February 24, 2013

RE: Bro's Craigslist Ad for Date to Wedding


New York Daily News headline for February 20, 2013:
BROTHERS’ HILARIOUS, BIZARRE CRAIGSLIST AD TO FIND DATES FOR COUSIN’S WEDDING GOES VIRAL, ELICITING MORE THAN 800 RESPONSES. 

“Dave, 28, and Mike, 24, originally of Albany, promise dates ‘eccentric/downright dangerous bro-2-bro dance moves’ and royalties once their night is turned into a romantic comedy. They say they are overwhelmed and need to sort through the deluge of replies.”

Whoa. Dudes. Thank you SO much for giving me this great idea for the next wedding I have to go to. All this time I’ve been going by myself, or you know, just asking someone I actually know. But what an idea to take an ad out and interview someone like it’s a job application. Nothing says romance quite like, “Feel free to include a resume!


And I’ll give you credit, you’ve totally pegged the we’re-quirky-in-a-cute-and-endearing-way that women seem to love. Crazy Christmas sweaters! Bro-2-bro dance moves! And where did you guys get those American flag swim trunks? You guys are basically the Mr. Darcy of my generation. I mean, 800 responses so far? WITH a PowerPoint presentation?  Pure gold. With numbers like that you could put Match.com out of business.


I also appreciate how this is helping put our hometown of Albany, New York on the map (Go Shaker Bison! I was on the tennis team and we used to kick Saratoga’s butt! #athleticstats!) We haven’t had anyone fun come out of that place since Andy Rooney. Did you notice that the local Times Union even picked you guys up? The story has what might be the best combo of a scary and weird headline of all time: “You could be the dream Craigslist wedding date.” Hilarious!

And when the TU picks you up you know you’ve arrived. My sister and I got our picture in there circa 1992 when we had a lemonade stand at the end of our street in Loudonville. Must have been a slow news day, but I’ll admit our lemonade was the shit. None of that from concentrate nonsense. Did I mention that photo placement changed our lives?


OK. So let’s get to the good stuff, and talk about your list of guarantees for the night.


• An excuse to get dressed up: So does this mean I have to wear an eccentric festive sweater and/or anything patriotic?


• Open bar and food all night: I’m a 29 year-old professional woman who lives in Manhattan, and let me tell you there’s nothing I love more than a guy who doesn’t have to buy me dinner or a drink. 


• Eccentric/downright dangerous bro-2-bro dance moves (may need to sign a waiver): I’m confused here. I get that you’re brothers, but does this mean you’ll both just be dancing with each other all night? If so that’s fine. I know the entire dance to Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend.”


• Adventure: In Saratoga? I mean, I guess. It’s not even August. How can there be adventure without horses? If I ever own a horse I’m going to name it Heavens to Betsy.


• Mystery: Will you be wearing masks?


• Suspense: Is this one of those murder-mystery weddings where everyone shows up as a specific character? I went to someone’s birthday like that once when I was in junior high, and it was a lot of fun. I was the murderer.


• True love: 50% of first marriages end in divorce, but I’m really rooting for your cousin. Oh, and speaking of your cousin, how does the bride feel about you guys stealing the thunder from her big day? I'm assuming that’s probably sort of a sore subject at this point. If you choose me I'm definitely going to need some time to beef up on my self-defense skills before we show up. #bridezillas.


• Royalties once our night's story is developed into a romantic comedy*

*if this happens (we estimate the chances at 85%) we refuse the right to let Ashton Kutcher play either of our characters, however, we will consider him for a supporting role. Can we call it “You Could be the Dream Craigslist Wedding Date?” And this sounds more like a Lifetime “based on a true story” movie to me. *People tell me I look like Lizzy Caplan.


Good news for all of us! You won’t believe the exact amazing compliment I’ve been getting from men my whole life. It’s what every girl is dying to hear: “You’re pretty, but not too pretty.” Bingo! Also, I too aspire to be with someone who doesn’t have time to get to know me, and can just make things up when I’m meeting their family for the first time. #keepingitclassy.


Listen, I understand the two of you have some pretty difficult decisions to make here. Getting bombarded by messages from women all trying to convince you to go out with them isn’t easy. Ugh, life is SO hard for guys these days, amiright? But knowing a woman’s high school athletic statistics along with how many jobs she’s had really is the best way to find the right match. So keep pressing on, boys. You have a date with destiny.


And when all is said and done in this American Idol of love and dating you guys have created, I really do believe you’ll both find your Kelly Clarkson’s (or at least the oftentimes more successful runner-up).


So here's to the happy couple! You know, the one that’s getting married.

February 1, 2013

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.”

