November 30

Her nickname was Princess. Can you believe that? It's like naming a Rottweiler "Daisy".

Well, you might believe it if you don't know her, but I know her. Better than anyone, frankly, because I'm the only person who sees the real Lucy. Seriously. Around mom and dad, she's the achiever, constantly polishing her image like a politician who's been running an eternal campaign for the top spot on the pecking order; around her teachers, she was the ass-kissing valedictorian who raises her hand and passes in her assignments early; around our aunts and uncles, she talks like she's in a job interview; around her friends, she's obsessed with appearances and puts tremendous effort into acting like she's not trying at all.

Around me? Different story. She'll punch me, but never around our parents; she'll listen to cheesy music around me, but not around her friends; she'll cuss around me, but never in front of her teachers. I get unfiltered Lucy. What amazes me is how well she disguises herself to others — though frankly, I sometimes think people don't bother to try to see past their preconceptions of her to examine who she really is. Ever heard that Irish proverb, "Convince the world you awaken at dawn and you can sleep until noon"? That's her modus operandi — she's convinced everyone she's an angel, and she's careful not to give anyone a reason to doubt it. But she's no angel.

I remember even as a kid, she was a terror. It was even captured on film, a flagrant attack at the family reunion. She demanded the tricycle, and when I refused, she grabbed the handle bars and dumped me on the ground. It was only when she realized how public her action had been that she backed off from trying to get the tricycle. I remember my mom looking at the pictures when we got them back and saying "Oh look, Lucy is helping Marcus after he crashed his bike." If I had been older, I would have had the language to say, "Help me? Look at the body language, mom! She's not my savior, she's the executioner. She's even fondling the trike handle covetously." Of course, if I had been able to articulate it then, my mother would have said, "Oh honey, you always try to make yourself the victim. Lucy is perfect, and you should be ashamed at trying to taint her sweetness." Okay, maybe she wouldn't have said that exactly, but that would have been the gist of it.

My friends have offered theories on why she acts the way she does. Perhaps she's still mad that she didn't get to be an only child - a theory based on the fact that she often acts like she IS an only child. Maybe there's something about me that simply gets on her nerves, just like my friends get with their siblings. But if you ask me, she simply can't keep up the front at all times, and I've always been her only pressure relief valve.

It's hard to maintain a facade. It's like acting on stage, and the play never ends, never has an intermission. Lucy isn't the only person who does it — we all do that. When I played football in my sophomore year, I pretended I was tougher than I really am; when I'm in class, I pretend I'm more studious than I really am. It's the "when in Rome" thing — there are expectations that come with everything, and we all do our best to live up to those expectations. We edit ourselves to suit the circumstances. I always tried to keep people's expectations of me fairly low, which gave me some flexibility; Lucy set up high expectations, and labored every day to live up to them. Or if necessary, to create the illusion that she was living up to them.

She can still be so mean spirited, so selfish, but the fact is, I love her. She pisses me off, but I'm proud to be the one person she can truly relax with. We had a lot of friction as kids, and still do, but I have just as many memories of us sitting on our respective ends of the couch watching Bill Murray and Chevy Chase movies and laughing ourselves to tears. They weren't even good movies, but it was like they were our movies, so maybe we appreciated them more than most people did. She would never say so, but I knew that she appreciated the break from having to be perfect. The funny part to me was she was only perfect when she was with me. Noogies and flipped fingers and all.

But as much as I love her, if I ever see her on a tricycle, she's going down.

November 29

"I'm going to win you something. I don't know what yet, but we're not leaving until I do."

Henry and I and my brothers were walking through the chain link gates of the State Fair, senses struggling to adjust to the growing clatter of mechanical machinery and screaming voices and heavy metal soundtracks on the various rides, the unmistakable stench of fried food and something cloyingly sweet like a Slurpee truck had crashed into the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the onslaught of flashing fluorescent glare. I heard what he said, but it never occurred to me that he was serious.

