Wherein I Channel Love Through Spiced Ground Beef

I made meatballs the other day.

The meatball recipe came to me from my father, a man well known for colorful description. The words “add 17 peas” or “stir in one mouthful of water” sometimes crop up in these handwritten instructions, along with comments like “too good for kids” and “your mother eats this by the handful”.

Food in my family has always been an expression of love. I don’t recall hearing the words “I love you” as a child, but I didn’t have to be told as it was obvious with a glance at the dinner table. My mother, convinced that pre-packaged foods were a toehold into deviant behavior that would lead to paper-plate usage and a laissez-faire attitude toward making one’s bed, served full meals every evening.

They were delicious.

And now I have the recipes - and scribble in the comments: "Good "man" recipe," I write next to the Mackey Beans. "The Boy once held me at bay with one hand while finishing this off, directly from the pan," I write next to the Never-Fail Fudge.

“Mom,” The Boy said the other night. “When you die, can I have your cookbooks?”

And then he laughed, thinking, judging by the look on his face, that he’d stumbled a bit, said something graceless.

But for the recipes to go to him?

I only hope the handwritten comments continue.

To Be A Rock and Not To Roll

My husband is a rock.

Not an actual rock. True, he rolls when pushed and sinks in the bathtub, but he is not an actual rock.

Willie is a figurative rock.

Willie comes from a long line of people known not only for their incredible calf muscles (we have a long-standing agreement that, should we ever go down in an airplane over the Andes, we will eat them) and an affinity for all lagers, ales, pilsners, and beers in general but from a group not known for their imaginations.

Willie lives in a world of absolutes, of exact measurements.

You can picture how much he enjoys cruise control.

“What I do, see,” he explains to me, “is that when the speed limit says 65? I set it for 67.” He grins – and did he just wink at me? Willie’s not a winker – and I do love a good winker – but the twinkle in his eye belies just such a gesture.

I nod and smile while wondering if I will have time at the next light to leap out of the car. Because while myself a lover of minutiae, I have periods of limited patience for unswerving dedication to patterns.

Willie can be counted on to follow the same route, go the same direction, go to the same restaurants.

Willie can be counted on to go two miles over the speed limit.

It’s not the speed we’re traveling at, of course, that gets on my nerves, but the level of certainty I have that any time he is driving the car he is doing just that.

And it occurs to me, briefly, that I may figure in there somewhere.

Still, I can’t help but tweak him sometimes.

“Don’t forget I’m meeting Pat to go consignment shopping tomorrow,” I say, just before going to bed. “We’re meeting at Cecil’s at 10:00.”

Willie frowns. He does not remember hearing this before. It’s not unusual for us to have coffee around 10:00 on a weekend, and this last-minute kind of information changes everything. “No coffee,” he says. “Well I suppose I can go to SA for coffee, just buy a cup… Or I can just make it for myself.” He pauses. “I could just make myself a whole pot,” he muses. He frowns in thought, stands, walks out of the room only to return just as quickly.

“I’ll make a whole pot for myself,” he says. “No point in changing anything.”

The start of the morning has been decided. He looks relieved.

And the rock remains unrolled.

When Water Chestnuts Become Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Water Chestnuts

The pantry at my parents’ house has reached Fun House proportions.

Step inside, won’t you? Would you like a pickle? No? Are you sure? Because I can give you up to six quarts before anyone would notice.

No?

I like to wander in, every now and then, just to see what we’re stocking up on these days. It’s not an especially large pantry, but it has its charms. Food, wooden matches, boxes of cassette tapes.

They stock up, my parents do, partially for winter, and partially for any unforeseen circumstances.

Should The End come, there will salsa and chips at my parents’, followed by a brief memorial and a dance.

Look over there. You see that? Appears a deal’s been made in the area of canned water chestnuts.

“Dad,” I say, barely able to keep the smile off my face, let alone out of my words. “You plan on doing a lot of stir-frying?”

My father is not dumb, but he does enjoy a good game of Let’s See How Far We Can Take This.

“You know what the currency will be, don’t you?”

