Category: glamorous

My Glamorous Life

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glamorous

A Parental Dilemma

MY DAUGHTER has been talking about her eighth birthday party since she was seven and a half. It will be a small party, on a Saturday at noon, with just her closest friends. Last night I found out her BFF won’t be there, because the girl attends a class Saturdays at noon, and her mom is unwilling to have her miss class—even just this once.

My daughter will be hurt. I’m powerless over another parent’s decision, and I must be cordial about it to preserve the smooth functioning of the BFF relationship (and also because it’s not my place to judge). My problems now are to find the right time to let my daughter know her friend can’t attend, and to manufacture positive life lessons in how we handle the disappointment.

Photo: Olivier GR

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glamorous Grief

My 9/11

AS I OFTEN do on this day, I here post a link to my story of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York, one of nine million stories from that day:

zeldman.com/glamorous/54.shtml

My story is not heroic. I saved no one on that day. It is not tragic. I lost no one.

The story I published then is incomplete in many ways. When September 11th happened, I was newly in love with a married woman who was leaving her husband. To be with her, I was leaving my girlfriend of six years. See? Not heroic at all.

The relationship with my girlfriend had been unhappy for years, but I still felt guilty leaving her. As partial penance, I let her stay in my apartment (“our” apartment) while I bunked in a tiny dump above a dive bar. The floor was crooked and the air always smelled like pierogies.

On September 11th, my new girlfriend, the soon-to-be-unmarried lady, was standing on Fifth Avenue when she saw smoke from the impact of the second plane. She was a mile north of the World Trade Center but could still see the smoke. Everyone could see it. Everyone but me, freelancing via modem in the pierogi-smelling fuckpad. The door opened, and there was my new girlfriend, looking stunned. “You don’t know,” she said.

I called my old girlfriend to warn her not to go downtown. She asked why I was crying.

I was crying for her, because I’d left her alone in a suddenly frightening world. Crying for the people in the World Trade Center. We didn’t have any details yet, but it was clear that many people had died. Crying, had I known it, for the thousands more who would die in the wars that were born on that day.

There was no TV and no internet. It was days before I could publish the incomplete story I linked to at the beginning of this memoir. Even when there was internet access again, I could not tell the parts of the story I am telling now. I could not tell them for years.

There it is. Like something out of Hollywood. Horrifying historic events as backdrop to a romantic drama. I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Everything changes, but, for the living, life goes on. My then-new-girlfriend, my fellow 9/11 PTS victim, is now the mother of my child, and my ex-wife. This morning I walked my daughter to school, then headed to the gym, where I warmed up on a treadmill. Above the treadmill were TVs, with the sound off. On the TV I watched, the names of the 9/11 dead were being read aloud in alphabetical order. They were still on B when I finished my workout. The other TV was showing ESPN, and the gym member on the treadmill next to me was watching that instead of the ceremony.

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"Digital Curation" Design dreams editorial glamorous Surviving The Essentials The Mind The Profession Zeldman

My mind and welcome to it

IN MY DREAM I was designing sublime new publishing and social platforms, incandescent with features no one had ever thought of, but everybody wanted.

One of my platforms generated pages that were like a strangely compelling cross between sophisticated magazine layouts and De Stijl paintings. Only, unlike De Stijl, with its kindergarten primary colors, my platform synthesized subtle color patterns that reminded you of sky and water. Anyone – a plumber, a fishmonger – could use the tool to immediately create pages that made love to your eyes. In the hands of a designer, the output was even richer. Nothing on the web had ever touched it.

Then the dream changed, and I was no longer the creator. I was a sap who’d been off sniffing my own armpits while the internet grew up without me. A woman I know was using the platform to create magazines about herself. These weren’t just web magazines, they were paper. And they weren’t just paper. In the middle of one of her magazines was a beautiful carpet sample. The platform had designed the carpet and woven it into the binding of the printed magazine. I marveled at her output and wished I had invented the platform that allowed her to do these things. Not only was I no longer the creator, I seemed to be the last sap on earth to even hear about all these dazzling new platforms.

Then I was wandering down an endless boardwalk, ocean on my right, a parade of dreary seaside apartment buildings on my left. Each building had its own fabulous content magazine. (“Here’s what’s happening at 2171 Oceanfront Walk.”) The magazines appeared on invisible kiosks which revealed themselves as you passed in front of each building. The content, created by landlords and realtors, was so indifferent as to be unreadable. But this did not matter a bit, because the pages so dazzled in their unholy beauty that you could not look away. Every fool in the world had a meaningless publication which nobody read, but which everyone oohed and ahed at as they passed. And I — I had nothing to do with any of it. I was merely a spectator, a chump on a tiresome promenade.

