I smell Architectural Digest Architectural Digest.
I"d start my make over in the Red, Blue, and Green Rooms, because they"re surprisingly small and laid out in a straight line. If I were President, I"d knock down the walls and make one big family room, with s.p.a.ce enough for a nice, built-in entertainment center. And a 70-inch plasma TV and a wet bar. Plus a computer station with 21-inch monitors. What an improvement that would be! Even the First Family needs a family room.
Obviously, I"d have to repaint the new room, too. I"d love to paint it my favorite color, which is pink, even though it"s politically incorrect. It"s the first thing someone would ask if a woman like me became President: "What, is she gonna paint the White House pink?"
I"d answer, "Yes. It"s good to be Queen."
I"d make a few changes in the furniture department, too. The wing chairs are lovely, as are the antique tables, but you have to go with the times. You can"t watch the playoffs from a wing chair. You can"t rest your Diet c.o.ke on mahogany. If I were President, I"d get me a nice, big sectional sofa. Gray ultrasuede would be chic, and I"d order it custom, with cupholders built into the armrests. That"s my dream. In my Presidency, cupholders for all! were President, I"d get me a nice, big sectional sofa. Gray ultrasuede would be chic, and I"d order it custom, with cupholders built into the armrests. That"s my dream. In my Presidency, cupholders for all!
Cupholders know no political party.
And, when I looked out the bubbly gla.s.s windows of the White House, I noticed there was no attached garage. That would be a must. Also an in-ground pool, maybe next to the Rose Garden, with some tasteful fake rocks and a little waterfall, so I could listen to artificial burbling while I contemplated foreign policy or skimmed the Frontgate catalog.
In fact, I found myself wondering if the White House had a finished bas.e.m.e.nt, which of course would be job one. It would make a perfect gym, and I"d fill it up with Nautilus weights and elliptical machines that I could ignore.
That"s how I"d make the White House a home.
By the way, before I left the White House that day, I did get to meet the First Lady. She shook my hand and was very nice. I thanked her for the Festival, but I didn"t tell her my suggestions for the house.
Or what I stole, which was the official paper napkin, embossed with the gold symbol of the President, encircled by the brown ring of my coffee cup.
You can hardly blame me for taking a memento.
Even without a Jacuzzi, it"s still the White House.
Cristoforo
I was the Grand Marshal of the Columbus Day parade, and I liked it so much it scared me.
I walked down the street with people clapping on both sides. If I waved, they waved back. If I smiled, they smiled back. So what if they had no idea who I was? I still ate it up.
The best part was that I got to wear a sash that went sideways across my body, Miss-America style. This was a thrill for a girl who was always The Smart One. For once, I felt like The Pretty One. And let me tell you a secret: every Smart One wants to be The Pretty One.
But back to the point.
It turned out that I love a parade, especially when I"m in it. I didn"t think I had a big ego, but being a Grand Anything will swell your head. By the time I got home, I could barely fit it through the front door.
I was having Delusions of Grand Marshal.
By bedtime, long after the parade had ended, my ego was only getting bigger. I tried to stuff it back into my body, but I"m only five foot two and it had inflated to the size of a bouncy house. I was full of myself, literally. I almost kept my sash on, because it looked so great with my pajamas.
Then I tried to stop thinking about me, me, me for just one moment. I reflected on the other important points of the Columbus Day parade: That it celebrated the cultural pride and accomplishments of Italian-Americans. Those thoughts helped a little. At least I recalled that there were other people in the world, other than me. But the most important person that day wasn"t any of those people, or me.
The Guest of Honor was Christopher Columbus, and my thoughts turned to him.
We learned in school that he sailed the ocean blue and discovered America, but we have learned since that he didn"t find exactly what he was looking for. And of course, as they say, mistakes were made. As a result, there are people, in other cities, who picket the Columbus Day parade.
If they had picketed mine, this Grand Marshal would have given them a swift kick. In heels.
Because Columbus wasn"t alone in his mistakes. The colonization of many countries, including this one, produced some of the worst injustices in human history. We all used to think that might made right, and it"s a lesson we haven"t learned completely, even today.
And what is undeniable about Columbus is that he set out into uncharted territory, against all odds, risking his life to follow a dream, believing profoundly in himself, and G.o.d. Columbus"s diary of his journeys, and he kept excellent notes, reveals that his crews were profoundly religious men, praying often. They were praying that Columbus was right.
They didn"t want to fall off the edge of the world.
