Six Months Old

So I turn six months old in a few hours and I am worried. I read about the scandal surrounding college admissions and I fear that even if I have served two terms as President by then, I might not get into the school of my choice.

I think back a half year when I was so carefree. Back then I was just trying to figure out what a diaper was and the difference between day and night. Back then I didn't know anything about Fox News.

Now I wonder whether it makes political sense to move forward with impeachment proceedings. Now I am sad to learn Alex Trebeck is sick. Now I have to deal with the trauma of the Knicks trading Porzingis and the Giants dumping OBJ. Now I wake each morning to the reality of Donald Trump.

But now I know who my mom and dad are, I know what snow is. Now I know how to laugh and smile, I know I have a favorite "lovey"and I know how to turn the pages in a book. Now I know what solid food is, I know I have almost as good an appetite as my dad and I know that one day soon I will be able to sit up without falling over.

So I still spit up way too often. But that will pass. I am still trying to get the hang of this crawling thing. But that will come soon enough. And while Dad says I am almost ready to dribble a basketball, the truth is I am really still just dribbling. 

I recognize that the rigors of a presidential campaign lay ahead for me, I am a bit concerned about the extent of the problem with the arm of Luis Severino and I am distressed by the long term effect of ongoing trade wars.

But I am happy. I am happy for the thousands of kisses I have received and I am happy to feel protected and safe. I am happy that I am surrounded by those who make me feel like the most important person in their lives. I am happy that each day I learn so much and I hunger to absorb as much new information as I can.

So here's to the past six months and to the adventures that lay ahead. Life is indeed wonderful. Thanks mom and dad for deciding to bring me into the world. I love you both very much. And I promise in the days to come I will give you as many hugs as you could possibly want. That's the thing where I wrap my arms around your neck, right?

Preparing to Hit the Campaign Trail

I have just spent nearly a week with my granddaughter. In that time we discussed topics as crucial as rolling over from back to belly and belly to back, eating solid foods without trying to grab the spoon from grandma and going to sleep without artificial aids (not Ambien but a binky).

But most of our days were spent in a far more important pursuit, framing her platform for her run for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020.

We talked about the Green New Deal but she thought I was referring to the avocado we recently introduced into her diet. We considered climate change but her understanding focused on how cold the living room seemed even with the heat on high. We analyzed our friendship with Canada but she imagined I was speaking of the girl downstairs. We covered immigration, voting rights, gerrymandering, an equal protection amendment for women, Russia, China, North Korea, mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, infrastructure needs, gun control, Medicare for all, raising taxes on the wealthy, the electoral college disaster and myriad other matters of consequence. But she kept getting distracted by her favorite book on the parts of the body.

Overall though I thought our preparation went wonderfully, certainly far better than did any of the sessions involving then candidate Trump. He nodded off while being educated far more often than my granddaughter did for her naps. And since my granddaughter has not yet learned how to tweet, or even type, she was able to concentrate in ways Donald could not. In addition, since neither of them actually reads books, she was at no competitive disadvantage.

I know there is a long way to go between now and the convention. There are certain to be many pitfalls, many places where it is not easy to find a good place to change a diaper, many days when my granddaughter would rather play with an empty water bottle than make another speech. But she has the boundless energy of youth on her side and she will only become stronger and more mature in the coming months. 

So, I am filled with a hope bordering on overconfidence, certain as I can be that there is ample room in this nation to embrace a brand new face (with maybe a little spit up in the corner of her mouth). A person unencumbered by past transgressions, willing to fight without end for what she believes, unafraid to take on Donald Trump. A person who is up in the middle of the night not covering her backside, but maybe having her backside covered.

And while, like the President, she has small hands, she is only 5 months old. And unlike him, she has a very big heart.

Look out America. Here she comes.

Fairy Tales Are Not True

Fairy tales are not true, no, not even a few

Oh your lying heart

And hard times you will find, life can be ever unkind

To a lying heart

You alone you demean with your litany of schemes

You will cry in your sleep for you're in this too deep

And investigations will mushroom with each passing day

And subpoenas either issue or they're on their way

Don't you see all your dough can't your evil unsow

Oh your lying heart

For though rich in your head, you've turned gold into lead

With your lying heart

And with all of your lies, you will never survive

From all you contrived, you have nothing derived

And here is the worst part, there is no fresh start

For one as bad as you with a lying heart

For one as bad as you with a lying heart.

Bread Crumbs Leading to the Front Door

("Oversight Season is Heating Up in Washington")

A full time job.

If we worried that the members of Congress had too much time on their hands, with little but fundraising to occupy their days, Mr. Trump's house of horrors has given new life to an old body.

