Actually, I don’t know anybody named Dick and Jane.  But now, Casey and Emily?  Yeah, we had tons of fun with them today.  This is so amazing, to be within walking distance of places that suck the money out of your pockets by the fist full, and make you feel great while it happens.

Think of your life.  When was there ever enough magic in it to land you in a house just across the street from a toy store?  A great toy store?  

Here it is by night, the light inside warm as a hearth fire.  Danged if it doesn’t look like home, just waiting for you to come in.  Looks like Christmas.  With a little snow, it would be Dickens’ Christmas Eve.

Casey and Emily, from whom all that warm light is emitted.  They know their toys.  They know kids.  And they know hospitality.  Gin and I wandered around the store today, trying to remember to keep an eye on the Frazz.  Casey found me with an arm full of Scooter things and offered to pile them up by the register for me while I continued to shop.

“HA!” I said.  “Now, that’s smooth retailing.  You know that by taking those things out of my hands and sending me back out into the store, you’re making it so that I’ll just forget how much I’ve already spent and get more stuff than I mean to.”

“Oh,” she said.  “Then here – “

But I didn’t want to remember how much I’d spent.  I wanted to spend more than I meant to.  So I let her take the things from me, which she did.  But as she did, she said, “But I’ll keep an eye on you.”

It’s the kind of store that has wonderful things hanging from the ceiling.  Not the usual see-it-on-TV junk, but the strange and wonderful: wooden toys from Germany, lovely chunky European plastics in bright colors and charming designs, games that teach you things, and games that don’t – trains and fake food, rattles shaped like stars and aliens and polka dotted monsters.

And how can Emily wrap that Christmas present so casually while an alligator is staring at her?

These people are serious about children – they know their venders, and make sure the toys are safe, that they’re inspected and tested for lead and all those things.

The Frazz spent almost an hour with the wooden trains this morning (this is not he) while we shopped, playing side by side with a little boy whose French mother hovered over him cheerfully.  “He’s in pre-school, here,” she explained to me, “so avec moi, c’est Francais toujours!”  Her Russian husband is doing research at the university, and so they are both far from home, but seem happy to be here with their son.  We got to exchange a little French with them – G more than I (who can ask questions in French, but rarely understand the answers).

Random monsters seem to be the fashion these days, odd creatures made out of carelessly shaped bits of felted sweaters – things with odd faces and stranger tails—soft and silly.

Stacks of boxes and books and balls.

Games – I always loved games, the more little pieces the better.

Creatures animated by your own hand.

I want one of these.  I picked it up to take it to G and show him – but as I did, Casey walked by and gave me a stern look.  “You need to put that down,” she said. And eventually, I did.  When the French lady left and we could pry the Frazz away from the trains, we left our purchased haul for Casey and Emily to wrap – some in Christmas paper, some in birthday.  We didn’t buy everything we wanted.  Our bags weren’t big enough.

This is another store near by, a sliver store owned by a man who used to be a flea marketeer.  The stores have made an “honest” man of him now, no longer playing the field.  Again, fifty steps away from our door, silver gathered from all over the world.  And on sale.  So this is my taste of the urban life – where you can walk to a restaurant as we did tonight, a great pizza place – a REAL East Coast pizza place, like I remember from my childhood.  The chef is a greek guy who showed us to our table and told us the specials in so wonderful an accent (exacerbated by a cold) that we had to ask the waitress to translate.  And she was wonderful, like the lady down the street, who just happens to work in the pizza place.  Pizza and souvlaki and spinach pies.

And when we were finished, and we were leaving—I saw the chef leaning out from behind the ovens to watch us.  “It was great!,” I told him.  “Wonderful.”  And he smiled with satisfaction and disappeared again. 

If you lived in such a place, you would know them all.  And when you said, “The regular,” they would know what you were talking about.  And they would know your kids, and you would know when they were having a bad day or a particularly good one.  It’s been like living in Disneyland.  Your bank a block or two away.  Milk cheaper at the gas station down the street than it is at the grocery store.

This is, in short, a great place to visit.  My heart remains, however, in my quiet yard.  It would be fun to be able to walk to a restaurant – maybe somebody will finally build one on that corner that’s been for sale for thirty years.  And my bank is supposed to put in a branch just across the street from that.  Nice, not to have to drive everywhere all the time.  But only if the places you’re going are like these – the small, real people shops, the unusual, not the some-assembly-required cookie-cutter franchises.  The world at your doorstep, one hand made creature, one personality at a time.

Of course, there has to be a bakery in all of this.  And here it is.  We went there today – and it is wonderful – earthy, artisan breads and scones and pastries.  And it was packed to the rafters – every little round table full, and conversations going at all of them.  Now here’s a fun thing: this is the restaurant you see in Dan in Real Life when he picks his middle daughter up from school.  This is where that scene was shot – you can see the ballet school across the street and the CVS pharmacy just briefly, but you wouldn’t know if you weren’t looking pretty close, and you’d have to be familiar with the area, which you now are.  There was a different sign on it that day, which was pretty confusing to the natives.  But ta-da!!!— just another fifteen minutes of fame.