For Tim and Max. You are the future.

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glamorous The Essentials

Divorce never sleeps

SO THE EX just moved to Manhattan’s most iconic private housing community. It is a large residential complex of oversized, renovated apartments set in an 80-acre private park. The sprawling collection of red brick buildings abuts the East River and the neighborhoods of Gramercy Park, the East Village, Alphabet City, and Kips Bay. It is a minute’s walk from anywhere you’d want to be on New York’s East Side. Yet it feels nothing like the grid-bound island of Manhattan. It is more like a dream suburb set in a manicured woodland.

I’ve been to the development twice since my ex moved there about a week ago. The first time I experienced a mild vertigo as I entered the maze of circling paths and identical red brick apartment towers. It was as if gravity itself could disappear without Manhattan’s rigid street grid.

The second visit was tonight. An early, handmade father’s day present and a quick goodnight kiss for my daughter before leaving on a business trip tomorrow. Then the girl got on her new bicycle — her first real bike, complete with training wheels — and the three of us began strolling the development’s safe, sprawling grounds. I noted fountains, a library, a huge green filled with picnicking families, a play center for young children, a study center for older children, and a basketball court before I stopped ticking off, and feeling slightly overwhelmed by, the development’s endless parade of private amenities.

“They’re going to put a coffee shop over there,” my ex said, pointing beyond a grove of hydrangeas.

Within a few minutes, we had run into one of Ava’s favorite school friends and her parents and were strolling with them while the girls biked in tandem, chased fireflies, and played tag with some younger kids. In my Manhattan, play dates must be arranged with the skill of a social director and the finesse of an event planner. Fail, and your kid has no one to play with that day. But this strange pocket of the city is like a small town: simply by going out the door of their apartment building, kids find each other and play in complete safety. No scheduling necessary. For adults, too, apparently, constant, pleasant social interactions are available simply by walking out your front door. No need for Foursquare, Twitter, or even a phone.

My ex introduced me to my daughter’s friend’s father. “This is a great place to raise kids,” he said — not knowing who I was, not realizing I was the father of the kid his kid was playing with, not knowing the lady his wife was talking to used to be my wife.

Divorce keeps breaking your heart.

You think you’re past it. You no longer sit bolt upright at 2:00 AM, asking yourself what you could have done to save the marriage. You no longer worry that your kid will become a junkie because her parents divorced. You no longer imagine the neighbors finding your dead, naked body in a room full of flies, cats, and pizza boxes. You no longer dread your lawyer’s call.

You enjoy your ex as a friend. You and she are equally committed to your child’s well-being, and that is all that matters. You take care of yourself, you’ve learned life lessons, you’re a better dad, a better man, a better worker than you were three years ago. Life is an adventure again.

And then, bang. Your kid is laughing ecstatically in a seemingly utopian environment you did not provide for her and you are not part of. The easy adult social interactions that are unfolding belong to your ex’s new life, not yours. You are watching your family move on without you, you are discovering all over again, as if for the first time, that your family has exploded, your wife does not love you, does not need you, the world goes on without you, this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife.

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Existence experience glamorous The Essentials

A plane crash in slow-mo

I WAS SOBER SIX MONTHS when my Uncle George took me to lunch and told me he believed his sister, my mother, had Alzheimers. She was 60. Via frequent short visits to Pittsburgh and more phone calls than we’d shared in decades, I helped my dad accept that he needed to take her to the doctor for tests. Then I helped him accept the results.

She declined over ten years. It was like a plane crash in slow motion.

At my Aunt Ruth’s funeral, my mother cried and cried, with no clue who she was crying for. When I joined my parents at the grave site, my mother turned excitedly to my father and pointed at me. “I know that man!” she said.

When she couldn’t talk any longer; after all the in-home nurses had quit; after the cousin who’d come to care for her committed credit card fraud while my mother wandered the house unwashed and raving; after that, I helped my dad accept that mom could no longer live at home.

Oh, and I stayed sober.

The final two years she spent in a facility. It was like visiting a statue. My dad would get her an ice cream and wheel her around the nursing home garden. She ate the ice cream. I’m not sure she saw the trees.

She had a little CD player in her room, and when we visited, we would put on music she liked – that is, music she had liked when she liked anything. Once, I swear I saw her shiver at the melancholy sax riff on a Frank Sinatra ballad. As if someone was there.

Then there was the day her hair turned white. I suppose it had probably turned gradually during the few weeks since I’d last seen her. My career was taking off and I couldn’t visit Pittsburgh as often. For that matter, maybe her hair had turned white a decade before, and the attendants at the nursing facility had just one day decided it wasn’t worth coloring her hair any more.

