This weekend my father and brother attended a retreat at a monastery in rural Virginia. I must, again, assert that I am not kidding. When I asked them how it was, both said it was great, and that they didn’t really do much of anything except “contemplate life.” Okay.

Vinnie did say he had some spectacular discussions with an 82-year-old priest who would tell him a story (”I was brought up in Africa, and learned a lot about the culture…”) and then roughly three minutes later, would tell him the exact same story (”I was brought up in Africa…”). I got a big kick out of that.

However, my favorite thing about this retreat is the string of emails exchanged between my mother, who was at home, being normal, and my father, forwarded on to me. You’d think there’d be no emailing while with the monks, contemplating, right? Wrong. Dad’s got a Blackberry and nobody’s gonna take that away from him. Not Jesus, nobody.

From: Kathleen Rotondaro
To: Fred Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Just had chicken fajitas from Baja Fresh and am sitting here watching the news..

Do you think Vinnie would like to be a monk? Seriously, I’m sure it is very peaceful. Are you going to get up at 4 for Vespers?

From: Fred Rotondaro
To: Kathleen Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

It is 3:30.
He seems to like it.
I am reading in my room and I guess Vin is too.
I am of course frustrated because I can’t use my phone and find out how much money we made.
Vin says he will go to vespers or vigil or whatever
I could say I miss you and wish you were here but then one of us would be sleeping on the floor.
Brother Alfred of the Weeds

From: Kathleen Rotondaro
To: Fred Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Brother Alfred–I want to take some wine up with me tomorrow. Do you have any worldly guidance for me?

Love, your wife on the outside

From: Fred Rotondaro
To: Kathleen Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Re: wine. Not really hon. Some good whites in the cooler and reds in the rack under the paintings. Don’t take serpico red. That is Vinnie’s favorite. I think some cakebread is in the cooler.

B. Alfred

From: Kathleen Rotondaro
To: Fred Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Thank you, Brother Alfred. Am now up in the bedroom with the dog and with the door locked.

Love, the girl

From: Fred Rotondaro
To: Kathleen Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Love you dear. Be careful.
I am going to read some more and then go to sleep. I am probably the last one up.
I will call tomorrow when I go out for a walk.
B. Alfred

From: Kathleen Rotondaro
To: Fred Rotondaro
Sent: Fri Jan 27

Ok. Love you too.

From: Fred Rotondaro
To: Kathleen Rotondaro
Sent: Sat Jan 28

Good morning. Up and at em.
I read last night that the a.m. vigils were changed forty years ago from 2 a.m. to 4. Some monks thought this was indulgent.
So do I.
B. Alfred

Recently J has been wondering about some pretty heavy things, like, “What if Quidditch was real?” After years of declaring he had no interest in the Harry Potter books, he’s been devouring them with the vigor of a 10-year-old boy and asking as many questions (see above).

He took it to a new level when he disclosed to us that he was going to find a way to make Quidditch real, i.e. use motorized flying vehicles instead of broomsticks, etc. I told him I was sure some youngster was already cruising ahead on that one, and he told me, no, they’re not, because he’d looked it up on Google. No one’s making real Quidditch yet.

Here’s a list of the things J’s expressed interest in making on his own over the years:
walking sticks
soda
coasters
birdhouses
a lamp
a real live Quidditch game

He made the coasters. So I think we are well on our way.

Since I’ve turned 28 I’ve been thinking about my life’s accomplishments and getting somewhat worried. Before you even think about typing a cheery comment explaining how I’m “not old” hear me out (while we’re talking about things that I’m not, I’d also like to state that marriage has made me fat, and I had to get a size of pants BIGGER than I normally buy the other day, and yeah, it IS marriage because once I tried on my wedding dress and it fit I had nothing to strive for, plus eating popcorn nightly with your new husband is a great way to bond).

I don’t think I’m old, and what’s more, I don’t think that age has to have much to do with one’s accomplishments, but for whatever reason, being 28 has got me thinking about whether or not I’m working hard enough to achieve certain goals and perhaps more importantly, what those goals are.

Luckily, some higher power heard my self-centered mental ramblings and sent a sample CD of The Teaching Company’s “Great Courses” in the mail. I took it with me on my commute this morning, and upon listening to the classical music introduction, realized that these were the very same lectures my brother and father have been raving about. “Cara, you should listen to these philosophical lectures! The speakers are amazing!” or: “Cara, I’m a nerd! I like to take college level classes in my car!”

