I’m melting.

My parents look at Jordan and me languishing on the livingroom couch, and at Tillie & Eva, sweaty and heat-rashed, and declare that we are all hopelessly Canadian.

It’s true. Not so much the Canadian part — Toronto can give NYC a run for its money when it comes to miserable, muggy summers — but after 4 years of Pacific Northwest living, I find the heat pretty miserable.

The cold, too.

When I was 18 I went on a year-long trip to Israel, to milk cows on a kibbutz and plan my future utopian commune and — well, and to disco every Friday night. On my program were a whole slew of Vancouverites, many of whom are still close friends — and two of whom now live, like everyone else in the free world, in Brooklyn.

The Vancouverites were famous for two things. First, they always thought everything looked like Vancouver. The hills of the Judean desert at sunrise? Looked like Vancouver. The ancient Arab port city of Akko? Vancouver.  

Second, they had absolutely no tolerance for heat or cold of any kind. I remember watching with curiosity as they staggered from the bus on a 40+ Celsius day. It was hot, sure. Okay, it was very, very, hot. But to me it was a smoke-in-the-shade kind of day (of course, every 18 year old North American planning a utopian community in the Negev desert must smoke), whereas they looked….ill.

And now it’s my turn.

New York is confusing for me. I can’t handle the weather, but I surprise myself by knowing my way around…navigating through a subterranean subway tunnel last night I thought, isn’t it odd how this is still mine? And then again, isn’t it odd, also, how it isn’t?

I once identified strongly with the city and thought I’d live here forever, and now NY is just the place I grew up. But of course nowhere is just the place you grew up  — the place you grew up is the place. And maybe everyone has that strange feeling of returning home, always a little surprised to find how well home has existed without them. New York is New York.  I’m overwhelmed by it each time. There are so many people, so much activity, and — a personal favorite (favourite?) of mine — so many, many, refreshing drinks to choose from at one of the millions of independent grocery-marts that make each neighborhood.

Jordan says that he could have married someone from anywhere, and been stuck visiting in-laws in, say, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Instead he married a girl from NYC, and gets to vacation regularly, albeit with some physical discomfort, in one of the greatest towns in the world.

But while he’s gotten to know the city through me, his small-city Ontario view of NY has also altered my own.  ”New York always looks like a movie set to me,” he told me years ago. It seemed so bizarre at the time, but now I’ll often catch myself looking at something — last night, for example, a restored waterfountain set against a  pre-war Village backdrop — thinking, wow, looks like a movie. 

I have truly a ridiculous amount to say on this topic — has there perhaps been a different NY for each stage of my life? — but…I’m too darn hot.

And now I’ve written an entire post about the weather. Can’t get more Canadian than that.

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1. Blogs

But before I go into that: can I talk about the flight? I was utterly sans children.  No need to entertain anyone during the customs line; no need to talk to anyone at all. All I had to do was sit still for 5 hours. I read a book. An entire book. And I slept. And I ate fine, because there was actually room in my solely carry-on luggage for my food. And…

Okay, I can tell, you’re bored. But as Jordan put it: traveling with or without one’s children might be one of the greatest discrepencies in the parent-game. And just this once, the without felt nearly luxurious.

Now–Vancouver. I had a reading last night at Diane’s Lingerie. Despite the fact that I showed up 10 minutes late due to a delayed bus at the ferry terminal(cut to image of me hustling down Granville, my rolling luggage banging along beside me), it went really well. 

(I know, I know: I should have taken a cab. But perversely, the longer I sat on the bus waiting it to depart the ferry terminal the more committed I became to staying on it….)

There was a  good mix of pregnant ladies & student midwives, for one. There were also women from a Lilith Magazine Salon, along with my personal publicity heroine, Rebecca Wigod of The Vancouver Sun. Wigod’s incredibly generous profile/review of me ran all over Canada, an act of good-will outdone only be a personal call I later received from her mother, who not only told me she loved my novel, but described exactly what I’d always hoped readers might love about it.

Meantime: it’s past midnight in NYC but I’m staying up to greet my parents, who went out to a Broadway Show this evening and got caught in Obama & Michelle-mania. Once again they’re outdoing me with their social life. But no matter–I have that brunch date tomorrow morning. With my editor & agent–or did I already mention that?

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1. Radio redux, and hold the babies, please.

I spoke at my mother’s Hadassah Chapter: Park Slope, Brooklyn.

