dog is my copilot

A dog does not make plans and back out the day of. A dog does not forget your birthday. A dog does not only say it cares about you under the influence of alcohol. A dog does not crawl back into your life every time its on-again/off-again significant other is, yet again, on the outs. A dog does not actively pursue you, charm all your best friends, ask you out, say it's interested in you and then, as soon as you let your guard down and express similar sentiments, completely disappear out of your life. A dog does not call you to make plans once a year coincidentally while its wife happens to be out of town. A dog does not tell you it wishes you were the one having its child instead of the girl he knocked up. Dogs do not get divorced. Dogs do not play mind games. Dogs are not fickle or evasive, that is best left up to cats and men.

I know my love of dogs seems to be a recurring theme in my writing, but I just really can't get enough of them. Abbi's husband, Ben, recommended I become a dog-walker--"because you're introverted and you love animals," he said. He had been working for OutUGo for about a month, when I finally took him up on his offer to interview with the company.
I had been sitting around losing money for three months, so it couldn't hurt, I thought, to at least try this dog-walking thing. My interview went really well; apparently it's a lot easier and more comfortable for me to talk about how much I love animals than how much I like myself, as I've tried and failed to do multiple times at human interviews.
I've been working there for almost a month now and I love it!(actually almost two now...seeing "Marley & Me" with Ben and Abbi tonight--1/3/09--inspired me to finally finish this post)
Basically I have a set of keys to a bunch of apartments/condos/houses in the Lincoln Park, Old Town, Roscoe Village and Wicker Park neighborhoods, and once a day (well twice for the golden doodle puppy that lives across the street) I let myself in and take the dog(s) on walks or play with them inside if the weather's horrendous, like it has been lately. I absolutely love my job and I'm aware that not a lot of people can say that. I even get to see a golden retriever twice a day who HUGS me! I'm not kidding--he stands on his hind legs and wraps his front legs around my waist and gazes up at me with those unconditional eyes. I know what you're thinking, but there is no leg-humping involved.
What is better than getting paid to hang out with dogs, to be outside, to be on the move for several hours a day? Not much. And this summer when most people will be freezing in their air-conditioned offices, I will be soaking in the rays in all of Chicago's glorious green spaces.

I also failed to mention, due to my unfortunate lackluster attempt to update this blog regularly, that my sister and I bought our parents a black pug puppy a few months ago as a belated anniversary surprise.

[this is at a gas station in French Lick, IN, right after we did the puppy/cash exchange on county road street corner]

[beanie baby pug vs. real pug, actual size]

[curled up with a toy Scrunch never liked]


[the first week we had her, she lived with me in the city. this is her meeting nola and axel, huge german shepherds]

[we found mini tennis balls, just her size!]
I made them a cryptic card with a picture of our family and Scrunch and wrote, "We didn't want your anniversary to be marked by the death of Scrunchy, so in honor of your 33rd, we got you a 3rd." A third, as in pug. We gave them the card as soon as they landed at OHare, after traveling throughout Rome and Israel for two weeks.


[i almost gave them a bottle of oxyclean as a hint but settled on just the card]
I thought there was a possibility my dad would figure out my puzzle, but neither him nor my mom had any idea what the card meant nor what was hiding in the gift bag we handed them upon exiting the airport (we have excellent video footage of our road trip to French Lick, IN where we picked up the puppy and of two weeks later when we surprised our parents at the airport, but I need a new computer just to find enough memory space to do video work).


[before]

[after]
My mom was thrilled. My dad, not so much. We told them her name, which I had come up with on our drive to get her: Junebug, because she was born in June and looks like a bug, and call her June for short. Neither of them liked that. I also thought of Georgia (the female version of Curious George) and Batman (because she looks like a bat whenever she lays on her back, which is frequently). My sister's contribution was Beyonce (and she wanted to buy the puppy's brother and name him Jay-Z), and my mom started calling her Phoebe for awhile. Ultimately what won, though, was Stella, which my boss at the time thought up based on the children's book, StellaLuna, about a fruit bat who lost her way and thinks she's a bird.

