One of the inevitabilities of being married and middle-aged is the gradual spread of one’s waistband. A souvenir of all those evenings when Patti would bring me a bowl of ice cream on the couch or we’d eat off each others’ plates like Jack and Mrs. Spratt.
Now our pantry is bare-ish. Jack and I shop on Sunday afternoon, buying just enough to provide cold cuts and fruit for his lunches, cereal for my breakfast, a few other meager things. I shop most days on the way home from work, buying whatever I will cook that night, always a salad, maybe a steak or chicken breast for him, some veggie or fish thing for me. My favorite word these days, Jack complains, is ‘Spartan‘.
Despite these complaints of deprivation, we are both healthy and rarely hungry. I am amazed at how much less I want to eat. It began in those first horrible weeks in late March, when I simply lost my appetite altogether. But once that passed, I found food wasn’t especially comforting, and instead I preferred the gym I had just joined. For the first time in ages, I love pedaling madly on a bike or throwing barbells around. I also find I have the time. When Patti was alive, I so often felt that time spent on myself was time taken away from her (a perspective she vigorously opposed, but to no avail). Now I have the time and control of my agenda to indulge myself in new ways. Fortunately, so far, most of them are healthy.
My newly instituted regime is also a reflection of a new assessment of my age, of how many years I have left. I’d always assumed that Patti and I would march into the grave holding hands and I had no especial interest in outliving her. Now, however, because I will continue on this march with no one to lean on, I feel I should be as vigorous as I can be. Both my parents are healthy and robust in their 70s and my grandfather just died at 98. Chances are I will be around to choose apples, tap melons, lift dumbbells and fill sketchbooks for a little bit longer.
In the meantime, I need new trousers and a shorter belt.
Jack and I have always shared certain things: pens, a love of R. Crumb, a disdain for Dane Cook. Now we have a new and more complex relationship, one that can be annoying and claustrophobic some times, rich and vital at others. We are roommates, creative collaborators, dinner companions, advisors, and dad and son. And there’s no Mom to act as a buffer, filter, and cooler head.
It can be tough living with a teenager who doesn’t realize he is shedding clothes all over the house or drinking the last of the juice. I’m sure it’s just as tough for Jack living with a cantankerous, soppy weirdo. Despite our differences, we are managing okay, crafting a new sort of life in our man cave, surrounded by chip packages and dachshunds.
Most recently, we’ve taken to sharing a pair of blue shoes that we both coveted. It’s been a true compromise as the shoes are a little small for Jack, a little large for me. The experience has proven useful, teaching us what it’s like to walk in each others’ shoes.
My relationship with my journal is like that with a family member or a friend I’ve known since childhood. Sometimes we are distant, formal, perfunctory, obliged. But when I really need my journal, it is there with open pages, ready to hold me as tightly as I hold it. These days, I need it more than ever, and I am more intense, more candid than usual, as I scrawl across its pages.
I would like to share some of these pages with you but they are heavy going and so I will doll them out a spread or two at a time over a number of days. If you like what you see, come back soon and I’ll have posted more.
Here’s where I began. By cleaning up my apartment, on my hands — dismissing the cleaning ladies who had scrubbed my toilets ever since I could afford them — reclaiming what is mine, filth and all. It is part of a process I’ve embraced, of forming a new relationship with the everyday, taking full responsibilty for every aspect of my life.
Being married means sharing the good, the bad, the important, the mundane. Patti and I leaned on each other in a thousand ways: she would shop, I would cook. I would bring home checks, she would pay bills. She kept up with our friends, I worked late. It was a deep symbiosis developed over 23 and 7/8 years — which unravelled in a heartbeat.
So now I am forced to reappraise all of the decisions we made as a team. Many of them can wait: is that the right shelf to store the wine glasses on? Do we need all of these dish towels? Should we live in New York? Others assert themselves and demand resolution. One by one, I pick them off; making lists, adding bleach, filling my weekends with chores.
Every choice is made in consultation with Patti’s ghost, with serious consideration of what she intended, what she thought I wanted, of how to stay true to her spirit, yet accomodate our changed reality. Sometimes it’s terribly sad. Often, it’s a form of companionship that keeps her in my heart, in my pantry, in my thoughts as I doze off.
Patti's final resting place. She loved bears and cookies.
After five weeks, so much of our lives has returned to ‘normal’. Jack and I get up, go to work/school, worry about meetings and midterms, come home, hang out, eat dinner, watch TV, go to sleep.
