Dear TAL

Dear Ira and This American Life Staff,
Love my letter and read it on the air.
thanks so much,

Thea

A tale of two t-shirts

A short homage to This American Life, the best of all broadcast journalism.

Ahem...(prep radio voice)

M was one of my two friends in high school. She was the kind of friend who would sit for two hours on the floor of the children’s section of Barnes and Noble on a Saturday night, watch me cry into a tepid latte and not make judgments about my sanity. High school and I didn’t get along well.

We were four hundred miles apart for college, and over a thousand after we graduated. For a few years life was pretty exhausting for both us; M was learning the ropes as a junior publicist and I was at the end of mine teaching eight classes of freshman English a day. Then suddenly in 2007 I found myself living in New York on M’s couch and starting a new job in the big city.

We spent a whirlwind summer reconnecting: I attended glamorous parties as her “plus one,” saw sneak movie previews, and found an apartment a few subway stops away. Life seemed to have reached an idyllic point—we were as close as we’d been ten years before, but I didn’t hate the world and This American Life started regular podcasts. What could be better?

The honeymoon ended that spring. Months passed without us talking. When we did talk, it broke my heart that it was hard to find common ground to start a conversation. I don’t own a TV and spend most of my days focused on 10-year-olds. M has to clip tabloids every morning and know who on the Grey’s Anatomy cast is sleeping together. Luckily our nerdy streak runs strong: a safe starter was always this week’s TAL.

Things improved when her company’s office moved to midtown, 4 blocks away from mine. Last Friday we were supposed to grab a bite to exchange Christmas presents. We’d been trying to meet since New Year’s, but as usual scheduling was difficult.

I called her at noon feeling peckish, and we settled on Grand Central as a destination. I wrapped up the morning’s work and waited for the signal that M’s conference call was over. An hour later I get a text: “call still on—longer than expected. sorry!” By now accustomed to the last-minute celebrity crisis, I reply “No worries,” and killed some office time on the internet looking up a song I’d heard on the “Scenes from a Mall” episode. http://www.thisamericanlife.org. Click.

Ooh! TAL t-shirts. Definitely necessary. Click, click. Type. Credit Card? Confirmation. Sweet.

My phone rings, and she’s ready.

“Hey, guess what I just bought? This American Life has t-shirts!”
Dead silence on the other end.
I try again: “Have you seen them? They’re cool…”
“I’m starved—ready to eat?”
“Uh, yeah. See you in 10.”

I walked up to the counter at Oyster Bar and grabbed a stool between my oldest friend and a grey-haired man in an overcoat and tweed cap. I hugged her hello and she slid a small cube across the bar. “You’re gonna laugh your ass off,” she sighed despondently. Puzzled, I removed the festive paper and popped the box top. I blinked for a moment at the grey shirt nestled the box until the guy next to me peered over and asked “What’d you get?”

Indeed, I couldn’t stop laughing to answer him. A full minute later I explained to him, our waiter, and the six other people staring that the t-shirt was from our favorite radio show, and I’d bought it ten minutes ago online. The old guy made a joke about amazing developments in technology and I smiled politely. “Must be some great show then?” he asked. “Yeah.”

I’m going to keep both shirts. One means that M loves me and still knows what I like, and the other reminds me of the struggle to stay friends in a city of casual acquaintances and demanding bosses. She knows me in a way that few people will ever know me, but friendship is hard work—sometimes harder to maintain than a romantic relationship. It’s good to know that I’ve got you guys helping us stay connected. That is some great show.

Thanks TAL, for doing what you do.

It's snowing up.

That's right. Flakes are "falling" towards the clouds right now outside my office window as I contemplate plans for this New Year's Eve.

I am not at all sure what this portends in terms of 2009 ...more to follow.

"What do you do at Kiawah?"

A couple of people have asked lately “Thea, what exactly is it that you do at Kiawah?” and I sat down to try and think about it. For approximately 20 Decembers, various members of the Williamson clan have trekked from locations across the ‘States to a small island twenty miles from Charleston, South Carolina.

Why do we come here? It used to be a central meeting point, a good compromise between our family in Maryland, my grandmother in Florida, and my dad’s two sisters in Georgia.

Nobody remembers whose idea it was to rent a small condo on the beach in 1989, and it doesn’t really matter now, because there’s a critical mass of the family that adamantly believes it just wouldn’t be Christmas without Kiawah. I am part of that ornery, sentimental faction. This island, with its salt marshes, sleepy alligators, winding roads and flat beaches is one of my favorite places on the earth. It’s a little hard to explain why, but I’ll give it a go. These are my top 10 reasons.

1. Wherever we stay there is an entire table devoted to cookies. Every family brings at least three baked goods, and everyone takes turn making lefse, the Norwegian flatbread that my grandmother rolled out in hundreds each year.
2. I can walk to the end of the island. That’s cool.
3. Nobody used to come there during the winter. That used to be über-cool. Now the secret’s out (sadness). I guess that doesn’t really count as a reason.
4. We cook delicious meals, eat them, laugh and be rowdy, go for long walk/run, then repeat.
5. New Tradition: a whole roasted pig and high-stakes BBQ sauce contest, three years running
6. Best street names ever. This year, we stayed at 70 Spotted Sandpiper. You take Bohicket Road to get to the island. What is that?
7. I never, ever win at Mexican Dominoes, yet I play every year. This one of life’s great mysteries.
8. I get to see my crazy family.
9. There are endless hidden places to get away from my crazy family.
10. At sunset, as the tide rushes from the ocean to flood the Kiawah River on the western tip of the island, dolphins hunt for fish in the shallows. The pelicans fly back out to the Atlantic, skimming the sparkling orange water, along with the other water birds that spent the afternoon sunning on private docks attached to mansions on the north side. Every day, if I wanted, I could sit and watch them splash and play as the sun sinks over the waves and the stars blink on overhead.