It’s hard for me to think about what happened six years ago and make sense of it. Looking back most of everything that happened during those three days in the hospital is, for the most part, a total blur. Yet each year when the anniversary of my mother’s death rolls around, I can’t help but think about time. How much has passed. How I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve seen her. I feel compelled to write about it but in all honesty there’s nothing left to tell. It happened, a story of loss that’s common to many. Sure it’s a story that will keep unfolding in its own private way inside my heart forever - but the rest? Well, we keep going.

Yet the other side of the story I’ve never told is the story of my friends. The people who, unlike my mother, still remain.

In the wake of hearing the news that my mother had been in a car accident and was lying in a hospital bed in a coma, my friends showed up within hours. People came up from New York City and Washington DC. They flew in from Wisconsin, drove down from Boston. Friends old and new, some who knew my mother and some who didn’t. Memories of what happened while we waited to see how that story was going to end, (the one that would tell whether my mother was going to live or die), appear and disappear from my mind. At times they’re perfectly clear and I remember what I was wearing, what I said, who was there, what she looked like lying in that bed with machines attached to her. Yet there are other times when I try to summon those days from my past, and I can’t remember anything at all. It’s all just darkness. Like it wasn’t even real.

And then this week as the anniversary of her death was approaching, something came to me. It was a flash of clarity from what has now become a chain of events that unfolded so quickly that at the time I could hardly process anything. I saw my closest friends from high school, the six people I used to do everything with, all sitting around the kitchen table in the house where I grew up. I don’t remember what we were doing exactly, but I remember they were all there, these people I’d known since I was in junior high, some even as far back as kindergarten. There they were. And over the long days that followed they would go home to sleep only to return the next day. 

I remembered one night it was snowing, and we all went for a walk illuminated by nothing but the soft glow of the moon shining against the white blanket beneath our feet. And my heart was hurting, and my head was in disbelief, but there they were, walking alongside me. And they were okay with the fact that sometimes I would talk and sometimes I wouldn’t. Sometimes I would cry, or shut down. Sometimes one of them would make me laugh, and I would manage a smile.

I had known for a long time that I was lucky to have such good friends, people who knew me throughout all the different iterations of who I’d been over the years and still cared. But this was big. Because sure, they stuck by me through the awkwardness of adolescence, the drama of high school, the harder truths of college and beyond. But death? Is anyone ever ready to deal with that?

And then I realized –these people already knew. This group of young men and women had already been there. Because these people I’m still friends with today I was friends with at eighteen, and at eighteen one of our group, his father died suddenly of a heart attack just a few weeks shy of us graduating high school. BAM! Just like that, we grew up.

So just five years later when we were twenty-three and it was my parent who died, they were ready. And there is something irreplaceable about this being the last group of people in my life who will know my mother. Over the years she’d hug them when they’d show up at our house. She’d pick them up at school dances, and the movies before we could drive. She’d have them over for dinner, ask about their love lives, how their band was doing, their parents, what their plans were after high school, what their plans were after college. 


It’s strange for me to think about how everyone I’ve met since I came to New York will never know her. How every person I’ll meet from this day forward won’t know who she was, won’t know the kind of person I was before I lost her, had to bury her, and everything changed. But I know that’s okay because this is what happens. This is how the story goes. And the older we get the more, unfortunately, we're going to have to deal with it. 

What’s important however, is knowing that you have people who will be there. People who will drop everything and get on a plane or train just to hold you, cry with you, try to make you laugh. What matters is that there are people who reach out to you every year on the anniversary of your mother’s death (even now, six years later), just to tell you they’re thinking about you. That they love you. That they’re there if you need anything as you take time to reflect, remember, and remind yourself to keep going.

This calls to mind one of my favorite Walt Whitman quotes, a poet whose words from The Leaves of Grass have gotten me through the darkest of times. “I have learned that to be with those I like is enough,” he wrote. For me, I have learned that to be with those I love is enough, because that, I believe, is life. It’s quick this time we have here, and in the whole scheme of things we’re nothing more than a speck, a mere flash in what is the vast scope of the universe. The history books will not record many of us, and our deaths will not be mentioned on the evening news or in slideshows at the Academy Awards. We will end our lives much the same way we came in, significant only to those who knew us. Knew us as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives. As friends. That’s how we live on long after we’ve become fading newspaper obituaries, and dates on crumbling tombstones.

Whenever I start to lose hope and question everything and want to hug my mother so much it makes it difficult to breathe, one truth repeats through my head like a mantra. It’s what I know to be the most important thing in the world, what will always be there to keep me going no matter what: the people, the people, the people. Always.  
And let me tell you, I'm lucky to know some of the best.