I found this poem from the Maker on my pillow yesterday; it was folded neatly into a homemade envelope and sealed with a tiny smiley face that had been cut out of masking tape.
I Love you so mutch I cant explain
Id’e like to rid whith you on a trian
Id’e ride to kentucky Id’e ride all the way
Id’e ride so fast I woldent even pay
And thats how mutch I Love you.
(I love you, too, Sweetheart. Boy, do I ever.)
If you’re in need of a little liquid therapy you need to drop by my Mom’s for some of her homemade Bloody Mary loving kindness. You’ll have to bring your own vodka (she’s allergic), but this zingy mix is going to rock your brunch whether you remember the Grey Goose or not. She says back when I was a kid she used to call it “Tomato Cocktail” and serve it virgin at parties.
For pete’s sake, don’t adulterate this with cheap vodka, people, even if you’re drinking it out of PBR cans. I’m trying to do you a favor. And she is too, sharing this recipe with you.
Lisa’s Mom’s Bloody Mary Mix
She says to make it the day before and let it sit in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
You might consider prefacing your comments below with “Dear Lisa’s Mom: I love you.”
When I was about eight years old my great-grandmother gave me a pink pantsuit that she had lovingly sewn by hand just for me; it was a cotton-synthetic mix, required no ironing, and was precisely the color of a cat’s tongue.
I was in a private elementary school and in some odd twist of religious reasoning, girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school unless they were part of a pantsuit. This meant that in addition to the pants, you had a matching jacket and often a vest as well, the addition of which somehow transformed the pants — in themselves a tool of masculinity and possibly immodesty and the devil — into an honorable part of schoolday attire for a second-grade suburban girl. I was violently opposed to dresses, which I considered highly impractical for dodgeball and kickball, my two favorite activities during recess; pantsuits met school requirements and allowed me to maintain my ferociously defended and regularly challenged position as queen of the asphalt.
My family lived carefully, in those years, on the lower edge of the middle class; paying for a private school for me required sacrifice. Gifts were carefully considered and occasioned a fair amount of celebration, perhaps because of their rarity and thoughtfulness. Interestingly, gifts were also often extravagant. A basketball goal. A Raleigh road bike. A trip to not one, but two movies. I was thrilled at the indication of love that the carefully hand-sewn pink pantsuit represented. I was a cherished great-granddaughter; a child over whom much care had been taken. It wasn’t that I liked pink (I didn’t particularly) or thought I would look attractive (I had never considered such a thing); in my mind and heart the physical outfit itself was minor compared to the rush of gratitude I experienced at being the object of such devotion.
My favorite outfit from the year previous was a three-piece purple paisley corduroy pantsuit (with bell bottoms!) and I’d loved it so well that my mother had taken me to Olan Mills to pose on their white shag carpet for a portrait. I had just outgrown that outfit when the pink pantsuit arrived in a cardboard shirt box with white tissue paper folded around it.
I had no idea, until I got to school, that clothes made by hand (and one could tell!) occupied the absolute lowest rung on the social status ladder. I had not even been aware that there was such a ladder. To this day I’m not sure how it was communicated. Was I sneered at? Were my sleepover invitations declined? Did I get picked last for kickball? Nonetheless, it was communicated, and I silently, shamefully, pushed the pink pantsuit to the back of my closet.
From that point I began to cultivate a carefully edgy “I don’t have to follow the rules if I don’t want to” approach. When with great ceremony I was inducted into the National Honor Society, I horrified my parents and extended family by choosing to wear sloppy overalls and leaving my sneakers unlaced. I wore cowboy boots to our very traditional church on Sundays. I reluctantly purchased one dress for my high-school graduation, and later refused to attend my college or graduate school graduation ceremonies. My wedding dress was a white cotton everyday garment; it was the first dress I saw when I walked into Goldsmith’s on the day I could no longer put off finding something in which to get married.
Mussie, wherever you are, thank you for your unreserved love. I didn’t wear your pantsuit much, but it helped me become the slightly out-of-the-mainstream, fiercely determined, and sometimes relentless woman I am today. Maybe there were days when I took it too far. But you know what? It felt good to be a woman who made my own way. I cherished your gift, and I loved you. You shaped me more than you knew, and I’m glad to be the woman I am.
So, the Husband is working on refinancing our house, mortgage rates being so low and all, and that is just a genuine thrill to start with. Really, he’s read multiple books, cruised websites, asked for recommendations, the whole deal. I more or less ignored the whole thing until it came time to unfreeze my credit file. Since he was in charge of the bigger refinancing project, I asked him to be on standby through Skype, where we had a chat box open, in case I had any questions during my phone conversation with the Equifax people. This is a screenshot of our conversation. Now there’s an excited man.
Lesson learned, girls: when you’re looking to get your guy’s engine going, call Equifax and unlock your credit so he can refinance your house! Works every time for me!
click to enlarge image
Nearly 50 years ago, when my mother was in high school, every girl had a set of these two pins. When they were “going steady” with a guy, girls wore the whale pin. The duck was reserved to mark availability. Why whale and duck?? Where did they get them? And why does the whale look so… dismal? My mother doesn’t know; please leave me a comment below to inform or speculate.