There was cake, there was coffee, there was hummus & salad & quinoa. And there were thirty-odd Jewish women in their 40s and 50s and 60s, each of them (well, almost) holding a copy of Sima.

It hadn’t occurred to me until I was walking over to the meeting: they had the potential to be my best or worst audience.

After all: my novel is about Brooklyn Jewish women. Yes, they don’t have to be Jewish. But: they are, unapologetically so. I recently read Nathan Englander rail against the “Jewish Fiction” label. I see his point, but reject it entirely. Sima is Jewish Fiction.

And yet: this was my first  exclusively –and assertively –Jewish audience.

Would they recognize themselves and the landscape they know in Sima? Or would they tell me I’d gotten it all wrong? Or would they make nice small-talk for my mother’s sake, while clearly hating every last word I’d written?

Well: they seemed to like it. I got lots of kisses and hugs and significant hand-holds. More than that, I got to sit back and listen as they took the talk from me and carried it forward: women raising their hands, women interrupting, women leaning forward impatiently to respond to someone’s point about my book.

Is there a greater thrill for an author than hearing her work intelligently engaged with? Than listening, and in listening knowing: this story matters to someone?

And then too: how I’ve missed interruptions! Honest, at a midwifery intensive that preceded this trip I kept chastising myself for interrupting. I’m terrible sometimes, and I do try to be better. But to listen to these women talk, and to recognize the flow of the conversations I’d been raised on –well, it was validating.  I’ve learned to say ‘please’and ‘thank you’ (I swear I wasn’t taught as a child) and to keep quiet sometimes and wait my turn others, but it doesn’t always come easy to me, and sitting there and listening I understood why, and loved it.

One of the funniest moments came when I told them how so many Canadian readers had responded to me: understandably intrigued by the “exotic” setting and full of questions about it. (“What’s with the wigs?”)

The laughed out loud to think of Boro Park as exotic. “Really? They think that?!”

On the flip-side, I’m used to Americans giving me a blank look when I say I’m from Victoria. But these women all seemed to have been there, on some cruise or another. “The Butchart Gardens,” one after another told me, “I couldn’t believe how gorgeous!”

All in all, a fabulous evening. They even gave me a framed certificate for speaking at their group. “Oh yeah,” my father said, when he saw it, “Hadassah loves giving out certificates.”

Luckily, I love taking them.  Thank you, Hadassah of Park Slope, Brooklyn!!!!

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Okay, I know that nothing is more boring than recounting airport travails — except perhaps undergoing an airport travail in the first place. But I have to pause a moment to capture the 100-odd furious passengers (our flight was cancelled 20 minutes before take-off), the one exhausted Air Canada employee sent to rebook said 100-odd furious passengers, and the Newark Airport baggage guy who kept repeating, “me personally, I would never, ever fly Air Canada.”

Eventually Eva and I found our way to an airport hotel. She was fabulous the entire time–far, far more mature and well-behaved than I was. When forced to wait an hour on a mammoth line she ran circles round the floor; when forced to wait an hour in an unheated luggage-claim hall she wrapped herself in a blanket and giggled from underneath its folds.  She then fell asleep en-route to the JFK airport hotel (don’t even ask how much a taxi between Newark and JFK costs) and stayed asleep until I woke her at 4am the next morning. Had I been alone in the Howard Johnson Airport Express I probably would have done something ridiculous like burst into tears–is there anything lonelier than an unexpected stay in a rundown airport hotel?– but instead I got to snuggle up beside the reassuring warmth of a snoring four-year-old.

Tillie, on the other hand, made me pay for my absence by ignoring me for my first three hours home. “No,” she’d say, looking at my outstretched hand, “Da-da’s hand! Da-da’s hand!” She wouldn’t even let me walk next to her on the way to the grocery store. It was horrid. Thank goodness I’m back in her good graces again. The wrath of Tillie is hard to bear. 

So….back home and back to clinic, although I’m still squeezing in any publicity I can muster.  Today I had three radio spots, including a fabulous interview on the  Louie B. Free Show during which Louie left a message on my parents’ answering machine.

I am really glad to be home. At the same time, the trip was fabulous and definitely exciting – not least for getting to see some old friends and new babies (Noa!) along the way. The final reading at Freebird was especially lovely– we packed the place, and it felt right to end in Brooklyn, where it all began.

And now…time to shred some cheddar for mac n’cheese….

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1. Bette Midler?

Crazy.