With a litany of wrongs to dissect as endless as the universe, a cast of characters as long as a Tolstoy novel and a villain who leaves more bread crumbs leading to his front door than Hansel and Gretel, Jerry Nadler and crew will be kept busier than a one armed paper hanger.

So, while our infrastructure is crumbling, our environment is disintegrating, our taxes are taxing, our immigration policy is devastating, our gun control is oxymoronic, our votes are unprotected, our cyber security is insecure, our health care reform D.O.A., our plight is unrelenting and our expectations are evaporating, at least we have our investigations to keep us warm at night.

While Mr. Trump has not a clue how to govern, he is a master at disaster. And for that Achilles heel, make that his entire foot (in his mouth), those otherwise left merely to twiddle their thumbs in the halls of Congress are eternally grateful.

My First Crush

A half century is a long time to have a crush on somebody. But I still do.

It was 50 years ago this week that Mickey Mantle announced his retirement. The Mick arrived on the scene in the season of 1951, with an uneven beginning before his star shined bright later that year. Just about the time I was conceived. So you might say that we entered the big stage together.

From my earliest memories, Mick and I were friends. He would hang around the house with me, my glove an extension of his arm. We would be in my backyard together, Mick making a throw from the center field wall to the cut off man, little Robby, who turned and threw a bullet, a perfect strike to home plate, cutting down the runner trying to score from first.

And at night I would listen to my friend's exploits on the transistor radio, that brown leather covering a smell my mind recalls vividly even today. And there, in my mind's eye was Mick, like a blur between first and second, sliding in safely, dusting himself off, grinning that slightly off center grin that told me how much fun it was playing baseball.

When he got injured I felt the pain in the pit of my stomach. When he struck out, I ached. But when he hit those home runs that traveled farther than nature intended a baseball to go, I felt a rush of adrenaline unlike anything else I had ever experienced.

We were best friends for 18 seasons, inseparable. He was always my hero, a god really. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I know it was mostly a mirage. I know he was a pretty bad alcoholic and an even worse husband. I know that I should long ago have abandoned my silly childhood fantasies and brought Mick crashing back to earth. But that will never happen.

To me, Mickey Mantle was and will forever be what I saw the first day he entered my universe. Forever young, forever great beyond description. And though it is nearing 70 years since he first arrived and 50 since he lay his bat and glove down, he is still walking beside me, still in my mind, still in my dreams. Still and forever my first crush.

When You're With Don ( A message to Republicans in Congress)

When you let Don

Turn you into a clown 

You'll regret what you did

You've let everyone down

When you protect 

You make yourself a fool

You have lost everything

You are evil and cruel

You're covered in dung

You need some disinfectant

You're at the lowest rung

You're disrespected

When you let Don

Get away with his lies

You become just like him

Til the day that you die

When you elect

To do nothing at all

You turn into a joke

You build him his own Wall

You're better than this

At least you know you should be

You lay down with a dog

You wake up with fleas

When you pretend

That you're blind to all this

That he's really not bad

All his hate you dismiss

Then you're with Don

You're with Don all the way

From the first cover up 

To your last dying day

First cover up
To your last dying day

Donny and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (Mikey talks while Kim and Donny stop talking)

Donny is far away from home and his own bed. He is in a strange place he stayed away from a long time ago because something was wrong with his feet, or maybe it was his knees, he can't quite remember which.

Anyway, back home, his old friend Mikey is telling terrible stories about Donny. He is saying that Donny is a cheater, a liar, a very bad boy. Donny doesn't like Mikey any more.

Donny likes cheeseburgers and french fries but where Donny is, they don't serve him what he likes. Donny misses cheeseburgers and french fries.

It seems that Mikey is going on forever about all the things Donny was supposed to have done. It sounds like Donny committed tax fraud, perjury, obstruction of justice and maybe a lot of other nasty stuff that Donny doesn't understand. And that maybe a lot of people are investigating him. Donny wishes he knew what investigate meant.

And he is also sad that he is so far away because Donny likes to tweet in the middle of the night but it is the middle of the afternoon where Donny wants to be when it is the middle of the night where Donny is. Donny doesn't understand how that could be.

Donny is meeting with a fat man with a very bad hair cut. Donny likes his own hair very much and he would never, ever wear his hair like that other man does. Or ever be fat like that other man. Donny is very handsome, or so the mirror on the wall tells him when he asks. And he asks a lot. But, in this strange land, the mirror doesn't understand English and is not telling Donny how handsome he is. Donny is sad.

Mikey is still talking. Some of Donny's friends keep saying to Mikey they don't believe a word he says about Donny but Donny wishes he could tell Mikey to his face what a bad boy he is being. Or maybe order a hit on him.

And the Fox News feed just went dead in Donny's room. He is very mad now and is screaming and cursing. Donny is not happy. He is not happy, not even one little bit.

