The Invisible Illness

William Styron's essay on depression, published in Vanity Fair in 1989, is the best description of the disease that I have ever read. Its symptoms do not always yield to treatment, leaving the victim in so much pain that the thought of another day is unbearable, and there is nothing a spouse can do to alter that perception (believe me, I know). In the past 24 hours, people have said a lot of things meant to give sufferers hope, but much of it is bogus. Until we know more about this lethal disease, we will continue to lose its victims at an alarming rate, and until we take steps to erase the stigma of mental illness, we will remain in darkness. A good way to start is by listening to its victims. There is none more eloquent than Styron, whose essay can be read by clicking here. (The link takes you to the Vanity Fair website. Styron later published a longer version of the essay as the 81-page memoir Darkness Visible.)

My Mother's Dresser

I finally got up the courage to go through my mother's dresser. Two years have passed since she died, and in that time I've gone through the entire house, emptying and sorting. In June, my sister and I emptied the dresser. It was hard, but not as hard as it would have been last summer, when we were emptying out the attic. My mother's dresser was neat as a pin and smelled like lavender. I photographed almost every item, unwilling to let her personal things go without retaining a memento. Jewelry, scarves, my father's wartime ID bracelet (before dog tags), a necklace of gold beads that had belonged to her mother, dress gloves, a box full of discarded hearing-aid batteries with hundreds of notations in her handwriting, signifying the dates they had been changed. Her bedroom, her private sanctuary for 67 years, now bears no trace of her. But I have the photographs, and the handkerchiefs (my sister has the gold beads). I remember her giving one to me every Sunday when I was a kid (I would pick). That was so I would have something to carry in my purse besides the dime for the church offering. The lace and the embroidery was done by Grandma Tucker.

Postcard from New Zealand

So I haven't seen or heard from my kid in, like, a year and a half and then yesterday he sends me a picture of George Bush holding an ear of corn. And for some reason this makes me weirdly happy. (I should add that this postcard was delivered to me via Facebook, which preceded it with the message "Thomas Texier has tagged you in a photo." Yes!) If Facebook had existed when I was 25 and living in New York City (a million light-years from Randolph, Vermont, just as New Zealand is a million light-years from New York City) I like to think that I would have taken five seconds to send my mom a funny picture that I was sure would make her laugh. She would have loved this one—the top half of her refrigerator door was dedicated to making fun of George Bush. At 25, I was not nearly as together as Thomas, but I resembled him in at least one way: I did not write home very often. When I did, I hope my cards and letters made my mother as happy as this postcard from New Zealand made me.

The New Traveler

Christy Turlington's head has been on my coffee table for almost a month—ever since a friend handed me the March issue of Condé Nast Traveler as I was passing through New York. This is the magazine that sent me to Moscow in 2009, and Paris in 2012, and sustained me, body and soul, for twelve years. Losing my job there in 2013 during a changing of the guard was a stab in the heart. So, as you can imagine, I was not eager to see what had become of the spoils in the hands of the conquerors. This morning, however, with March about to pass into oblivion and the April issue already on the stands, I mustered the courage for a thorough inspection. Here's what I found.
The new magazine carries the old motto, "Truth in Travel"—ouch. That slogan, which goes back to the magazine's roots, is a promise by the founding editors to outlaw any behavior that would arouse accusations of bias—no free hotel stays, meals, airline upgrades, and so on. Under the new leadership, however, that policy has been terminated. The slogan should be retired, too.

            Otherwise, I like the cover. It's a lovely, moody image that says "travel," and the Ray-Ban logo on the lens of Christy's glasses is so tiny that I almost didn't notice it.
Inside, too, the new Traveler is beautiful—clean and crisp. Pilar Guzman, the new editor, used to edit Martha Stewart Living, which is also clean and crisp—unlike Martha's Forty-second Street offices, where I used to edit cookie recipes in a dark corridor outside the men's room.

            There isn't much text. That's because media gurus tell us that nobody reads anymore, and magazine people tend to believe this. We're all on life support.

            What there is—text, I mean—is mostly written not by journalists but by "real people." This is explained, in the editor's letter, as a nod to social media. Real people, in this case, include Jacques Pepin, who says, helpfully, that he never leaves home without his kitchen knives.

            There's lots more advice from Pilar and friends about what to pack (e.g., harem pants if you're going to India) and what to buy (Sanex deodorant if you're passing through Heathrow).

            The toothiest article in the feature well is a piece about Rio, a complex city on the verge of change as it prepares for two world sporting events. It reminds me, nostalgically, of the old Traveler. Tellingly, it is written not by a real person but by Simon Romero, the New York Times bureau chief in Brazil.

            My husband, who loves to travel, picked up the March issue and quickly put it down with the comment : "A lot more ads." Well, yes. That's the whole point, dear.
Christy, by the by, has been featured in Traveler before, as a 2012 recipient of the magazine's Global Citizens award (one of the many ways in which the old Traveler wore its conscience on its sleeve). The 2012 honorees were announced in the 25th-anniversary issue, which had Hillary Clinton on the cover. Not the wisest choice, perhaps, from an advertising standpoint. It's hard to argue with a raybanned supermodel. Certainly Christy looks better on the side of a bus.

            As for a slogan that befits the new magazine, I kind of like "Travel Lite."

Paris with Laurie (+playlist)

Back in the USA: French lessons, talking parakeets, and a stroll through Washington Heights

West 181st Street in Washington Heights.

Years ago, my employer paid for me to study French at the Alliance Française in New York City. I proposed the arrangement because I wanted to be able to carry on intelligent dinner conversation with my French in-laws. My employer was interested in developing well-rounded employees; I had convinced the company's human resources division that French lessons would make me a better copy editor, or maybe just a better person in general.