“What, when The End comes?”

My dad nods.

“Water chestnuts?”

Dad smiles.

“Dad, have you been listening to the Mayans again?”

Dad taps the side of his nose and winks but remains silent.

“And you’re thinking that sliced water chestnuts are where the power will lie?”

“And the whole water chestnut!” he interjects. “Let’s not downplay the value of the whole and unsliced water chestnut!”

Water chestnuts aside, the pantry also seems to hold a lot of canned tomatoes, bar soap, marinated artichoke hearts (“oh, your mother loves those, you know”) and, inexplicably, wooden toothpicks.

“Wooden toothpicks,” I muse. I let the phrase hang for a bit, see if it will gain any momentum.

“What,” Dad says. “Because it’s the end of the world we’re not going to have cocktail parties? Build tiny rafts? Spear each other in mock duals?”

He has a point.

No use in letting the end of the world ruin a good time.

Hope and the Dispersal Thereof

I once found myself in the Caribbean with my brother.

I believe it was St. Lucia.

Have you ever hung out with Kevin? You should. He’s one of the more sincere BS artists you’ll ever meet. Kevin is the devil’s advocate, the turd in the punchbowl, the handsome man you suspect may be pulling your leg.

He is. Pulling your leg, that is.

Except when he isn’t.

Both Kevin and I tend to attract lonely people, and we did on this vacation. Perhaps it was because we were having fun, perhaps because we looked like people that would listen, perhaps because we looked like people who were drunk.

It’s not important. What was important was the moment Kevin asked Jean-Claude to sat down.

Jean-Claude was a very black man with very white teeth, a man whose face spoke of sadness. He tried to sell us a variety of cheaply made trinkets in a rush of words, more than three-quarters of which whistled into one ear, around my brain, and back out my other ear without my understanding them.

Kevin threw himself into the moment.

“What am I gonna do with this stuff?” Kevin asked. “Seriously. Jean-Claude, aren’t you tired, brother? Let’s relax. You want a beer? Here, you run and buy Pearl and I here a beer, and buy yourself one, too. You wanna?” Kevin handed him a twenty.

Jean-Claude’s sad eyes took in the money, looked at Kevin and I, and left.

I took a long pull off one of the beers we already had in front of us. “Think he’ll come back?” I asked.

“Of course he will,” Kevin said, lifting his arm to display a dozen necklaces. “I’ve lifted half his inventory.”

Sure enough, Jean-Claude returned.

And stayed.

We had three beers apiece with Jean-Claude, or “Jay-Say” as he insisted we call him, on Kevin’s dime; and while his island patois was not easy on these Minnesotan ears, his story came out as the hour grew later and the steel drums played. His mother had just died. He had three younger sisters still in school. He worked during the day, sold trinkets at night.

He looked up. What did we think? He got by, but it wasn’t enough. Should he go back to school?

Kevin put a hand on J-C’s arm. “Brother, you need to go to school. Make yourself the go-to guy here. Work on your English, give ‘em that big smile of yours, and use that brain. It’s all going to be okay. I know it. Say it with me: it’s going to be okay.”

J-C smiled. “It’s all going to be okay.”

“That’s right,” Kevin said. We raised our last beers, clinked.

We left about an hour after that. With handshakes and hugs, J-C went his way and we went ours.

We walked away from the outdoor bar. “That was real nice,” I said, “all those things you said to J-C.”

“Wasn’t nice,” he hiccupped. “Was true. It’s all true, and I hope he believes it like I do.”

We stopped walking and stood for a moment, a streetlight overhead, the ocean in front of us. Strange Caribbean stars blinked overhead.

Kevin, a full foot taller than me, smiled down.

“It doesn’t cost anything to give people hope, you know.”

What? What?! Yes, of Course I Saw The Who in ’80! Why Do You Ask?

“I’m leaving!” I shout.

“Swait!"

Swait? What? What did he just say?

“What?” I yell.

“Swait a minute!”

Ah. Just wait a minute, he says.

My husband thinks he can speak without having to move his jaw.

