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Category Archives: Andy

Even Good Boys Bleed

My husband, retired police officer and former upholder of rule and law, seems to have had a thing for bad boys, at least judging from his line up of formers and one terror of a hubby. He may have been the one wearing a ‘Get Wicked Tonight‘ t-shirt the first time he met my parents, but I got buzzed on a high ball with his Mom the first time I met his. 

Being that this year marks our 25th anniversary of meeting (and 15th of being married) our early days have been on my mind of late. That kind of nostalgia is warm and sustaining, and sometimes it’s been what’s seen us through the rough days. As Andy once said to me at a difficult moment, “There’s history there.” I don’t think he realized how much I took that to heart, and how much I took him to heart. 

The good girl in your dreams is mad you’re lovin’ me
I know you wish that she was me
How bad, bad do you want me?
You’re not the guy that cheats and you’re afraid that she might leave
‘Cause if I get too close, she might scream, “How bad, bad do you want me?”

‘Cause you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans
You like the bad girl I got in me

She’s on your mind, like, all the time, but I got a tattoo for us last week
Even good boys bleed
How bad, bad do you want me? 
‘Cause you hate the crash, but you love the rush
And I’ll make your heart weak every time
You hear my name, ’cause she’s in your brain and I’m here to kiss you in real life
‘Bout to cause a sceneHow bad, bad do you want me?

Before we ever met, Andy had seen me in Oh Bar when Suzie and I were out for a night of fun. I didn’t notice him, but he noticed me (and dismissed me with a ‘Bitchy Queen’ sizing-up assessment of my attitude. He would later tell me that when I walked by him the Jimi Hendrix song ‘Foxy Lady’ came to his mind

Back in the beginning of our relationship, for one of our earliest get-togethers, I invited him for a pasta dinner at my parents’ home – they were out for the night. I made what I thought was a funny comment, but it was more cutting than anything else for him, and we had our first fight, which ended with him leaving. It was so early in our dating that I simply stood my ground and refused to yield or admit that I might have been wrong in what I said or how I said it. We didn’t know each other’s histories or trigger points then, and we didn’t quite know how special what we had would turn out to be. 

You panic in your sleep and you feel like such a creep 
‘Cause with your eyes closed, you might peek
So hot, hot that you can’t speak

You’re so fucked up with your crew but when you’re all alone, it’s true 
You know exactly what we’d do – How bad, bad do you want to?

I was a bit of a hellion in those early days – at the young age of 25, I was just beginning to figure out exactly who I was, and it wasn’t easy. I didn’t always make it easy for Andy, or anyone in my life in those days, and if being bad was wrong, I never wanted to be right. There was a razor-sharp edge to how I acted in those days, and while I tried not to cut Andy as soon as I understood his sensitivity, it couldn’t help but happen sometimes. Hurt people hurt people no matter how careful we try to be, and in those days everyone around me ended up getting hurt. Those streets ran both ways though, and it’s not entirely accurate to paint me as the villain in every scenario. Not that I’d have been averse to such a characterization, and something told me Andy secretly thrilled at some of my more diabolical machinations. As I said, he didn’t mind a bad boy. 

Which brings me to this latest Lady Gaga song, ‘How Bad Do U Want Me?’ I’m completely obsessed with it and all of its layered meanings. There’s the literal reading of its title, which seems to be a simple question of how badly you want or desire someone. A slightly deeper digs brings out the more resonant idea of someone questioning how bad they want their paramour to actually be, and how bad the object of one’s affection may actually want to be. It also posits the question of what exactly is bad? 

‘Cause you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans
You like the bad girl I got in me

She’s on your mind, like, all the time, But I got a tattoo for us last week
Even good boys bleed
How bad, bad do you want me? 
‘Cause you hate the crash, but you love the rush
And I’ll make your heart weak every time
You hear my name, ’cause she’s in your brain and I’m here to kiss you in real life
‘Bout to cause a scene – How bad, bad do you want me?

