So there was a story on Thursday that Andy Kaufman had faked his death and was alive and well in hiding with a wife and child.  The faked-his-death idea has been around forever, but a 24-year-old woman stepped forward at the Andy Kaufman Awards this week to present herself as Andy’s daughter.

I didn’t really know what to believe when I read it in the morning.  I was trying to imagine how I would feel if my grandfather popped out of the woodwork this week and told me that he was alive and well, living under an assumed name.  I mean, on one hand, I would get to see my grandfather again.  But on the other; to know that I mourned and missed him — and he put me through that?  I don’t know if I could forgive him; if it wouldn’t irreparably change our relationship.  I’d get him back without really getting him back.

Of course, a few hours later, the identity of the girl was unearthed.  She’s an actress, and Andy’s brother recruited her for the role of Andy’s daughter.  It was just a continuation of the hoax.

Which just felt like a big drag, a letdown, a quieting.

How would you feel if you discovered someone faked their death?  Would you be thrilled to have them back in this world or want nothing to do with them after the emotional turmoil?

*******

The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 62 on the list and about a month to go until the hard deadline (December 15!).  So, are you on the list yet?  Extra love to people who submit early!

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Remembrance Walks and Somethingness and Sorrow” (By the Brooke)
• “Living in the Moment” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a great and thoughtful response to that longstanding statement that if you don’t have children, you don’t understand.  I’ll admit that I cracked up at the beginning when she said, “I wish I had a dollar every time I heard a parent say ‘no-one tells you how hard it is.’ …  Yes, they do.  (I want to shout).  Everyone tells you how hard it is.”  But she really gets to the heart of why people ask for empathy; and also, how we have a tendency to sometimes push it away before we can receive it.

An Unwanted Path has a wonderful (and admittedly familiar) post about being pregnant after loss.  She writes, “The day of an ultrasound? Oh, I’m okay. Peachy. Everything looks okay today.  It’s the tomorrow you have to look out for.”  I certainly related to it.  I bet a lot of other people will too.

Where Love and Chaos Reign is breaking up with infertility.  The post is tongue-in-cheek, but there is a lot of emotion contained in the kidding.  She writes, “It’s weird to think about what things look like without this relationship in my life. It’s been holding me back for a long time.”  But on December 12th, she is walking away from 10 years of family building.  It’s a wonderful post.

Lastly, Bio Girl has a beautiful post about her late sister’s wedding gift, now hanging in their window.  She is decluttering her house, and she pauses on her sister’s sign which her husband unknowingly placed in the kitchen.  You’ll need to click over to read what the plaque says.  And yes, you will become weepy thinking about the words from seven years ago to today.

The roundup to the Roundup: How would you feel if someone you knew faked their death?  The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 8th and November 15th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

…part deux of this post.

The next morning, it occurred to me that I had just handed my kids over a hundred dollars.  Yes, it was all in change, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t money.  I could have taken those coin to the bank and changed them into cash, and put it in my own bank account.  I will admit that I had a little bit of giver’s remorse.  But I also knew that the money had blown their minds, and that was sort of cool too.  Was it worth a hundred dollars?  Probably not.  But I couldn’t unring the bell so… onward!

We went to the bank with the extremely heavy Tupperware container where we encountered a second set of twins who were already using the coin machine to convert the money that THEY found.  It felt like a great comedy set-up: two sets of twins with containers of coins too heavy for their stick arms needing the same coin machine.

When it was our turn, I gently shook in each bag of coins, moving from quarters to nickels to dimes and finally pennies.  In the end, the machine spat out a ticket telling us that there were over $120 in coins in the container, and we brought that money to a banker to set up their own savings account.

They informed the banker that they were unexpectedly very rich while he typed in their information.  I don’t think he fully appreciated just how unexpectedly and fabulously rich they were.  He did not properly respond to the news that they had found all these coins due to a treasure map, so he had to listen to the story until he gave them an enthusiastic enough “wow!”

The Wolvog informed me the night before that he was counting this money as the first capital he would amass to open his own computer company.  I was proud that we had made the first contribution.  But while we were at the bank, dollar signs started dancing in his eyes and he started listing other items he wanted to purchase with the money until we dragged them back to our hopes when we exited the bank clutching their new bank book.