I don't know why he insists on making me say "what?" all day long, but he does. I say "what?" all day long.

"Marmzert," he said.

"What?"

"Marmzert," he said.

Sure. I'll play along. "How come?" I said.

"Ianno," he said. "Musta bin because of alla the cans I crushed yesterday."

Ah. I can see this now. His arms hurt.

Well, what are you going to do when aluminum is up to a whopping 55 cents a pound, let it just collect in the garage? Besides, the money he made should just about cover the Ace bandage he’s going to need.

A woman could drive herself mad suspecting her hearing’s on the wane, but I’ve come to discover that the key to success here lies in treating the lock-jawed vocalizations of the male sex as a foreign language.

"Mungree," T said the other day.

"What?" I said.

"Mungree," he said. "Skweet."

Well, ya see that? He’ll get no argument from me. I could eat a little something myself. Let's go!

I've noticed this affliction in men almost exclusively. I don't know what that says: perhaps that men are more apt to clench when talking, or perhaps that women do much more talking than men and are therefore more apt to be good at it.

Steve called. "What're you doing?" he asks.

"Writing," I say. "What're you doing?"

"Buildin' a Stratocaster copy. Gonna put African Babinga inlays on the neck."

OK. So sometimes there are different reasons for my inability to understand the men around me.

All I know is that these guys are making me say "what?" a lot.

Hi, My Name is Pearl and Have I Got A Deal for You

My father always had ideas on how we could make ourselves useful.

“How’d you kids like to make a buck?”

It was at this point that both Kevin and Karen would shoot out from wherever they were lurking – Karen especially was known for dropping out of trees – and peel away on their bikes.

My father suggesting that you might “like to make a buck” usually precipitated something that either required rubber gloves and strong soap (as in the can-you-believe-I-got-all-these-old-dishes-for-free debacle), 30 minutes of rubbing his feet (which rarely netted you more than 50 cents), or going door-to-door selling various items.

“You kids just don’t recognize your opportunities,” he’d say. “We got all kinds of chances for success out there!”

And so it was that I was selling door-to-door from the moment that it occurred to my father. Candles, salt-and-pepper shakers, greeting cards, ashtrays: if there was a catalog for it, eventually I would be at your door.

“You’re a kid, for Pete’s sake!” Dad would say, aghast that I was not fully utilizing this angle. “Smile at ‘em! People like smiling kids.” There’d be a pause as he studied my face, looking for ways to boost my irresistibility quotient. “And how old are you again?”

My father was incapable of remembering the ages of any of his children.

“I’m 8.”

“Eight?” He’d frown, take a drag of his cigarette. “You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Hmm,” he’d mutter. “We’ll work around it…”

And so it was with a combination of excitement and trepidation that I heard him pulling into the alley one day, shouting, “Pearl! You wanna make a buck?”

By the time I reached the car he had jumped out and was rooting around in the backseat. His voice was muffled. “You wouldn’t believe the deal I got on these. You’re going to make a fortune.” He turned around, holding a large cardboard box.

“Guess,” he said.

“Um… Candles?”

“You lack imagination,” he chortled. “Come on! You’re not going to have any trouble unloading these at all!”

“Candy?”

He shook his head, disappointed. His oldest child, totally devoid of foresight.

He set the box on the ground, dug through its contents, and emerged, one arm held high. “Ta-da!”

“What is it?”

“What is it? It’s an interchangeable wristwatch band! Look! I figure you can sell these for $2 a piece. We’ve got any color they want as long as it’s purple patent leather or a kind of mustard-yellow faux snakeskin…” He trailed off, considering the salability of these items. “OK – you sell these for a buck apiece. Still, you’re gonna make a fortune.”

A fortune! I smiled, the words “make a fortune” running through my head. Could I, as my father liked to say, “unload” these watch bands? You bet I could!

My head spun as I considered my approach: Hi! My name is Pearl, and have I got a deal for –

“Go ahead,” my dad said. “Grab that other box. Let’s get you started.”

And so I did. I grabbed the other box, tossed it to the ground, and slammed the car door…

On to my hand.

