March 31, 2005
Stew
Last night wind rattled the blinds covering wide open windows, and then the sky lit and the thunder clapped and by gosh if we didn’t have an old- fashioned midwestern storm. However, it didn’t last long, not even waiting for me to fall asleep. This morning the air is damp and much cooler, but I still have plans to move Helen outside for a spell, as was suggested by her visiting physical therapist.
I have been pretty darn helpful, if I don’t say so myself. So far I have helped my father fix the driver’s side window on my truck and I’ve helped him change the front brake pads. I had to change the oil myself as my creaky body creaks less than his in the slide-under-the-truck way.
Last night, armed with a box of Chicken Thyme Soup and directions from Diane, I proceeded to create this healthy and way-hearty soup Diane made here on our last visit. I started with one pot, began adding what the recipe called for, plus what Diane suggested I toss in - more chicken and more vegetables - but ran out of room. I grabbed a bigger pot, poured everything into it from the smaller one, added more of what I had cutup, but ran out of room again. If there were a bigger pot, I’da grabbed it, but there was not. For dinner we had delicious Chicken Thyme Stew, and afterwards Tupperwared about a week’s worth. That is, if we have it every day.
I do miss Diane.
Yesterday
Helen leads off:
“My grandmother hung on so long because she was afraid to die. She was in the nursing home for ten years and the gals there knew her very well. Anyone else wouldn’t have lasted so long, but they said she was afraid to go. That’s the thing with Joan, she thinks I can move in with her; she doesn’t know how much is involved. My father’s sister had pernicious anemia, and his father died in our house. I know what it’s like to care for people, Joan doesn’t.”
“Here is the way I see it. Joan doesn’t have a thing to worry about because I don’t see you hanging around.”
“Neither do I.”
“It is so obvious. You’re just waiting for the opportunity to see what is next. You get this cold or whatever it was and it’s check out time. Your not eating is the same as packing your luggage.”
We are both laughing pretty hard at this. Helen thinks I’m funny or finds my laugher infectious, or she is laughing along with me and plotting ways to cut me out of her will. Could be any of the above.
“This is why I’ve put you in charge of me at the end.”
“I’m your health care proxy?’
“Yes. I know you’ve worked with dying people before and I know you ... .”
“You mean you sat down and thought which one of my kids do I want to consign a lifetime of torment to? ‘Gee, I really thought she was dead, but now that I said pull the plug, I do remember a twitch..oh, dear god, I killed my mother!’
**************
Today
It is only noon and already we have had a full day. The cable guy installed broadband, the visiting nurse popped in to give Helen a quick checkup, and I called a plumber to fix the clogged sink drain. We are having lunch, right before departing to visit the dentist to have Helen’s crown re-glued.
HO. “My blood pressure is good today.”
Mack. “Good for what?”
Me. “Good to keep her alive another day.”
HO. “ I won’t be joining Terri Schiavo today.”
Me. “If my prayers are answered you’ll die the same day as Paul Wolfowitz, and you’ll ride his soul for all eternity.”
HO. “Who?”
“Wolfowitz. Or Cheney or Pearl or Bush or Powell. Pick anyone of them. If you don’t go on the same day you might never find them.”
“Oooo, I’d love that. I’d ride ‘em.”
March 30, 2005
Emma and Matt
Matt and his cousin, Emma, taken Easter Day.
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March 28, 2005
Caroline's Art
Caroline gave me permission to post more of her work. Take a peek.
The magnolia trees are in bloom, the jonquils are up and the forecast is for sunny skies and temperatures in the seventies. We just finished with breakfast: scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, coffee and sort-of-fresh cherry pie (from Idylwilde). Now most of us are taking naps.
How is this for a maudlin update?
Mike's last Stand
It’s 4:30 AM, Matt and Diane are fast asleep, my truck is packed and I’m about to jump in and drive to Indiana (Peter Finlay refers to all those interior states as “Somewhere in the middle.”) to visit my parents. A planned trip that follows my sister’s visit where she was able to provide comfort to my mother who is a bit under the weather. Anyway, I figure the blog needs all the commenters it can get, and her absence the last two and a half weeks has been glaring. I hope I can help move her back in front of her iMac; she’ll love la Chica’s baby pictures.