Alzheimer’s can only be proved via autopsy; it can’t be diagnosed with 100% certainty while the patient lives. My dad’s insurance company used that loophole to avoid covering a dime of the cost of the last ten year’s of my mother’s care.

After she died, after months had elapsed and my dad was still living among all her old things, my then-girlfriend and I volunteered to weed through my mother’s possessions, giving nearly everything to charity. In my mother’s desk drawer, we discovered a note she had written to herself at the onset of the disease, acknowledging that her mind was going. She feared the passage into darkness.

April 24th would have been my mother’s birthday. I think of her with some regularity. Sometimes I wish my mother could have lived to know my daughter, who is now seven. And sometimes I indulge the thought that somewhere, somehow, she does.

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cities glamorous New York City

My Glamorous Life: Lucy Ricardo, C’est Moi

TRYING A NEW breakfast place. I tell the cashier, “Extra crispy bacon.”

“Extra bacon,” she says.

“No, not extra bacon. Extra crispy bacon,” I say.

A fast-paced volley of shouted Spanish follows, between the cook, the cashier, and the server. A customer in line behind me chimes in. He is either describing my order to the cashier or telling her about a dream he had involving velvet chickens. I’ve got to learn Spanish.

The cashier turns her green gaze back to me.

“Extra bacon,” she says.

“Um, no,” I say.

“No bacon,” she says.

“Yes, bacon,” I say. “Spinach mushroom omelette, bacon — no toast, no potatoes.”

I will never be able to make it up to her, or to the other customers in line behind me. Or to the pig, quite frankly.

“Extra bacon,” she announces.

I say, “Thank you” and leave a tip in the jar.

Categories
experience glamorous Live tweeted macho invincibility Zeldman

Accident

CAR JUST HIT ME as I was crossing street. Van carrying old people. Driver didn’t see me. Van struck my head. #

I punched door. Driver and passengers stared at me. Time slowed way down. I gestured for driver to pull over.#

Asked woman on street if I was bleeding. She said no. Told van driver to leave. He got out, walked over, insisted on seeing if I was ok. #

Black man, about 60. Told him I was good, merry Christmas. Shook his hand twice, nearly hugged him. Glad to be alive. #

Two hours later:

In ER with friend, getting checked after accident. #

No concussion, no spinal or brain injury, I’m very lucky. #

P.S. Having some back and arm pain today, nothing unexpected according to what the E.R. doc told me. Overwhelming feeling remains gratitude at being alive, although the feeling is more tempered now, not as giddy as it was immediately following the accident.

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glamorous The Essentials

My glamorous life: some holiday!

THIS WEEK I will finally sign my divorce papers. It’s like that old Woody Allen joke, “The food here is terrible – and such small portions.” I didn’t want to get divorced, and I’ve been waiting two years to do it. It’s a friendly little divorce that started out as a simple mediated settlement, but we made the mistake of hiring lawyers. The legal bloodletting around the Beatles’ breakup took less time and surely cost less. But here we finally are, about to sign papers that enshrine our daughters’ rights and our rights as parents and put into stark English the courtesies my ex and I would naturally extend each other anyway.

That’s Wednesday, unless it’s Tuesday (my lawyer can’t seem to keep track of which day we’re meeting), and Wednesday also there is a school field trip I chaperone to I don’t remember where, and somehow between the field trip and the review and signing of the divorce papers I hire a team to gut and rewire our new A Space Apart office on Madison Avenue, arrange for two internet services to wire our 19th century building, and order the furniture.

Today I take the kid to school, meet about wireframes for the A List Apart redesign, interview Khoi Vinh for The Big Web Show, meet about a Happy Cog redesign, and run back to school for the kid. Somewhere in there I get a meal. Thursday, blessed relief, I’m in Philadelphia for a holiday party (yay!), and Friday my Dad and his bride arrive.

In short, it is a week like any other.

Since I started my first business with two nickels and a Power Computing Mac clone, I have not had a week that would pass for normal, if normal means manageable. The last predictable week I had was my first week in AA in May of 1993, although that certainly wasn’t usual in that sweating and shivering and coming to God (in other words, quitting drinking) isn’t a normal or even expected event in an alcoholic’s life. But that week did find me in the same room in the same city doing the same thing for five days straight — surely the last time that happened, if you don’t count those four days in Disney World.

I’m a boring guy, but my life has conspired to be interesting. Members of my inner circle who have access to my calendar get ulcers just from looking. And for all that constant change and growth, although somewhat stressed, I am most grateful.

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cities glamorous

Air Travel As We Know It

My thrice-delayed, once-cancelled flight home has been resurrected and is boarding. No one was ever so happy to be flying coach to Newark.

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family glamorous

That’s love.