This name suits her well as she has quite the personality. She is absolutely nothing like Scrunchy. She hides bones in the house, plays fetch, makes very weird noises and likes to plop herself down on people's backs, heads, laps whenever she pleases. She also apparently LOVES the snow, another trait unheard of in the pug breed. To further illustrate this, I will end this will a few more captioned photos.
[my little vampire bat]

[i spent three hours trying to make a pumpkin pie on thanksgiving, and it took her three seconds to push her way into the fridge and stick her face in it! and then stuck her tongue out at me!]

[look closely, there's a creature hiding in my dress]

[...and in my hair, which she probably thinks is a nest]



[i have no idea how i caught this, but yes, she's mid-air]

[weirdest picture award...this is her running back and forth between my sister [in red] and me [with camera]...i don't even know what kind of creature she looks like, but she's tearing through the snow so quickly, that it looks like the waves she's making should be water...]

[love at first sight.]

For the growing collection of Stella photos, click here

25 on 25 (i made it a quarter century)

Numbers have always been quite present in the Liebovich household, mostly thanks to my dad. He sends me e-mails with odometer updates about his car and he also informs me of how close I am to the next age on the 25th of every month.
While sitting in Rosh Hashanah services back in September, he turned to me when the little kids came in for the sounding of the Shofar, shook his head back and forth and muttered, "Twenty-five," already in anticipation of my 25th birthday which was still two months away. "I can't believe it--you used to be that big," motioning to the children.
Just after the stroke of midnight on November 25, I received the following text message:

Dear Lyse,
happy golden, silver, quarter century birthday.
and many, many more!
love, dad

Amidst Belly's Bar, at a 7-way birthday celebration, and slightly intoxicated I paused to smile at my phone, knowing my dad most likely waited up that late just so he could acknowledge the exact moment when I finally turned the big 2-5.

The party was fun, I'm glad I went. I was two weeks into a horrible, relentless cold/cough and was on the verge of not attending my own party, but my dutiful friends

insisted I go.
Lots of laughs,

lots of drinks,

and lots of ridiculous dance moves later,


I was glad I didn't waste the night away sleeping. I took Goldschlagger shots, symbolic of my golden birthday, and became mystified with the floating flakes of gold.

I even thought it was a good idea to put one of the flakes on my face.

(i don't recommend this. it burns.)
A few times I hid in the corner and watched everyone, satisfied, thinking, "Good. Everyone's having fun." At midnight, people sang "Happy Birthday"

My sister took a picture of me taking that picture, which pretty much sums me up in a photograph.


We stayed at the bar till about 2:30 in the morning. Even though it was the first year my sister was old enough to celebrate with me, she remained sober (thank you, Sheri!) and let about seven of us pile into the faithful minivan. Before dropping most of us off at Amy's to sleep, we made a pizza pit stop at the famous Bacci's next to Wrigley Field. While my sister and I were in line to get our slices, two guys got in a physical fight right next to us, knocking into us as one guy held the other up against the counter. My wallet fell out of my hand and its contents dispersed all over the floor. As my sister and I bent down to collect it all, one guy said to the other--
"Say it--say one more bad joke about Jewish people and I'll punch you in the face!"
I yelled up from the floor, "Hey! It's my birthday AND I'm Jewish AND you're stepping on me and my sister! So you better shut the hell up or I'M going to punch you in the face!"
I stood up and stuck my long, skinny arm in between their angry faces...like that was going to do anything...I don't think they even noticed.
Finally they left and we got to eat our pizza in peace. They were the biggest slices I've ever seen and they had a bucket of red pepper.


As soon as we got to Amy's, Jenny and Ryan crashed on Amy's pull-out couch and Carrie built a bed on the floor. I brushed my teeth with my finger (I remembered everything but my toothbrush), put a Band-Aid on my bleeding (from unknown causes) finger and passed out in Amy's bed.
At 7:00 I woke up to Amy mumbling, "I don't feel good."
"I don't either," I mumbled back.
But I succeeded in not puking, which I was hugely grateful for. Jenny, Ryan and Carrie left around 9:30. I drove Amy in my sweats and heels (also forgot normal shoes) to the airport and continued on to my parent's house.