**************************
I have Diane’s permission to have, for the purposes of a non-boring blog entry, a clinical, no strings attached, one night stand with a middle aged, marriage-on-the -rocks, bleached blond named Brenda. I’m pretty sure I’ll meet her tonight in the Motel Six bar just outside of Dayton and she’ll be from Brownsville. That’s usually the way these things work. In Diane’s exact words, “If even Chris is no longer sending witty and poignant stories, well heck, Mike, you gotta do what you gotta do.”
March 27, 2005
Birthdays
Hil at one with her mom and her older sister, Laura.
The Big Picture
Hil at four.
The Big Picture
March 26, 2005
Adrift
An observant reader sent me this link to compare with the the sandy toes picture below. She asked, "Separated at birth?"
My crop of this photo prompted Diane to say, "My God, it looks like they set her out to sea."
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In many ways, those first days at school are not unlike being set adrift.
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March 25, 2005
Disappearing Diane
This week's mystery child. Who is she?
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Diane's birthday dinner at the Hopkins.
The Big Picture
March 23, 2005
Black & White & Gold
Adam Kibbe
“Don’t scrunch up your eye like that!” said Tricia to me, laughing.
Hard not to when someone’s trying to get to your eyeball through the unfamiliar, thin skin of your eyelid with an even more unfamiliar eyeliner pencil. I was getting an improbable education in the things women put themselves through in the name of “beauty”, in the service of the theme of this year’s Dorothea Birthday Extravaganza chez Cynthia.
Last year it was “Titian and Topiary”, both color and set piece décor. This year it was the less precise but more flexible “White and Gold”. Tricia had gotten me a nicely pleated white tux shirt and burnished-gold-metal-mesh bowtie for a song at Keezer’s, a Cambridgeport emporium serving the formalwear needs of Harvard students (and others) for many decades, partially through clothing “recycling”. But even atop off-white pants and a metallic belt, we hadn’t yet “nailed it”.
Accessory one was a small paste diamond literally glued to my right earlobe (however good a sport, I wasn’t getting pierced for the event). Arguably, it started the thought process that led to the current excess. The ladies would augment their own splendid wardrobes with gold jewels, gold finger and toenail polish, and gold blush -- why not yours truly? So here I was in Lynn’s bathroom minutes before departure for Le Bash, gold & white eyeshadow in place, along with a touch of mascara, and having eyeliner run along my already affronted lids. To say I was acquiring a case of self-consciousness would be an understatement.
But my homage to Valentino and Nureyev (and Chaplin and others from an era of men-with-makeup) was a hit. “God you have beautiful eyes! For a girl……….!” A few homophobic come-ons followed, but whether earnest dissembling, flattery or truth, the ladies all seemed to dig my look. Arriving with the complementary clash of a long black cloak and woven black scarf, and unveiled in the obsequious glow of golden drama that is their house -- itself tarted up something fierce -- I was just another perfect accessory to the evening’s themed party. The melodramatic guest.
The others were “lovely” as well, in gold lame, or shades of varying golds layered with white, one full black tux with gold cummerbund and bowtie, melded tones of softweave whites, and even a cook’s jacket with gold buttons. The house positively shimmered, and the foods would carry the theme, with white mascarpone/Vidalia pizza studded with black Nicoise olives, a to-become-legendary leek/fennel/Pernod cream soup, and other delicious decadence, including the theme drink of cream, white chocolate liqueur and vodka. Cynthia gets her theme from some small inspiration and then uses it as a phrasing structure off of which she can riff as she conducts the songs and set changes of the evening’s opera.
But for all the color – white, after all is a blend of all colors and serves to let the use of simple saturated subset colors play in elevated accent – perhaps the most memorable passage was of the observance of some classic, colorless “black & white”. Though warned by her husband it could kill the evening, Cynthia eased us sideways into participating in her current rage for the DVD of the 1987 Roy Orbison tribute concert, first released as a CD in the year of his death, 1988, and recently remastered on DVD as “Black&White Night”. Staged in dinner-theater fashion before notable guests, and filmed in black & white in kinetic cutaway style, it features an astonishing ensemble of talent, and a playlist for a generation. Or two or three generations.