Josh and I had used our own savings accounts for experiences: Josh went on a trip to China during high school, and I went on a trip to Israel.  We had drained our savings accounts paying for said trips, and it was money well spent because we still had the memories of those trips years later.  Any tangible item would most likely be gone by this point.  We loved the idea that they would save up for something that they couldn’t imagine at this point in time: a trip or a class or — yes — a computer company.  Something where the money spent would last long beyond the actual purchase.

Perhaps not as fun, but they seemed happy enough to get in the car, still talking about how they had so much money now that they were Hundredaires.  And how cool it was to be rich.  I hope they keep that value of money; that sense that a hundred dollars is nothing to sneeze at, a penny saved is a penny earned.  Oh and that being a Hundredaire is the most incredible thing to ever happen on this earth.

I blame the falafel baby for how the twins ended up becoming Hundredaires.

The ChickieNob suggested that we get lunch at a falafel stand; the sort of place that makes you moan with eat bite, “this is soooooooooo good.”  Which meant that I overate, still taking bites when I was full, until I pushed back the chair and announced that I had a little falafel baby in my belly.  It felt and looked as if I had the first questions of a pregnancy bump.

We talked about the falafel baby, how it is the easiest baby: one that doesn’t kick or make me ill and will not require a very painful delivery.  The falafel baby will not wake me up in the night or need a bottle or want a diaper change.  We were laughing, but as we were talking about it, I got sadder and sadder, thinking about how that’s all I will have in my body: a baby made out of ground up chickpeas.

*******

Days earlier, my sister and I had been talking about a pin I once owned that had a moving part — a Halloween mask — that swung on and off the metal girl’s face.  I tore apart my room, trying to find the pin, and in doing so, ripped through a bag of spare change.  I swept all the loose coins out of my drawers and placed them in an enormous Tupperware container, the kind that could hold a pound of cooked pasta.  I filled it to the top.  And then I couldn’t move it.  I shoved it out of the way and thought that I’d deal with it later.

*******

We finished errands after our falafel lunch, and the twins kept bringing up the garbanzo bean baby.  To get them off the topic of the non-baby in my stomach, as we crossed the parking lot, I asked them if they wanted to buy a treasure map from me for $5 each.  If it led to treasure, they could split it.  If it led nowhere, they were out $5 each.  This — by the way — was not a well-thought-out plan.  It was unfolding as I spoke it.

The ChickieNob, always up for an adventure, immediately said yes.  But her brother was more cautious.  He really struggled with the offer, trying to make a few counter offers in return: lower the price, refund the money, show them the treasure map prior to purchase.  Nope, I said.  Either you trust me that it’s a good treasure map, or you don’t.

My father had made a similar deal with me when I was their age.  Give him our allowance and my sister and I could have the contents of the coffee can.  We weren’t allowed to pick up the can or look in the can, it was just a leap of faith.  Did we trust him or not?  My sister took the bet immediately.  I really agonized over the decision until it was time to give him a final answer, but finally handed over my allowance so I wouldn’t be left out.

When we went in the house, the kids went to count their money in order to make their decision, lingering by my room to get a read on the situation.  “Mum has her tricksie glint,” the ChickieNob told him, agreeing that I could be teasing them, “but I’m going to do it.”

I told them that I needed to change, and then I locked my door and quickly scrawled out the WORST treasure map of all time.  Unfortunately, I only had one piece of paper, so even though the map was unintelligible, I had to spruce it up since I couldn’t start over.  I wrote Ye Ancient Treasure Map across the top, and scrawled half of a “poem” in the corner: this is a place to rest your head, the treasure lies underneath the b–.  I left the final word as a squiggle to extend the treasure hunt by a good five seconds and kicked the Tupperware container under my bed.

With a great deal of trepidation, they gave me $10 and took my paper.  Their faces fell when they sank down onto the floor to look at it together.  “This isn’t an ancient treasure map!” the Wolvog accused.