My actual day of birth was pretty uneventful, that is until my sister gave me my birthday present. But in order for her to finish making my birthday present (I found out later), my dad spent over an hour driving me around town, obviously stalling. First he offered to take me to lunch, which was suspicious because he hardly ever eats that meal and we were having an early dinner just a few hours later. So off we went to Portillo's...or so I thought. Instead of turning left on Golf, he continued going straight on Roselle.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"It's a surprise," my dad smiled.
"Well I'm not really dressed for a surprise. I haven't even showered."
"I don't think it's going to care."
So the surprise is an "it," I thought. Visions of puppies and drumsets played out in my mind. (I wouldn't tell anyone what I wanted for my birthday, but finally said those two things, both of which I knew I wouldn't get.) He turned down Wise Road, and I said aloud, "I think I know where you're going but I'm not sure why." I knew the Great Frame Up was on Wise and thought maybe they did something creative like frame the page in the issue of JPG Magazine I was recently published in.
Then he turned into a neighborhood. And I realized he was going to our old house.
Sure enough.
"Well here we are--surprise!" my dad said, gleefully as he pulled up in front of 922 East Point Drive. The surprise was that the current owners made our old split-level into a full two-story house. "Cool," I said. We then drove past the hill I used to sled down, which barely constitutes as a hill, then past the playground, where my dad narrated, "...and this is the park where you used to play...25 years ago." We then drove to the Osco where my mom works and went inside to visit her at the pharmacy and waste more time until I complained that all I wanted to do was shower. So we left. But once again did not go straight to our destination. This time we had to drive past Walter Payton's house and sit and stare at it like his ghost was going to appear in the yard. Even though we both knew he was stalling, he made up for it by saying he "just wanted to have some bonding time with his daughter." Thanks, Dad.

This brings us to the Cheesecake Factory. Shawna stopped by to give me a "small gift" as she called it. The bag was huge and thought behind what was inside was anything but small. She instructed me to read the quote inside the shadow box first:
A journey of thousand miles must begin with a single step
"Now read the tag on the slippers," she said.
"Rainbow sandals..." I read aloud and realized immediately what she had done, while my family donned the same confused look. I almost started crying. At some point in the last year I expressed wanting to frame my Rainbow-brand sandals because although they're destroyed, I can't bring myself to throw them out because they've taken me so many places. Most people would have rolled their eyes or ignored me or would have "you would" or "you're a freak." But no, not Shawna. She's one of the most thoughtful, supportive people I know.

She had to leave and unfortunately couldn't join us for dinner. While we waited for the delightful avocado eggrolls appetizer my mom handed me a small gift bag. I opened the card first which started loudly singing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Inside the bag were the CD soundtracks to "Across The Universe" and "I'm Not There" as well as my annual symbolic turkey gift--this year a beanie baby named "Leftovers."

Then my sister handed me a giant unwrapped Carson Pirie Scott box with a wide gold ribbon holding it together. Inside was an oversized blue scrapbook. Now before I get into the details, I have to admit, I knew she had some kind of surprise collaborative gift in the works. What happened was the night she asked me for my contact list, she accidentally sent me the email that said "DO NOT TELL ALYSE ABOUT THIS E-MAIL!" We were talking on gchat and I said, "so am i not supposed to look at the email you just sent me that says don't tell alyse about this email?" I didn't realize why she wanted my contact list, and my address was embedded in the "Shorashim" listerv (from my Israel trip this summer).
I wanted to be surprised, so I immediately deleted the e-mail and tried to forget about it, assuring Sheri that I would not venture in my "trash" folder to dig it out. So in the back of my mind I've known she's had something up her sleeve...but I never ever imagined the project would be so meaningful (I pictured her asking everyone to send a quarter...don't ask).

Because I was already overwhelmed with Shawna's thoughtfulness, it didn't take long for the tears to start spilling over. Midway through reading the first page of the book, which was the e-mail Sheri sent out to everyone, I lost it. The only other time I cried out of happiness was on December 12, 2000 when I got my acceptance letter to NYU.
I was shocked at not only how many people people contributed but also at the variety of people who did! Not just my best friends, but my best friend's fiancée, my sister's friends, a college professor, high school teachers, a former employer, my current employer, and both people I haven't talked to in years as well as a bunch from people I just met THIS year--whether from being in art shows or from my Birthright trip to Israel. I barely ended up eating anything because I amidst all the excitement, I lost my appetite.