When I was in high school we either wore a guy’s jacket (for me, this was the Husband’s maroon nylon windbreaker with elastic wrists and aluminum snaps up the front, oooh wee) or their class ring. Guys’ moms hated the latter, I’m sure; after shelling out $300 for a Balfour that said “Craigmont Chiefs” on one side and “Class of ’84” on the other, some fritzy-headed teenage girl leaves it in the school bathroom and it’s gone forever.
I didn’t do that, I swear.
I mean, I did do it, but I remembered and ran back to the restroom (risking a detention slip) and found one of the nice cleaning ladies just then picking it up.
I never told.
PS: Thanks, Alex, for taking the macro photo : )
The Husband recently organized his life into categories. I love this; he’s so organized! I know I’m category number seven, but I’m forever asking him what category something fits into. The other night I made him tell me again so I could write it down:
1. Non-billable work
2. Billable work
3. Aftershock (his rock band)
4. Connections (his church band)
5. House/chores
6. Kids/parenting
7. ME!
8. Himself
I told him he really only has four categories (work, music, home, us), but I feel comfortable allowing him to subdivide to his heart’s content.
Forget where we went for dinner: look where we went for dessert! Don’t the KKreme just rock? All the people who work there have this marvelous island accent (are they all from the Bahamas?) and getting one of the hot, fresh-from-the-sugar-fountain delights can totally change your perspective on life. And their coffee is utterly superior to McD’s or any other fast food.
On seeing all those little fried dough saucers come gliding down the runway: ahhh, come to mama.
View the short-lived but yummy slide set.
About three days after my grandfather died I had a dream.
I had been invited to this huge gathering and once I arrived I found myself wandering around an enormous banquet facility unable to recognize anyone. I knew I’d been invited, I just felt utterly out of my element in such a huge place, and although there were scads of people around, I was alone.
Finally my frustration won out, and I left the building by a back entrance.
But rather than finding parking lots filled with cars, I wandered out into a nearby field, and up into the bordering woods. I hiked for a while, looking back periodically to the building I’d vacated, wondering how I’d got myself into such an odd predicament.
Suddenly another hiker — a young man in his mid-twenties — climbed up to my vantage point and approached me as if we were friends.
“Why aren’t you at my dinner party, hon?” he asked, with a soft accent and manner that I immediately found familiar, although I couldn’t connect the face. He seemed to be talking to me as if he were an older man and I was his his granddaughter.
“Oh, wow, I didn’t recognize you,” I stuttered with some amazement. “You’re young.”
It was my grandfather.
He laughed quietly and put his arm around me. “Well of course I am,” he agreed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I don’t want to go back,” I told him. “I didn’t recognize all those people. That place is too big. I just wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you,” I told him.
And so he sat and talked softly with me there in the woods, missing his own banquet.
And that was the last time I ever saw my grandfather. But I am so grateful to him for seeking me out and spending time with me.
I have the sense that I could talk to him if I wanted to, but things seemed settled and comfortable between us now, like a familiar and well-loved quilt.
My paternal grandmother and grandfather in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.
I watched Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s again last night and remembered all the things I loved and hated about that fabulous old (1961) film. I loved that her couch is half a bathtub and that her phone is in a sound-muffling suitcase. I loved every single outfit Holly Golightly wore, even the tuxedo nightgown. And the enormous hats! I loved Patricia O’Neal, and even even! Buddy Ebson. George Peppard was okay as a love interest, but he was a bit soft and maybe even too pretty for me; he didn’t come close to matching the passion and energy of Audrey/Holly. If she hadn’t been so screwed up herself, she would never have fallen for him. Oh, and I loved “Moon River.” Especially when Audrey sang it.
Naturally, I hated Mickey Rooney’s role. Yikes! I know it was probably the most apologized-for role in cinematic history, but what a cultural disaster, even worse than the incessant smoking and glib treatment of the mafia. But most of all I feel conflicted about Cat. Poor baby, the misery he endured at that party! Not to mention his most miserable and biggest role during the closing scene in the rain. I have to say my pleasure in that final scene is greatly diminished because of his obvious suffering.
Still, isn’t Audrey stunning? Dah-ling, you know she is.
What do people wish for when they cast their pennies in the fountain?
Me, it’s nearly always been the same. I search my pockets and weigh out my change in my palm, gauge the distance, and cast my prayer with my coins, and plip, plip! One by one my coins tumble winking to the bottom with my whisper, “May my children be healthy.”
My prayer is wide, much more vast than a handful of change, or many handsful, can represent. It pervades my hopes for these three fragile and sturdy lives over which I’ve been given influence. There are other prayers I have for them: That they will make wise choices, particularly when it’s difficult to do so. That they will be so fiercely faithful that demons would be afraid of them. That they will build others up, rather than tear them down. That they would love heroically. But if I counted up all the private, only-for-the-ears-of-God petitions I’ve made on their behalf, health seems to top the list, I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it seems to be the one thing over which I have the least control.
And having been given this gift so far I find myself profoundly grateful.