            My French teacher was a native of Brittany, a tall redhead with blue eyes and porcelain skin. Every Wednesday afternoon, we met in the Frank Gehry–designed cafeteria of the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square. We sat on curving caramel-colored faux-leather banquettes, drank coffee, and chatted in advanced-intermediate-level French, Caroline correcting my grammar and supplying the vocabulary that I lacked. Caroline is about my age (I was in my late forties at the time), and we had no trouble finding topics of mutual interest. My tutorials lasted for about four years, and during that time, we became friends.

            On the first weekend in June, I met Caroline in front of her apartment building in northern Manhattan. She lives a block from my Washington Heights pied-a-terre (how I happen to have a New York pied-a-terre is a story for another time). For the past six months, I have been trying hard to improve my fluency in French, with modest success. We spoke in English.

            Caroline’s rent had shot up and she was moving to Florida. We spoke about life transitions. She mentioned a parakeet. At first, I thought the parakeet belonged to her brother, with whom she will be sharing a house in Fort Lauderdale. But no, the parakeet was living in Caroline’s tiny and very expensive Washington Heights apartment and would be moving to Florida with her, making the trip in a cage stowed under the seat of a passenger jet. Caroline was worried that the parakeet, whom she called Teetee, would go into a panic, have a heart attack, and die. “They’re very delicate,” she said.

            Moving is never easy, but until recently, Caroline was not a pet owner, and she had not foreseen this particular brand of complication. Then one day Teetee flew in her window. She freaked (Caroline is afraid of birds) and called the super. The super came and shooed the bird out. A few minutes later, Teetee was back. This time, the bird landed on Caroline’s head. Caroline screamed and called a neighbor. Again Teetee was made to leave.

            On the third try, Caroline relented. She went out and bought a cage. It came in a kit; she assembled it as Teetee hopped around the living room. When the cage was put together, it looked very small. Teetee showed little interest in it. Caroline thought about buying a bigger one.

            She was in a bookstore one day when a book fell off an upper shelf and landed at her feet. She picked it up and read the title. The book was Irene Pepperberg’s Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Secret World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process. Caroline decided that she was supposed to keep the bird.

            She bought a bigger cage. When it was ready for occupancy, she asked herself how she would convince her free-roaming housemate to move in. She went in the kitchen to think about it and to make spaghetti, and when she returned, the parakeet was in the cage. They have been compatibly sharing the Washington Heights apartment ever since—“ever since” being, at the time of my New York visit, a matter of weeks.

            The sequel to Alex & Me is entitled The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots. Teetee is not a grey parrot, but that small detail did not prevent Caroline from trying. (She really is a very good teacher.) She went on YouTube and found many talking parakeets, most of whom had picked up human language without any formal instruction, just by listening to their owners talk to each other or to them. Their repertoire is heavy on endearments, things like "I love you, you're so cute, come here, you're so pretty"—the kinds of things women love to hear.

            The video below features a parakeet named Buttery. It was uploaded by Ken Krantz, who says "We've heard that letting him out of the cage helps because it makes him feel like one of the family." Caroline picked out a similar video and showed it to Teetee on her smartphone. Teetee sidled nervously back and forth on her perch. Weeks later, she was still cheeping and chirping without distinction, and Caroline said she had given up.

            Caroline and I walked in the Heather Garden of Fort Tryon Park (the park, by the way, is a favorite place for Washington Heights residents to release their unwanted pets—rabbits, dogs, cats, birds, and so on). We drank chardonnay (me) and pomegranate lemonade (Caroline) at the New Leaf Café. Then we walked back down Fort Washington Avenue and said good-night. On the way back to my Washington Heights apartment, which I share with my ex-husband, I thought about the many twists and turns my own life has taken, and the many times I’ve moved in and out of New York. I had no idea when I met Caroline that I would ever live in France, which is what I've been doing for the past six months. And she had no idea she would ever meet Teetee.

            Next: Caroline and I have drinks with a neighborhood friend, an actor who plays a space alien on TV.

Hanky, Godzilla, and Me

Once upon a summer evening, I was hanging upside down from the backyard trapeze when my mother called, “Sara! Telephone!” This in itself was an extraordinary event—in 1962 in Randolph, Vermont, children did not normally receive phone calls. “It’s Hanky Buermann,” said Mom. “He wants to invite you to the movies.” What? No boy had ever invited me to the movies before. Timidly, I picked up the heavy black receiver of our rotary phone and said in a tiny little voice, “Hello?” A few minutes later, Hanky’s mother drove the two of us to the movie theater in downtown Randolph, where we saw King Kong versus Godzilla, a classic (believe me, the trailer above is well worth viewing). Hanky said he liked me because I was the smartest girl in the class. Fifty years later, I still have the arrowhead-and-rawhide necklace he gave me, but many of our childhood haunts have vanished—the old playground where we swam in the river, the Rudelle where we slurped ice-cream "custards," the cow pasture where we learned to ski. But the Playhouse is still there, a miracle. This week several of my Randolph neighbors posted on Facebook that the theater needs a digital projector and I could donate here. I chipped in, not because I care about small towns and old buildings and cultural heritage and all that (although I do). I gave out of sheer sentimentality, and because when I was raising money for the Randolph Senior Center's memoir-writing project, people gave. Not just from Randolph but from all over the country. My turn. PS: After school, Hanky started a company that makes little doodads out of plastic. He owns a couple of planes, a bunch of motorcycles, and I don’t know how many classic cars. He likes to hunt, and spends part of the year in Saskatchewan. And the smartest girl in the class? I’m pretty sure she wasn’t me.