I don't have the time now to scan each page for public viewing, so I'll share a few funny/interesting pieces of the puzzle.
My dad (who said he requested being placed first in the book--"I told her, 'She wouldn't have made it to 25 without me, so i think i deserve it.'") wrote about our first Indian Princess campout in the Fall of '88. This particular excerpt made me laugh so hard, I started crying again, rolling around on my sister's floor, trying to breathe. I so remember this happening and it just proves that some people never change:
"I still remember vividly the first campout, about a month after we joined. We arrived about an hour early at Camp Duncan, a Y camp about an hour away. I wasn't quite sure how Alyse would do, being the first thing like this she ever did in her little life, and with most of the other girls in the tribe and nation being as much as five years older. Sure enough, the first thing she did was wander into the forest, where she spent the next half hour or so collecting acorns. I tried to get her to join the other members of the tribe as they arrived, but all she wanted to do was collect more acorns. So I'm thinking, hmm, this is going to be fun. She might just want to stay out here forever."

My mom reprinted her graphic Lamaze labor and delivery questionnaire. I didn't have to get much past "mucous plug" in the first sentence to make me never want to be pregnant. On the opposing page, though, she put a picture of me in the infamous turkey outfit that the nurses dressed me in after putting my mom through 27 hours of labor and finally making an appearance at 7:13 a.m. on Thanksgiving of '82 (I still do things at my own pace, she'll tell people today). Every Thanksgiving her relatives say, "I remember when I first saw you dressed as a turkey." I guess they weren't lying.

Dana, my former SNL boss, who I became good friends with, recounted some funny memories together. This was my favorite--so typical:
"Me telling you to 'take it down a notch' about 25 times at the Kate Hudson shoot...only you found it physically impossible to not dance and sing and were therefore sent to Starbucks."
What can I say? I loved my job!

My friend Alex painted me a portrait of Bob Dylan!

Stephanie created her own monopoly board based on where the four of us (me and my sister, she and her sister) went to college and vacations our families have been on together. This is also significant because I taught her how to play the game when she was four or five.

Abbi wrote this absolutely hilarious play based on my clothes using quotes from my 8th grade poetry book (which I mistakingly let her keep a few years ago) and her own inner monologue, entitled: "Best Friend and Secret (girl) Crush: A Legacy and (jealousy) of Clothes."

Zach turned me into a freaking ipod ad! About a week ago he asked me if I had any pictures of myself "dancing crazy" to make a "spec ad." Thinking nothing of it, I sent him about a dozen pictures of myself tearing up the dance floor at various weddings and events. This is also fitting because my mom used to say the people on the ipod commercials reminded her of me.

(you can see the tears)

One of my college roommates, Tina, wrote:
"Alyse and I both had a love for sign language and an unabashed penchant for activities which others might deem 'corny' or just plain 'uncool.' I was ecstatice to find a willing participant for my sing-alongs, and Alyse knew exactly whose door to knock on at one in the morning during a snowstorm.
*Tap tap tap.* 'Tina?...Are you up?' Alyse whispered. I opened my door. 'Do you want to go out and play in the snow?' she asked. Hell yeah I did! Of course I contained my enthusiasm to a whisper until we got outside. There we played with the abandon of six-year-olds in foot-high drifts and winds that whipped around the piers of the South Street Seaport. We made fun of the Abercrombie models in the store windows. Tragic figures, really. Those cool, jaded faces had no idea how much FUN they were missing!"

One of my roommates from Madrid, wrote:
"Alyse, you impacted my life more than I think you understand. You, ironically, are responsible for my current career choice and direction. Because of that one fateful lunch at Isla del Tesoro in Madrid and the subsequent hospital experience that followed it, I became a Spanish medical interpreter and am now in nursing school. Without that experience, I don't think that I would have realized the need for professional interpreters and would never have pursued it further."
Who knew that walking nose-first into a glass door would lead to such life-altering changes!

My friend Christopher Rawson from my final photo class at NYU included a black&white photograph he took of me at a jukebox, a moment I remember, a photo I never knew existed.

Even my 13-year-old buddy, Max, participated with inside jokes galore, intertwined with some really heartfelt sentiments, which really validated what I've been doing with my life the past year and a half.

