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I am so thrilled and excited to announce my first New York reading will be Tuesday March 4th at 6pm
Hue-Man Bookstore & Cafe
2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd
Between 124th and 125th Streets
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212-665-7400
Then on Thursday March 13th at 7pm I will be at
Morningside Bookshop
2915 Broadway (at 114th Street)
New York, NY 10025
The kids have been down visiting their mom, grandparents and cousins in Georgia all week. I've been working like a fiend trying not to miss them too much but when they missed their flight Sunday and didn't arrive till this morning I thought I'd burst. They arrived at 9 in the morning at Newark and it took me an hour and a half door to door to get there. That's exactly how long it took them to fly from Atlanta to Newark. I got up at 6:45, got out of the house at 7, took the #1 to the #2 express subway to Penn Station and then New Jersey Transit light rail to Newark Airport. I brought with me their backpacks for school and four packs of Pepperidge Farms Goldfish because it was Ava's day to bring snacks for the class. At the airport train station I took the monorail to their terminal and picked them up. They always look paler, oddly different after I haven't seen them for more than just a few days. The stewardess said they'd been fantastic on the plane and I beamed. Then I reversed the transit process with them, dropped them off at school and then splurged on a cab to get myself home with all their luggage. Four hours of non-stop action.
Once home I had time to shower, write this, put up a HuffingtonPost blog and now I'm running off to office hours at Columbia and then I teach for three hours and then I pick up the kids from school and they I'm going to a book reading tonight at a place that I will give a reading myself next month.
I'm not complaining. I like being busy. And just the fact that they are back safe with me lets my heart rest a bit.
When my friends ask me, "How do you do it?" How do you teach grad school and write a book and a play and blog on the HuffingtonPost and raise two kids and blah-blah-blah. The fact is that I am woefully overextended and mess up from time to time.
Yesterday was one of those times.
I had been scheduled to do an NPR interview weeks ago but then I was told by my publisher that they'd changed the date. So there I was at home wading through a pile of applications for grad school next year when the phone rings and NPR is wondering why I'm not in the studio.
My heart leaps to my throat. I live way uptown and their studio is at Times Square. I assure them that I can be there in twenty minutes and dash out of the house (without my book), run into the subway, run out at Times Square and dodge pedestrian traffic to arrive, yes, twenty-minutes later, panting, at their New York studio. The interview actually went well and I relaxed for a second until I saw that it was 1:50 and I had to teach back uptown at Columbia at 2. So I raced back to the #Subway, took the express to 96th street but the local to 116th wasn't coming so I vaulted up the stairs and took a cab.
The photo here on my blog page is one of the last ones from me in LA. I swear I'm not as smug as the photos conveyed. I needed pics quickly and I loved my old car so I ran out to the beach with a friend and took a bunch. I kind of forgot about them until a few weeks ago when I was interviewed by this very beautiful writer for TIme Out New York Kids. She said, "Gee, from your photo on your blog I thought you would be such an asshole." Yikes.
Since then I've been lobbying my web designer to replace all the old ones with these pictures from New York taken by Kwaku Alston, a good friend, an old neighbor from Venice, and a world-class professional (he's also Oprah's photographer).
I think what is making me expunge all records of my time in LA is the fact that I'm finally selling my house there. The car went last fall. The only thing left now is my (310) area code on my cell phone.
What do you think ? Do you have any old photos of yourself that you cling to from another era?
I was a bad dad yet again. On Wednesday night I hunted for Valentine's Day cards for Chet's first-grade class. Ava, at nine, said she was too old. All the drugstores in my New York neighborhood didn't have anymore of those kitschy packs that haven't changed since the '60s: puppies with freakishly large eyes and elongated tongues, blushing little girls in pigtails crossing their legs and their arms. I would have settled for Bart Simpson or Spongebob but everyone was out of everything. Chet said forget it and I was relieved. I figured this being a New York City public school not everyone would have made batches of homemade Valentine mini-scones wrapped in homemade organic paper like the super moms at Ava's star-studded private elementary school back when we were living in L.A.
I was wrong. Well, they weren't as homemade or as organic but everybody but us brought in something. After school, Chet, bless him, didn't berate me, seemed much less embarrassed by our lapse than I was. It's funny, he can flip out, hurl his body to the floor and make like Curly in a shrieking, teary, bicycling circle on the floor, because I decided on spaghetti instead of macaroni and cheese, but being the only cheapskate on Valentine's Day didn't phase him.
And then Ava, who hadn't wanted to do anything special, now asked me what special plans I'd made. I told her every day was Valentine's Day with us but Chet just groaned and said Mrs. Willner the music teacher tried to pull that one too.