The first booth was the bottle toss, where you try to land thick wooden rings the size of small onion rings onto the necks of Coke bottle. It's a suckers game, and there's Henry handing over a dollar to a guy whose movie credit might read "Serial Killer Historian." The brief series of clanks as each wooden ring bounced away from a win and settled in between adjacent bottles was a pleasingly piercing sonic, but Henry could have played blindfolded and done equally well.

Next came the darts, and before I can advise that we pass it by, Henry is paying the mostly-bearded man and negotiating for extra throws - which he gets through the magic of paying extra. He takes the darts, turns to me and says, "Go ahead and tell me what you want, I'll win it for you."

Scanning the "prizes", the whiff of overworked children was unavoidable. Neon green ponies wearing sombreros, shag-covered stuffed basketballs and soccer balls that resembled a roundish shape, a polka-dot parrot with an eye patch, some stuffed creature that might have been an alien or a mutant Smurf - it was a wall full of consolation prizes, and I didn't want any of it. Everybody knows how carnie games work: the cost of every prize is lower than the price to play, so even if you win, the carnie makes money. You're basically just buying a prize, and if you're just going to buy me something, maybe buy me something nicer than a plastic football with the texture of a sex toy or a banana with a Rasta hat.

"What's your pick?" he asked eagerly, which made me feel like a teenager whose date had no idea how to impress except to perform whatever not-quite-Herculean tasks were available. But we've been together for three years - Henry is not going to climb the ladder of my admiration by handing cash to someone in a faded AC/DC tee.

"Hon, I appreciate the sentiment, but do you see anything on this wall that would look good in our apartment?" He gave the prizes a quick assessment and seemed deflated, as if I had misunderstood his intentions. The prize wasn't the point, his disappointed eyes seemed to say, it was the winning that mattered. "Yeah, good point," he said with the same tone children use when they're told a "why" that clashes directly with their want. I felt like I'd disappointed him, and all I had done was try to keep any royal blue satin monkeys out of my home.

"Allright, you've already got the darts, win me the.....um....the orange teddy bear."

"That orange one? I think that's a frog."

Was it? Good lord, how long was I going to have to endure looking at this ungodly hybrid of beasts before I could sneak it into the Goodwill box? I confirmed my order.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Not one balloon popped. I'd have kissed him if I thought he was throwing the match, but he was clearly frustrated at his performance. As he reached for his wallet, I stopped him. "Henry, how about you win me a beer instead?"

"That's not winning, that's just buying."

He was starting to get the hang of the State Fair.

November 28

It was around 7:30 when we first saw them. They were sitting in the window at Stumptown when we were outside deciding if we should get breakfast instead of coffee. Don't tell Janine, but it was the woman who kept drawing my attention - they could have used her as the cover photo for a book on sexy short hair. Janine looked to see what I was looking at, so I pretended I had been looking at the man. "If Dick Van Dyke and Jim Carrey had a baby, it would look like this guy," I said. It wasn't exactly true, but it was a plausible cover story because he had a very malleable face — every change in expression caused a massive shift of his features. It was mesmerizing to watch, but we both glanced away because we figured we looked like creeps staring at him through the glass.

We saw them again at Powell's later that morning. She was looking at cookbooks in the Orange Room and he was shuttling items from the gift section in the corner where they sell notebooks and handmade soap and commemorative famous-author card games. She gave each of his offerings a glance and a nod, gave the soap a quick sniff, and generally seemed like a distracted parent who just wanted her kid to shush for a few minutes so she could look at the books. I left them with the cookbooks and joined Janine in the knitting section one aisle over. "I saw the Dick Carrey guy from Stumptown over in the cooking section."

"Yeah, me too," she replied. "Is he buying all that soap?" I guessed that he wasn't.