Over twenty five years, I slowly, and mostly, grew out of my bad boy eras, and at times Andy had his own bad boy moments, flip-flopping our roles and jolting us into an awareness of how precious and precarious love could be. I also grew to realize, with friends who stuck with me for decades, that I couldn’t be entirely bad all the time; the truly bad and the awful among us simply do not maintain friendships for that long. Sometimes we mistake being young for being bad. 

And sometimes being bad is the best thing you can be. 

Uh-oh, oh, you love a good girl
Uh-oh, oh, you love a good girl bad
Uh-oh, oh, you make a bad girl
Uh-oh, oh, you make a bad girl mad
A psychotic love theme
How bad do you want me?

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A Heartwarming Meal by Andy

Andy’s first attempt at chicken adobo – that classic Filipino dish – was a resounding success, despite my mis-remembering the exact ratio of rice vinegar needed (it’s a party forgiving recipe). Having him make this ancestral dinner was a surprising and heartwarming gift of a very long winter. When he took over the chicken curry dish I made early on in our relationship, he elevated and perfected it, so I’m looking forward to future adobo endeavors. 

These little things that spark joy in our day-to-day existence are the true jewels of a life. Too often they seem incidental or mundane – those in-between moments that tie bigger events together – but they are the real events, if only we knew enough to honor them as they came. 

My husband making a dish beloved by my father is just this sort of moment. 

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An Endless Omelette By Andy

One of the rediscovered joys of this holiday season has been home-time with Andy. While it’s always been something I’ve appreciated and adored, it means a bit more as the world around us shudders with awfulness, and even those people we thought would be with us forever dwindle and disappear. A time of uncertainty brings a time of realignment, and finding refuge in a partner is the safest bastion against an ever-threatening world. 

On a recent morning I requested one of his omelettes – he opted for a ham and cheese, and turned it into an endless plate of delectable goodness, one that went on almost too long for me to finish it. Almost – I can fit a lot into my mouth and stomach (just ask Andy how I got the nickname ‘Gummie’). When you fill the stomach with a meal made by a loved one, you fill the heart as well, and a full heart is how the holidays should be celebrated. 

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A Day of Comfort

This fall season has been about boundaries and protection, of fortifying the heart and home against threats past, present and future. It’s strange the way things that have happened so long ago still have the power to hurt, especially when viewed in greater retrospect so that patterns and repeated offenses are seen in their diabolical totality. Perhaps because of the immensity that such realizations occupy in the mind, I’ve had to take things slowly, distancing myself from similar situations and retreating to the people I love and trust.

Thankfully, Andy has been a trooper and pillar of support, even if I haven’t quite shared everything that has been evolving in my head regarding my family. He senses a downtrodden sense of hurt running through my days now, juxtaposed with a sense of freedom that balances things out with a lightness, and I’ve done my best to keep him free of familial drama. 

As I navigate how to work through this without burning it all down to the ground, he’s been a kind and patient husband, and last Saturday he turned a dim day into a warm one of holiday happiness, which is the last thing I expected. It began with a ham and cheese omelette (pictures of appreciation in a later post), and as I spent most of the day writing in the attic, he snuck out to pick up our Christmas tree – something he’s done for most of the past twenty four Christmases. I took a nap, and when I woke not only was the house filled with the delightful perfume of fresh balsam pine, there was an intermingling scent of beef stew boiling away on the stovetop. A day of comfort and coziness, courtesy of the person I gave my heart to all those years ago. 

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A Magical Flower from a Magical Man

We hadn’t planned on having flowers at our wedding ceremony, but when Suzie showed up with a bouquet of peonies for the day it was the perfectly serendipitous accent that has since come to symbolize that happy event. We return to them every May, and whenever they bloom in the garden they evoke wonderful memories. Given the sorry state of the world right now, I’ve been bringing Andy a couple of bouquets of roses – a reminder that there is still beauty to be found, and there is still love no matter what else is happening. 