A lot of things in our routines have changed. Patti handled every aspect of our domestic life. She walked the dogs, paid the bills, did the shopping, arranged dates with our friends, and a million other things I never knew needed doing, Sure, Jack and I helped out with a lot of that stuff, but she insisted on handling most of it. Now it all falls to me and Jack.
Oddly, doing chores isn’t a chore. On the contrary, it gives me a sense of order and control which I have been sorely lacking.
I like packing Jack’s Scooby Doo lunch box each night (it’s the same one I had when I was 13. Back then I was mocked for it but Jack’s turned it into a badge of coolness). I make sandwiched, pack snacks, write him lame little jokes notes.
I like walking the dogs and getting them back on schedule (I wondered how they would react to Patti’s absence. Would they miss their constant companion? She drove them around on her scooter everywhere, Joe at her feet, Tim in her basket. They were weird but are getting back to normal too. They have had some stomach problems and totally forgot their housebreaking for a while but they are getting better. I enjoy retraining them. Today we worked on sitting and shaking hands).
I like bonding with Jack though I have to beware that I don’t get too overbearing and overprotective. He is still a 15 year-old-boy and needs to stretch his wings. But, of course, because he is all I have left, I worry a bit excessively. He has a new phone so I can text and email and call him anytime. Sadly, I do.
I have been back at work for a couple of weeks. It’s been very busy and the routine distracts me. My tolerance for stress and bullshit is lower than it was. I still care but not necessarily in the same way I have for years.
Patti is still a part of my days. I think of her when I am at the butcher, picking ham. I think of her when I wake up in the middle of the night and want someone to discuss my dreams with. I see her down the block — only it’s not her. I bury my face in her overcoat in the closet and smell the last atoms that once touched her skin. Patti and I had a special vocabulary of our own, silly words I’ll never utter again except into my pillow.
Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I make myself cry. Crying is like starting a car that’s been sitting in the garage all winter; turning over the engine keeps the feelings alive, keeps my soul lubricated, stops me from becoming a dessicated husk. Pandy will always be in me, always be in Jack, so our sadness has been ironed into us, a layer of who we are, but not a crack or a break in us.
I am changed most because my future is blank. The many plans and decisions we made over the past 24 years are gone. Instead, I have to form a new map, a new set of goals, a new vision of what I’ll be in the years ahead. I imagined that Patti and I would keep growing old together, leave the City one day, go somewhere warm and easy, drawn and paint side-by-side, visit Jack and our grandchildren, feel free in new ways, live a full creative life. Now, it’s just empty. Not bleak or barren but absolutely undefined. I could do anything. Jack and I could move anywhere, anytime. The security I have been saving for all these years seems irrelevant now. I have to provide for Jack till he graduates …. but then what? Who will I be? What will I want? I have no idea.
I have lived with disability for 14 years, always looking for curbcuts, accessible bathrooms, room to maneuver. In an instant, that consideration has vanished. There are restaurants we can go to we never considered before. We can travel without worrying if the hotel has a roll-in shower. And, yet, I would do anything to have that limitation once again, give up any freedom to help Patti through the door or up the step.
Life goes on. The road bends. New obstacles and opportunities, ditches and valleys appear. I am taking them turn by turn, mile by mile, step by step. Head up when I can keep it up. Looking back now and then, but still moving forward.
My friend, d. price, called me from his surf shack in Hawaii and told me: “The universe picked you and decided to test you. It decided you were strong and had everything and so it would throw you a curve. First, Patti had her accident and it watched to see if you would crawl into a hole or would make the most of the experience. When it saw that you had become stronger and wiser, had discovered that everyday matters, the universe decided to test you again by taking Patti away altogether. Now it’s waiting to see what you will make of this, will you use it to learn, to share what you learn, to make the world a better place? The universe is just waiting to see.” I said, “Why can’t the universe just leave me the fuck alone?” He just laughed.
“Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. … You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.” -Cookie Mueller
Stage parents wait for their auditioning offspring.
Jack is applying to the Summer Arts Institute, a fantastic program which allows him to study drawing and painting for eight or so hours a day through July. It has loads of dedicated teachers and visits with professional artists and, probably most importantly, the company of other teenagers who are committed to art.
He participated in the program two years ago and did some extraordinary work.
Admission is fairly competitive; applicants need to show a portfolio, complete a drawing assignment, and survive an interview and portfolio critique.