I am hoping that you are not wearied by all of this, because I’m having a great time showing it to you.  And tomorrow, I will show you our shots of the stormy beach and some of the fine and excessive houses we saw, driving through Newport.  Oh, and we were driving along that same road Dan was taking when the cop stopped him.  Twice.  Maybe you’ll recognize it.

It’s actually a fine thing when a child grows up to outshine her parents.  But it’s not so great when she grows up to be one of them.  Like Barbara Boyce.  She lived in a big old house down on 2^nd or 3^rd North with a bunch of other girls in our BYU ward, and she was soooo nice. And she was soooo classy.  She could have gotten up in the morning, tied her hair in a knot and thrown on an old shower curtain, and she’d have looked like the classiest person to ever walk the planet.  She always made me feel like I was something special, which is ironic because I am to class basically what acoustic tile is to sound.

            And Katherine Stadelbauer. One of the eighty girls my age in our Scarsdale ward – a pack of us, like sisters, loving-hating, going to camp together all through high school.  Katherine used to wear these cool Villager cardigans.  My mother draped me in whatever we could find at Korvettes.  Katherine had hair like a waterfall.  My hair couldn’t hold a flip to save its life.  I could sleep in curlers all night (yeah—what was that about?) and in the morning, my hair would hold the curl for about fifteen seconds before it fell over sideways and died.

            But it was more than that—from her first breath, Katherine had it—panache, charisma, that je ne sais quois.  Me?  I never got over being an adolescent.  In later years, when we ran into each other again at BYU, she said, most disingenuously, “You could look good, if you’d just take care of yourself.”

            So yes, I taught my kids everything – reading, writing, writhmatic – music, photography, art, dance.  And now they all do all of it better than I do.  Which is right.  Which is good.  Except I find myself coveting my daughter’s eye.  You go to Gin’s place and look at her shots, you suddenly turn French and kiss the tips of your fingers (superb!!).  With her, you are in the presence of greatness.  And now she has moved to the East Coast, and lives in the presence of Autumn at its most classical.

            Which is why I am here.  I got tired of playing my little mountains against her deciduous forest.  It wasn’t fair.  So I came out here to get some maple shots for myself.  Only to find the weather gone weary and dreary.  Which means we have to stay mostly indoors – which is even sadder because Ginna’s house is just like Barbara Boyce, welcoming, generous, and carelessly classy with that gift of scattered and unselfconscious whimsy and artsiness that makes it a joy to behold.

            So I have turned the tables by taking pictures of her world – albeit in the perennially low light that has plagued me all through this season.  Or is it my eyes are just getting worse and I can’t tell when I’m focused anymore?  Well, through rain, dusk and inside lighting I have stolen these images – and now I offer them up, hoping that what has made me happy will do the same for you.

Frazz: home and glad to have us with him

Studying the menu – she’ll hate this shot, but I love it.

G, with his daughter.  This hat, he took off at the airport, worrying that they’d think he was a terrorist.  Actually, he wears it because it’s cold outside.  I loved this light.

Weighing broccoli with Grandpa G

This is the “don’t take pictures of me” sign.  Ha.  I followed them around as they bought groceries for the week, watching scenes as natural to me as if they still happened every day.  I have learned to record the unremarkable, since the aggregate of these is what does, in fact, make our lives quite remarkable indeed.

I always seem to be shooting great leaves from the back of a horse or the inside of a car.  This one looks good at this size.  Please do not double click it, however – you will get motion sick.

Dog in the kitchen.  He was just lying there with business going on all around him, his chin propped up on this stool. You can just catch the good humored glint in one eye.

I am in love with the vestibule.  The light coming through her sheers is so diffused, so creamy.  And this old fashioned entry has such a romantic quality.

Getting lunch together.  More lovely light.

Kathy and I both are represented on the wall.  Kathy’s is bigger and has a cat in it.  Also pumpkins.

Dog, now in the living room.  An ear, certainly not asleep, cocked to catch any promising sound – the fall of a crumb, the mention of his name.

What you can’t see clearly here is Kathy’s gorgeous quilt – wait, I think Gin might have put this one together under her tutelage.  The colors are lovely, makes the whole room rich.

More entry.

Attention to detail, and all of it points to a household built around the child.

Love the fish.

Outside our window.  The house is in the city, and the community almost walkable.  Groceries are a distance, but swimming lessons, the library, a cleaners, the little school – all a pleasant walk away.  Sirens pass the house a couple of times a day.  Energy up and down the sidewalks. But the earth in woven through it all, peaking out in tiny lawns, in drifts of leaves at corners of some of the oldest buildings in our country.

On our way home from the cleaners.

Part 2: out and about –