But I was instantly hooked. The first lecture, an Oxford professor on four philosophical views of “the good life,” brought to mind countless hours spent in ollege of Arts and Sciences classrooms at BU, slowly pounding out some kind of meaning in our texts - Hegel, Kant, Aristotle, of course.

The lecture touched on the many dimensions of a good life - an examined and satisfactory life - and in the end the professor came to a typical philosophical point: That there are many necessary components of such a life (you must live an active life, a selfless life, a contemplative life) and that these components may very from individual to individual.

Perhaps at 28 I can tie the youthful idealism I lost some of in the past few years (when I stopped thinking it was ok to discuss vague ideas like “moderation” at random, because, seriously, nobody wants to hear it unless you’re all splayed in the grass outside the student union on the first day of spring) with my practical goals and come up with some kind of timeline like this:

28: A magnificent turning point, a true awakening. Work at newspaper. Learn new skills. Kick brother and father’s ass at listening to philosophical lectures. Mostly, listen to mom, because who runs a successful company? Mom does.

29-40: Move on. Have thoughtful, curious, well-behaved children. Do great and amazing things. Work hard.

40: Open coffee shop in South Arundel County, MD.

Rest of life: We will see.

I just looked up Tori Amos online to see how badly beaten I’m going to get for writing the following, and I’m going to get beaten pretty badly. So let me start out by saying how awesome Tori Amos is. According to the internet she is the co-founder of RAINN, a sexual abuse support network, as well as expresses true survivorship in her songs, inspiring many women.

Point is, I know that song “Silent All These Years,” is about surviving sexual abuse (at least I thought so, but I just stumbled upon a guy with a Tori Amos webpage - that’s right, he’s got a Tori Amos webpage - that suggests the song is: “…basically wistful, a lament of a probably single mother with a self-indulgent and non-committal boyfriend and a generally unfulfilling life.” Whatever, guy. Hey, by the way, can I get arrested for that? Copying and pasting someone’s analysis of Tori Amos’s “Silent All These Years” into my blog?) but even though I know that, I really hate that song. The subject matter has nothing to do with why I hate it. I’m just not a fan of overdone dramatic music, the kind where you feel like you’ve got to be weeping a little when you hear it, maybe slowly petting a cat, wrapped in a blanket sitting by a window (except for Van Morrison and U2, who can do whatever the hell they want and it’s awesome). I mean, have you ever been driving, windows down, beautiful day, it’s the weekend and you are PUMPED, and then something like “Silent All These Years” comes on the radio? That, my friends, is an awful feeling.

But besides all that, there’s another reason I hate that song. I’ll tell you.

When I was in high school there were kids who did drama, all the plays and whatnot and many of them were good at it, and before you go yelling at me for making fun of them I was in the plays a couple of times too and those kids were awesome. Besides, they’re not really my target. The people I’m really talking about were the kids who didn’t really do drama - not seriously anyway - but who hung out with all the drama kids and wore flowy clothes and hung out in the student lounge all the time. The student lounge at our high school featured really dirty couches and floors and a couple vending machines. Well, the crux of this meandering story, in which you will discover that it’s actually OK that I’m making fun of some people and Tori Amos, at least a little, is that one day I walked into the student lounge to check my mailbox - see if I’d gotten any hot gossip from my buds in the form of carefully folded notes - and that song, “Silent All These Years,” was absolutely blasting from the stereo and the drama kids, wearing formless skirts and pants in black, and chains, naturally, were all draped out on the dirty couches and chairs, looking like someone had just died - like, I’m thinking maybe Robert Smith of The Cure or something - and I just stared, and I swear to you, to this day I have not seen such a flagrant display of unnecessary melodrama. I was no Queen of Cool or anything but come on. Don’t lie on the dirty couches and act all tortured when “Silent All These Years” is playing. I mean, Jesus, it was private school.

Saw a commercial for this and got excited about trying it out. Really got psyched. Bad. Really pathetic. Bad. Bad.

Went to a party and talked to friends about how I can’t wait to have children some day. Fast forward 1 hour: dancing, belting out “Sweet Home Alabama” in living room. Jumping up and down.

Learned about ways to help prevent pollution in our streams, lakes and rivers (like this) at an informational session Saturday in a cozy home with a very gracious hostess. Drank coffee while it rained outside. Continued to think more about how we treat our environment, our people and animals. Been thinking about things like this.