Jack’s portfolio is really diverse these days, oil and acrylic paintings, pastel, conté, various types of prints and the medium at which he truly excels: pen and ink drawing.
Early Saturday morning, Jack and I rode out to the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a beautiful new public school in Astoria. While he went off for his audition, my pal Tommy Kane drove up and we pulled our pens and drew next to the elevated subway overpass. I think this may be my first drawing in this borough.
An hour later, Jack appeared with a broad grin: “Interview went well. The teacher didn’t like my paintings but loved my drawings and sketchbooks. I think I’m in.” I’m sure his confidence isn’t misplaced, but then I’m his biggest fan. We hope to hear the verdict soon.
Next landmark event: next’s months audition for the Summer Outreach program at the famous Cooper Union School of Art.
Under the subway overpass, Tommy draws the 99c store.
This is Jack’s current portfolio.[click on any thumbnail to see the gallery]. Next time, I’ll share some of the work in his sketchbooks.
Jack and I took a brief break from New York with 75 hours or so in Boston. Neither of us had ever spent time there before —though with the torrential Nor’Easter dumping all over New England, I’m not sure we saw it at its best. We trained up there, stayed in Cambridge and managed to see Harvard (infinitely inferior to my alma mater, of course), its art and natural history museums, then visited the Institue of Contemporary Art and the Science Museum. We saw some movies, had some nice meals, played cards,talked, and drew in our journals. I broke out my watercolors for the first time in ages, and Jack bore down on his dip pen.
It was a refreshing break after a very sad week, giving us some distance and perspective, as well as a chance to start our lives as a smaller family. Drawing was a relief to both of us, a feeling that we were making something out of the nothingness, and seeing a new place with fresh eyes. Our journal pages will be a landmark for us, the first fresh pages we are turning over, with many blank ones ahead to fill.
One thing I hadn’t anticipated: Patti was always the first person to read my journal pages after I finished them. Somewhere in Boston, it occurred to me that I write for her to read and that she wouldn’t read them, ever again. But then I realized I will always write for her, she will always be my favorite reader.
As you have heard, my wife Patti passed away last week.
She was a lovely, creative person who gave me strength, inspiration, ideas and love. She was always extraordinarily positive — despite what the pathetic initial media reports may have told tell you.
A couple of days ago, our friends put together a lovely tribute to her memory. Hundreds of people jammed the place, singing songs, sharing stories, crying, laughing, and celebrating her life and approach to it. There was a huge crowd out on the street waiting their turn to get in to share the festivities. She touched so many, and the spheres of her influences all came together on Wednesday nigh: school friends, librarians, fashionistas, moms, dads, kids, chefs, florists, all celebrating the bright perspectives and willingness to take risk with which she infected them all. There were many people who were professionally creative— artists, musicians, photographers, authors, directors, ad folk — but also lawyers, doctors, accountants and stay-at-home moms whose creative juices were stirred by Patti’s inspiration I was never prouder of her.
Everyday Matters was the fruit of our family’s mission to celebrate our daily gifts in the face of the random crap life throws at us. That mission grew from Patti’s heart. The fact that she has gone does not diminish the importance of this mission to me and to all of us. Life is wonderful. Its riches don’t lie in bank accounts or career success, power or fame. We just need to look around us, at the beauty of a wrinkled orange skin, the ray of sunshine across a wooden table, the curve of a napping pet, an abandoned shoe, a building against the sky. To reap those riches, I use a pen and a small book. I meditate on what I see, and transcribe that reflection in my book. The lines I make, sometimes sure and sharp, sometimes wobbly and vague, are the deposit I make in my account, the way I capture life’s true rewards and value.
In the days following Patti’s death, I lost my appetite, my ability to sleep, my concentration, my will. I hesitated to pick up a pen. Nothing seemed to matter, let alone the everyday. But then, after some time spent staring into space, I began again to draw. And I must and will continue. Drawing brings me meaning. To abandon it would betray Patti’s memory and myself. I hope that if you are hesitating to draw, beating yourself up because you’re not good enough, telling yourself you have no time to spare, feeling distracted and down, remember that, though life can be plucked from us at any moment, it is full of wonder and beauty. Keeping an illustrated journal is the perfect way to capture and treasure the gems that lie all around us. A few minutes a day make it all worth while.
Patti made things all the time, knitting, sewing, singing, making collages, gifts, drawings, paintings, flower arrangements, photos, and more. Creativity was her passion and she loved people who loved to create. I hope you will help to keep her love and spirit alive.