To this day, I cannot truly work out how I managed to slam the car door on my hand, and yet I did.

I stood there, open-mouthed and speechless, my hand in the door. My father, walking toward the back of the house, shouted for me to keep up, that he had a strategy for “moving these bands”. Failing to hear any enthusiasms on my part, he finally turned around.

“Are you coming? Pearl! What are you – Get away from – Why don’t you…”

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Paul,” my mother said, pushing past him and running down the steps. “Can’t you see she’s got her hand stuck in the car door?”

My mother, drying her hands on a kitchen towel, the woman who saw herself as emergency personnel, the sound of choppers and sirens no doubt going off in her head, approached the car.

“You all right?” she queried. “You got it together?” She peered intensely into my eyes.

I assured her that I had it together.

She opened the car door to reveal the once-smooth and now regrettably lumpy aspect of my left hand.

My mother surveyed the damage, turning my hand first this way, then that. The index finger and the middle finger in particular seemed awry.

“Yep,” she said, one hand holding the ends of those two fingers, the other on my forearm. “You seem to have a – Good God!” she shouted, wide-eyed and staring at a spot directly behind me. “Would you take a look at that!”

I turned quickly to look – and my mother yanked, hard, on my lumpified fingers.

“ACK!” I bellowed.

I looked down. The lumps were gone. My mother was turning my hand this way and that. “Can you bend them?” she asked.

I could.

“Well there you go then,” she said, and she walked back into the house, dish towel jauntily draped over one shoulder.

Another medical emergency, handled.

I don’t recall what happened to those watchbands. I can’t imagine that anyone turned down the opportunity to own one in any color they wanted – as long as that color was purple patent leather or a mustard-yellow faux snakeskin – so I’m mostly sure that that particular endeavor was a great success.

And if it wasn’t, there would be other chances.

And Now for the Sports

Another Friday! This is like, what?, the 100th Friday this year?

And who are we to doubt it? The calendar says it’s the end of the workweek, I am sick of working, ergo that must be the weekend over there.

If only we had some way of knowing, with only two precious days of time off, what we could expect. If only…

But wait! Step away from your rational mind and consider this thought: the shuffled playlist played during my commute to work on Friday morning tells the future.

What, you don’t believe me? Well check this out:

Pretty Green by Mark Ronson featuring Santo Gold
Cantaloop by Us3
Everybody Ona Move by Michael Franti and Spearhead
You The Man by the Sensational Joint Chiefs
Super Bad by James Brown
Stomp by The Brothers Johnson
Hit it and Quit it by Funkadelic

Now if you can’t make something good happen with that selection, my friend, I don’t know what to tell you.

I can tell you one thing, though.

It’s been a problem for me for years, but I’ve discovered a cure for my insomnia.

It’s Willie’s conversational skills.

He’s a lovely man, don’t misunderstand, but if he doesn’t stop talking about the weather soon, I’m going to stuff his ears with ricotta.

It’s in the fridge. We work with what’s on hand.

Weather, as many of you know, is a staple of conversation through the middle part of the U.S. Minnesota in particular provides a number of interesting weather treats to ponder, including a yearly temperature variance of well over 120 degrees; whirling, sucking wind vortexes; and blinding snowstorms that once drove hearty ancestors to affix rope from the house to the out-buildings and stuff unwary travelers into the slaughtered bellies of oxen for warmth.

And so, while grateful that Willie has a “weather eye” out at all times, what it does to everyday conversations leaves one falling limply off the furniture, eyelids fluttering.

“I see here where the temperature, with the heat index, is going to be around 105 degrees tomorrow.”

“Is that right, Pa?”

He hates when I call him Pa.

“Say, you didn’t happen to catch the rainfall totals for last week, did you?”

“No, sorry. I was totally disinterested and opted to alphabetize the pantry instead.”

“Did you really?”

“No.”

Things could be worse, a fact of which I know firsthand. I’ve had boyfriends who stole my eyeliner, for cryin’ out loud.

Then again, once they learned not to do that we then had two eyeliners in the house…

“Pearl, it’s gonna rain! Grab your umbrella!”

