My Wish

I have a wish. Wishes are such ephemeral things, here today, gone tomorrow. They have no substance in their larval stage. The length, depth and breadth of them don’t really matter. A wish is a deeply personal thing, so you can keep your judgments to yourself, thank you. My wish is no better than yours, and yours no better than mine, even though they might be separated by a bajillion dollars.

Wishes move outside the dimension of time, or at least the metric of time like the day, or the hour. You can make one anytime, and nobody needs to know, unless you choose to tell. Telling is what heads them off at the pass—it’s the only surefire way I know to drop’em dead in their tracks.

We all have years of practice not telling, of course.

“So what did you wish for,” they all ask, as the smoke from the candles floats lazily towards the ceiling.

“I ain’t saying,” we reply. We are firm in the conviction that any birthday wish, revealed so soon after it has been released, will fall to earth with the velocity of an armored chestnut, nettles and brown icky stuff seeking the nearest body part to strike.

“What was your wish, c’mon, tell,” our sibling says, after the satisfying crack of the wishbone fades into the rich smell of turkey and cranberries and stuffing that clings like lint to the walls of the dining room.

Sometimes we just smile, and don’t respond. Are we smiling because the likelihood of our wish coming true is enhanced by the heft of the turkey bone in our hand, or simply because we have bested our sibling? For once. Or for the fortieth time.

Again, the answer resides in that little secret place where we formulate wishes.

I wonder, though. If we have just made a wish, and then allowed ourselves to indulge in rascally thoughts, is the wish fatally tainted aborning? And what happens to wishes that don’t get answered. Are they recycled? Do they morph into prayers?

And how different really is a prayer from a wish? I suppose a prayer should be a combination of supplication and maybe a little craving of indulgence. Is a prayer a conditional wish?

“Yeah, Spirit who guides us all, I love and honor you. If you love me too, please convince Nancy La Grange to give me her phone number.”

As opposed to a straight, formally structured wish.

“I wish I had Nancy La Grange’s phone number.” There is a slight difference in form, that’s true. But maybe a wish is shorthand for a prayer. Maybe we just assume that a wish knows it is being addressed to some entity greater than ourselves.

But when you cut them both to the core, the little dishonesty of each gleams like a pearl.

We don’t want Nancy La Grange’s phone number to have and to hold in perpetuity. We don’t even want Nancy La Grange’s phone number. We have wished and prayed for Nancy, although we could never admit that. The phone is merely the most socially convenient way of beginning a process of gaining access to Nancy that will ultimately result in, well, gaining ACCESS to Nancy.

And do we really think that the Spirit is going to appear in Nancy’s mother’s prized rose bush, all aflame, and go over the pro’s and con’s of releasing her number to us? No, that isn’t what we really want, even though that is sort of what we prayed for.

What we really want, sans prayer or wish, is to have Nancy say, suddenly and we hope uncharacteristically, to herself or a friend, “I’m going to give my phone number to Melvin Karpowitz, because he has the cutest butt in school. I hope he calls, because I have these urges I can’t control.”

When you really start to think about it, you can see what a slippery slope this is.

Remember what we said about the ethereality of wishes. With no depth, length or breadth, we have no real basis on which to make a judgment regarding the morality of a wish. In the realm of wishiness there is no difference between a Porsche and a bowl of popcorn; you’d have a hard time weighing the relative goodness or badness of the wish. Is it good for a hungry person to wish for a cheeseburger? What if they have no money? What if the cheeseburger they wish for is the one on your plate? What if a person who isn’t hungry wishes for a cheeseburger? Is that bad? And what about the impact of such a wish on your cholesterol? Does that make a wish bad?

And what happens if two people wish for the same thing at the same time? Does that increase the likelihood of it being granted? I know of many prayer circles, where people of deep spirit and genuine faith are convinced that the power of prayers increases exponentially when they are all cast into the universe at the same time. Is it the same with wishes?

I’m not sure. I still remember when Abbie Hoffman gathered 50,000 people at the Pentagon in the sixties to try to levitate it. Aside from two people in the crowd getting spontaneous hernias, the building didn’t move. Much.

You can see that this line of discussion is the equivalent of the angels dancing on the head of a pin contretemps.

So here is my wish.

I want to be on a Rolodex card, sitting on someone’s desk.

No fancy blackberries or hand held PDA’s for me; I want to be in a Rolodex.

I want someone to get on the intercom to their secretary, and say, “Marty, get me Menin, right now.”