By early afternoon we were ready for beers. We caught the streetcar to a place called Bridgeport in a section the hotel concierge called NoLove — "That's for North of Lovejoy Street. Most people lump it with the Pearl District, but they're not the same." We got out at the restaurant, took our seats in the dining room, and ordered our first round. As we waited, we glanced around the place and laughed to see the same couple sitting at a table at the other end of the restaurant. The odds seemed impossible, so Janine and I walked over to say hello. Their smiles as we approached made it clear they remembered us from at least one previous encounter.

"I'm beginning to think we're using the same travel agent," the short-haired woman said as she offered her hand. Kendra and Kyle from Asheville, South Carolina. We introduced ourselves and made small talk about the pleasures of Portland and the odds of our overlap. "Incalculable!" the Dick Carrey guy said, his eyebrows contorting as if they were suddenly carrying electrical current. A minute later their food arrived, so we wished them well, made a couple of "see you soon" jokes, and returned to our seats to find our beers waiting us. Very good beers. The second round was even better. Kendra and Kyle waved on their way out, and Janine and I resumed drinking and scouring the Portland guide book.

We finished our beers and decided to take a taxi to page 56, Forest Park, supposedly more than six times larger than Central Park. In the cab ride over, Janine complained that we'd been in Portland all day and hadn't taken a single picture. I decided to be a wise ass, so the moment we got out of the cab, I started snapping photos of anything and everything — the park entrance sign, the trail rules, the trees. I wasn't even bothering to lower the view finder away from my eye, so I was surprised when I turned to take another useless picture and saw a man waving at the camera. No, waving at me. I let out an involuntary cackle as Janine said, "You've got to be kidding me!"

As they walked over, Kyle said, "Look, this is funny and all, but if I see you in our hotel room tonight, I'm going to be a little freaked out."

"But wait," Janine joked as she took a slip of paper from her purse, "I think your hotel room is on our itinerary."

That was the last we saw of them. We still keep the picture of them on our refrigerator. Last week some friends joined us for dinner and one of them asked who it was in the picture. "Oh, just some stalkers we met in Oregon." Without looking away, he said, "Damn, as stalkers go, you could do worse." A moment later he remarked, "You know who this guy looks like?" Before I could say yes, he said, "Bowzer, that dude from Sha Na Na."

Damn, Bowser would have been a much better cover story.

November 27

I'm standing in the front yard stacking and restacking the rocks that mom is using to build a flower garden around the front lawn lamp post. Rupert is laying near us, twitching his ears each time a rock lands in the little pile. Mom is humming another song I don't know as I look up the street and see a sliver of green appear like a mirage at the top of Sycamore street. Rupert is suddenly on his feet, ears on alert and tail wagging as the green strip grows larger and I realize it's dad's Buick coming up over the hill. I tell mom, who says "stand back from the driveway" without looking up from the flats of mums she's burying at the base of the pole. I bounce with excitement as he flashes his headlights at me from a few houses away. When he pulls into the driveway, Rupert and I rush to be the first to greet him. The door of the car is cold. Dad smells of cologne. I am three years old.

That's my earliest memory of life on Sycamore Street, and the way dad's car seemed to rise up from the street itself left a lasting impression. Even later when I understood the physics behind "driving over a hill", I always felt there was a bit of magic to the westbound end of Sycamore. Just as dad's car seemed to materialize from the street itself, I watched so many wonderful things appear there: hockey sticks jutting into the air moments before the bobbing knit hats of my friends who came every morning of Christmas break to play pick-up hockey in the flooded construction lot over on Maple Street; the ice cream truck whose annoying glockenspiel jingle announced itself long before it appeared over the crest of the road; Adele's bumble-bee helmet when she rode her Vespa over for study sessions that eventually evolved into "study sessions" once we discovered that kissing is much more enjoyable than algebra; Jimmy's little blue Honda loaded with friends who were en route to whatever party was rumored to be happening that night; the mail truck that brought the acceptance letter from USC (the only school I'd applied to) on the same day that Adele received hers.