“Willie, there’s not a cloud in the sky.”

“Yeah, but I got a feeling about this one.”

Unfortunately, Willie’s weather feelings are a poor bet. Outside of “probably going to snow tomorrow”, said in the middle of January or “Gonna be windy tomorrow!” in the spring, he’s just making it up.

It’s a cure for insomnia, isn’t it, this incessant weather blather. A carefully interjected “You don’t say” or “That seems different than last season, doesn’t it?” is all he asks for and all I need to ensure ten minutes of conjecture regarding caterpillar stripes and their warnings on the dreadful winter to come.

Frankly, they’re all dreadful..

Still, he gets to talk about the weather with only the mildest of interjections and ribbing on my part, and I get to fall asleep to muted dreams of snowbound cabins and roaring fireplaces.

Another problem solved.

To My Son, I Leave This Stack of Old Jokes

People say to me, Pearl? Where’d you get that sense of humor; and once you got it, what have you done to try to get rid of it?

And I tell them: I inherited it. There’s really nothing I can do.

My father, the King of Clean Jokes – the man who carried around a little wooden coin inscribed “TUIT” just to present when someone said that they would do something, just as soon as they got “a round to it” – was and is my primary influence.

The first joke he told me was on my way to kindergarten.

“Man walks into a bar,” he says to me, at five. “He sits down, he hears the man next to him tell the bartender, “I’ll have another Waterloo.” The bartender gives the fellow a tall, well-iced drink, then asks the newcomer what he would like to drink. This new guy, he’s thinking the other man’s drink must be a specialty of the house, right? So he says, “I guess I’ll have a Waterloo.” The bartender gives him the tall, well-iced drink and the customer takes a big drink. “Hey,” the new guy says, “this isn’t any good. It tastes just like water!” The man next to him looks at the bartender and says, “Well, it is water. Right, Lou?”

That Dad. What a card.

He told clean jokes when my friends came over, causing me to nip at the heels of my friends in hopes of pushing them out the door. “Hey, Pearl! Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but there’s a guy at the community pool –“

“OK. Stop.”

“Oh, no,” a friend would say, “I don’t think I’ve heard this one.”

“So this guy is at a community pool, right? And he gets kicked out by the lifeguard for peeing in it. “Hey,” says the guy, “get real. Everyone pees in the pool.” And the lifeguard says, “Yeah, but from the high dive?”

General chortles all around.

I swore, of course, that I would not do such a thing, tell jokes to my child’s friends.

But we know what a liar I am.

The Boy had some friends over the other day. They were talking about dogs. I couldn’t resist.

“Did I ever tell you guys the one about the talking dog?”

They laughed. They think I’m funny anyway but now I’ve got a joke.

“OK. So a guy walks into a bar. Tells the bartender that he’s got a talking dog and if he’ll just front him a beer, he’ll get the dog to talk. So the bartender gets him a beer, the guy downs it in one gulp, turns to the dog and says, “What’s that up there on top of the house?” and the dog says “Roof!”. Bartender says, “Oh, come on…” and the guy turns to the dog and says, “What’s the texture of sandpaper?” and the dog says “Rough!”. The bartender’s getting upset now, feels he’s been cheated out of a beer. The guy can see this and turns to the dog one more time. “Who’s the greatest baseball player that ever lived?” The dog says “Ruth!” “That’s it!” screams the bartender, and kicks the guy and his dog outside. The guy stands up, dusts himself off, the dog looks up at him and says “DiMaggio?”

And I saw the look on my son’s face: bemusement, love, perhaps a touch of resignation; and I recognized the look as the one I wear myself when my Dad tells jokes.

Turns out I’m a carrier.

Not everything we pass on to our children is in our DNA or trickled down to us in a will.

Some of it is far more serious than that.

My Mother Will See You Now

It’s Friday, it’s summer, and it’s the start of a long weekend here in the U.S. Do I ask for much more? I do not. Ladies and gentlemen, join me, won’t you, in giddy anticipation of the end of the work day and the beginning of a three-day foray into unabashed revelry.