They’ll want me because they have a job they know I can do. A problem they can’t solve. They’ll want me because “getting Menin,” means something positive, clearing a logjam, getting something off the ground, pulling the fat out of the fire. They want me because I match what they need.

They want me because something I have to offer is exactly what is missing. And they want me badly enough to reach across their desk, and fly through a Rolodex filled with the cards of insurance brokers from ten years ago, dry cleaners who’ve been out of business for fifteen years, the deli that stopped delivering last year.

And there I will be, the card still as clean and crisp as the day they put it in, a simple name and phone number, unused, waiting patiently for me to make this wish.

The Family Bed

Morning in our household is something of a movable feast. Sometimes it happens at 2:30 AM, sometimes at 4:00 AM, sometimes when the sun rises. When I was younger, the early morning was mine; I claimed it with vigor and confidence. I’d get up and run the dark streets of this city, I’d write, I’d watch old horror movies and listen to music. I’d toast the sunrise with a cup of tea.

Now, most early mornings I roll over and look into the sleeping face of Sammy, our four-year old. Often next to him is his seven-year old sister Lily, and next to her is Julie, my wife. If she and I want to whisper things to one another, given the crowd, we need to use a cell phone. Somewhere, stretched across the many Menin limbs, is Rufous the wonder pup. Stuffed animals and small plastic figures with sharp points litter the blankets. Often, I have no recollection of when the wave of immigration has occurred; it is just that nightly magic, with kids appearing at all hours in search of security and snuggles.

I don’t dare wake the little ones; my side of the family harbors surly, not-morning people. A family story that has taken on legend involves my brother Glenn, who was on a family vacation in Florida with some of our younger cousins. One of them, Bertie, was a teenager with a narsty streak who was eventually expelled from a college for tossing parachute-wearing mice from a fourteen-story dorm roof.

He decided to wake Glenn up early one morning (10 AM) by pouring cold water on his face. My brother grabbed the offending relative and suspended him by his ankles from the motel balcony until cousin Bertie nearly fainted. Knowing the danger coiled in their genes, I let the little ones sleep on.

As we pass the night, I will often have bizarre little conversations with the kids. At 3 AM one morning, Sammy tugged on my beard and asked me to read him a story. I started reaching for a book. In the darkness. Instinct. And then the little guy fell back to sleep, even after I turned the light on. So, I read the book myself. It was very exciting, about fire engines, and I found it difficult to get back to sleep, I was so jazzed.

Sometimes, they will need a refilled glass of water. This one I'm always hesitant about, knowing that my little darling may very well continue to nap next to me for several more hours. Lily and Sam have never had any nocturnal problems of this particular nature, but I think I might have as a child, and I am very susceptible to influence.

This ersatz family bed can be little disorienting. I’ve woken up to find Sam sleeping sweetly, holding tightly onto my nose or ear. I am then faced with the parental dilemma. Do I remove his hand, and risk waking him up? Or do I wait, hoping that he will do it himself, while I run the risk that for the better part of the morning, my nose will bear the imprint of his fingers? Vanity or sanity? Luckily, while I am agonizing over the decision, I usually fall back asleep, and trust to gentle nature. I can use the extra sleep, anyway.

Lily is moving into the age of dental eruption. I wonder how this will affect her nocturnal pilgrimages to our room. She will have to face a logistical problem- will the tooth fairy still ante up if her tooth is in one room, and Lily is napping in another?

I suppose I should have seen this phase coming. Perhaps the progeny were just warming us up with their sly little Christmas strategy of wandering into our room every forty-five minutes on Christmas Eve, wondering aloud if it was time yet.

Well, it’s a scary old world out there right now. I’ve figured out that if the kids sleep easier, so do I. If on occasion they need a security recharge by listening to Daddy snore up close, or curling up next to Rufous the wonder pup in our room, so be it. Julie and I can catch up on lost sleep later. Like twenty years from now. And I know things will change this summer, if we can afford to put an air conditioner into Lily’s room. Then it will probably be Daddy, knocking lightly, sleeping bag in hand, looking for some space on the floor.

So for now here we are, huddled together some nights like Eskimos on the chilly coast of New England. Is it a three dog, or a four dog night? Sometimes, the whole pack just climbs under the covers. I think I've spotted the neighbor's kid, as well as that German Shepherd from up the street.

As the kids grow, these moments, when they are utterly safe from the dangers of the world and I know exactly where they are, will become much less frequent. For now though, I can listen to the family snore softly- all right, the truth is I’ve woken myself up by snoring loudly, and they are breathing softly in the night. The dog snores too, though. Sometimes. And passes gas.