Tried to understand football for the 47,652nd time. Failed.

Marveled at the lyrics to “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas (”What u gonna do with all that ass?/All that ass inside them jeans?”). Does this mean I am getting older? Because I really couldn’t believe this either.

Drank wine with old friends.

Did none of the things on my to do list.

Dreaded Monday.

From: Fred Rotondaro
To: Cara
Date: Jan 21, 2006 5:07 PM
Subject: Objectionable content in you blog

I am shocked that you would make fun of my very fashionable multi-colored socks. I got them in maine and I love them.
And as I read on, I realizwd you were making fun of J–something about the garbage and you called him, indirectly, a nerdy birder.
Living in the south has certainly not improved your sunny disposition.
Your sainted father

his right sock
Originally uploaded by caramaria.

This is one of a pair of socks, CLOWN SOCKS, which my father bought in Maine which he HONEST TO GOD was wearing when he and my mother arrived at our house last night. They were just settling in on the couch when I heard J say, excitedly, “Check it out! Look!” And I looked and there they were. My father happily explained that each was different. While the left one featured yellow stripes the right featured pink. Honestly. This is a real photograph I took with a digital camera in our living room.

C.M.M. “So, I took the trash out.”

J.A.M. “SHIT! Cara, I was gonna do that. I wrote myself a to-do list and that was on it and everything! I don’t know what more I could have done!”

C.M.M. “You could have taken the trash out.”

One of the best things that can happen to a person in my opinion is for the person to be sitting at a bar having a Guinness with a friend, and for that person to learn, through the powerful force of random bouts of conversation with strangers, that the nice guy sitting next to her is the sommelier of a well-known hotel and restaurant in town. After she thinks about vocabulary for a few minutes and realizes that, indeed, sommelier=individual who knows and inordinate amount about wine=new best friend, they chat for a while.

This weekend we took up my new friend’s offer, which was to visit the Sienna Hotel in Chapel Hill where he’ll only be working for a few more days (before he moves on to wine distribution with friends) and do a tasting.

What made this visit even better was that J and I had visitors in town: Kristen, who went to high school and college with J, and who is 100 percent awesome for many reasons (one of which is that she didn’t cry her way through the book The Time Traveler’s Wife, like me, even though all our friends told us we would. We thought, “God, what’s wrong with us?” and then realized, NOTHING. First of all, people can’t time travel. There’s a lot of crap going on that actually happens, like politics and celebrity gossip) and my brother, Vinnie. The four of us entered the hotel a little nervous that four raucous young movers and shakers like ourselves might be looked upon with disdain in such a posh establishment, but quite the opposite was true. First of all, once my sommelier friend Damon entered the scene and warmly welcomed us, we were drinking about five glasses a piece of better stuff than the swanky looking older gentlemen sitting in the room. Cabernet Sauvignon? Ok. But we’re going to sit here and enjoy the best bottle from the best producer in Northern Italy. So there.

For another thing, once you’ve had, you know, about seven glasses of wine you start to feel very comfortable in your surroundings. Once we we’d asked a full array of appropriately absurd questions (”Could you explain ‘full-bodied’ to me?” “Do you get to drink this stuff every day?”) we started picking up the lingo. We talked about varietals and our palates and detected hints of all sorts of things you’d never think you’d find in there. Cocoa. Cinnamon. Raisins.

It was an amazing experience, quite frankly, and I’m so thankful to my new friend for setting us up. But the weekend wasn’t all nice hotel bars and checking whose teeth got reddest fastest, which is classy. We took in some local culture with an exhibit at the Ackland Art Museum. And Sunday we rejuvenated our souls with a brisk walk at Jordan Lake where J, who by all means knows way more about birds than he used to, packed a bag full of gear, including binoculars, birding guides and the “Flydentifier” he got for Christmas. For those of you who are non-birding-non-nerds, that’s a little contraption that plays all sorts of bird sounds. Sadly, those recorded calls were the most prevalent that day as the lake was pretty deplete of wildlife except for the dogs, who proceeded with roam the beaches and woods with zealous insanity.

It was a cold day, unlike the unusual warm weather we’ve been experiencing recently, and when we got home we made cappucinos. It is this sort of weekend that makes the nights lying under a quilt watching television seem less lazy and more appropriate recharging. Especially when the Golden Globes are on and for the first time in a year we’ve got a working remote.