I turn to my iPod, Harmonic Harbinger, Aural Oracle, Tuneful Tarot, and ask it: this morning’s playlist? What’s it say for the weekend?

Funky So-and-So by Sugarman 3 and Co.
Take Me to the River by Talking Heads
She’s in Parties by Bauhaus
Shadrach by Beastie Boys
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright
Easy (Like Sunday Morning) by Faith No More
Nausea by Beck

First of all, I’d like to deny everything that the above list says about me and suggest that my iPod is a liar. While I may be funky and am definitely a talking head, and, okay, I enjoy the occasional party, have been known to shout along with the Beastie Boys, and have plans to – ah, rats.

I am not, however, all that easy; and I’m speaking particularly to my mother here.

Curse you, iPod!

And speaking of my mother…

When the weather gets warm, when the days get longer, I think of my mother and her unmet desire to become a medic.

Summer always provided ample opportunity for an unlicensed medical practice.

In her heart of hearts, my mother fancied herself a professional. She lived for the moment one of us would come running into the house – “MOM!!!” – shouting in that tone that makes women, mothers or not, stop what they’re doing, tilt their chins toward the sound, and consider getting involved.

She specialized in make-do situations. She once removed a perfectly nostril-sized pebble from my nose when I was five using nothing but her wits and her left pinkie nail.

And she loved slivers. Her eyes glittered as she’d go for her sewing kit.

“Oooh, we’ve got a nice one here,” she’d say, hunched over the afflicted spot. “Howdja get that? You climbing telephone poles again? Kevin, give me your lighter.” She’d hold her needle over the flame. “It’s sterile,” she’d say. “Hold still, now, we don’t want another incident.”

I once watched her pry a nail out of my brother Kevin’s tennis shoe. The nail had gone up through the shoe and well into the arch of his foot, the result of running across the top of the dump that ran behind the trailer park. I amuse myself by pretending to recall that it was terribly gruesome and that you could actually hear the nail rub against bone as she wrenched it from the bottom of his shoe; but the truth is less satisfying.

Kevin leaned against the trailer, his foot tucked firmly under Mom’s left arm. The hammer in her right, she appeared to be taking a shoe off a horse.

The operation was surprisingly swift.

Kevin howled, of course, but more out of the anticipation of pain than the pain itself. It was over so quickly that he stopped yelling, an abrupt cessation; and we all watched as Mom pulled the shoe and then the sock off.

It was disappointingly bloodless.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you’ll be wanting new shoes then.”

Mother Pearl Has a Nice Ring To It

When I was young, back when the Garden of Eden was in bloom and we were still counting how many turtles' shells the Earth was resting on, I actively considered following in the path of Mother Teresa.

No, really.

I was a serious child and could not understand the despair in the world – I was pretty sure I could help.

A lack of confidence has never been one of my problems.

Unfortunately, the path to righteousness has many sideroads at which you may turn; and since leaving childhood, I have gone dizzy with the number of times I've diverged from the path...

I have laughed – and not in a nice way – at a drunk woman who squatted on the sidewalk, in a very short skirt, to rummage through her purse, her underwear glowing in the dark, her butt, inches from the pavement, a chubby white advertisement for sobriety.

I once told a beggar who tried to hug me “Touch me and I’ll scream”.

I have accused my husband, the long-suffering William Throckmorton the III, of undisclosed mental retardation after having been asked to repeat myself for the fifth time.

I have chased a rather large woman on a motorized scooter for three blocks before succumbing to asthma and bare-footed-ness.

This is kindness? This is humility? This is turning the other cheek?

Ah, well, the other cheek is still squatting on the sidewalk, I suspect, looking drunkenly for her wallet.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have strayed from the path that Mother Teresa would have asked me to walk.

I have lost patience with the people who take more than they need, pretending that they don’t notice that they’ve done so.

I have lost respect for the people who don’t cop to their own culpability, who manipulate reality for their own ends and take others with them.

I have become intolerant of the people who add nothing but only take.