Tom Kane and I started working together in 1984 (!). We were junior ad men at a now-defunct New York agency. Decades later, we are drawing-buddies, not colleagues; when we hang out, we occasionally reminisce about our careers and how things have changed over the years. Last weekend, we set up a couple of cameras while we sat around and recorded our chat about bygone days. If you remember stat machines or sending out for type or hand-drawn layouts anything about design and production before everything went digital, you might enjoy this conversation. We did.
When I was little, it seemed everyone had glasses.
My mother. My grandparents. My relatives. My friends.
I thought they made people look cool or more grownup. So if I wanted to become one or the other or both, I had to get my own glasses.
When I was fourteen, I told my mother I was getting headaches and thought I needed glasses. She took me to the doctor. As he looked into my eyes with a gizmo, I crossed them slightly.
“Amblyopia,” the doctor told my mum. “Strabismus. Heterotropia. Something like that. His eyes are slightly crossed. He needs glasses.”
I spent a long time picking out frames. When my glasses finally arrived, I put them on excitedly.
A week later, my mum asked me where they were. “Why aren’t you wearing your glasses? They were expensive.”
I didn’t want to tell her they gave me a headache and so, conveniently, I’d lost them.
A decade later, I married a girl with glasses. I got in-laws with glasses. Then I had a son. He got glasses too.
In my mid-forties, I started getting headaches again. I could only read in bed with the lamp on. I had a tough time with restaurant menus. My friends called it “short arm syndrome.” Someone lent me a pair of drugstore glasses. I was amazed at how much better I could see. It had been so gradual but it was beyond denying. Presbyopia. A gradual thickening and loss of flexibility of the lens inside my eyes that makes it tough to focus on things that are near.
I like my glasses for what they do for me. I am less thrilled about what they say about me. Welcome to middle age.
So far, I don’t wear my glasses when I draw. I can see what I’m drawing without them, and not being able to see the page clearly is fine. I know what I’m making. And there’s the added pleasure of putting on my glasses when I’m done, to examine the lines on the page as they really look.
My eyes have brought me a lot of pleasure. I count on them to make a living, to make art, to watch my wife brush her teeth. And I’ll need them for a while to come. I hope. But nonetheless, they are changing. A reminder that every day, so am I. And so is everything I see.
Jack and I took up life drawing a couple of months ago. Virtually every Tuesday we go to a basement in Soho and spend two or three hours drawing a model or two. When the weather is freezing and we are bored with drawing things in our apartment or in photo books, it’s nice to have something new and challenging to sketch. But there are all sorts of drawbacks too.
The process has forced me to break my habit of drawing only in ink in small books. I now have a huge sketch pad and boxes of graphite sticks and conte crayons and a new appreciation for erasable media.The whole process is very different form my usual process; sort of student-y and contrived and academic, with lots of negative associations about right and wrong ways to do things. Maybe it’s putting me back into a beginner’s mind, but the worse sort of self-conscious feelings of ineptitude rather than a fresh tabula rasa.
Drawing from life forces one to think about drawing quite differently. The human body is so familiar and so strange; one can detect any flaw in the proportions of a drawing immediately and yet it is hard to know intuitively how to draw the curve of a calf or the length of a forearm. There is no substitute for simple, intense observation.
The drawings end up having little value to me. They are not observations from life really and the subjects themselves have no meaning to me. I find much more emotion in my drawings of apples or chair legs in my home than in these studies.
Watch this video tour of some of my life drawings and you’ll sense the critical way in which I look at them. I dont know if we’ll keep doing this when the weather gets warmer, it’s really up to Jack who seems to enjoy the experience ( not surprising — he’s a fifteen year-old boy who gets to sit with his dad and stare at naked bodies all evening) but often ends up getting bored after a couple of hours and ends up drawing just details of bodies or staring into space. He is extremely good at drawing under these circumstance ; even though he’s the youngest person in the room by a mile, his drawings are usually among the best.
I’d also like to recommend Walt Taylor’s self-published book “Naked People and the people who draw them“which has been very inspirational and shown me how far I have yet to go. I urge you to check out the book, buy it, and support an extraordinary and unheralded artist.
Jack and I took up life drawing a couple of months ago. Virtually every Tuesday we go to a basement in Soho and spend two or three hours drawing a model or two. When the weather is freezing and we are bored with drawing things in our apartment or in photo books, it’s nice to have something new and challenging to sketch. But there are all sorts of drawbacks too.
Danny Gregory 