He brought me a bouquet of peonies – a trio of large pink blooms that promptly began opening, even in the middle of the night, as soon as I put them in some warm water. They were not the fully double pom-pom versions that are ubiquitous in old-fashioned gardens. These were more delicate, and what they lacked in petal count and fragrance they more than made up for in other ways. 

The next morning, they were open completely, and the deep pink hue had softened to a softer pastel color – even more delicate and elegant than the bombastic shade they first showed off. This was where the magic began – as the hours went by, and it actually happened that quickly, the transformation became more profound and beautiful. 

As shades of pink drained from the petals, they took on a creamy glow, almost translucent in the light. And then the last part of the show began, as the petals took on a deeper shade of yellow, echoing the golden stems of their stamens. A truly magical performance, courtesy of a magical man. Andy’s been saddened and worried about the likely effect that this election will have on the federal recognition of our marriage, but I reminded him that we were together for ten years before it was legal anywhere, and we would be ok again. Legal terms, papers, and even flowers fade and wither, but love can never be destroyed. 

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Andy’s Mom: Shades of Gray

   ~ ~ ~  f r o m   O C T O B E R    2 0 0 4 ~ ~ ~

Though she died a few years ago, the wound is still fresh. In happy moments he forgets, but then the happiness serves as a reminder, and he seems to hunt for why he has to be unhappy. His grief is like a severed limb – invisible, phantom thing of pain – there but not there, and, somehow, always with him.

Sometimes he is happy to remember her – a smile at the scent of her favorite rose, a laugh at a salty memory, a spunky phrase she once uttered – and then he is lost again

He finds solace in baking her old recipes. A calm settles around him in the kitchen. Bending over a simmering sauce of tomatoes and fresh basil, or rolling out the dough for an apple pie, he is best when he is busy. He thinks she is with him then, or maybe that he is cooking for her again, like he used to do. 

He sleeps late when the pain and the night inspire to keep him up. Waking, alone, he plods to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. The scene outside the window changes with the seasons – the light slowly shifting, shadows lengthening or shortening, but it’s difficult to detect day to day. Only the occasional burst of a storm or the gray water vapor of a January thaw make any discernible difference. He draws the shades and looks out the window. The world is quiet from inside. 

 

~SHADES OF GRAY~

Midway Through Life

Gray Ghost 1

A Bagel in Boston

At the Mall

Gray Ghost 2

Squirrelly

Brother 1

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A Husband’s Helpful Shadow

Giving credit where it is due, Andy has been especially helpful for the past couple of years when things have gotten difficult with family and life – and it’s in keeping with how he has mostly been over the past twenty-four years. The featured picture is from our ‘shades of gray‘ party – held in October of 2024 to celebrate the release of my ‘shades of gray’ project, which is going up now in blog posts here and there, to see us though this often-dour month. I’ll resume in the next post – for now, a fun look back with this photo, and the following up-to-date scene of what an average morning is like in our home.

ANDY, waking me up: “Did you oversleep?”

ME, waking in an immediate panic thinking I’m late for work: “Why?! What time is it?!?!”

ANDY: “It’s 8:20.”

ME, realizing it’s Saturday: “Wait, what day is it?”

ANDY, realizing it’s Saturday: “Oh. Well, you’re really late. You were supposed to be at work yesterday.”

 

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Happy Birthday Andy

Sitting on a bench and looking out at the turquoise and sapphire sea, we watched the waves come in, pulled by the moon. It had been just a little over twenty-four years since our first trip to Ogunquit together, and as impossibly far away and long ago as it felt, I remembered it distinctly, especially our first walk along the Marginal Way. Now, all this time later, Andy was still by my side, still providing the comfort and love that made the rainy days ok and the sunny days soar. 

Today is one of those very special sunny days, and it marks Andy’s birthday.  In honor of that, here are a few pics I managed to sneak on our recent trip to Maine. It’s one of his favorite places, and even all these years later it still provides a haven and a sanctuary when the rest of the world grows ever dimmer. It is here where we have been more ourselves than perhaps anywhere else, happily content to simply be – walking along this beautiful coastline, dining at familiar restaurants, and searching for the possibility of a beach day. 