I thought about Columbus then, and about our own uncharted territory, both the good and bad. A new baby; a new diagnosis. Love is uncharted territory. So is life. We truly do not know what will happen to us tomorrow. All of it is un-mapped to us, yet we sail on. not know what will happen to us tomorrow. All of it is un-mapped to us, yet we sail on.
We will make mistakes.
We will be capable of great cruelty and great kindness.
We will meet those who love us and those who don"t. They might even picket our parade. Some call them haters. I call them book critics.
We might not find exactly what we were looking for.
And the odds are that we will find things that others have already found. Just this morning I discovered again how wonderful it feels to have the sun on my face. It"s not a new discovery, or one as big as a continent, but it"s still a thrill. And I get credit for making it. So do you.
All of our little discoveries will be new to us, and the happiness they bring can"t be underestimated, nor should they be. They shouldn"t go uncredited, either, nor should our efforts. On the contrary, both should be celebrated, our voyages and our discoveries.
We are all of us explorers in this life.
Christopher Columbus reminds us to sail on, to have faith, and to trust that we won"t fall off.
Andiamo.
Let"s go.
Hold On a Min-
Let us now praise interrupting.
I know it"s an unpopular position, but I"m not one to shy away from controversy. I"ve already admitted to emergency-room bralessness and spitting out Dead Whoppers.
I have a habit of interrupting, and now I"m going to make a case for it.
Interrupting has gotten a bad rap for too long. Those of us who interrupt aren"t being disrespectful. We"re just excited by whatever it was you just said. We"re so excited, in fact, that we can"t wait for you to finish saying it before we respond.
You can"t blame us if you"re a great conversationalist.
The subject of interrupting comes up because recently I had dinner with best friend Franca. You have to trust me when I tell you that Franca is an angel. She"s not only a great mother, she"s a brilliant lawyer who represents children with special educational needs, and she"s dedicated to her job, her clients, and their families.
But she interrupts, and so do I.
We interrupt each other all the time. You know that cliche about the friends who are so close that they finish each other"s sentences?
Don"t believe a word of it.
A really close friend will never finish your sentence. A close friend will interrupt your sentence and say something new. After all, you knew what you were going to say. Don"t you wanna hear something else?
I could never be friends with anyone who wouldn"t interrupt me. I can"t imagine eating dinner with someone who sat there in stony silence while I talked. Likewise, I would never be so rude as to not not interrupt a friend. How else would she know I was listening? interrupt a friend. How else would she know I was listening?
Franca and I could finish each other"s sentences if we wanted to, but we don"t want to. We"re both so excited by what the other one just said that we can"t wait to add to it, elaborate on it, or give another example. Plus, we know that the end of each other"s sentences isn"t always necessary. In our sentences, we get to the point right away, and the rest is usually repet.i.tion.
So the other night when we had dinner, we interrupted each other constantly through the appetizer, and by the entree, we were interrupting each other so seamlessly that we were both talking nonstop at the exact same time. What a great conversation!
We weren"t offended. We were excited!
If you"re not buying my excited argument, try this one: it saves a lot of time to have two conversations at once. Interrupting is mult.i.tasking, only with words. That night, if Franca and I had conversed in the mundane, conventional, taking-turns-in-preschool way, we"d still be at the restaurant.
Interrupting is efficient.
Interrupting saves energy.
Interrupting is green!
And when I looked around the restaurant that night, I much preferred our table to the others. At those tables, there were couples, but none of them was talking. I gather this would be the height of good manners, with n.o.body interrupting anybody. couples, but none of them was talking. I gather this would be the height of good manners, with n.o.body interrupting anybody.
There was even a table with a couple who wasn"t talking, and between them sat their toddler, who was watching Winnie The Pooh on a portable DVD player. I guess they brought the video so their child wouldn"t interrupt their not interrupting each other. The only one talking at that table was Tigger, who was interrupting Pooh.
Tigger"s excited!
And help me out here, but don"t you think that your opinion on interrupting depends on whether you run on estrogen or testosterone?
Case in point. I didn"t even realize that anyone thought interrupting was rude until my second marriage. Thing Two did not like to be interrupted. One day, he said to me, "Will you ever stop interrupting me?"
I answered, "Why?"
So you can see how it didn"t work out.
And in my experience in aggravating people, I"ve noticed that women are never aggravated when you interrupt them, and men always are, based on my sample of Thing Two and a couple of testy dates, which I admit might be statistically slim.
The exception is Chris Matthews.