By then well-lubricated by champagne, the wines of dinner, and the evening’s signature drink, we were off-handedly asked our impression of/predilection for Roy’s music. With favorable to rave results, the path was clear for a surprise screening. And so, with the epic soundtrack ripping through the soundsystem-on-steroids of our hosts’ basement “Flamingo Lounge” party space, we settled into the demanding task of grooving to the outpouring of a stagefull of legends joyously giving everything to honor their leader for the night, this firmly pedestaled icon of their craft. He of the black helmet of hair and even blacker shades. He of the inimitable, operatic warble, with its deep-baritone-to-falsetto range. He of the quintessential 50’s and 60’s love ballads, such as “Only the Lonely” and “Blue Bayou”. And of the concert’s climactic coda, “Oh, Pretty Woman”, with which his name is arguably more lastingly associated than even that of the richer, more notorious (and still living) Julia Roberts.
But he of an amazing band-for-the-night, too. Elvis (Costello that is) earnestly handled acoustic rhythm guitar, while Bruce (need I say Springsteen?) shared moments of lead guitar with T-Bone Burnett and did backup vocals with Jackson Brown and J.D. Souther, while the oh-my-god trio of k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes and Bonnie Rait did sweet doo-wop for the gang, and Tom Waits tickled piano and organ into the mix. Through it all, Roy stood stalwart at the center, only occasionally moving about to acknowledge his friends, but emoting whole eras of love and equaling the sonic power of any crooner name you care to conjure with matter-of-fact natural grace.
An epic concert, and this excess of talent melded into the tightest, livest, most professional group of studio musicians you ever saw, their own names and egos damped in the service of this greater name, their rapture to be there in whatever role evident in every move and note. And the enthusiastic audience of yet more names another active component of the visual and auditory energy. Transformed by shared experience, we shook our tambourines and booties, and despite the “just-a-song-or-two” premise of pushing “play”, we participated in the whole damn thing, start to finish. Just one part of how most of us rocked past 2:30 before heading home, leaving the even more hardcore to head for the hottub and their own “enough” of 5:00 a.m.
When we first got the annual invite, I little expected to sit for an application of eyeshadow and eyeliner, and while I knew full well there’d be dancing and tambourines, I also could not have predicted we’d have music royalty for “live” entertainment. There are times this evening seems but over-rehearsed ritual, with little discernible variation from those that came before, however unique and excellent the individual elements that go at great effort into forming each event might be. But through a certain amount of restraint in intoxicants, and the ebullient infusion of energy Roy & Co. gave us, we staggered home more replete of friendship and good times perhaps than usual, afterimages of many colors, but especially of three, still dancing in our eyes well past final curtain.
Photo Gallery
March 22, 2005
Two Poems
Thin
How anything
is known
is so thin-
a skin of ice
over a pond
only birds might
confidently walk
upon. A bird's
worth of weight
or one bird-weight
of Wordsworth.
Kay Ryan
Subway Seethe
What could have been the big to-do
that caused him to push me aside
on that platform? Was a woman who knew
there must be some good even inside
an ass like him on board that train?
Charity? Frances? His last chance
in a ratty string of last chances? Jane?
Surely in all of us is some good.
Better love thy neighbor, buddy,
lest she shove back. Maybe I should.
It’s probably just a cruddy
downtown interview leading to
some cheap-tie, careerist, dull
cul-de-sac he’s speeding to.
Can he catch up with his soul?
Really, what was the freaking crisis?
Did he need to know before me
if the lights searching the crowd’s eyes
were those of our train,or maybe
the train of who he might have been,
the person his own-heart-numbing,
me-shoving anxiety about being
prevents him from ever becoming?
How has his thoughtlessness defiled
who I was before he shoved me?
How might I be smiling now if he’d smiled,
hanging back, as though he might have loved me?
J. Allyn Rosser
Photographs
There are many more on this Finlay wall, but this is all I could capture in a single pic.
Huge View
After we (inlcuding Patti's long time friend, Sally) finished hanging new pictures on this wall, Emma ran to her room to retrieve her favorite photo of her mother.
