RI. So the parties moved there. And they only got bigger as cousins got married and years worth of high school and college friends came too. Now that we had a big, sloping lawn, the annual bocce ball championship began, a mostly drunken, highly competitive game that went until dark. I have a picture of Sam at three months old, dressed in red, white and blue, smiling up my father on Dad's birthday party at the beach; a picture of me, seven months pregnant with Grace, my head tilted against Dad's, grinning.

Like all things, those celebrations at the beach ended. In 1996, Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he died the following April, three months before his sixty-eighth birthday. That year, we all decided that we needed to go somewhere that didn't celebrate the Fourth of July. Even though grief advice is often that running away is not a good thing, I have found the opposite to be true. Mom, Cousin Gina, Niece Melissa, four year old Sam, nine month old Grace, and I flew to Mexico, where we stayed at a luxury hotel on the beach in Ixtapa.

For four days we ate tacos with our toes in the sand, swam in the pool, shopped at the outdoor market, and drank margaritas. On the 5th of July, we realized we had managed to miss the holiday, and felt so grateful that we immediately ordered more margaritas. dad would have approved.

Ever since then, I have had to think ahead, plan my escape. For several years I taught out of state at a writers conference over the Fourth. I took other trips out of the country--London or Italy or anywhere, really. If I had to be home, I said no thank you to invitations to parties and cook outs and kept my family close, gazing up at the fireworks exploding above us. "Isn't it nice how everyone puts on a firework show for my birthday?" Dad would say. In 1986, I was invited to the hundredth birthday party of the Statue of Liberty, celebrated on the Fourth of July. We had ring side seats on Governor's Island, with lots of food and drinks, and a perfect view of the 40000 pyrotechnic device fireworks show. They lasted for twenty-eight minutes, dazzling us and two million other spectators. At one point Dad squeezed my hand and whispered, "Really. This year they've gone way overboard to celebrate my birthday." I leaned my head toward his until we touched, and the sky exploded before us.

2020 finds us living in such uncertain times. On March 11,  Michael and I were in our apartment in NYC trying to decide where to eat before we went to see the play The Lehman Brothers on Broadway when Sam called and told us that Broadway had just shut down. I remember looking at Michael and saying, "This is really bad." Four months later, we are still saying that as the coronavirus spreads and spikes across the country and the world; as protests over racial injustices shake us awake; as our country, of which I have always been so proud, sits on a dangerous precipice. On that Fourth of July in 1986, France's president, Francois Mitterand, said: "May our children's children find themselves celebrating together in 100 years time." Yet today, we can not even travel to France, or anywhere in the EU. In this time of so much uncertainty, when there is no normal anymore, firework displays have been cancelled and large cook-outs are not allowed because we can not safely social distance.

Sam is in Miami, which is a hotspot for COVID 19. Michael is self quarantined in NYC after visiting his son in Syracuse to celebrate his 21st birthday. So Annabelle and I will watch Hamilton (again! Thank you, Lin Manuel Miranda) and eat ribs (thank you Chez Pascal!) and corn and heirloom tomatoes. That's all just fine with me. I don't know if there is a heaven, though I like to think there is. I like to think Dad and Mom and my brother Skip and my daughter Grace are all there together, looking down at me here. I hope there's beer there.

In my mind, John Phillip Sousa is playing, loud. Dad is grinning up at me, a beer in his hand. I can hear the clink of bocce balls knocking together, smell the acrid scent of fireworks right after they've been lit. Happy Birthday, Dad. Happy Fourth of July.