Andy has usually been the bedrock of our home together – and home is wherever we might cuddle up for the night. Whether that’s Maine or New York or Boston, as long as he is there, that place is home. Since Andy’s never been one for big birthday celebrations, we’ll spend a quiet day at home per his usual request, capped by a family dinner and some vanilla cake. Happy Birthday, Drew – I love you. 

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Andy Has the Best Balls

Throughout this fall’s tumultuous online trajectory, one of the unheralded and all-too-often unseen pillars of support has been Andy. That’s typical the case in a general sense, but when I’m down or unsure, he seems to know when to be there, such as in this delicious comfort food dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. When the weather dips into the cycle of usual fall doldrums, a spaghetti dinner is one of those easy pick-me-ups that can shift the emotional arc of a day, or at the very least make dinner a bright spot. 

Andy makes amazing meatballs (as previously celebrated here) – it was one of the first meals he ever made for me back when we had just started dating. Over the years, he has experimented and perfected his recipe for sauce, and there is always a ready pot of it in the fridge on days when you need a little extra comfort. 

It also makes for a happy post to finish this early week of fall – come back for tomorrow morning’s recap to catch up on all the drama you might have missed for the past 49 years…

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Andy’s Towering Eggplant

Fresh off the culinary success of Andy’s take on fried green tomatoes, he went back into the kitchen to craft this insane tower of fried eggplant, interspersed with burrata, balsamic glaze, and fresh basil. We first had something like this at Angelina’s Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine – and it was a welcome revelation. We went back there several times just for this dish. 

As we’re currently under the semi-annual spell of the deep fryer (we can only bring it out two or three times a year or we’d have heart attacks and die) it’s been a week of fried glory – next up is fried okra, courtesy of Suzie’s vegetable garden. 

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A Summer-Salvaging Moment by Andy

When we visited Savannah several years ago, Andy and I had a delicious dish of fried green tomatoes that turned me into a fan. To be fair, I’m a fan of fried anything, even if it’s an unripened tomato, and since then he’s been planning and plotting how to recreate that dish. When we put our fryer into its semi-annual rotation, he found a bag of green tomatoes and set up assembling a summer lunch that recalled and celebrated the best of the season, something of which I’d sort of lost sight and faith

He perfected it without any practice, producing this delicious dish of fried green tomatoes, augmented by a drizzle of balsamic glaze, some burrata, a sprinkling of green onions and some tomato chutney. It was just as good as the original.

It brought back happy memories of Savannah, happy memories of summer, and happy memories of Andy whenever he gets to work in the kitchen. We needed a happy moment here.

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Our 24th Anniversary

Andy and I met 24 years ago tonight, and we’ve used this as our real anniversary because for many years it wasn’t even legal for us to get married. (And it may not be again if we have a Republican President, so vote accordingly.) At the 24-year mark, we pause in quiet honor and gratitude for making it all this way – we’ll go all-out for #25 next July. For now, it’s a typical summer day – perhaps it will rain, as it did on the day we met. The rain that day proved quite fortuitous, which is something I keep in mind whenever I get down about a rainy day. 

We’ll go out for a quiet dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and I have a special gift that will come to fruition next month, but otherwise it will be just another lovely day with Andy – the sort of happy life that whispered to me all those years ago, and that we have both worked to build for ourselves and our little family of two. 

Happy Anniversary Drew – I love you. 

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Who Are the Young Men

This piece of music from the AMC television series ‘Interview with the Vampire‘ (of which I am thrillingly enthralled at a time when not much on television enthralls me) struck me as incredibly moving, as it formed the backdrop to when two vampires met for the first time and didn’t realize they were at the beginning of a centuries-long love affair. No one knows at the beginning – we all think we do, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we never really know. Even if it turns out to last a lifetime, we didn’t know it at the time it began. All we knew was love

The first summer I met Andy wasn’t what we initially knew as our first summer – it was simply summer. Who could foresee the twenty-four years – and counting – that would follow? As much as I felt like it might be for more than a single summer, I didn’t truly know, and as much as I wanted it to be, I was only one-half of the equation. 