March 21, 2005
Rocks and Salt
Early Saturday afternoon, before visiting Flo, we drove Peter and Emma to La Cantina for Peter’s birthday, and made sure he ordered a margarita with rocks and salt. Before Paula brought them to our table, I ran to my truck for my camera. When I returned, Emma made a not-another-photo face and I felt a need to explain myself. “Auntie Sue loves this place and her favorite drink is a margarita with rocks and salt. “
Chris will appreciate this: After Peter finished his margarita he said, “That was good, now if only I could have four or five more.”
Emma eating a cheese quesadilla.
Helen. “Dr. Bieker told me, again, it’s time to move closer to my children.”
Me. “Remember what happened to Lillian?”
Lillian, my mother’s mirror spirit, lost her husband of forever, and lived alone for years before moving from Evansville to be near her daughter in Florida. I remember sitting in Lillian’s kitchen, with my father, and as she passed arrowheads across the table to me to give to Matthew, she said, “I never had a thought about my mortality until I turned ninety.” Lillian smiled as she talked about her now tenuous future. She always smiled, even while she was helping her husband feed himself.
“She lived about a year.”
“I’m afraid the same might happen to you. Helen and Malcolm moved to Gaithersburg to be near their daughter. May they rest in peace.”
“That is what I am afraid of. That the move will kill your father. ”
March 20, 2005
Chugging Along
Rakkity is in Spain with the Mrs. and their daughter, KT. He has promised to send updates. Adam, before he and Tricia left for a birthday celebration in Connecticut, sent me a photo to post. He called it a “tiny bone.” A generous mother, who for the moment will remain anonymous, has provided me with her daughter’s baby pictures. I will post them this week. So you see, though this blog did grind to a temporary halt, it will, like one of those serpentine midwestern freight trains blocking the road in front of you, start again.
March 16, 2005
March 15, 2005
This Summer
Hil stopped by for dinner last night so she and Matthew could talk to us about possible summer plans. Bouncing around the table: A return to Nicaragua, but pick a different city and a different activity. Matt won’t again sit for four hours a day of Spanish lessons. Guatemala, but it is safe? Colombia, but would they return home alive?
Knocked from the list: Costa Rica and Mexico - too ordinary, too safe. South America? Who knows anything about those countries? If they go somewhere, everyone, even Matthew agrees that they should have structure, as in community service, etc. . Preferred by the ‘rents and maybe even the deal breaker, known contacts in the area.
Anyone out there with ideas?
From the book The Unsubscriber by Bill Knott:
Untitled
Fingerprints look like ripples
because time keeps dropping
another stone into our palm.
From the review of The Unsubscriber in Poetry, the magazine Adam and Tricia gave me for my last birthday.
The Unsubscriber is Knott’s first new collection in a decade, and it is something of an event, in part because Farrar, Straus and Giroux - home to Noble Prize-winning Derek Walcott and Pulitzer-winning, John Ashbery, as well as many distinguished others - is publishing it. And a good thing, too, because, as it turns out, Knott is an underrated, or at least an under-read, poet. To be sure, he is also plenty capable of bad - not to mention offensively grotesque - poetry, of a sort that is more unsettling than the average tediously bad poem. But his talent is a kind of live wire: no one, least of all the poet himself, seems to be able to get a consistently steadying hand on it, and if the result is sometimes appalling, it can also make for a kind of terrifying beauty.
March 14, 2005
New Art
More art by Caroline Radulski (Chris's daughter).
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Jan's new Rottwiler, Brady, about a 120 lbs shy of his adult size.
March 13, 2005
Letting Go
“Do you have children?”
“I have three. I had three. My son, Rajiv, died when he was a young boy.”
While I stood outside talking to Adam on my cell phone, Maya set a place for me at her kitchen table. I walked back inside to see “something before you begin work”: a mug of spicy Indian tea, a paper cup of water, two round, tan-colored chappathis, two cookies, and a handful of pistachio nuts. She stood some distance away on the other side of the kitchen, and when she told me about Rajiv she looked away, as if into another room.
