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Who Are You Apologizing To This Holiday Season:
or, for the more hard-hearted among us, for those of us with hearts more similar in composition and texture to stale gingerbread, or peppermint hard candies found at the bottom of last year's stocking, or cookie dough right out of the freezer; for those of us with hearts that could use a little ripening, like a winter pear or clementine, can't imagine who i'm talking about here, can't imagine anyone like this,
Who Are You Trying To Forgive This Holiday Season?

heather and i saw the irish writer colum mccann speak at the 92nd street y last night (this means i will get to hashtag colum mccann again on this blog, making him the second most hashtagged thing after #dinner), and he referred to a little something called irish alzheimer's. according to colum, this disease is, you forget everything but a grudge. ah! a diagnosis! finally!

the name for this affliction comes in a season, month, week, where i find myself forced prompted, like scrooge, or perhaps more like matthew mcconaughey pre- his recent ascent to Great Movie Star of our Time, by a selection of personal ghosts to think about all my grudges of years past, how to work on myself, things i wish i'd done better this year, hope i'll do better next year, mistakes to rectify, the e-reader i want, must be on nice list, and importantly, how to forgive people, because it's the way to truth, and my ereader, and may make my psychosomatic shin splints go away.

on monday i arrived at work in my normal monday mood, which is to say simultaneously over-caffeinated and drowsy, points if i can make it from the subway platform to my desk chair without looking up from my book, feeling distinctly able to focus on the bad but utterly OCD when it comes to prospect research, generally a human storm cloud, but dressed, and i checked facebook. i was recently explaining to my boss that i never check facebook unless i'm at work, then realized, terrible audience, but it's true, so i checked my facebook and LO AND BEHOLD over my stupid, self-pitying weekend i had received this totally unexpected and kind facebook message. it was just waiting for me there in the internet! and it included an apology from one of these ghosties mentioned above. from someone i really didn't need an apology from, from someone at least 3 apartments and 10 lbs and 4 jobs ago, but it was of course still appreciated, and, more than that guys, it was a cindy lou who shock to my grinchy system.

i was asking for this shock like a kid talking back to his parents. i've been operating under the influence of a pretty serious bout of irish alzheimer's for most of the fall quarter here and i wonder if i'm starting to see the light, or if it's just the christmas spirit, or if it even matters which it is, because while my ab muscles have developed from hanging on to all this tension, it hasn't been particularly good for my cuticles or the enamel on my molars and all i've been flirting with in 6 months is TMJ which isn't even to speak of what it's done to my typical cool chill manner!

 

i watch my roommates struggling with forgiveness, granting it or seeking it, while i do the same. we trace each other's footsteps through our tiny apartment, negotiating the small space, twinkling with christmas lights and crowded with our brooding. (or maybe not, guys, and i'm just so brood-y that i imagine it?)

and then, when it comes, forgiveness, it comes so easily. it is a flood of warmth that is so relieving, like walking inside out of the cold december night. it seems like you hardly had to work for it after all, you so quickly forget how bad and useless all that energy was, and then acceptance exists as a matter-of-fact truth, the truth that it's fine, i'm fine, we're fine, and worst case scenario there is absence and apathy in place of all that anger, but best case -- there is affection.

i'm lucky because every time i want to remember how that feeling is possible and how it is so good, all i have to do is go to this one bar in brooklyn. this guy, this ghost, he's important to me, and he's always there. and every time i look at him all of these piled up years are there, too. and i get to revel in this ridiculous feeling that's maybe like how mother teresa-george saunders type people feel all the time, and it's like my irish alzheimer's morphs into buddhist alzheimer's and i only remember nothing except for that it's nice to see him and we get to pepper each other with kisses and it's nbd and no one is angry ever and there's world peaaaace!!!!!

because i'm pretty sure that's the point of all of this, or at least this:

seasons greetings and love and acceptance (depending who's reading this heh heh),

 

fran

this post is a season send-off for my main men

my yankee, brett gardner

I am in a period of mourning.  Sunday was the last day of the Yankees season. Thursday was the last home game.  I had what felt like many solitary nights and weekends this past spring and summer, and I will tell you, from much firsthand experience, that the YES announcers make spectacular company.

Baseball is my favorite background sound, for cooking, for eating, for doing crunches (**I do crunches!**), for driving.  From April to September, one is forgiven the need to have plans.  Essentially every night, no matter who you’re not seeing, who you wish you were seeing, or who you're trying not to see, you have companionship for 9 innings. 

There is something about the deliberate, measured structure of baseball, the way the strikes and the outs come in threes, the way each pitch, each inning, and each game amounts to a greater sum, that makes the sport downright therapeutic.  It is boring, even.  Like this blog.  A nerd's game, much of the time more about numbers and organization than actual physical fitness or athletic prowess.

On Thursday, Bennett and I said good-bye.  We took the crowded 4 train into the Bronx. We piled out with everyone else, and without everyone else stopped at the grocery store for peanuts and gummy bears. We scalped two seats for twenty bucks on 161st.  We bought Budweiser in the stands and littered peanut shells on the people in front of us and exchanged glances with the Dad sitting near us as we spiked our coke.  I ordered a hot dog and watched as it was amiably passed through 8 pairs of hands before reaching my mouth. We limply did the YMCA before the seventh inning and were solemnly quiet for God Bless America and yelled "YANKEES" in place of "home team" during Take Me Out to the Ball Game. We were on our feet for the entirety of the 8th inning and watched while Mariano Rivera threw his last four outs ever and sobbed into Andy Pettite's shoulder. It's like no one told Frank Sinatra that we lost 0-4; we were sung insouciantly out of the stadium. 

The end of baseball means it's really the end of summer. There are already no fresh stats to compulsively check on the MLB At Bat app, from bed first thing in the morning, or the bar late at night, or my office during the 2:00 lull.  Long drives up and down I-95 will feel longer without the company of John and Susan on AM 880, mindlessly interrupting each other with updates on the Jeterian swing and Suzuki's milestones. On Sunday, there won't be a beer cracked at 1:05pm, just because the baseball game is starting (well, ok, there might be, but not because the baseball game is starting, so it won't taste as good).  Six months without the chance to make a last minute decision after work to take the green 4 train up to the greenest borough and lazily spend three hours with 40,000 other New Yorkers, in suits and pinstripes and even, brazenly, A-Rod jerseys.

If you are not a baseball fan, but if you like warm feelings and good writing, this old essay from the Sunday Review written by Colum McCann might get your mind changed in time for next year. He talks a lot about why baseball is an immigrant's game, which doesn't apply to me at all, but he also does a way better job than I just did at explaining what it does for the soul.

until april (and hopefully before, but jeez, having a blog is a lot of work),

fran