A Fix of Thanks

Here we have a rare moment of peaceful collaboration: this angelic pair are putting together an assortment of tattoo options, which Simon went on to offer to all our Thanksgiving guests. He would walk up to you and hand you the catalog, and then when you'd made your choice, he'd whip his big red Captain Underpants ball-point pen out of his belt-loop and get to work on whatever body part was handy.


Most common request: Skull & Crossbones. Also popular: The Dragon. And "Other" is how Mikala wound up with a full drum kit drawn on her right hip, with "MOM" emblazoned on the big bass drum like the name of the rock 'n' roll band she is.

Thanksgiving dinner was lovely. Lily & Luna brought olives & wine and an antique button-making machine; Lauren brought pies and rolls. We prepared a comprehensive array of carbs to accompany the amazing turkey Andrew turned out, with token greenery in the form of string beans. We expressed our thanks for friends & family, for Obama's victory, and, in Josie's case, for the fact that "middle school didn't turn out to be quite as horrific as I was afraid it would be." (Well, that's a relief, eh?)

After making a respectable dent in the mountain of food, we staggered out for a walk, hoping to return with some capacity for dessert, taking turns shaking the whipping cream in a jar as we trudged up the hill to look down at the lights of the city. What with all the kids opening and closing the container every thirty seconds to make sure we didn't go overboard and come back with butter, we were lucky we only had one minor spill. Care to take the whipped cream Rorschach Test?


(Me, I see a skull & crossbones. And a dragon. Definitely a dragon.)

Back at home, we all did our best to consume our share of pie (there were four pies for the seven of us: you do the math), after which several of us lay on the floor moaning softly, thinking what a ridiculous, yet wonderful, holiday this is.

Then we all settled in to watch "Young @ Heart," which we've been sitting on from Netflix for at least a month. This is the documentary about a chorus of seniors (average age: 80), getting ready for a spring concert featuring songs by the Rolling Stones, Allen Toussaint, Sonic Youth, the Talking Heads, and Coldplay, among others. It turns out these old folks can rock, in their own good-natured, well-seasoned way. Hilarious moments included a deadpan "Should I Stay or Should I Go," performed by a decorous 92-year-old lady, a raucous version of "I Wanna Be Sedated," and the many, many fumbled lines on "I Feel Good."

The film is oddly moving, too, despite the narrator's condescending chirpiness. When the chorus performs for the inmates at the local prison, they finish up the set with Bob Dylan's "Forever Young." Anyone who's ever sniffled through Joan Baez's cover of this song as the soundtrack to, say, a preschool graduation slide show, can imagine the power it had when sung with genuine tenderness by a group of great-grandparents to an audience of young men who (judging by the looks on their faces) seemed taken aback -- and deeply grateful -- that these elderly strangers could still see some kind of innocence and possibility in them.

But the showstopper was definitely "Fix You." Originally sung quite hauntingly by twenty-something Chris Martin of the British alt-pop band Coldplay, "Fix You" takes on a whole new meaning when performed by Fred Knittle, an 83-year-old WWII vet who has been married five decades. At their big spring concert, the Young @ Heart Chorus dedicated the song to two long-time, much-beloved members who had died in the previous week, including one who was originally supposed to be singing this song as a duet with Fred.

And so Fred is there alone on stage, several months past his own congestive-heart-failure deadline, giving what's almost certainly his last public performance. If I'm making this sound over-the-top weepy, it's really not. Fred has such a commanding presence, with his steady, deep voice -- you just know he really would try to fix you, even though he knows as well as anyone that you can't really fix people, much as you'd like to, much as we'd all like to be fixed sometimes.



On Friday Andrew and Mikala embarked upon their first childless weekend getaway since -- well, since we were childless, we think. A generous cadre of friends & relations passed Josie & Simon around for 54 hours -- many thanks to Ken & Lenore, Tiffy, Lauren & her pals, and Steve & Hillary. (Some of these dear people even claimed to enjoy our children sufficiently that they'd be willing to do it again before another dozen years go by. Amazing.)

Meanwhile, we went up to Doe Bay Resort, a beautiful, rustic, hippie retreat on Orcas Island, where we made an important, though perhaps obvious, discovery.

It may well be true that we can't be fixed, or even fix ourselves. But we can spend a lazy weekend with someone we love, even if it takes us a while to remember how it's done. We can sweat in a sauna and soak in a hot tub, showing off our ball-point-pen tattoos to the hipsters with real ones. We can read in bed until noon, and after another trip to the tubs, read in bed some more. We can drink Lillet martinis as the sun goes down. We can eat mushroom tartlets, and salmon with mint, and pumpkin bread pudding in caramel-bourbon sauce. We can be serenaded by sweet folky musicians who have somehow found their way to Orcas Island from Olympia and Belgium. We can wander the misty woods and find cryptic but possibly instructive signs there.

And at the end of it all we can return home to a giant running tackle-hug from Simon, a fridge still full of Thanksgiving leftovers, and clear evidence on the kitchen counter that a good time was had by the staff of the Bakery while we were away.


All of which is to say, it turns out we can muddle through somehow. Repair may be beyond us, but repose, with love, is within our reach. And if we're lucky, we'll survive long enough to find ourselves onstage with our oxygen tank, still promising to learn from our mistakes.



P.S. Hmm.... I just watched the video again, and Fred actually skips over the line "I promise I will learn from my mistakes" in this performance. Ah well. He does say it on the chorus's "Mostly Live" record -- I got the single from iTunes, if anyone wants to hear it.