All in all, it was the most beautiful, touching, meaningful, inspiring gift I've ever received from the best sister I could ever ask for!
I will end this with the short anecdote I sent as a thank-you to the book's contributors.
After a belated birthday sushi lunch with Shelley, I got caught in a whirlwind of Chicago's first seasonal snowfall. I walked through a deserted park, gloveless and holding the Carson's box--the one containing my sister's gift to me--in both hands.
I paused a moment, twirling around myself, my head thrown back letting the snowflakes gather on my glasses. And I thought of one of my favorite (although brief) poems (by Taneda Santoka)--Here in the stillness of snow falling on snow.
I completed his thought and said..."all I need in the world is inside this box."

Thank you to everyone who made this momentous birthday the best and most memorable one thus far.
If you wish to view the birthday album in its entirety, click here: more birthday photos

it's about damn time

A few weeks ago when it reached 60 degrees, one of the DJs on 97.1 said, "Well it looks like we get more bonus weather this weekend..." Try boGus weather. People don't seem to acknowledge the fact that the reason we have this uncanny weather is because our earth is dying...a little problem called Global Warming.

Snow and numb toes defined my childhood winters. I miss those days. Chicagoans who complain about the weather need to suck it up or move somewhere else. Personally, I love the variety and challenge of living somewhere with four distinct seasons…even when all four of those seasons show their fury in one day…it makes life interesting.



Now that it's finally winter weather, I thought I’d write about some memories of winters past.

* Building forts at the end of the driveway near the mailbox…I’d sit in them by myself and wonder what would happen if they caved in.

* Gathering fresh snow in plastic cups from the front porch so my mom could pour syrup on top of it. I’m still unsure where she came up with this idea…maybe it was just the poor man’s slurpee? But I loved it.

* Sledding by myself at "Pat's Lake" when the flag was green (meaning the lake was fully frozen and therefore ok to sled on). Then walking home with the wind whistling and it was only about 5:30, but it might as well have been midnight with the dark sky and lack of neighbors outside.

* Coming inside from playing in the snow and sitting on the kitchen floor with my bare, frozen feet defrosting atop the vent.

* Sitting in the backseat of my family’s minivan, driving somewhere at night. I tilted my head to look out the window. Huge snowflakes poured down at a certain angle, that against the black backdrop, looked like our van was propelling into outer space.

* After the first snowfall post-getting my drivers license my dad had me drive to the empty parking lot of the Korean church on the outskirts of our neighborhood. There he instructed me to do “donuts” so I would understand what it was like to drive in Chicago winters.

* The feeling I get almost every year when the ground is blanketed in snow...I don't want anyone or anything to ruin how perfect the untouched ground looks.



* journal entry from 2/17/03:

"Every news station tonight simultaneously reported on "Blizzard 2003" The east coast is hilarious. They freak out whenever it snows. It has been snowing for 12 hours now and we're supposed to get around 2 feet accumulation. I was sitting at my computer talking to Sheri around 1:30 a.m. and then went to over to the window--down below, 22 stories, in the open lot were two boys city sledding=placing a piece of cardboard on the ground, running and sliding on it while standing up. I needed to go outside. Zach and Kayla were of course already asleep. I IMed Chase telling him to go outside and play with me but he didn't respond. So I knocked on Tina's door cause I knew she was still awake and we went downstairs and outside. I shrieked and giggled and ran through the snowdrifts like I did when i was a kid. It made me so happy. How exciting it was to just run into the middle of Water Street and twirl in the falling snow. We crossed the street and walked in between the stores and watched the snow patterns swirl recklessly around the cobblestone. As we approached our building in return the one other person outside said my name and I was confused at first but just as soon realized it was Chase! I got so excited! We went inside to pack on more winter gear and went back outside. Walked to the seaport. Mine and Tina's footprints had already vanished. This time we went all the way to the water. We were out there for awhile taking it all in and everything was just so calm and beautiful...relieving. The walk back was brutal, windy snow stung my face and my nose was running uncontrollably all over my scarf. Nothing else on me was cold, though, which was impressive. We went to Chase's room and he made us real hot chocolate. Good stuff. We sat and talked for an hour. Chase said that he quit trying to figure out life and that his conclusion is we do it because we have to and the few rare moments that are filled with beauty are what last and what we try and hold onto. The last sip of my cocoa just missed covering the bottom of my mug so that when I moved the mug gently the cocoa shifted and the white circle of porcelain appeared in different places. The snow made the Brooklyn Bridge look like an apparition. The three of us sat there breathing. This, I thought, is one of those moments."