Later, I walked to where she had glanced and on the kitchen counter was a small shrine . Inside an open cabinet that would normally hide a blender or a toaster was a photo of her son at about four: round face, dark brown eyes, hair cut short, and a smile perhaps coaxed by an adoring mother standing behind the photographer. On narrow shelves above and below his photo were carelfully set Hindi religious objects.
“What God gives, God takes away.”
Maya seemed equally at ease talking about her son as sitting in her worship room with the sun streaming through the skylight two stories above. She wore a red sari, the same color as her third eye dot, with a flowery pattern sewn into the hem. Her white sandles were either on or off depending on which room she entered. She told me she’d moved to Weston thirty-six years ago and that her eldest daughter had married after graduating from Northwestern.
“I didn’t think Hindus believed in such a God. That sounds very Christian.”
“We believe in God, one God, and that we are all a small part of God. All religions are the same. The Jews have a saying, “What goes around, comes around... .”
“Reincarnation?”
“Yes. We believe we have eighty-four incarnations and what you don’t learn in one lifetime you learn in another.”
“But your son...it must have been rough.”
“It was very rough for three or four years, but when my second daughter was born I realized it was okay. And my aunt-in-law told me that if I love my son, I have to let him go. That my holding on would make him unhappy.”
“Easy for others to say. But you were ready to let go after those years of suffering?”
“I was, and I watched my husband. He’s so strong and he, better than I , accepted what was happening.”
“You must have gotten much closer then.”
“We did. We were not close before that. I hate to say it, but we weren’t. It was an arranged marriage... “
“Of course.”
“...but not forced.”
“You’ve accepted your son’s passing... “
“It still hurts. Now and then it catches me when I’m not aware.”
“Did you talk to him at the end?”
“Oh yes. He knew more than we did. His doctor said Rajiv had the brain of a sixteen year old, though he was only ten. The doctor told his other patients they should be like my son.”
“Were you able to say goodbye?’
“No. I couldn’t .. .”
“You...”
“I couldn’t face the reality. You know he would have thirty-five this year.”
Today's required reading As a Word Doc to read on the plane to Spain.
Room with a view (Thanks to Chris)
March 12, 2005
Fill'er Up
Betty toils behind the counter at my local lumberyard. She is short and slim, has brown hair and a childlike Betty Boop sounding voice, which is odd coming from a woman who must be in her mid-forties. Her voice makes me want to go home and watch cartoons.
I placed a quart of ceiling paint on the counter.
“Anything else you need?”
“No, that’s it. And I see you are bundled up again.” I looked around and she was the only one wearing more than a long sleeved shirt. Even teardrop-shaped Al who often wears sweaters sported only pin stripes.
“No blood.”
“No what?”
“No blood. I am always cold and growing up my Swedish grandparents told me I didn’t have enough blood.”
“And your parents... ?”
“My mother died when I was four and my father was no good. I plopped into my grandparents' lives when I was four and they were about fifty.”
“I lived next to a couple who raised their two granddaughters after the girls' parents were killed in an auto accident. The grandmother lived forever, but not so for the grandfather.”
“Mine lived into their eighties and they died a month apart.”
‘That must have been awful. I mean, they were your parents,really.”
“It was and they were. I was in my thirties then.”
Betty turned away to retrieve my printed sales receipt. I could see another salesman, David, who could play a perfect mall Santa Claus, sitting behind his desk, listening. Betty returned.
“And they thought you needed more blood?”
“I was hungry all the time. I’d eat all day and my growling stomach would wake me at night for another meal. And I couldn’t stay warm. When they cooked a roast beef they would pour the blood and the fat from the bottom of the pan into a glass and make me drink it.”
“That sounds delicious.”
“It was terrible, especially the fat. I drank it from nine until about twelve, but as a teenager, they couldn’t make me drink it.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? The stuff that gets handed down. In extreme climates like the arctic that fat would be good for you.”
“Now I just wear a sweater.”
Today's Art
March 11, 2005
What Are The Odds?
Last year, Matthew is in his web design class and while he is listening to his teacher he’s also surfing the net. He stumbles on someone’s home site with links to music and photos. Matt clicks on “People I know and You Don’t, ” and standing among folks Matt truly does not know is a year old photo of his web design teacher.
