In the French family, we sleep under quilts. Even when a duvet is
involved, a quilt absolutely must lie atop it. We are used to the
weight of them, and among the five of us, own around three dozen. Each
one of these was handmade, stitch-by-stitch, by my mother. To get an
idea of the scope of this, she quilts daily, and a single quilt takes
over a year to complete. She does not believe in idle hands, or more
precisely, cannot relate to them. Last year I found a melon-sized
rubber band ball sitting on her desk, held it up to my brother and
asked, simply, “Why?” “Because,” he said, “It’s what she does. She
makes things.”
My whole life I have slept under one or another of my mother’s quilts, some of which were blue ribbon winners in the Bishop County fair. I dragged them to boarding school in Canada, college in Scotland, then Boston, and back to California again. During a Laura Ingalls Wilder phase, I began to pretend I was huddled up beneath one on the back of a covered wagon. I still like to imagine this when I can’t fall asleep.
I always know the exact moment love officially strikes me clear and hard. The world actually goes silent. I can’t help but smile. My eyes light up. And most importantly, I shut up. Because in that very moment, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, I’m rendered speechless since there’s only one truth: I’m alive and I love you and I know it and that’s all there is to it.
Since I've recently become single, I find myself going places and doing things that I normally wouldn't do all in the name of meeting women. This usually means after a long tiring day of work I'll force myself to visit a bar or a party that I normally wouldn't go to. The most recent of these events was when my work hosted a networking event called "Girls in Tech." As you might have guessed, it's for women in the tech industry.
She leans in toward me, her elbows on the counter. She is tall, blonde, and very slender. She’s wearing a tight black skirt and a white blouse open one button just past modest. A maid’s apron circles her waist. She begins to speak but I raise my hand and gesture for her to wait. I am listening to the teenage girl with the long legs and short shorts standing to the blonde’s left. She is a regular but, tonight, she wants more than usual.
In New York for a brief visit, my wife and I wanted to celebrate our
19th wedding anniversary with a special dinner. After a beautiful day
walking around the city, we decided to find a restaurant near where we
were staying at 70th and Amsterdam. For our anniversary dinner, we
wanted a restaurant where we could talk and hold hands. And we wanted a
meal prepared by a chef who cared about making interesting food, but we
didn't want to spend a fortune.