That little rise of road was the horizon of my life for 18 years. From our front porch I could see what was coming before it got there, feeling anticipation or trepidation depending on what was approaching. I don't have that luxury anymore. These days I sit in my dorm room disconnected from the world, always caught unawares when someone knocks on the door: Are they complaining about the music? Did Adele get out of class early? Did the campus police smell the weed? Is it the douche in 212 trying to mooch weed? I never see what's coming anymore, so every knock on the door makes me paranoid — especially when I'm smoking weed.

That's why I asked Mom for the picture. "I don't understand what you want you want a picture of," she said. "A picture of the street? What part of the street?" I finally simplified the request: "Stand in the middle of the road, turn toward the D'Antoni's house, put the street in the center of the viewfinder and click." The next day I got the picture in my email — it was as satisfying as seeing Adele making silly faces through the dorm room peep hole. I printed the picture as large as I could with our little printer and taped it to the back of the dorm door.

When my roommate got home that afternoon, he sat down to pack the bong and eyed the picture for awhile, finally asking what it was all about. "It helps me see what's coming," I said. After a few quiet seconds he said, "Ummm, okay. I don't see how, but I'll take your word for it."

I knew the science wasn't sound, but this wasn't an equation with a right answer. The things that matter most to us rarely are.

November 26

There's a thing we called the "emotional last bite." The concept is pretty simple: Imagine you're splitting a slice of cake with another person, alternating bites, trying to stay at an even pace so that no one eats an unfair share. The theoretical last bite is the final forkful of cake and frosting, which is usually split ceremoniously, as it's the pinnacle of rudeness to take the last bite as if it simply belonged to you. Even if the other person has eaten more, civilized people will discuss that theoretical last bite to make sure there is peace and accord in the post-cake-eating world.

The emotional last bite is different. It's the savored bite, the bite that will leave the flavor lingering on the tongue, the bite that contains the satisfying essence of what you're eating. It has nothing to do with quantity, because quantity and contentedness aren't as related as our super-size-value-meal culture would have you believe. The emotional last bite captures the experience of your enjoyment. It may be only your third forkful of cake, but at that moment, three is enough; the concert may still be going on, but you heard the songs you wanted to hear. In other words, you got what you wanted from the price of admission, and anything else is superfluous.

Which is why we called our trip up the Pacific Northwest coast the "Emotional Last Bite Tour." From John and Sara's house in Reedsport with fresh oysters cooked in their shells on the fire pit, to our rainy camping attempt on Orcas Island where we sat in the car playing rummy for three hours before giving up on tenting and checking in at the overpriced bed and breakfast we swore we'd never pay for. In between, we stopped at every one of our favorite spots along the way — breakfast at the Otis Café, beer at the Pelican, ice cream at the Tillamook factory, dinner at Moe's, beers at Fort George in Astoria - pretty much carbs and alcohol and scenic vistas for six days and 600 miles.

It's odd to say, but the laughter was the hardest part. She had every alibi for adopting a black sense of humor, and she had every capability to hone it splendidly. It was clear she found catharsis in laughing about it, refusing to respect that disease that was showing no respect for her, yet somehow, hearing "I might be dead soon" would have be less wrenching than, "Let's put it on my credit card. The bill doesn't come until next month, so that means it's free!"

I wanted her to stop making a joke of things, but I never said so. You don't tell someone how to live what might be the last few days of their life — and the truth is, she was pretty damn funny about it. We laughed ourselves to tears many times, and I loved every moment, but when the laughter would finally subside, she would absent-mindedly scrape morsels from the plate or just stare out at the enormous sea and say, "I'm going to miss this."

She wasn't saying it to me. She seemed to be cataloging it all in her head, trying to pinpoint the sensations before storing them away. Every memory that was revived by an old haunt, every nostalgic twinge conjured by her nose or her taste buds were all heavy with complexity. That's why she made dark jokes, and why I let her. It's rare for anyone to know they're enjoying something for the last time. Even if you move away, you know you could come back if you wanted to, you could plan it into your next vacation trip. It's something else all together to bite into your favorite cinnamon rolls with the knowledge that it could be your last cinnamon roll ever.