* Right before I went back home for winter break of junior year at NYU, there was another blizzard (12/03)….this is an email I wrote my friends on 12/6/03:

“listen to what happened today. this is really a piece of work. so i think i'm mentioned before that one of the huge windows in my room (which doubles as the common room this year) never really closes all the way. there is always a slight draft coming from the seams of it. this morning i noticed a few flurries coming in which made me laugh. as a precaution i took the picture frames off the window ledge that runs the length of the wall because some were old pictures of my grandparents. then i left to meet my mom at her hotel to help her bring luggage back here cause she's sleeping here tonight and taking some of my stuff home on the train tomorrow. i was gone about two hours. we came back and from the hallway you could hear wind in my room....like really loud monstrous wind and as i was putting the key in the lock i said, "haha hear the wind mom? i told you" but then as it took extra effort for me to push the door open i realized that something wasn't right. upon opening the door i immediately saw the problem--one of the three huge windows was OPEN, i don't mean a few inches like normal if you were to open it, open like you had opened a door. i charged across the room and took a flying leap onto my bed (which is right under the windows and rises a few inches about the window ledge) and slammed it shut but it wouldn't stay. nyu almost had a fourth falling student in a semester. 31 stories. my stuff was ALL over the place. and there were piles of snow on my window ledge where the picture frames had been and on my floor, which ruined some art paper i had under my bed. my mom tried to hold a suitcase against the window while i went downstairs and told the front desk that i needed someone immediately. a man met me upstairs and hopped up on my heater to try and fix the handle. a huge guest of wind came and shoved the window open again and what was left on my window ledge went crashing to the floor. including my favorite green lamp (which just last night i was telling kayla and my mom how much i love) by some ounce of luck it didn't break. this is going to sound crazy but while i watched the man fixing the window i had this regretful feeling that i should have taken a picture before he had come up there. instead i took a picture of him fixing it, but it's not as dramatic. anyone could have posed for that. oh well. my room is a disaster area so i'm gonna go try and clean stuff up...or take a nap”

About a week later, I had to wake up at 7 a.m. to single-handedly push a large cart of stuff down the street about a mile to the storage building. Overnight it snowed about another foot. Carts aren’t meant to be wheeled through snow banks, but I trudged onward. It was difficult, but I managed….until one of the wheels hit something and the whole cart fell over. I just stood there in disbelief and thought, “Now what?” There was no way I could lift the monstrous thing back up. Not only was it huge to begin with, but it held all of my belongings (I was leaving the following semester to study abroad in Spain). Suddenly, a man in shorts (yes, shorts) came running across the street. I got excited because I thought he was going to stop and give me a hand. Give me a hand my ass. He literally ran right past me and didn’t turn around when I tried to say, “Excuse me?” He probably thought I was homeless. The cart had toppled over right in front of the entrance into a Jehova’s Witness building. Two Australians, a man and a woman, who were headed there helped me lift the cart, and then proceeded to help me push it the rest of the way to the storage place. I didn’t even know how to thank him. This incident pretty much confirmed that I was supposed to leave New York.



And, finally, here is an anecdote I wrote almost exactly a year ago:

(January 20, 2006)
Around 3:15 this afternoon it started to flurry, and little hail balls bounced off my windshield as I drove home from Blockbuster. As I passed the Montessori school on Freeman, I saw three girls crowding the open doorway on the side of the building. All three arms outstretched, hesitantly, catching the little white pellets in their cupped hands and looking at each other in awe. It’s hard to believe that it was 50 degrees and sunny yesterday while I spent my day off running errands in a t-shirt. I rented March of the Penguins and Grizzly Man. I don’t know—maybe I was in the mood for nature. Probably more so for some inspiration as I’ve been lacking that for awhile. I wanted to see the ideas that some people conceive and manage to pull off. Seeing other people indulge in their passions reminds me that I have my own passions to reignite and that I should start creating again.
Morgan Freeman narrates the penguin documentary and begins by saying, “…This is a love story.” A love story that made me laugh. A penguin waddling is funny. A mass of penguins waddling is hilarious. These empire penguins make a 70-mile treacherous journey multiple times a year. Love can be a mean joke. But this breed doesn’t seem to mind.
After dinner, Jenny and I were going to hang out at Borders, but about a quarter mile down Algonquin I suggested it wasn’t such a great idea to continue any further, seeing as neither of us could see more than two feet past the car. Plus, the streets weren’t plowed. I asked if she felt like ice cream. I haven’t eaten ice cream in months. We detoured to Oberweiss on the way back, where I got the best milkshake of all time, made with chocolate-peanut butter ice cream. We brought one back for her dad, whose utility van got stolen today in front of Mayor Daley’s nephew’s house. Not that a milkshake will bring back his dad’s dogtags that dangled from his rearview mirror. But maybe it would settle his stomach a little.
The Grizzly Man movie I watched later on, drifting in and out of sleep on the couch with my dog curled up next to me. Around 1:30 I woke up to the sound of what I thought was the garage door. I watched the parts of the movie I missed. How does it happen that someone who dedicates his life to preserving the lives of bears ends up getting eaten by a bear? I guess you could say this was a love story as well. It has a tragic ending, but maybe all love does. I started to wonder why my dad wasn’t home yet. For the past 20+ years he’s played poker with the same nine guys from the old neighborhood, the first Friday of every month, minus the summer. I think he’s at Orin’s, who still lives in that neighborhood over in Schaumburg, only a 15-minute drive from here. Hopefully the roads aren’t awful, I think, even though I know they are. Maybe I didn’t imagine the garage sound. I opened the front door and there was my dad shoveling the path leading up to where I was standing. I opened the storm door a few inches and said, “Why the heck are you shoveling now?”
He looked at me, bewildered for a moment. He doesn’t like when I start conversations without first saying “Hi.”
“See my car?”
“Yeah," I said as I noticed it perpendicular to the curb. “Is it stuck?"
“Well, yeah.”
“I had to go get the plow on the other corner just to get him to plow the entrance to the cul-de-sac because the snow he had plowed down the main street made a 3 foot high pile over there,” he continued, motioning behind him.
“Well do you want me to help?”
“That’s up to you.”
I enjoy the nighttime and had already gotten a little sleep, so I bundled myself in a big purple coat and joined my dad in the winter wonderland. He was already halfway done with half of the driveway. I asked him if he wanted me to take over, but he said if I wanted to help, there was another shovel in the garage.

The only sound is the shovels scraping the driveway. Two of my goals in life are 1) to better understand my dad and 2) to be ambidextrous. Snow is silent and heavy. About a quarter way down my side, I started shoveling with the opposite hand in the lifting position. If I am going to be sore tomorrow, at least I’ll be equally sore. It occurred to me that I might have just completed both goals. My dad wasn’t wearing gloves. Or a hat.
“I don’t think anyone ever expected this many inches. I mean I read eight inches somewhere, but even that was just one source.” He sort of chuckled, “Tom Skilling’s going to have a ball with this tomorrow!”
“Why?”
“Oh he’ll come up with all kind of record-breakers—largest snowfall above freezing…? I don’t know.”
I responded by throwing a few snowballs in his direction; a handful hit him directly in the back. He didn’t turn around. When he finished, he started right in front of my van just as I was getting to the same spot. We finished the driveway by shoveling the last bit of snow together.
Before he went to retrieve the car, he wiped some sweat from his forehead and said, “I broke my three-year winning streak tonight.”

At 3:45 I was still awake when the power went out. I think too much in the dark. Penguins and grizzlies and blizzards, oh my.

* * * *

In conclusion, go rent An Inconvenient Truth and figure out how you can help stop global warming and bring back the real season of winter.

I will leave you with a simple but beautiful poem that landed on my desk sophomore year of high school on a discarded page a day zen calendar page…:

Here in the stillness
of snow falling on snow
~Taneda Santoka

[photos: 1) taken 12/1/06 outside my house in the city 2 and 3) taken in 4/03 from my 22nd story window where i lived on water street in nyc, 2002-2003 4) taken the night of the story about shoveling with my dad 1/21/06]