“It is!  Look, it says so at the top.  Ye Ancient Treasure Map.”

“You wrote that!  You wrote this just now in your room.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I sniffed.  “It’s super old.  Are you going to look for the treasure or not?”

“I thought we were going to go into the mountains.  With shovels,” the ChickieNob admitted.

“Well, are you going to read that very difficult poetic clue and find this treasure or not?”

The Wolvog read it aloud, filling in the missing word, and then raced to look under the various beds until he found the Tupperware box.  “Is this it?  I have never seen so much money in my life.”

“So you gave me $5 and you probably made about $100.  You just instantly became a Hundredaire.”

Which is like a millionaire.  Except you only have $100.

They were dumbfounded by their luck, that they had just found about $200 — mostly in quarters and dimes.  We separated the non-US money from the rest (there were a large chunk of Italian lire, inexplicable Barbados currency, and of course Canadian coins) and then made separate bags of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

The rest of the day, they kept talking about how they became Hundredaires; completely amazed by their luck (and, in turn, forgetting completely to ask about the falafel baby until the ChickieNo returned to the topic at bedtime).  I reminded them of two things, the first something my father told me when he made me that offer that banked my sister and I $88 each, and a second thing that I hope they always remember when they are having a terrible day.

Like my father, I will never trick them; at least, not a cruel way.  I may tease them incessantly and have a tricksie glint in my eye, but where it counts, I will never lie or do anything other than have their back.

And secondly, no matter how bleak things look, there is always the possibility that something is going to come along that you cannot predict and change your luck for the better.  When they woke up that morning, they had no clue they were going to be spending the night looking at a 16 ounce container of glittery coins.

…to be continued.

I’m still sick-ish, so you get a bunch of photos from last week.

Official White House Photo

This is from the reception I went to at the Vice President’s residence earlier in the week.  Why yes, my eyes are closed.  You know what I say: every second is a good time to blink.

On Friday, I took my sick self to the White House to cover a very cool event matching high schoolers with people from Hollywood.  I wrote about the film symposium over on BlogHer.  The White House uploaded the First Lady’s speech on YouTube:

And here are some photos I took from the event.  The guests for the panel discussion were David Frankel (director: The Devil Wears Prada), Ryan Coogler (director: Fruitvale Station), Harvey Weinstein (producer: uh… of everything), Whoopi Goldberg (actress), Blake Lively (actress), Naomie Harris (actress), Bruce Cohen (producer: Silver Linings Playbook).  Todd Wagner (producer: Akeelah and the Bee) joined the panel midway through.  Gayle King moderated the discussion.

Weinstein, Goldberg, Lively, and Harris behind the First Lady.

King addressing Goldberg, Lively, Harris, and Cohen.

Lively and Harris.

The whole panel, with Wagner taking Goldberg’s seat.

Not shown: The enormous quantities of used tissues filling my rubbish bin.  My raw, red nose.  The black three-inch high heels I bequeathed to the ChickieNob for dress-up in a moment of poor judgment.  Did I mention my raw, red nose?  The empty bottle of Reed’s Spiced Apple Cider that I didn’t think I’d like at all but was insanely good.  And my very raw, very red nose from all the aforementioned tissues.

I want to give you ample warning that right now may not be the time that you want to read Ariel Levy’s piece in the New Yorker about giving birth to her son at 19 weeks.  It is hard to read.  It could be impossible to read if you are in a certain frame of mind.

But that is the thing about written pieces; they can wait for you.  They can wait until you are ready to read them.

Josh told me that he thought maybe I shouldn’t read the piece tonight.  I was in such a good mood, or a neutral mood.  He didn’t want a weepy mess before bedtime.  But I read it anyway.  Because I thought it was important to read it.

She writes of her loss,

But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody’s mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. Sometimes, when I think about it, I still feel a dark hurt from some primal part of myself, and if I’m alone in my apartment when this happens I will hear myself making sounds that I never made before I went to Mongolia. I realize that I have turned back into a wounded witch, wailing in the forest, undone.

I’m not a mess.  Maybe I would have been if I had read this without warning.

Instead, I’m just quiet.