BY STEVE JANOSKI
If I did not see it myself, I might have thought it straight off the cover of some generic Hallmark card: a middle-aged couple, sitting side by side together on a wooden park bench overlooking the wind-rippled waters, watching the geese waddle back and forth between bank and burn.
They’re tightly intertwined and make for a curious sight: he, gray-haired, adorned in a black suit jacket with a silver wristwatch that glares in the sun, sits with his arm around her shawl-clad shoulders. Her blonde hair washes over his sleeve.
She leans against him, dips her face closer to his, and they appear to speak in between small kisses, and I cannot help but think how unusual it is to see a couple so clearly in the middle of their lives who retrain that kind of affection for each other.
Often, it seems that those who have become too familiar with each other tend to let a callous apathy replace the fondness they once felt.
Not these two. They huddle close in the way that young couples with softer hearts do, before life’s tribulations cast their stony shadows.
I come to the conclusion that they’re probably not the typical long-married couple, and I wonder what their back story might be.
Maybe they are both divorced… or at least, one is divorced. Maybe the other is separated.
They met by way of a friend, maybe, or through a dating site that has put them on the path to being one of the infamous "online success stories" the commercials talk about. Now, they’re in those early stages of love that makes even the most callous adult feel like a teenager again.
Or maybe it is something more sinister — an illicit lunch break meeting in a secluded park far from prying eyes and husbands and wives, with darkened cell phones left back at the car to clear the way for an undisturbed soiree.
Although I always picture those kinds of things happening in seedy hotels along Route 3, maybe they’ve branched out.
Or maybe it’s something less unscrupulous. After all, it could be something sad — shockingly sad, perhaps — such as two people coping with the news of some illness that only one must face and pondering their own mortality in a place so rife with life.
Sometimes, it takes that sort of thing — that sort of calamity — to recognize the true worth of the things around us.
Regardless, each looks upon the other with feeling, with passion even, and that in itself is admirable.
A rustling in the wild-tailed forsythias, which are quickly turning from yellow to green, captures my attention for a brief second, and I notice the ground cover, little patches of clover and whatnot, is rising quickly because of the snowless winter and a lone cherry blossom tree is already in the midst of its annual sanguine fireworks display.
When I look back, the couple is walking away, arms around waists, in a slow, amiable saunter back to the parking lot.
I turn back toward the river.
Their story was probably not that insidious, and not that morose.
But in the end, their story matters not. It is spring once again.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/community/147105115_Springtime_again_.html?page=all
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Defending our last bastion
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
By Steve Janoski
Only in Brooklyn could the idea of bringing a baby inside a bar sound anywhere near a good idea — but that's what happening, according to Jessica Ravitz's recent article on CNN.com, "Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars."
Ravitz chronicles the story of one Matt Gross, 35, an editor for the blog DadWagon and the columnist who writes the Frugal Traveler in the New York Times. He's also the stay-at-home father of a 14-month old daughter.
In the article, Gross says that he "longs for adult contact," and that though he has a child, he "doesn't want to be excluded from the adult world," so he brings his daughter with him to the bar.
The craze has apparently caught on in Brooklyn, where bar patrons are forced to put up with middle-aged adolescents who can't tear themselves away from the bottle for long enough to raise a kid.
My objections to this are multilayered. As a 25-year-old pub connoisseur, I am revolted by the idea of sitting in my neighborhood dive surrounded by children.
The guys I know go to bars to be out with other adults. We go to hit on women, or to commiserate about what said women have done to us. We tell stories about other nights drinking, laugh at crude jokes, and, depending on the night of the week and the amount imbibed, other things that the majority of society frowns on.
But it's OK. Why? Because that's our escape from the straight-laced job or the overbearing wife, and our last, great hiding place from the never-ending responsibilities that are heaped on us over the course of life.
Children, however, have the run of the country. Everything is about "the children" — some celebrity has a costume malfunction at the Super Bowl, and it's "What about the children!?" If an athlete gets arrested for some indiscretion, its always, "What does this tell the children!?"
Kids can go to any movie theater or restaurant, and other patrons are expected to put up with any kind of screaming fits or other baby issues they might have. And that's fine — this is the way it is.
But honestly, the bars? Have they no mercy or compassion for this last bastion of true adulthood? We who go to bars do not want to be surrounded by children and strollers and other reminders of either present or future responsibilities…we just want to have a beer after work or enjoy a Friday night.
And on top of that, what does it say about the fathers themselves, putting a little kid in harm's way at a bar because you "long for adult contact?"