I love Chris Matthews. I should have married Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews interrupts all the time and doesn"t even apologize. On the contrary, the whole point of his TV show is interrupting, which he has redefined as a sign of intelligent conversation. This was a genius move by a guy who just likes to interrupt. It"s not rude, it"s Hardball Hardball.
It"s the boy version of Excited Excited!
Compare and contrast with The View, The View, a TV show in which a TV show in which four women are always interrupting each other. It"s not seen as intelligent conversation, it"s seen as a hen party. four women are always interrupting each other. It"s not seen as intelligent conversation, it"s seen as a hen party.
So please, discuss among yourselves the issue of interrupting.
And remember, show your excitement!
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is about family, so I thought I"d ask daughter Francesca for her thoughts about the day. We spend so much time talking to and teaching our children that sometimes it"s nice just to ask them what they think, and listen to the answer. So take a minute this Thanksgiving to ask your own baby birds what they think about the day, and listen to whatever they chirp up with.
Because I bet that the thing that you"re most thankful for is them.
From Francesca: My family is small. Since it"s only my mom and me at home, our Thanksgiving has never been the Martha Stewart production it can be for some other families. My dad"s family has Thanksgiving in New York; my grandmother and uncle have Thanksgiving in Miami. My mother and I buy a last-minute turkey, make up some wacky ingredients for a stuffing, and eat together with Frank Sinatra playing in the background and a lot of warm, furry dogs warming our feet. It has always been nice, and I know we"re lucky to have each other, but sometimes it has just felt small.
Until Harry.
Harry is our neighbor, he"s in his eighties, and we got to know him from running into him when we walked our dogs. He used to go for a long walk every day, waving a white handkerchief so cars would see him. He would stop to chat with us, always cheery and warm, even when the late-autumn wind made his nose red and his eyes tear.
A few years ago, my mom invited Harry to our Thanksgiving dinner, and he arrived at four o"clock sharp, wearing a cozy, Icelandic sweater and graciously removing his Irish tweed cap as soon as he came inside. During dinner, my mom asked him about his hobbies, and to be honest, I didn"t expect this to be the most thrilling conversation topic. After all, my grandmother"s hobbies are crosswords and yelling at my uncle. But Harry"s face lit up at the question.
"I"m a Ham!" he said.
We didn"t get it.
And with that, Harry turned into a live-wire. He talked about his hobby as a Ham Radio operator, a mode of amateur radio broadcast first popular in the 1920s. Harry told us all about using radio technology while serving in WWII, and we sat, rapt, as he described sending a signal into the air, bouncing it off the stratosphere, and bending it around the earth. He seemed like Merlin, hands waving in the air-his fingers had lost their quiver and his watery eyes were bright and shining.
Well-meaning, but being somewhat of a teenage buzz kill, I asked, "Have you ever tried email? Wouldn"t that be easier?"
No, he said. He enjoys the effort-a foreign concept in my wireless Internet, instant-messaging world. Even though ham radios can communicate through voice, he still uses Morse code sometimes, just for the fun of it. Most of all, he enjoys belonging to the community of Hams. "I get to meet people I would never meet. I have friends around the world." belonging to the community of Hams. "I get to meet people I would never meet. I have friends around the world."
That night, it didn"t matter that Harry and I didn"t share a last name, or that we didn"t share the same relatives or the same nose. That Thanksgiving, he was family. He still is.
What Harry and my mother taught me that Thanksgiving, whether they knew it or not, was that you don"t just get your family, you can create your family. We do it all the time without realizing it; we form bonds with the people we work with, live with, learn with. I"ve felt homesick up at college, but I"ve also created my own little family of friends at school. I hope all those brave soldiers overseas have found second families in their comrades, people to support and lean on when they"re forced to be away from loved ones at home.
These second families don"t replace our first one, they just extend it.
It wasn"t until that Thanksgiving with Harry that I really got it: there are no rules for what or who makes a family, no limit on love. The holidays especially are a time when we can reach out and say "thank you" to all the people who make up our many families. And sometimes, if you"re lucky like me, Thanksgiving can even be a chance to set an extra plate at the table.
Looking out the dining room window, I can barely see Harry"s house for the trees. But inside that house is a man who is not alone. There lives a man who is an expert at reaching out to people, whether by angling radio waves around the globe, or by flagging us down on a walk around the block. He has us, he has our other neighbors, he has friends around the world. Even better, we have him.
And for that, I am thankful.
Priceless