FOR TWO YEARS, our daughter was bullied in school. The school didn’t notice and our daughter didn’t complain so we didn’t know. Finally a mom saw and told us. After that, things happened quickly. One result is that we changed schools.

During those first two years, our daughter shut down emotionally and psychologically from the moment the bell rang in the morning until school let out at night. Maybe this shutting down was a reaction to the bullying. Maybe there were other causes. What’s certain is that she didn’t learn. She didn’t learn the kindergarten stuff. She didn’t learn the first grade stuff.

The old school noticed the learning problems and provided support programs that helped, but did not close the gap. The school warned us our daughter would probably flunk kindergarten, but in the end they passed her along to first grade. The first grade teacher worried, but in the end passed her on to second grade.

Now she is in a school where they pay attention, in second grade, lacking skills her peers learned in kindergarten.

Catching her up takes hours of extra homework a week. It takes patience and cunning as we work to cool a fear and dislike of learning that’s been baked into her soul for two years. Some days I want to cry. But for her sake I smile.

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Apple Design glamorous industry

In which I unwittingly befoul an otherwise fitting tribute to the late, great Mr Jobs

“SHARE YOUR MEMORIES of Steve Jobs” read the email from Faith Korpi, producer of the 5by5 network to which I contribute a podcast. I thought she meant memories of actually interacting with the guy. I had one such experience: Steve fired me from a freelance project. That being my only “memory” of Steve Jobs, I responded to the assignment by telling that story.

5by5 created a beautiful audio tribute to Steve Jobs. The other contributors, who understood the assignment correctly, carefully crafted personal tributes to Steve Jobs and his legacy. Listening to this series of heartfelt recollections, you get a sense of the contribution Steve Jobs made to all our lives. The testimonials of my colleagues make me feel awe, wonder, hope, and terrible sadness.

A little over twenty minutes into this love fest for a giant of our time, my little story comes along and quickly sinks like a stone. I didn’t write it out in advance (no time, I was chaperoning my daughter’s second grade field trip) and I didn’t record it in my pristine podcasting studio (same excuse). The gist of it is, Steve Jobs fired me and another guy from a project before we did a lick of work, paid us anyway, and afterwards, for nearly ten years, Apple hardware and software that worked perfectly well for everyone in the world misbehaved for me — as if the aborted project had left me cursed.

Pathetic.

I admire and marvel at Steve Jobs every bit as much as my better spoken, better prepared colleagues. Not only did he understand that computing is about people, not technology; he also had the will to unapologetically demand perfection from the human beings who worked for him. If I live to be one thousandth the creative director he was, I will tell myself, “Well done.”

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glamorous

Ten Years Ago Today

On 27th Street, a couple is passionately kissing. Behind them, the sky is filled with white smoke.

Everyone has left work. It’s like the Fourth of July. And then again it’s nothing like the Fourth of July.

At 33rd & Lex, a woman in an electric green dress squats down to take a snapshot of the Chrysler Building, standing tall and unaffected to the north. I catch myself thinking they haven’t bombed that one yet.

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: My Glamorous Life #54: 11 September, 2001. 12 September, 2001. 13 September, 2001. As my loved ones and I lived it in New York City.

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family glamorous

Ava’s first comic strip

Bucktooth character: “I wonder what is in this box. It is cute.”

Other character: “That is a brick.”

Bucktooth character: “Oops, I’ve been trying to open it all day.”

Ava’s first comic strip | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Categories
cities glamorous New York City Weather Zeldman

Clear Blue Sky

A STATE of emergency has been declared, but it’s a magical day in New York City. Any grownup who can do so is playing hooky to bask in the perfect sun and gentle breeze. Death, damage, and flooding are expected. We’re preparing for days, maybe weeks without power or water. Any fool could make a fortune selling flashlights today. But while we go through the motions of buying flashlights and stockpiling bottled water, somehow on this blue-sky golden day the threat seems unreal.

You’re a draftee during wartime and it’s your last night before shipping overseas. You’re on the porch, kissing your girl’s neck, but in 48 hours you’ll be smelling blood and gunpowder. The nearness of war makes your girl feel unreal, but your girl’s hair and perfume make the war seem like some strange practical joke.

So today in New York: a glorious Autumn day we glide through without quite seeing, because our minds are in Hollywood disaster movie mode, our carless bodies weighed down with water bottles and flashlights. It’s like that clear blue sky ten years ago, minutes before Hell flew out of it.

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family glamorous Zeldman

The Wind-Down

LISTENING to Coltrane. Taking a break after assembling American Girl doll bunk beds. The tuxedo cat has appropriated Ava’s American Girl doll tent as his personal summer house. Ava is making up a song about wishing on a star. End of summer. Happy.