The Burial of Atala, 1767.
Anne-Louis Girodet De Roucy-Trioson
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March 10, 2005
The Witch of Endor
Salvator Rosa
The Spirit of Samuel Called up before Saul by the Witch of Endor, 1668 .
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Today's required reading . Among other labyrinthian connections, Charlie is my godson.
March 09, 2005
Rembrandt
Philosopher In Meditation, 1632.
Scanned from Paintings In The Louvre by Lawrence Gowling
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Not that this reminds me of anybody in my house.
March 08, 2005
Life Support
Jennifer
My daughter at college was on my mind after the blog about what people have read. (I can’t deal with reading any of the recommended reading though.) I was thinking about sharing some of our important early read-alouds: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Mary Poppins (the BOOKS, *N*O*T* the movie!), and The Jungle Book. That really has nothing to do with the next part, except that she rarely calls, and then she did.
She didn’t want to talk to me, just her sister. Whatever it was, Hilary didn’t want to do it; she suggested a friend now at Oberlin; then another relative. Eventually, I got back on the phone. It turned out she needed to fill out her health care proxy form for a class, and she felt parents were too irrational about their kids. I listened. Her: “I mean, have you seen that woman in Florida? She’s like a trained seal. 15 years ...” Me: “Wait a minute. Remember me? Remember the parrot?” (I had to remind her about the parrot, but she got it. You folks can just look back some days on the blog*) “So, mom, have you guys filled out your health care proxy?” (No. So she’ll bring forms home next break.)
And then the conversation with her dad: Me: “She needed someone to be her health care proxy.” Him: “You know, you have to be careful. She may not feel loved, if you agree to cut off life-support.” “I had to remind her about the parrot in order to pass.” (I had to remind him about the parrot too. He doesn’t read the blog either.)
“Did you know the parrot at Brandeis is the smartest parrot in the world? It’s been being trained for 25 years, by students.” “It’s the smartest, or it can do the most?” I started thinking, I bet 3 year-olds could learn way more than most of them do, except that they only spend a year being 3. Would that make them smarter?
* Reprinted from an earlier blog post:
"I once went into an exotic pet store with La Chica, age 6ish. She wanted a parrot or something like it. I was relieved that the prices were such that clearly we weren't going there, but trying to be polite to the salesman. He bragged something along the lines of "They have the intelligence of a three-year-old, and they live to 40." (My numbers may be off by a factor of 2.) I couldn't think of a worse fate. Even La Chica seemed daunted. "
March 07, 2005
In Common?
For Adam and Tricia.
.
March 06, 2005
Sunday's Reading List
If you have the time, read the first two articles from the March 24th edition of The New York Review of Books: Very Bad News and Welcome to Doomsday. In Very Bad News, Clifford Geertz reviews two books : Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond and Catastrophe: Risk and Response by Richard A. Posner.
“Whether societies waste away in ecological neglect or are destroyed by foreseeable disasters they have failed to prevent, for both writers vigilance and resolve are the price of survival. Awareness is all. However much they may differ in style and method (and they occupy the poles of the social sciences—dogged, fact-thick empiricism on the one side, model-and-calculate political arithmetic on the other), these are consciousness-raising books, tracts for the time. It is later than we think. Later even than we have thought to think. “
From Welcome to Doomsday by Bill Moyers : “ There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power.”
Maybe even before we landed in Evansville, or was it while we weren’t waiting for our luggage because we had only carry-ons, Brian brought up Salinger’s short story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish (click and download a Word.doc). As an example of near-perfect dialogue. That day, I downloaded it, Diane read it out loud in the living room on Bellemeade and we all discussed it off and on until we got back on the plane. One question, that we couldn’t answer, that is only tangentially related: Why did we read it in the first place? Why did every high school student read Catcher in the Rye? And other books that are now classics - A Separate Peace for instance. Were they assigned? I don’t think so. Did we all simply read more then? Are there not comparable authors? Are the Harry Potter Books comparable? Matt reads, but claims most of his friends do not.
March 05, 2005
Terms Of Endearment
“ 'Sugar.' You like that, don’t you?’
“You mean Jeff and Karen?”
“Hey, Sugar.”