Looking back at our story, to the very genesis of how it began in the summer of 2000, I’m more and more touched by our innocence then, by the tenderness of how we learned to accept and love each other. Watching Andy clean the pool – something that seems like such a simple act – is a part of the daily mundane that I’ve come to appreciate as magical over the past few years, when the world has revealed itself to be so much less than kind. 

Back when we were the young men, maybe we just didn’t notice it. 

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An Unremarkably Remarkable Anniversary – Part 3

Just as we seemed to be getting accustomed to Boston life, it was almost time to return to Albany and resume the rigors of regular life. Before that, however, one more fancy dinner, this time at Amar, one of the restaurants at the Raffles Hotel – something that had sprung up without my giving it much notice in the midst of Back Bay. The entry-way provided the splash of excessive florals that I had originally been seeking for this anniversary

Amar was lovely, offering a bird’s-eye view of Back Bay, reminiscent of our wedding rehearsal dinner at the Top of the Hub. That restaurant has also disappeared, so out of our original wedding dining locales, only Mistral remains from fourteen years ago. 

On our way out, another spectacular display of flowers demanded a moment and a picture, then it was into the night after the sun had gone down during dinner. 

One of Boston’s bunnies, constant companions to us over these many years, wished us goodnight as it sat beneath a fragrant patch of Korean spice viburnum. The perfume of spring carried in the night air. 

Gardens glowed differently in the light of lamp-posts, such as this chartreuse variety of the bleeding heart. The evening itself gave off the sort of enchantment that only comes at this time of the year, when the ghostly blooms of the American dogwood on its sparsely elegant bare branches create an effect that is unmatched by the most splendorous of summer scenes. 

The next morning the sun was out, sending us off after another unremarkably remarkable visit to Boston – the very best kind of visit to make. Happy anniversary, Andy! Thank you for being with me on this crazy journey through life together. 

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An Unremarkably Remarkable Anniversary – Part 2

Our wedding anniversary tradition is to start the day with the cleaning of our wedding rings, which get spiffed up and shined at Shreve, Crump and Lowe, followed by a slow walk through the Boston Public Garden, the site of our wedding ceremony. In strangely glorious fashion, the moment we set foot into the garden transports us to a different world – the magical space and time when the mundane concerns of reality fall momentarily by the wayside, replaced by a happy reminder of what really matters, and what has always mattered most to us. 

Amid the occasional squawking of waterfowl and the mischievous mayhem of some overly-friendly and zealous squirrels, there is also a subdued solemnity during our time here, the same way a hush came over our ceremony fourteen years ago and no one else in the world seemed to exist other than Andy and me and our chosen guests. That special circle has dwindled over the years, as our fathers have already left us, but they were with us again on this day in our memories

Andy and I sat down on a bench that looked out at the spot where our ceremony had taken place. A gnarled old cherry tree was resplendent in full bloom, while a group of squirrels ran among its branches. We’ve always paused in our walk at some point, to take in the moment and the day, to remember and honor what we’ve been through, and where we’re headed. Love changes and evolves over the years, and it takes nurturing and care to keep it thriving. Here in this sacred place, we remember that day fourteen years ago… and all the days of the last twenty-four years. 

Before we left the garden, the sun peeked through the overcast sky – another little gift of the day. 

Across the street from the garden, we tried out the new-to-us Coterie at the Four Seasons. Our beloved Bristol Lounge – the site of our wedding lunch, and subsequent indulgences in their Chocolate Tower Cake – had closed years ago, but the new restaurant was lovely on a smaller scale, and we talked of how it would work well for next year’s anniversary, when we planned to bring all the living attendees of our wedding day back together while we are willing and able. 

The Public Garden had worked its romantic magic again, as we laid pans for next year, and one more dinner for this anniversary celebration. 

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