Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal Read online

  Freezing Time: 7/13/2015 6:15pm

  The Moment When I Was Walking Along the Lake and Talking to My Son on the Phone

  water taken from Lake Michigan, placed in baggie, frozen in ice cube tray

  Freezing Time: 8/04/2015 10:00pm

  The Moment When My Daughter and I Were Drinking Tea Together on the Night Before She Left for College

  tea taken from her glass, placed in baggie, frozen in ice cube tray

  SCIENCE

  THE RAINBOW EXPERIMENT

  1. Look up at the sky.

  2. Do you see a rainbow? If so, snap a photo.

  3. Now text Rainbow.

  You will then be prompted to send the photo.

  4. Your rainbow and its location will be posted on the Live Rainbow Feed at textbookamykr.com.

  5. Rainbow posts will remain live for one day. So at any given moment, we will be able to see where in the world there are rainbows.

  6. After the one day, each rainbow will be moved to the Permanent Archive of Beautiful Ephemera.

  THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR EXPERIMENT

  1. Fall and stay in love.

  2. Remain loyal.

  3. Sometime later, hire a private investigator who specializes in infidelity work. Hire this private investigator over the phone; do not meet in person.

  4. Email photos of your beloved to the private investigator.

  5. Tell the private investigator that you know for certain that your beloved will be with the “other person” at such and such a time at such and such a place, and that you want photos.

  6. Arrive at that place, at that time, with your beloved.

  7. This place might be your favorite restaurant. Or a park bench. Or even just your home.

  8. Wherever it is, make sure the two of you are easily visible to the private investigator (who will be staked out nearby—maybe across the street, or hiding in a bush). If you are at a restaurant, for example, sit at a window table. If at home, maybe hold hands on your front porch, or embrace one another by a large window.

  9. The private investigator will proceed to take long-lens, black-and-white photographs of the two (of you).

  10. When you receive the photos, frame them for your home.

  11. Title the series Caught in the Act of Monogamy.

  THE PIÑATA EXPERIMENT

  1. Procure a candy-filled piñata.

  2. Hang this candy-filled piñata in a tree near a baseball field.

  3. Affix a brief clarifying note next to the piñata that says, Yes, this is for you.

  4. Sit back and wait for some baseball players (or Little Leaguers) to discover the piñata.

  5. See how long it takes them to realize, Hey, the perfect item for whacking this thing open is in our possession! and watch as they gleefully have at it.

  THE SHORT, COLLECTIVE BIOGRAPHY EXPERIMENT*

  1. Gather between six and twelve people around a table, ideally over dinner.

  2. The group can consist of good friends, individuals you are meeting for the first time, or any combination thereof.

  3. Someone happily agrees to be a notetaker.

  4. Through conversation, endeavor to find a collection of autobiographical statements that are equally true for each and every member of the group.

  5. While it may begin with one person tossing out questions (“Does everyone like flannel?”), soon enough everyone will be chiming in, energy will escalate, and questions will bounce around in pinball fashion.

  6. Maybe you will do this for 30 minutes. Maybe for a couple of hours. You’ll know when to wrap it up.

  7. Assemble your statements.

  8. Call it your Short, Collective Biography.

  FIG. 1 The Short, Collective Biography of Diane Bond, Emily RK Chester, Teri Cicurel, Jim Clark, Ann Kim, Krista Varsbergs, and Amy K.R. Created over dinner on Saturday night, August 15, 2015. Imagine it read by all seven people in unison.

  Click http://bit.ly/29DoOwT to see a larger version of this text

  THE COUCH EXPERIMENT

  1. Start a family.

  2. On a lazy Sunday morning shortly after your first child is born, take a family photo on the couch.

  3. Put this first photo, and all subsequent photos, in a small album labeled Couch Pictures.

  4. Repeat one or two Sundays a year, or whenever you happen to think of it.

  5. When your children are preteens, there will be some nonsense complaints about doing the Couch Picture. Pay no attention. Proceed as normal.

  6. Observe how one day you have an album full of Couch Pictures.

  7. On the first Sunday after your last child leaves for college, take a Couch Picture with your mate, just the two of you.

  8. When it occurs to you that removing the c from the word couch is more like it, do not actually label it as such. Proceed as normal.

  THE APRIL 29TH EXPERIMENT

  1. On 4/29 at 4:29pm, text someone I love you. This is what I would like for my birthday each year.

  MIDTERM ESSAY

  MIDTERM ESSAY

  AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL

  If it is wonderful, splendid, remarkable—a view outside a window, a lit-up fountain at night, that fig-chorizo appetizer—I am compelled to seek some sort of saturation point, to listen/stare/savor on a loop, to greedily keep at it until I’ve absorbed, absconded with, and drained it of all its magic. Invariably, I will have to move on before I have had enough. My first word was more. It may very well be my last.

