excerpts
A Field Guide To The North American Family.
Material
One house, three cars, four sets of clothes, gratuitous amounts of shoes, daily medications, weekly groceries, glossy monthlies, a year’s supply of firewood for the wood-burning stove, a garage worth of tennis rackets and basketballs, a lifetime of cigarettes. Honey can I, Daddy can’t I, Dad why can’t I, won’t you, will you? Please would you write a check, please can I have some cash, please could we put your name down for a small donation? Of course Frank would. He can. He could. For cellphones and Palm Pilots and personal computers, he’d shell out. For cornerstones and uniforms and meals on wheels for the elderly. These things cost money, but then that’s why he worked. In the end, it was easier to say yes.
Home
They came to Long Island in search of sunlight. Not the kind that trickled down like water through the fingers of a skyline, but the kind that spread like butter across a green expanse of lawn. They came for the relative quiet, the soothing bugsong in summer, in winter the cold crash of waves. They came for the view of those waves, for the big picture window in the living room that looked out over the pool, the trees, the backyard, the breakwater. They came for the community, the neighborhood, the schools. All it cost was a thirty-year mortgage, club dues and greens fees, and train-fare to the city five days a week. There were good years in these houses and in these yards. There were pickup basketball games in the driveways, with the kids. There were parties. There were Halloweens and Thanksgivings. And if, after the switch to standard time, they got home well after dark; and if gradually the kids became strangers; and if when the lights were out they only fell asleep exhausted…well, was that so different from what their own parents had done, chasing their own dreams of America?