Beside my feet, keeping me grounded, is a lovely 3-legged dog named NoLa–as in, New Orleans, Louisiana. Nola is a Katrina rescue dog, once found scavenging beside the road in a semi-submerged section of the city, now resting on a suede dog bed in Georgetown. I figure she’s the dog equivalent of Larry David’s family Black. I’m very pleased to meet her.

Last night’s Philadelphia reading at Delicious was terrific — a wonderful mix of old friends and new readers. And, my first sighting of $700 corsets and a male corseter –Sima’s jaw would have dropped. It reminded me, too, that I haven’t blogged about my New York reading at Bra Smyth.  Guess who was there? You’ll never guess. OK, I’ll tell you.

Drumroll, please.

Miss Pauline! 

Miss Pauline, who as I mention on another page on this website, was the owner of the bra-shop where I was fitted for my first bra, and the inspiration for the setting of Sima’s Undergarments for Women. Well, an old high school friend heard about my novel through facebook, and she not only knew Miss Pauline’s from her own Junior High bra-fitting experience, but she also knew Miss Pauline’s grandson, a lawyer with whom she’d worked. And so she emailed him about the novel, and he emailed me, and he went to his grandmother’s house and showed her this website, and got her the book, and–

She came to the reading. And brought the whole mishpacha: son and daughter-in-law, two grandsons, and even a great-granddaughter.

She looked fabulous. Fur coat, pink lipstick, big hug. I was worried she’d hate the book, but clearly she enjoyed it — she talked Jewish bra-shop lineage with Sandi, the owner of Bra Smyth (“Frishman’s in the Bronx–sure, I remember”) and posed for pictures with me. It also turned out that I wasn’t the only fan in the room. “You fitted me for my first bra!” a woman said, holding out her hand. “Lisa Safier–remember my mother?” Miss Pauline, who at this point I think I can mention is actually named Leah Kruger, most certainly did. “Here,” she said, taking Lisa’s copy of my novel, “I’ll sign it for you.”

Afterwards, Leah Kruger took my publicist aside. “Who’s idea for a cover was this?” she asked, gesturing to the retro-bra advertisement. “They won’t buy it in Boro Park.” Then she gave us the names and addresses of Boro Park yentas who, if given the book in plain cloth, might help spread the word: “On 13th and 51st, you want to ask for Chansie–” 

Chansie, if you’re reading this: We’ll sell you all the cover-less copies you want. 10% discount, nu?

Related posts:

1. Radio redux, and hold the babies, please.

It’s just Eva and me at my parents’ place in Brooklyn–Jordan had to return to teaching, and we decided Tillie would fare better at home. A good decision, as I spent today polishing off a paper on gestational hypertension while Eva, bedecked in a Disney princess gown, roamed about our old Victorian home on her own. Luckily, it was easy to track her progess, marked as it was by the desperate meows of Nomi, an old gray cat whom Eva held captive.

We ventured out for lunch to Avenue J, where Eddie at the fruit market (much like Eddie in my novel) gave Eva copious amounts of free candy in exchange for a hug and kiss. I laughed and tried not to think that after all it wasn’t the best girl-training. In Dunkin’ Donuts (I was desperate for coffee) it was my turn as an older woman latched onto me, complimenting my hair.

 ”I love the frosting on it,” she told me.

(Cut back to Victoria, when, seeking highlights from my hair dresser, I warned that I didn’t want it to look frosted. “Frosted?” she said, “what’s that?” “You know,” I told her, “frosted. Like when women with dark hair have this odd blonde camouflage look.” Well, apparently I achieved it, and it’s a hit with the Dunkin Donuts set.)

So then I ate kosher-pizza (Difara’s, always my destination on Avenue J, was closed), and finished my paper and gussied myself up and briefed the babysitter, and then my mom and I headed out to the big NYC launch party.

I had no idea what to expect.

It was fabulous.

Peter Mayer, Overlook’s publisher, hosted at his Soho home (all my new friends live in Soho). Got to catch up with old friends, put Overlook names to faces, and chat with editors I hadn’t encountered (someone at Penguin loves my book! Someone at Random House loves my book! Someone at the New Yorker wants to read my book!) while hoping no one noticed my wine glass faintly trembling in my hand. Best of all, I gave an impromtu thank-you speech (why did no one tell me this would be expected?) while wearing heels on a helical open staircase,  and managed not to trip.

Here’s a picture of the launch from MediaBistro’s GalleyCat

Phew. And now that it’s bedtime even in Victoria–to sleep.

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