I don’t usually look at my cell phone, I enjoy watching football with my uncle and cousins, I can sleep as late as I want.

The island clearly exists beyond the normal space-time continuum and has little correlation with reality. As I step through the marsh grass the memories of the past twenty years wash over my tired mind until each beach walk is indistinguishable from the last; when I serve my plate of Norwegian meatballs each year, the familiarity adds another layer of richness to this Dinner we’ve shared as a family; I burn my fingers pulling pork and it feels just like it did one year before. I never learn.

And that’s why we’ll keep coming back.

Blast from the past

I got home today, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? Not a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer (although that would be cool), but a clean room and semi-organized garage. This is something that I have not observed in the Williamson house since some time when I was in college. Definitely pre-2002.

In the hall sat my magical purple trunk. Magical, I call it, because it tends to make an appearance around milestone moments and elucidate some metaphorical growth or transition. I really wasn't expecting one tonight but was pleasantly surprised to unearth 2 volumes of self-indulgence labeled in the following manner

SOPHOMORE YEAR: I SWEAR I'M NOT A DRAMA QUEEN.

[unlabeled Senior Year with the following late-night quotation on the cover]

K-Y'know how we have a [big] intestine & small intestine?
T- Yeah?
K-Wouldn't it be funny if they were called the colon & the semi-colon?

Sweet.

Inside were printouts of journals and blogs that I hadn't read in years, including all the "On Air" and "On the shelf" full of thinly-veiled angst and/or reflections of my academic pursuits. These snippets were almost more fun than the journal itself, although I haven't really gotten to read most of that. Yet.

There was a warm (and not always sweet) wave of nostalgia that passed over, and this will probably spur more commentary later, but for now I submit one quote and one observation.

QUOTE regarding a torridly unrequited long-lost love. is that oxymoronic? who cares.

"He really does forget that I exist, and that's just the way he is; I'll always remember, and that's the way I am."

Wow. It's great how pronouns can make something applicable...TO EVERYONE I'VE DATED in the past two years, not to mention long-lost boys.

OBSERVATION
There used to be a different tagline for Amarga, which I had completely forgotten. In a smack of dramatic irony, it surprised me at it s bitterness:

And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque
-Lord Byron, Don Juan

First Snow

Of course, I picked tonight to run errands and do last--minute Christmas shopping. The flakes that threatened all day came tumbling down on my umbrella while I tried to balance my work stuff and a load of goodies from Sahadi's.

It's not the first snow of the year tonight, but nearly that. The freakishly warm weather this week is completely messing with my head. I can't believe that a week ago I was walking through Caroll Gardens on my way to a tree-lighting party, my footsteps muffled by a layer of white flakes. 'Tis the season, as they say, but I'm not sure what. Blind dates? 60 degree weather? These both sound improbable, and yet...

I'm ready for the holidays, and if I could just get my damn printerr to cooperate, I'd be ready with cute holiday cards too! Grr, Epson, and your stupid drivers.

Oh, and I should mention my pre-new-year's resolution: I'm back, posting again and trying my darnedest to do it regularly =). Hasta pronto

A New Team

Soccer is fun, I think we can all agree on this. But throughout my illustrious soccer career team dynamics have been a thorny issue. Soccer is the kind of sport that attracts a wide variety of personalities, which is not always a good thing.

In high school, I rarely got along with more than 1 or 2 people on a team, at school and on my club team. Soccer was the sport for the "cool" girls, a group I was very clearly not a part of. Back then, I didn't want to be liked by the team, I was on the field to play soccer, defend the goal, and get the hell out of there.

When I met my college teammates, I was stunned to find them all to be intelligent, well-adjusted people that wanted to socialize with me and interact in friendly ways as well as play sports. Who were these alien "soccer girls" who had brains as well as cleats? And why was I invited to all their parties? My cynical self warmed to the idea that not all soccer players are horrible bitches, and quickly joined the fun.

Then coaching began, and while I loved leading a team of gregarious high school girls, there was part of me that just wanted to get in the mix. Along came my first co-ed soccer experience in nearly twenty years. On the roster were:
-a Senior VP of Telemundo
-a New York-born son of a shipping magnate
-a racing yacht crew member
-a corporate financier and his girlfriend
-me
Sweet.

We rocked. We had fun. We lost many a game due to poor attendance =). Everyone else drove a Mercedes or a BMW to practice, and I rolled up in my rusted minivan.

While I traveled, I knocked the ball around a few times, but never really got to play. Then, once I finally settled in NYC i decided it was time to try my hand at the co-ed soccer.

ZogSports, the largest co-ed league in the city, was the first to get my money, and in August I dug my cleats out for my first full-field game since 2004. It was great to get back in the game, and running around on a gigantic pitch certainly helped whip me back into shape, but something was missing. Most of the team hadn't played soccer before and didn't really 'get it.' There were some big male egos and a lot of yelling at the refs. I'm sorry, but if you're a good player yelling about it doesn't help. Pushing, shoving and belittling the other team from the sidelines doesn't compensate for an embarrassing lack of skill--all this in a league that's designed to benefit *charities.* Yes, I do catch the irony. Then, if that weren't enough, nobody really wanted to socialize after the games, and we hardly ever hung out as a team. Lame.

So when an old college teammate called me up on a Friday afternoon and asked me to moonlight in another Brooklyn league to fill the female quotient, I zipped over to McCarren Park in a hurry. It was really the logo that hooked me, apart from the friendliness of the team, the 7-a-side format, and the proximity to M's apt. A cheeky take on the timeless "I [heart] NY", I desperately wanted a t-shirt that said "I [soccer] NY."


And so I signed up. Man, it feels good to have a new team.