Parents in town for graduation is fun and all, but it means a whole lot of hectic running around playing hostess and not a whole lot of sitting around blogging.

Oh!, the blogging story is that after convocation on Tuesday, Maud and Jazon and my parentals and I were on the downtown train to a happy lunch at Otto, where so many little tasty things awaited—roasted beets and English peas and radishes and olives and pizza with fennel and bottarga, and a rum-soaked brioche and all kinds of gelato, including rose-rosemary and goat’s milk ricotta—and, to quote a funny French boy we know, pim pam poum, now I have a lunch story, too, which is that one of the things on the menu were “ramps,” which the waiter explained are like wild leeks, which made me and Maud say, simultaneously, “Aaaaaa!!” and wave our hands around. And then the waiter said, “Yes, we hunt them down with dogs,” and I said, “Really?” You see, higher education has made me less gullible.

Um. But, so, the blogging story. Which is this: we were on the train downtown after convocation and Jazon started to ask a story about blogging on the road trip, which made me lean toward him to say, in a low voice and between teeth gritted into a smile: “Ngy ngarents gnon’t gnow I nghaff a nglog.”

And now what comes to mind is the Jazon story, which is that my dear little mother thought Jazon was my boyfriend. So I said, “Well. Jason likes boys.” And she blinked, and then she said, “You mean he is...a gay?” Oh, funny Mowmy! And this reminds me that today when we were talking about L.A. and I said something about staying with Jude and Chad, she said, “So Jude is a girl.” And I said, “Both are boys.” And she thought about it, then said, “How come you are only friends with gays?” Oh, mother, me too I have the same question.

One last tangent, I swear, and it is that today we were in the park, and I pointed out to my mother a squirrel perched on a fallen log. He was perched, and still, and looking. Just looking. And I said, “I wonder what he’s doing,” and my mother said, “He is thinking, ‘Did I leave the gas on?’”



So you see. Parents in town for graduation is fun and all, but I have been wanting to blog about the end of the roadtrip, and I have been finding it difficult because of one thing after another—like post-commencement lunch at Le Pain Quot’, where there was the great tartine trade-off: roast beef and wild caper mayo for black bean hummus for chicken curry and cranberry chutney; like “Faust” at the Met Opera, where Soile Isokoski and Roberto Alagna sure can belt it out, but where Méphistophélès had on a very silly devil bodysuit; like a walk through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where the tortoises sunned on hot rocks, where the Japanese peonies were blooming in pink and white and red and stripey, where a brown duck and I played a staring game for a good couple of minutes; like Café Regular, where my parents were charmed by the place and the boys behind the counter and the foamy heart Josh made on the surface of my mocha—and the thing is, I just need, like Maud says, to be able to sit down and think about it.

It is not a week since we got back to New York, me and Maud and Ya, and being caught up in the whirl of the city is making the trip seem like it all took place a long time ago. I was talking to CC yesterday, and I said, “The roadtrip, it is under my belt and behind me,” and she said, “That means it is your ass.” Even with egregious lack of sleep from looking after child, she is quick, that one.

But the thing is,

the thing is,

the thing is this.



Once upon a time, there were three girls on an adventure around America. One of them was in love. One of them was leaving soon. One of them knew all the songs. Two of them played drums. Two of them had red cloth shoes. One of them had a pair of gauchos. One of them was good with numbers. One of them could put her hair in little braids that stayed put without rubberbands.

Each of the three had brought the same Otis Redding CD, and together all three of them knew that when Charles Aznavour’s “For Me, Formidable” came to an end, it was time to play it again, c’est obligé.

Two of them liked to stop for photographs. One of them was very patient.

Mornings, one of them could generally be found sitting on the back bumper eating an orange.

One of them drank a goodly amount of gas station coffee.

One of them wanted yoghurt. One of them wanted pie. All of them wanted chocolate.

One of them learned a word a day. Car, la bagnole. House, la baraque. Tisane, le pisse-mémé. Someone driving too slow in the left lane, pédé. A key that doesn’t work, pédé.

One of them said “Blog it.”

One of them said, “Don’t blog it.”

One of them learned to drive at the speed limit. Well, maybe five miles above.

All three of them liked to put their feet on the dashboard.

One of them thought she knew, but she had no idea.

America sure is big and different, there is no way around it. The Korean waitress at the Luxor Hotel buffet, who said, when I asked her what Las Vegas locals do: “We just work, there isn’t time to do anything else”; the waiter at the highway Barrigos in El Paso, who told us about upping and moving from city to city, because he likes the change of scene; the old Native American man and his table of trinkets at Monument Valley, the wind lifting the corners of his tablecloth while he hunched over in a plastic folding chair—this is America. Also Jésus, manning the cashier at a Shell station in Baker, California, whom two towing-company guys raucously and jovially hailed “Zoos.” Also the Navajo women in Fort Defiance, Arizona, who pointed us in the right direction and then smiled and said, when they found out where we’d come from, “No wonder you’re lost; I’d get lost in New York.” Also the DC politician and the Nashville lawyer and the Texas-based French expatriate and the California academics, all generous and warm and eager to show us their lives, if only for a day, or a night, or three hours. This is America, too.

And the mountains and the valleys and the fields and the cow ranches and the beach and the snow. And the desert and the desert and the desert. Somehow, I’m not quite sure how, the desert changed everything. In one month I leave America. And maybe everything’s changing and everything’s changed, but the desert.