Although I'd written a long Valentine to the kids that I was trying to place in the Times or NPR, I hadn't even gotten them a card of their own. The essay is very sweet but not anything a first and fourth grader could understand. In it I say that even after my wife leaving me and after all the romantic misadventures since then, I'm still an incurable romantic. It's just that now I'm an incurable romantic about my kids. The debt that I owe them can't be repaid by chocolates and a card.
Nevertheless, I had to do something. We eat out at restaurants several times a week so that wouldn't be special at all. That's when I had the idea of actually cooking something for them. Ava is addicted to French fries so as I entered the subway I had the bright idea of cooking hamburgers shaped as hearts and her favorite frozen steak fries. Once home Ava helped and shaped the patties. We three ate on the dining room table instead of the kitchen table for perhaps the second time ever. It's usually just the place where they do their homework. I pulled out the cloth napkins and we sipped lemon-lime flavored seltzer in champagne flutes. We held hands and each said a sort of grace. Theirs were quasi-religious copies of what their grandparents say down in Atlanta at Thanksgiving. Me, the Zen Buddhist, I just told them that I loved them very, very much and always would, even when they're screaming and yelling and driving me nuts. Sure, it was all very lovely, but also a little sad. I keep telling myself that we don't need another person to complete our little family and usually, I swear, we don't. But there at that big round table, too big for just the three of us, with Ava east, Chet west and me holding down the north, I felt that someone, somewhere was missing.
I don't think I've thanked all of you enough who've already ordered Bedtime Stories. I am so moved not only that you check in here to see how the kids and I are doing now but that you care enough to get the book that explains how we got here.
Amazon would love to hear from you. I love getting comments on Treyellis.com but if you like what you've read please scroll to the bottom of the Amazon order page and click "Create your own review." I'm told that's a great way of getting the word out.
And I thought I was used to East Coast winters after my seventeen years in LA. I'd forgotten how these late-winter storms can sap your will to live (or at least go outside). Making matters harder, Chet is in a howling phase. At least once a day he throws a fit about something. This morning I was a cruel monster and his worst enemy and he wasn't making me a Valentine's Day card because I made him wear his snow boots in the slush. He insisted that his sneakers would actually keep his feet drier. Not exactly the way I like to wake up but I tried to remain calm and dump him off at school. Of course ten minutes later he's holding my hand and calm as can be. I wish I could scream and yell and then just let it pass again as easily as he does. His fury is like a storm in the tropics, intense but brief and soon the sun is shining hot again. He and I are also big Star Wars fans so I think the next time he flips out I will pretend to be an evil Sith Lord urging Annikin or Luke to feed on his anger and join the dark side. Let's see if it helps control his rage.
Thursdays and Fridays are the days when I really get all my personal writing done for the week. Monday to Wednesday I'm tied up with Columbia. So I was rushing the kids to school this morning but in my head I was already back home at the computer when I realized that all the blocks around the school were cordoned off.
Crowds of parents and kids meandered confusedly. It turns out that there was a bomb scare, not in the school, thank God, but in the construction site just across the street. In my mind I immediately linked it to the big Gambino crime family raid last night.
I'm a New Yorker but I was living in LA during 911 so feel oddly disconnected from the defining moment in the city's recent history. To me the bomb scare was obviously a prank, an act of vandalism, not al Qaeda. But in the eyes of the other parents I saw something more ominous.
Eventually, however, we all calmed down and Chet when on one playdate and Ava on another so I could run to the gym for the first time in two weeks and then return to work. I just picked up Chet and put him in front of Burt Lancaster as "The Crimson Pirate." Lancaster was an acrobat in the circus before he became one of my favorite movie stars. Who knew?
Oh, and if you're having trouble finding my book in bookstores please let me know.
I'm thrilled that Salon just ran a long excerpt of the book today. It is a little odd, however, that we chose perhaps the single-embarrassing moment of my life. I love the book because it is the sum of me. It's not just a cute, touching story of an overburdened dad. I really did my best to include the less-flattering manifestations of loneliness and courting. All wrapped in humor and, I hope, a fundamentally enthusiastic spirit.
Also, if you'd like to hear another example of what my life is like with my kids, click HERE for one of my NPR "All Things Considered" commentaries.
And did I mention that Valentine's Day is coming up and Bedtime Stories would make a great gift!
It's super not just for the nation but for me as well. I still haven't seen a final copy of the book but they hit bookstores tomorrow. I'm running like mad, like usual, but this is such an exciting time for me. This morning I took the kids to school under fat flakes of snow then picketed ABC for the WGA for an hour. When my fingers started losing all feeling I left, went home, blogged on the HuffPost endorsing Obama, and then hurried over to Columbia for office hours (where I am now). I'll pick up the kids in a few hours but till then I'll write here in my office waiting to see if any students show up. This early in the term they don't come in much even though I've commanded them all to drop by and introduce themselves.
I'm told bookstores look very carefully at the first few weeks of a book's release so please buy Bedtime Stories early and buy often.