  ***

  About my midlife crisis. I did not get a sports car (staying with minivan). I did not run off with the ski instructor (staying with mate). I did not go on a cruise (staying at home).

  But here is what I did get: weepy, chronically weepy.

  I wouldn’t describe the origin of my tears as Boo-hoo, I’m so old, but more, Oh my, here I am, living, and I would like to keep on living, preferably perpetually.

  I would like to avoid, for as long as humanly possible, being pronounced dead and just keep being pronounced AY-mee KROWSS ROH-zihn-THAHL. I would like to say to that tomorrowless day (the one day that coyly begins like any other but then ends—so nonchalantly! so dismissively! so boorishly!—without me in it), STAY AWAY!

  But even if I were crowned life-expectantly average by an optimistic actuary, the hourglass is now, at most, half empty.

  And so it was, everything around me had a bittersweet sheen to it; moments were dramatically stamped FLEETING and TRANSIENT as I roamed about. A simple exchange between my son and me, for example, felt epic in its beauty and poignancy; all that happened was that he tapped on his bedroom window, I looked up at him from the sidewalk below, and he waved.

  I choked up at a Park District ice-skating show when the girls did their synchronized straddle leaps just as Irene Cara screams FAME! Something about the sincerity of it all: the matching polyester costumes and well-rehearsed jump in the air; the song itself, a mighty combination of touching and kitsch. And I didn’t even have a kid in the show.

  I lost it when my daughter excitedly asked me to quick come outside, watch this: See how much faster my new sneakers make me run?

  I didn’t exactly have a midlife crisis. I had a midlife cry-bliss.

  If one is generously contracted 80 years, that amounts to 29,220 days on Earth. Playing that out, how many more times then, really, do I get to look at a tree? 12,395? There has to be an exact number. Let’s just say it is 12,395. Absolutely, that is a lot, but it is not infinite, and anything less than infinite seems too measly a number and is not satisfactory. Also, I would like to stare at my kids a few million more times. I could stare at them a few million more times easy.

  Tell me:

  How many more times do I get to cut an apple?

  How many more times will I put on my shoes? Kiss my mother? Use an ATM?

  How many more
times do I get to toss the salad and ask How much longer ’til the chicken’s ready? as Jason pokes at it on the grill? How many more times do I get to lift my head from the pillow to see what time it is? Run inside after getting drenched in the rain? Look for the Ping-Pong ball? Check my email? Text <3 to the kids? Catch a whiff of jasmine? Use a straw?

  ***

  I have this vivid pictorial memory of being 9 years old, sitting on the sidewalk by my house and thinking, There is nothing special about what I am doing right now, but I want to remember this moment, perfectly intact, for the rest of my life.

  I no longer remember the fine print of it—like what I was wearing, where my siblings were, if there were worms on the sidewalk—but I have a carefully preserved recollection of the certainty of my mission, of sitting there on that suburban subdivision sidewalk, feeling adamant about carrying the moment with me into old age. I swear I feel like I could just plop down on the curb next to that girl, she seems so close.

  Hi there, 9-year-old me. Can you believe it? Here I am, that middle-aged me you imagined. And here we are together. And here is that moment, just like you wanted.

  Yes. And what about the very old and very gray 80-year-old us? Is she coming?

  I believe so. I hope so. Let’s sit and wait. I have a feeling she will be here in no time.

  ROMANCE LANGUAGE

  CHARACTERS

  Ana

  Ana’s mother Fran

  Ana’s best friend Peter

  Ana’s paternal grandmother Gram

  Ana’s dead father Frank

  PRESENT TENSE

  Ana & Peter:

  14 years old

  best friends since kindergarten

  Ana calls him Re-Pete:

  because he stutters

  She also calls him Petep:

  so they can both have

  palindromic names

  Gram has always called him

  Sweet Pete:

  because he is

  PAST TENSE

  In kindergarten, Fran nicknamed the two of

  them Ampersand

  On account of them having met in a sandbox

  On account of them always

  being together

  PAST TENSE

  Frank was an architect

  He died unexpectedly and instantly from a

  brain aneurysm

  Ana was 12

  Frank was 42

  People who didn’t know Frank well

  said he died in the prime of his life

  People who knew him would

  never say that

  Frank always said

  Every day is the prime of your life

  PRESENT TENSE

  Ana and Gram are having lunch at their

  favorite sushi place

  They are sipping miso soup,

  talking about Frank

  As they often do, they begin doodling

  anagrams on their napkins

  They enjoy referring to themselves as

  AnaGram

  Gram writes: I’m sad

  Ana’s anagram response: Is mad

  Ana writes: Miss you so much

  They play around with this for a while

  Gram puts a dash of soy sauce in both of their

  miso soups

  She shows Ana her anagram response:

  us = miso soy chum

  They clink bowls

  PRESENT TENSE

  Ana has a dream about her dead father

  In the dream she runs into him at their

  favorite deli

  She can’t believe it—

  he’s not dead after all

  He clarifies that he is indeed dead but was

  allowed to come back for a single day

  Ana is ecstatic but panicked—

  she feels they’re wasting time at the deli

  She insists they hurry home

  Her father first wants to eat a

  sandwich together

  In this way it can just be a

  regular day

  Ana starts crying

  You lied to me!

  You said you would love me forever & always,

  but you died!

  The deli-counter man calls his number

  27!

  Instead of giving the deli-counter man

  the paper ticket, her father puts it in Ana’s hand

  This ticket is for you, Ana.

  It says everything.

  He kisses her hand holding the 27 ticket

  Ana wakes up

  She is still crying

  PRESENT TENSE

  Ana shares “the 27 dream” with her mother

  She shares the dream with Pete

  She shares the dream with Gram

  She begins having “the 27 dream” regularly

  PAST TENSE

  Ana and Pete were in 5th grade

  Classmates were teasing Pete at recess about his

  stuttering

  Ana stood up for him

  Back in class later,

  they learned about Venn diagrams

  Pete passed Ana a note

  It was a Venn diagram

  In the left circle he wrote

  th-th-thank

  In the right circle he wrote

  y-y-y-you

  In the overlapping center he wrote

  from your best friend

  She tacked this “sweet Venn thank-you” on her bedroom wall

  It has been there ever since

  PAST TENSE

  Frank and 7-year-old Ana sat at

  the dining room table

  They were looking at architectural drawings for

  their new dream house

  Ana asked why it was taking so long to build

  the house

  Frank told her a year was actually rather fast

  He showed her a photo of a house that took

  22 years to build

  It was the Taj Mahal

  He told her the (true) story of the 17th-century

  emperor whose beloved wife died

  The emperor became despondent and had a

  palace built to match the size of his grief

  The story upset Ana

  Frank made up a happier epilogue:

  He told her that after the Taj Mahal was

  completed, the emperor fell in love again!

  The first time the emperor kissed his new love

  it was at sunset in front of the palace

  The moment they kissed it was as if lightning

  struck his heart

  He immediately knew their love

  was everlasting

  Ever since, through the ages, couples from all

  over the world have journeyed to the Taj Mahal

  They kiss at sunset

  If lightning strikes their hearts,

  they know their love is everlasting

  Frank concluded the tale by sharing the

  “famous poem” (made up on the spot)

  about this legend:

  Kiss under a dimming sun

  In front of the Taj Mahal

  And if thy heart lights up

  Yours is the truest love of all

  PAST TENSE

  It was the night Fran and Frank first met

  They were at a party

  Hi, I’m Fran.

  Fran is it? Well, that’s cool.

  And why is that cool?

  Because based on our names alone,

  it seems I complete you.

  He reached to shake her hand:

  Hello, Fran,

  I’m Fr
ank.

  PAST TENSE

  Frank handed Fran a ring

  It was cobalt

  Even more than gold, cobalt is the element of

  enduring strength

  FUTURE TENSE

  Ana & Pete will decipher “the 27 dream”

  They will discover that the ampersand was

  originally the 27th letter in the English alphabet

  They will discover that the atomic number

  of cobalt is 27

  They will discover there are 27 bones

  in the human hand

  They will discover that the largest prime

  number ever calculated is 17,425,170 digits

  long; those digits add up to 27

  They will discover an anagram for

  twenty seven = sweet Venn ty

  (sweet Venn thank-you)

  They will discover that there are two major

  cities on earth with a latitude of 27 degrees:

  Tampa, Florida

  Agra, India

  Tampa, Florida—

  the place in the world where lightning strikes most

  Agra, India—

  home to the Taj Mahal

  FUTURE PERFECT

  Ana and Pete will have turned 27

  They will have ventured to Agra, India

  They will have stood in front of the Taj Mahal

  under a dimming sun

  Pete will have taken a cobalt ring from his pocket