Book groups, food groups, preschool groups ... How many ways do Americans have of helping their families socialise, asks Jennifer McCann, in Connecticut
You cannot live in a US town like ours without joining a book club or two. The one I've joined is pretty similar to any I came across in Ireland: an hour discussing the book, three hours discussing everything else and, finally, an hour deciding what to read next - all accompanied by lots of wine and nibbles. Recommending books in that agonising hour at the end is a delicate business. All types of insight into your taste and intellect are construed from the titles you come up with. Recently, I would have loved to have suggested Bergdorf Blondes or the The Devil Wears Prada, silly but entertaining stories of Manhattan frivolities. My nerve failed me, and instead I went for The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. It turned out to be a great choice, much to my relief. At least we don't have the stress that some book clubs, in Manhattan and Washington DC, have introduced. They invite the author of the book to join the meeting, either in person or via a conference call.
On the topic of clubs, moving to a small US town, for women at any rate, is rather like being a university fresher again. There's the scrapbooking club, otherwise known as crop and chat; the sewing club, or stitch and bitch; the bunco club, which involves playing a dice game with lots of wine, giving rise to the nickname drunko; the gourmet group, where four couples who don't necessarily know each other get together for a meal, each having cooked a course; the cooking group, whose members demonstrate, say, their Italian grandmother's favourite recipe; the preschool playgroup; the church group; the garden club; the historical society; the newcomers' club; and the international women's club.
Why is there such an appetite for this stuff? Firstly, perhaps, many Americans seem to think nothing of being relocated by their employers, sometimes as often as every three years. They can always say no, of course, but they seem not to. Loyalty to multinationals has replaced the trail-blazing spirit of those who jumped into tarpaulin-covered wagons and headed west all those years ago. Secondly, and in a related point, the US is a surprisingly transient society. Young single people, for example, gravitate towards the cities, meet each other, get married and have children. When the first child approaches school-going age, these new families head for the suburbs - Connecticut, where we live, is a popular choice for many New Yorkers. Before you know it the children are leaving home for college, more often than not in another state.
Suddenly, in late middle age, you realise that you're living in a children's campus, paying local taxes for schools you no longer have any involvement in, and that many of your older friends have upped sticks and relocated to Florida or the Carolinas. Realising that your children are unlikely to move back to where they grew up, you, too, sell up and move to heaven's waitingrooms - where you'll need a club or two to keep you busy.
*****
If you're a Bruce Springsteen fan, you'll probably know his song that goes: "Man came by to hook up my cable TV / We settled in for the night, my baby and me / We switched round and round til half-past dawn / There was 57 channels and nothing on." How right he is. Flick, flick, flick - nothing on but rubbish. Ads, ads, ads - at least 20 minutes an hour. Ads for cars, for all-you-can-eat restaurant chains, for refinancing packages, for heartburn tablets, for sleeping tablets, for cholesterol inhibitors - usually followed by of dire warnings about possible side effects, from nausea and headaches to dizziness and diarrhoea - for fat-blasting products and for "jiggle-free abs".
Were you to rely on television for your news, it seems to us, you could easily be oblivious to what is happening outside this vast country. The war in Iraq gets so little TV coverage that it's almost as if it's being censored - although limited public interest may be more to blame. News tends to be parochial: the cost of petrol and how it's threatening the American way of life, as well as the immigration movement.
*****
I have just returned from a horrific visit to the dentist. I had been sure there would be nothing wrong with my teeth. How naive. I am, after all, in the land of perfect pearly whites. The dental hygienist tutted as she cleaned and scraped my poor teeth. "How long did you say it was since your last visit?" she asked. I meekly explained that my last cleaning was just over a year ago, before we came to the US. "Aha. You've come from over there. You really must take full advantage of your time over here to get good dental care." On she went - scratch, scratch, scratch, ouch, ouch, ouch - before declaring: "American dentists are immensely superior to those in Europe." The upshot is that I have been referred to a periodontist to have a hideous treatment that should stop all my teeth falling out before I am 70. My husband has been referred to an endodontist for some equally ghastly work, and, naturally, braces are already being planned for our four-year-old and seven-year-old.
When I got home my eye was caught by an article in the New York Times. Apparently, some dentists are now opening "dental spas". These offer manicures, pedicures and movies (on video eyeglasses) while you sit in the dentist's chair.
It's only a matter of time before I'll be wearing a custom-made whitening shield every night, in an otherwise perfect mouth. A mouth that will probably have cost as much as a new car.
*****
Last week, as my husband was taking an early-morning jog, he paused to let streams of people pass on their way into Mass at the town's Catholic church. It was neither a Sunday nor a holy day - Catholicism is taken seriously here, with standing room only at many of services, and an overflow Mass in an adjoining school on Sunday mornings.
It's quite different to the church we were used to in Ireland. Parishioners are asked to tithe 5 per cent of their gross income, children go to Sunday school and, at Mass, people sometimes hold hands and hug each other, in a folksy way, which bemuses us. A couple of weeks ago the priest used his sermon to denounce The Da Vinci Code. Give no support to the lie that will be showing in your cinema, he said, denouncing the audacity of the book's premise. He concluded by asking: "How would you all feel if you saw a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf in your neighbour's house, and your neighbour justified it by telling you that it was 'just a good read'?" All I can remember from reading The Da Vinci Code, two years ago, is how hard it was to put down - and how unbelievable it was.
Anyway, back to my husband's jogging. Too much running resulted in a foot injury, and crutches, which meant I had to do the "Saturday thing" single-handed. Why do we parents insist on torturing ourselves so much? There was the traffic as I ferried the children to swimming and a birthday party, the crowds in Dunkin' Donuts as I queued for the ritual weekend coffee and doughnuts and, worst of all, the challenge of coaching first-grade soccer. You read right. My husband has joined the ranks of soccer dads and become a coach. But, in his current state, I had to take over.
After standing in the middle of a field, trying to instruct a bunch of seven-year-old boys while keeping half an eye on the one-year-old, I returned home, exhausted, to see my husband basking, foot up, in glorious spring sunshine.