The View from Friday

Little Babe is asleep on a mattress in the living room next to Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians who clearly believe they have died and gone to puppy heaven. With a dopey, love-besotted fascination, I watch their furry little backs rise and fall in tranquil slumber. Nala sleeps in the crook of Little Babe's right thigh while Alfie reposes somewhere near his toes. On the pillow, my 15-year-old's Jim Morrison-like mop of long curls reminds me of a finger painting he once did with chocolate pudding.

Though my other children are elsewhere -- Middle Babe on Long Island, at the home of her Gentleman Caller; Big Babe, in his adopted home of Berlin -- I have heard from both this morning. Middle Babe texted to confirm our travel by Short Line bus later today up to our bungalow in Monroe with her BFF and in an email sent in the middle of the German night my 26- year-old son gladdened my heart by informing me that he plans a month-long visit back to New York in November. Yeeess! Already my mind is fast at work conjuring up effective strategies (handcuffs, brainwashing ala A Clockwork Orange, large sums of cash, all the Zabar's babka he can eat) to get him to stay.

On Monday, we drive our 22-year-old daughter back to her college in Maryland for her final semester so this weekend is our last together...though, in truth, she comes home in two weeks for Rosh Hashana. Still, this last-Shabbat-of-the-Summer-with-My-Daughter does make me kind of maudlin and Middle Babe is sad in advance, not because of her impending separation from us but from her Gentleman Caller, a fine young man who is attending Law School in New York.

In other news, a COTB (Cousin of the Three Babes) is asleep in Little Babe's room. Leggy, blond and stunningly beautiful, she and Little Babe share rock band aspirations, spent half of yesterday at Guitar Center on 14th Street and vacillate between being young sophisticates and overgrown puppies themselves. They are the human versions of Alfie and Nala crossed with the aforementioned Jim Morrison and Gisele Bundchen.

Sadly, SOBB (Sister of Bungalow Babe) is in a Jerusalem hospital, having fallen off her bicycle and shattered her clavicle earlier this morning. I just got a call from her husband and had to beg him to refrain from calling MOBB and FOBB (Mother and Father of Bungalow Babe) to convey this news. My parents will be spending the weekend with BOBB (Brother of Bungalow Babe) who knows about our sister's accident as he is a doctor and is the first family member my Israeli brother-in-law called.

Who else did I neglect to mention? Oh yes. HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe), who is in his Columbia office. Our week together included beloved (injury-free) bike trips and films that ranged from the appalling (Eat, Pray, Love...what the #$% were we thinking????) to the unforgettable (The Pawnbroker) to the darkly compelling (Life During Wartime).

Next week, we celebrate our 27th Anniversary. I want to say that I hardly believe this number and yet that is not true. I have a deep cache of memories -- magical, marvelous, tragic, transcendent -- that seem to span not 27 years but an entire lifetime. The only reason to disbelieve the number of years I've been married would be to deny my age.

AND SPEAKING OF COLUMBIA....I've got some stuff going on there today including co-hosting a blogtalkradio program, taking a Mac skills class, surveying the fitness center to see if it is worth joining (last time I belonged I bolted after learning that the meager number of cardio machines bred a culture of vulture-like behavior as frantic fitness buffs hovered over you while you tried to enjoy your 30-minute workout) and checking out whether my Columbia ID has that magical door-opening power.

This is the way it looks from the morning of the last Friday in August 2010.