In short, I have discovered that I am more human than I had hoped for.

"Sweaty" is the New Black

You may not know this – despite the e-mail blasts and the tattoos my friends insist on getting in my name – but I cling to the Old Ways (ie home trepanning and milling my own soap).

OK. I don’t mill my own soap.

Here we are, my friends: it’s the end of June, and I just may turn the air conditioning on.

I mentioned that to some friends today, that I was thinking of turning the air on. They laughed, because, ha ha, what kind of nut hasn't turned on their air conditioning yet?

One look at my sincere and sweat-beaded face and they knew I was telling the truth.

There were limited options, when I was growing up, if you were hot. You could do as my mother advised, which was to take a cool shower, roll yourself in talcum powder and then lay on your crisp, line-dried sheets with a fan on, thus creating a cool and dry environment for yourself.

Or, you could do as my father did, which would be to take as hot a shower as you could stand, thus making whatever temperature it was outside cool by comparison.

Air conditioning was like a dream to us, part of the exciting “Let’s go to the movies!” package on those really hot days. One of my aunts – the same woman who taught me that if you whistled in the dark the ghosts couldn’t get you – used to drive us around town with the windows up so that “the rich folks” would think we had air conditioning in our car, something that was, in our eyes, the epitome of wealth.

But that’s what happens when you come from no-air-conditioning people – first you glamorize those who do; and then you find ways around it. And honestly, whether your way of dealing with it is running through the sprinkler, sitting in front of a fan with your swimsuit on, or running naked down the alley from Brent's house to Sybil's, you won’t remember being this hot when winter rolls around (or until the photos start showing up on Facebook).

It’s 92F out there right now. That’s 33.3C. It’s to hit 97/36 by Friday, which is much easier to take when described, at least for this gal, in Celsius. Ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit sounds like the temperature you pre-set the oven to. Thirty-six degrees Celsius sounds friendly, like there might be a decorative scarf or some brand-new socks involved.

Hmmm. Somebody remind me of how nice I think “36 degrees” sounds, come November or so.

The Gravitational Pull of Turkey Gravy is Measured by the Number of Necks in the Roaster

I live in a three-storied House of Aroma, and I say this in the nicest possible way.

Close-approximation living is a learned behavior and is not for the overly sensitive.

The House of Aroma has, as I say, three floors. Curries float up from the first floor astride a conspiratorial acoustic guitar; spaghetti and color-crusted oil paintings with chips on their shoulders waft down from the attic. On my floor? This week it’s boxed pizzas and the faint electric smell of sparking brain synapses.

And therein lies the beauty: Each place has its personality, its own energy. Maybe it’s the direction the house faces, where the windows are, that attracts people to the city.

I don’t know what it is and I don’t care but it’s Saturday evening and I smell turkey, people!

Turkey!

Turkey! Beckoning arms of buttery goodness. Who can be sad when there’s turkey? I’ve been swept away by a river of turkey gravy, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

It is as if part of my mind has been seized, seized with vivid, visual memories of Thanksgiving tables, tablecloths and mismatched folding chairs and cousins, women with dishcloths and men with cigarettes.

And the other part of my mind? The other part of my mind is puttering around the house setting things aright only to find itself considering the complexity of canned cranberry jelly versus the whole-berry-style cranberry sauce. Why, the vintage appeal alone of the canned jelly, the way it retains the shape of the can? What could possibly be more kitsch than cranberry jelly? And so perfect for spreading on sandwiches later, too! That’s not to say that there’s not room for change, for some attention to the true taste of the untamed cranberry itself...

Ah. Did you hear that? This is what it has come to. My mind has been turned on end, and all by the heady bouquet of roasting turkey.

I give up. That's right. I’m just going to sit here, my feet up and my eyes closed, and think about plump golden goodness and tables of people happy in knowing that they’ll soon be eating with people they really like, and that later, there will be pie.

And that reminds me: Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. You’re the lilac-scented air on a warm day, and the turkey-dinnered meals of my life.

Willie Suffers

My husband’s calves are the size of a Sunday roast.