We went through the week knowing that everything we did might be the last time we did it, or at least that she did it. But we didn't talk about it that much. It felt macabre to call attention to that particular elephant in the room, so last bowls of chowder weren't commemorated as such; last cheeseburgers were consumed without noted significance. We both knew, so it didn't need to be said. The picture of us I have on the mantle, snapped outside the little coffeehouse on Orcas, that wasn't taken as if it would be our last photo together. Though as it turned out, that's exactly what it was.

Almost every part of the trip was captured in the tiny wires of our tiny little devices — yet the moment that lingers most happened without a camera flash. We were standing on the bow of a Washington State ferry on our way back to Seattle, tasting the salt in the air, listening to the massive churn of the engines below us and the cawing of seagulls hovering by the tourists on the deck above. We were staring ahead at the skyline of the city when I glanced over and saw that she was crying. I wrapped my arm around her as she said, "I'm kinda scared it isn't going to go well." We'd had six days of talking about the power of positive thinking, the need for positive thinking, but it didn't feel like the time for platitudes or a pep talk, so I pulled her close and said, "But I sure hope it does."

It didn't. It was an experimental surgery, and she knew that the odds were against her. But she figured it was a gamble either way, and gambling on the surgery was at least betting on something hopeful. She lost the bet. We all lost the bet. And even when you know the odds are against you, it sucks every bit as much to lose.

It was the day after the surgery that I got the postcard. The front was the Astoria-Megler bridge, a colossus of steel over the mouth of the Columbia which we both wished we could see from our homes. Now I could. On the back, her simple, handwritten note: "That was a great last bite! I love you."

Theoretically, yes it was. But emotionally? I'm left wanting more.

November 25

When I was growing up, the ice cream flavor "cake batter" didn't exist. In those days, the only way to experience that delicious flavor was to sample some actual cake batter — and if you grew up in my house, you kept your grimy little hands out of the batter bowl. If you want a taste, mom would say, you can have one of the beaters when I'm done.

The beaters were a big deal. When we knew mom was baking a cake, we would strategically position ourselves so that we were ready to pounce the moment the Sunbeam stopped running. When the clatter of the machine stopped, no more than a minute would pass before the call would come: "Who wants the beaters?"

The batter on the beaters had the sweetness of forbidden fruit, a taboo momentarily condoned. Licking the beaters was like a sneak preview of the coming attraction, whether it was the rich sweetness of yellow cake, the pudding-like taste of chocolate cake batter, and the occasional holy grail, the beater laden with a thicker layer of frosting.

We became masters of extracting the batter from the little four-sided cage that held the sugary remnants captive. First, broad licks up the four outer edges, clearing the way for the more complicated excavation. For those, you could curl your tongue around each blade individually and slide it up toward the tip. The underside of the tip was the hardest to scrape with the spatula, so it was home to the thickest batter deposits and had to be approached with care so that none was lost to dripping. If the beater held enough batter to justify it, I would use the finger of my other hand to scrape off every last bit.

When I first tried cake batter ice cream, the idea seemed like pure genius - this rare and coveted flavor was now available any time, in any quantity? I ordered the large, but after a few cloying bites, I was done. It just didn't seem right — the quantity of batter that remained on the beaters after centrifugal force and mom's rubber spatula were done with them was barely a measurable amount, so like truffles or caviar, the flavor was savored, a small, sweet reward for the effort of extracting it from the implements. Having a Costco-sized serving of the flavor made it much less delicious.

Of course, I have raised my kids to have the same reverence for the beaters that I had. They are still forbidden to sample the batter from the bowl, so I make sure the beaters have a thick coat of batter clinging to them when I place them in the boy's eager hands. I admit, it's hard to hand them over without taking a lick myself, but that's what a loving mother is supposed to do, right? Besides, I'm the mom now — I can stick my finger in the bowl.