“It’s a southern thing, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“We say, 'hon.' Maybe they think hon is quaint.”
“We do say that, don’t we?”
“Often. You use it all the time.”
“Except when I say it, I’m thinking h-u-n.”
Dinner at the Gersthaus.
Jeff Ruthenburg photo by Brian.
March 04, 2005
Ralph's Cars
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Matthew brought Sarah and we had a most unusual MFA experience. The Ralph Lauren Collection of Cars. Cars? Not art? Audio players with Ralph describing at what age he fell in love with which car? “Dad, he’s a jackass.” Don’t misinterpret, we’re glad we went, but I’m convinced it set the mood for Diane’s comment later as we browsed paintings by Fantin-Latour, Gainsborough,Rembrandt and Nicholas de Largillierre
“Look at the colors, the perfect brown eyes, the reflection on his armor, the separate strands of hair.”
“But who would want to look so goofy , year after year, century after century.”
Afterwards, we made our usual Village Smokehouse dinner stop. Matthew and Sarah’s meals were proportioned for normal humans, Diane looked down at her baby back ribs and said, “I have a pig on my plate.”
One more from the collection.
Happy Birthday, Diane.
March 03, 2005
Still Waiting
My last day with Teresa.
“How is your coffee? Warm enough?” She asked.
“It’s perfect coming from a microwave.”
“I heated it for forty-three seconds.”
“Did you call Walter this morning at seven?”
“I did. But yesterday, or was it Monday...I walked the dog again and he called at 7:03 wondering if I had fallen and needed help.”
"Suppose you have fallen and that’s why you haven’t called him?”
"He'd call the police if too much time went by."
“I couldn’t help overhearing your phone conversation with John. A bleeding ulcer?”
“John was one of my Larry’s best friends. They did everything together. John never married, but I always invited him to be with us.”
“Even Thanksgiving...Christmas...with your children?”
“He wouldn’t always come. Sometimes he would say he was too busy. He is eighty now and he was admitted to the hospital for four days. When they found out he was alone they sent a social worker to his house after he was discharged”
“If they decide he shouldn’t live alone, where would he go?”
“I don’t know. He is so independent. But he could afford a nice place like where your mother-in-law lives. He has the money, but he won’t spend it. He is always telling me how well his stocks are doing, but he won’t pay for a house cleaner. He says they are too expensive. He is so set in his ways."
"Makes you understand why he never got married."
"Once, right after the war ended, and this was before I met Larry... .”
“Before you knew both John and Larry?’
“Yes. They were going to meet at a bar with their dates for some drinks. Larry was already there when John pulled up outside the bar with his date. John got out of the car, but the girl didn't move. She was waiting for him to open her car door. He walked right past her and into the bar. Larry asked him where his date was and John told him she was in the car waiting for her door to be opened.”
Sunset at thirty thousand feet.
Ever been to the Detroit Airport?
March 02, 2005
Penny Lane
Denise Dill playing at Penny Lane in Evansville, Indiana.
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March 01, 2005
Dream
Jennifer
I tend to have nightmares about school especially in the week before school starts in the fall, a day or two before every vacation ends, and on long weekends. This is from before the end of our last vacation.
I was in my classroom (which was a lecture-hall), and I didn’t have much for my students to do, so they were somewhat rowdy. I kept thinking of additional things which we could do together, but each involved leaving the room for a minute to get something. Each time I returned there were more students in the room, being even rowdier. I didn’t know anyone’s name, but finally realized the reason I didn’t was some of them weren’t my students. The final time this happened, one of the drop-ins was smoking a cigarette, holding it with a test-tube holder. I remembered that I could call the office for help, so I did. The secretary who answered yelled at me for leaving the classroom.
I woke up, and I couldn’t remember what my situation is. I knew I was home, in bed, that I do teach school, and even that the secretary had in fact retired a few years ago, but I couldn’t figure anything else out. I knew that the feeling of not being able to remember students’ names is real, so I figured the way to go would be to pull up a visual memory of my classroom. It took a while, but I finally could remember where my windows are.
Classes went ok yesterday, but students were somewhat rowdy and I wasn’t quite organized enough with what I wanted them to do.