Donny is going into a meeting now with the fat man with the bad haircut. Donny says the fat man is wonderful but he really has no idea what the fat man is saying. Donny wishes the fat man had a very pretty translator. And that Billy Bush was there hanging out with Donny.

The meeting with Donny and the fat man does not go well. Donny wants the fat man to stop building all his big toys but the fat man says he wants to still build some, even if Donny stops all his sanctions. Donny likes the word sanctions. It sounds very grown up. He doesn't like the fat man so much anymore. He pissed Donny off. Donny pouts when he walks out of the meeting. And he tells the fat man he should get a different barber..

After the meeting Donny decides he is going to bed. Mikey is done talking now but Donny thinks many other bad boys and girls will be saying some very mean things about Donny tomorrow.

Donny won't sleep well tonight. He had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

If only he could have said what a good boy Mikey was when Mikey was so polite around Donny and kept saying pardon me. If only Donny had said "you're pardoned" maybe he and Mikey would still be friends. Good friends. The kind that don't rat on each other. Who would take a bullet for you.

And then it would not have been such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Shelter from the Storm

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS POST IS PUBLISHED IN THE MAIL (LETTERS) IN THE MARCH 18, 2019 EDITION OF THE NEW YORKER

("How Much a Dementia Patient Needs to Know")

My sister and I watched for a decade as the mother we knew faded into a fog and then disappeared from view. Her dementia eventually left us with nothing but her physical shell.

But there were occasional moments when my mother would animate. Most often these involved her belief that she was a young girl residing with her parents and was needed to work at the family store. And I traveled back in time with her, asking her questions of her day, her parents and what was happening of consequence. 

We kept my mom in her apartment until the end, hoping that familiar surroundings would prove soothing. But it was truly only when I wandered with her into her childhood home that a certain peace, fleeting as it might have been, emerged.

Dementia is a horrible illness, stripping one of virtually every connection to the universe one has inhabited. But there still remain shreds of a former life waiting to be uncovered, remembered, revived, providing brief shelter from the storm.

Republican Party Backbone? D.O.A.

 ("An Emergency for the G.O.P:")

So this is where the Republicans in the Senate show their fealty to country over party, to Constitution over pouty leader, to the dictates of their position over protecting their chances in 2020? Have you not been paying attention over the last decade?

From that moment in January 2009 when Mr. Obama took office, the mandate from Mr. McConnell was to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Denying that President any victories was their mantra and for eight years they were ever vigilant, from seeking to derail Obamacare, to eviscerating even the most limited measures to rein in the Second Amendment abuses, to the bitter end when they stole a Supreme Court seat in blatant dereliction of their duties.

And with the ascension of Mr.Trump, they have protected him at every wrong turn, an occasional mini slap on the wrist, and John McCain's vote preserving Obamacare notwithstanding. For each random act of insanity, each revelation of another grave error on the part of the President there has been capitulation on the part of those whose couId demonstrate, with their votes, that the line in the sand has been crossed. 

So today is an emergency? We have long ago passed emergency. That first week in office when the initial executive order on the immigration ban was pronounced by the dictator in chief, that was when all hands should have been on deck putting out the fire. 

Now it has spread beyond all boundaries, out of control and creating a conflagration from sea to not so shining sea. And there is no water in the Republican party's hose. 

They ran dry a decade ago.

My First Protest

"This is what Democracy looks like. This is what Democracy looks like."

My first protest. I know I am five months old and late to the party, but I am feeling it now.

There are a couple of loud Trump supporters trying to aggravate everyone. I want to get into it with them but grandma tells me not to. Since I am lying on her chest in a snuggly and rely upon her as my mode of transportation and warmth today, I think it best if I heed her advice.

The crowd is a little smaller than I hoped. Thinking it may be Trump fatigue. I may try to help organize the next rally. They could probably use some new blood.

I wish I could read. There are a couple of posters that my uncle is taking pictures of and I bet they capture the mood. I think mine would show a picture of Trump's big rear end and say "This is what an a...hole looks like. This is what an a....hole looks like." Grandma is telling me to calm down a bit.

I am worried what this idiot will do next, aren't you? I mean I think every day of my life has been uncertain because we have a President with more than one screw loose. In fact, I think every screw is loose. Geez Louise, he is dangerous.

Grandma, grandpa and my uncle are ready to leave now. I hear them talking about being hungry and wanting dinner.

"Stay a little longer. Just five more minutes. There are some things more important than food. I promise I will not make a scene if we can just stay five more minutes. Just five."

"Thanks."

"This is what Democracy looks like. This is what Democracy looks like."

Grandma tells me not to yell right in the face of that Trump supporter. We are leaving now.

She tells me I am too worked up, but I can't help it.

This protest stuff really gets my juices flowing.