By Meghan O'Rourke
Grew up on the Jersey Shore in the nineteen-seventies.
Always making margaritas in the kitchen,
always laughing and doing their hair up pretty,
sharing lipstick and shoes and new juice diets;
always splitting the bills to the last penny,
stealing each other's clothes,
loving one another then complaining
as they walked out the door. Each one with her doe eyes,
each one younger than the last,
each older the next year, one year
further from their girlhoods of swimming
at Sandy Hook, doing jackknives off the diving board
after school, all of them
being loved by one boy and then another,
all driving further from the local fair, further from Atlantic City.
They used to smoke in their cars,
rolling the windows down and letting their red nails
hang out, little stoplights:
Stop now, before the green
comes to cover up your tall brown bodies.
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From this week's New Yorker.
I have nothing exciting to report from my day (laundry, kids, finally finished reorganizing post-trip), but I had a lovely evening because Paul decided we needed to celebrate Bastille Day properly and made French onion soup and cassoulet, then put on a DVD he'd made from a torrent someone had posted of the 2006 Les Miserables revival (undoubtedly recorded illegally, and with a terrible Fantine, but hey, it's been so many years since I saw the original cast in the pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center that I'll take what I can get). I suppose The Scarlet Pimpernel would have been appropriate but I don't have a DVD of any of the Broadway incarnations, though I'm sure I saw a concert performance with Linda Eder on public television at some point.
It's not France, but here are some photos of the French Quarter. Like so many here, I am getting up early to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (with birthday girl Gblvr, plus Hufflepants, and Paul and my kids are coming too, though Daniel does not want to be seen with me and my friends and may sit elsewhere), so I am off to bed!
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