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The Russian sandpiper is on the brink of extinction, so I was glad to see a big flock of its American cousins on the beach yesterday.
Around sunset a beautiful young woman wandered into the Little Store, a refugee from San Diego, fleeing the southland fires. Camping out in a football stadium didn't appeal to her. Instead she got in her car and started driving.
"My son's college roommate's family lost their house," I told her.
Which is true of course but still I had to wonder why I brought it up. There is something about great disasters that makes us want to stake a claim in them. I remember all those people who confabulated dead family and friends after 9/11 for no apparent reason, certainly not to defraud, maybe just to share in a collective process (in this instance, grieving.)
"I don't know if my house is gone or not," said the woman. "Anyway, there's nothing I can do about it now so…" She shrugged. She stooped to look at the Venetian masks in one of my glass cases. "That one's very pretty. Mind if I look at it?"
I took it out, showed it to her. "It's called a bauta. It's the mask that was most commonly worn during Carnivale. See how the chin tilts? That's so you could eat and drink without taking it off –"
"I'll take it!" said the woman. "If everything else I own's been destroyed, at least I'll have one thing that's mine."
Then she laughed.
The Number 2 son has been a real pain in the ass for the past week or so. Coinciding with his birthday, the new skateboard, and his ascension to the outer fringes of the Cool Kids' Clique.
The cool kids all skateboard, see.
"Robin says he feels very sorry for ____ ____," Ben tells me. "The cool kids won't hang out with him because he's not Italian."
"Don't they need a Sammy Davis Jr?" I asked. "And why are they hanging out with Robin?"
"Well, because you're Italian and that makes him Italian –"
"I see."
Actually I don't see why anybody would want to hang out with JoJo and Gigi who spend every second they don't spend at the skateboard park crashing various born-again Christian bible study groups.
"But aren't they Catholic?" I asked, scandalized.
"I guess," said Robin. "But they give away all sort of cool stuff at bible study. Like yoyo's and colored pencils. And there's free food! Can I go?"
"Absolutely not!" I said. "You want to run off to Pakistan and sign up for the madrasah or move to Brooklyn and enroll in a yeshiva, be my guest. But you're never setting foot in a born-again Christian bible study group, at least not while you're living under my roof."
"Fine!" said Robin. And he stormed off into his room, slamming the door behind him. Presumably to update his MySpace profile.