Any place where alcohol is served en masse' is going to come with a certain degree of danger, and bars are known for being the place where you…well, get drunk. And when those people get drunk, they act in wholly different ways than they would otherwise.
Alcohol is involved in a good chunk of violent crimes — you don't often hear about the guy who drank too much Gatorade one night and decided to shoot his wife. Why put a little kid in the same spot where a lot of crimes start, and a good amount end?
The danger is not just from a lone drunken basket case, either. What happens if a guy has a couple beers and loses his balance and knocks the kid off the stool, falls on them, or even gets run into while he's standing? While these things can happen anywhere, things tend to end worse when booze is around, and it's the child that will pay the price.
The amount of fights I have seen in bars is also beyond count, and it doesn't matter what time of day you're there, because things happen. Is it worth it for a kid to be around that instead of just springing for a babysitter?
I don't have kids, but what I learned from my father about it is that when you do end up having them, they have to come first. You put their safety above everything else, and you don't do anything to jeopardize it.
I'd like to tell Mr. Gross that when he decided to have kids, he should have understood that his life wasn't going to be about what he wants anymore, but what his daughter needs — and what she doesn't need to be around is the kind of people like me who spend a lot of time at the local pub.
And if he wants some "adult contact"… join a book club.
http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/89085917_Defending_our_last_bastion.html
By Steve Janoski
Only in Brooklyn could the idea of bringing a baby inside a bar sound anywhere near a good idea — but that's what happening, according to Jessica Ravitz's recent article on CNN.com, "Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars."
Ravitz chronicles the story of one Matt Gross, 35, an editor for the blog DadWagon and the columnist who writes the Frugal Traveler in the New York Times. He's also the stay-at-home father of a 14-month old daughter.
In the article, Gross says that he "longs for adult contact," and that though he has a child, he "doesn't want to be excluded from the adult world," so he brings his daughter with him to the bar.
The craze has apparently caught on in Brooklyn, where bar patrons are forced to put up with middle-aged adolescents who can't tear themselves away from the bottle for long enough to raise a kid.
My objections to this are multilayered. As a 25-year-old pub connoisseur, I am revolted by the idea of sitting in my neighborhood dive surrounded by children.
The guys I know go to bars to be out with other adults. We go to hit on women, or to commiserate about what said women have done to us. We tell stories about other nights drinking, laugh at crude jokes, and, depending on the night of the week and the amount imbibed, other things that the majority of society frowns on.
But it's OK. Why? Because that's our escape from the straight-laced job or the overbearing wife, and our last, great hiding place from the never-ending responsibilities that are heaped on us over the course of life.
Children, however, have the run of the country. Everything is about "the children" — some celebrity has a costume malfunction at the Super Bowl, and it's "What about the children!?" If an athlete gets arrested for some indiscretion, its always, "What does this tell the children!?"
Kids can go to any movie theater or restaurant, and other patrons are expected to put up with any kind of screaming fits or other baby issues they might have. And that's fine — this is the way it is.
But honestly, the bars? Have they no mercy or compassion for this last bastion of true adulthood? We who go to bars do not want to be surrounded by children and strollers and other reminders of either present or future responsibilities…we just want to have a beer after work or enjoy a Friday night.
And on top of that, what does it say about the fathers themselves, putting a little kid in harm's way at a bar because you "long for adult contact?"
Any place where alcohol is served en masse' is going to come with a certain degree of danger, and bars are known for being the place where you…well, get drunk. And when those people get drunk, they act in wholly different ways than they would otherwise.
Alcohol is involved in a good chunk of violent crimes — you don't often hear about the guy who drank too much Gatorade one night and decided to shoot his wife. Why put a little kid in the same spot where a lot of crimes start, and a good amount end?
The danger is not just from a lone drunken basket case, either. What happens if a guy has a couple beers and loses his balance and knocks the kid off the stool, falls on them, or even gets run into while he's standing? While these things can happen anywhere, things tend to end worse when booze is around, and it's the child that will pay the price.
The amount of fights I have seen in bars is also beyond count, and it doesn't matter what time of day you're there, because things happen. Is it worth it for a kid to be around that instead of just springing for a babysitter?
I don't have kids, but what I learned from my father about it is that when you do end up having them, they have to come first. You put their safety above everything else, and you don't do anything to jeopardize it.
I'd like to tell Mr. Gross that when he decided to have kids, he should have understood that his life wasn't going to be about what he wants anymore, but what his daughter needs — and what she doesn't need to be around is the kind of people like me who spend a lot of time at the local pub.
And if he wants some "adult contact"… join a book club.
http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/89085917_Defending_our_last_bastion.html
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