Summer Television

Back when TV was free:

Every summer my husband spends interminable lengths of time watching the list of television programs crawl over the screen. “There’s nothing on,” he says of our hundreds of available channels. “I’m thinking of canceling our cable.”

“Remember when television was free?” I ask, recalling the days when the antenna mounted our roof pulled in the three major networks and one weak signal for PBS.

“We could go back to that,” he says.

I wonder. Our neighbor, who has no cable and an older model television, set herself up for the big changeover from analog to digital by installing a converter box. She received five good, clear, channels in those few minutes before her screen went blank. A technician came out today. He pushed a button and told her all was well with the equipment, but that the local stations were having trouble with their signals. Thousands of people, including my neighbor, are apparently surviving quite nicely without television. Of course there has been an upswing in local crime lately.

And when I think back to the “free” television of my youth, I can also remember rabbit ears festooned with aluminum foil. My father running outside to turn the antenna. This way for Youngstown stations. The opposite way for Pittsburgh stations. My mother lamenting that we would once again have to call out Mr. Quinn, a humorless man who took off the back of the television set to fiddle with those mysterious glowing tubes. My father resorting to a resounding smack of his palm against the cabinet when the vertical/horizontal buttons failed us.

“That’s all you pay for cable?” our daughter asks her father. “That’s a bargain.”

Oh.

Somewhere between free television and mega-cable channels, there must be a happy medium, but we have yet to discover it. Besides, how can my husband possibly find contentment with only five channels to surf?

The Merriest Month

West Cork Cows

When I was a young mother, my friends and I would meet once a month to talk about raising children or to hear a speaker or take a class: our one night escape from the routine of mothering. But we never met in May. Besides our customary family activities on Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, we were overcome by a wave of dance recitals, band and choral concerts, school field trips, and soccer and soft ball games that required plenty of practice sessions. May was the busiest month of the year.

Today, when I look at the calendar and realize it is June, I appreciate that May is still the busiest month for Liz, Tracy, and me. In between trips to New York and Cape Cod, Liz is readying her latest book of poetry for its publication deadline. It may be a labor of love, but it is time-consuming. Tracy, freshly returned from Italy and her encounter with the toad, also went to Ithaca, New York, for Cornell’s graduation ceremonies in May. She is working on short stories.

As for me, I spent most of the month in Ireland observing how the Irish are similarly frenetic during this time of the year. The farmers are watching the skies and worrying about having their fields cut and their cows out to pasture. Parents are carting their children to Gaelic football practices and matches, preparing them for first communions, and cheering them through the school year’s final exams. There are also weddings and commencement parties aplenty. Everyone is looking forward to the summer holidays.

Tracy, Liz, and I are also looking forward to our summer holidays, especially our July week in Findley Lake, New York. In addition to teaching our week-long writing workshop and eagerly greeting our writer friends and meeting new ones, the three of us will have a chance to catch up on stories from each other’s lives. The stories too long to put into a single email, stories that meander and require postscripts and speculation, stories that will make us laugh from the joy of being together again.

And we will continue to have stories to share with you as our summer rolls on.