English

The day after returning from England, I took my daughter prom dress shopping. She was thinking black or maroon but ended up with emerald. The woman who rang us up spoke in a thick Russian accent and was really pushing the department store’s credit card. No, I did not have a Macy’s card nor was I interested in one. But you could save twenty percent right now and there are no fees. No card thanks, just the dress. But what about your points? You can earn points. I am not interested in the card, thank you. Finally, maneuvering the dress into a plastic garment bag, she acquiesced and said sternly, “Ok but I will take all your reward points.” My daughter and I looked at each other, eyes wide, holding back fits of giggles. Later, over a suburban restaurant lunch of Caesar salads and Shirley Temples, we kept repeating, “I will take all of your reward points.”

That night, my husband and I went to see an all-female Japanese punk rock band, aptly described by Dave Grohl as, “the most fucking intense shit you’ve ever seen.” The lead singer dressed like an office temp, in a neatly tailored outfit, but sang like the boss had just killed her family. The only English I understood was when the lead guitarist middle-fingered the ecstatic crowd and screamed, “Buy our t-shirts!” On one song I later learned translates to “I Am Not Maternal,” the drummer stood up to get more bang. It was a wild night, and I can’t say I quite understood it. But I will remember how they made me feel. 

I had been in England to visit my brother, who is in a fancy fellowship program that is a very different kind of fucking intense shit. He is working in an office in a 500-year-old building with Beauty and the Beast sconces and ornate hooks for hanging your black gowns that you wear to dinner. One night at dinner, I sat next to the warden of the college, a kind, white-haired gentleman who, after inaugurating the meal with a Latin prayer, introduced himself to me using his first name which felt like fist bumping Joan of Arc. Over encrusted cod, I admired his refined language and imitated the way he nestled his fork and knife across his plate to symbolize he was ready for the next course. When he asked me what I thought of Oxford, I said, “I feel like I’ve landed on Intellectual Island.” He smiled, and then told me one day he’d like to write a suspense novel that is “sold at airports.”

Today the editor of the Merriam Webster dictionary announced, “It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with. The idea that it should be avoided came from writers who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong.”