He comes from a long line of large-legged people. His father is large legged, his brother is large legged, and his mother? Her legs appear to be one solid bit from calf to foot, a feature known colloquially as a “cankle”.

You may safely conclude from this description that his mother and I are not close.

You may also conclude that the size of Willie’s calves have been the subject of many conversations.

What? You don’t talk about body parts?

“Willie?”

“What?”

“If we were flying over the Andes, and the plane went down –“

“Oh, God,” Willie sighs. “This isn’t the we-eat-your-calves-first conversation again, is it?”

“No! No! Of course not!” It is. “But I’m just thinking that in the future we may want to pack snacks when we fly. You know, things like carrots and onions and potatoes, maybe packets of salt and pepper –“

“There might be something wrong with you.”

He doesn’t mean it.

There’s also my theory on the nomadic nature of his ancestors.

“Hey, Willie.”

Willie sighs heavily. It is clear that he suffers. “Yes?”

“Where do you think your people were from?”

“The Netherlands.”

“No, I mean, like, don’t you think hundreds of thousands of years ago your people were bounding up and down mountain sides, locking their legs around the necks of saber-toothed Big Horn Sheep or something?”

“Or the necks of their wives.” He pauses, feeling this needs softening. "Ha ha," he adds.

He keeds, this one.

We all have our physical distinctions. I, for example, seem to have a flat spot on the back of my head. Sure it’s strange, but it’s also handy for sleeping on the floor. My mother denies that she strapped me to a board as an infant, but she’s a shifty one. I have my suspicions.

Flat head. Monster calves.

Ah. Life’s rich pageantry.

Some People Just Have It

My parents, back in the late 70s and during the time of the Purple People Eaters (the Minnesota Viking’s defensive line) hosted a number of Super Bowl parties.

The Vikings, by the way, have managed to play in quite a few Super Bowls but they have never managed to win one.

It was to one of these parties that my Aunt Pat and Uncle Mark brought their three kids, the youngest being Eric. Cousin Eric was, and is, a funny and deadpan person. At the age of four, however, he was primarily inclined toward running small toy cars up and over things.

“Vroom vroom vroom,” Eric ran the little car up and around the TV set, which in accordance with the times, was a large piece of furniture the size of a polished wooden Volvo.

As an aside, this will come as a surprise to some of you younger folk, but during my childhood, there was no remote control for the television, at least not as we know it today. “Remotes” back then were called “children”; and if you wanted to turn the volume in any direction you had only to give the command and the nearest child was required, by unwritten law, to do your bidding.

There was also no such thing as cable – at least not where we were from. It was a horrid, mean existence. Not many of us lived.

The little boy ran the car up and down the sides of the TV, and despite his mother's insistence that he "come away from there, Eric", he repeatedly found himself unable to comply for long. Sure, he'd step away. Eric wasn't a bad boy. But he always returned, his willpower drained by the pull of wheels, the pull of the TV screen that had everyone's attention.

My father, a man not particularly long-suited in patience, took as much as he could of Eric running that little red car perilously close to the television screen on Super Bowl Sunday and finally asked him, “Eric, how would you like to eat that car?”

Eric stopped what he was doing and considered it. Blinking solemnly he said, “I would not like to eat this car. But I would like to lick it.”


Even at four, Eric had it.

Peekaboo!

I grew up in a trailer.

We moved once a year, sometimes more than that, one dirt-road court after another.

“It’s harder to hit a moving target!” Dad crowed.

The lack of sustained contact influences one, as you would suspect it would; and I compensated by developing a rather dangerous habit.

I became a Peeping Tom.

Don’t get me wrong! I wasn’t the peeping-in-the-bedroom type, and I wasn’t the I-hope-I-catch-you-showering type.

That would be wrong.

I just stood outside of people’s living rooms, looking in.

No big deal.

At the time, I told myself that those people wanted to be seen. Why else would they leave lights on, drapes open, in a trailer park? In hindsight, of course, they could hardly have been expecting the child that crouched in their bushes. I didn’t think about my actions for long, of course. I just wanted to know the people around me.

But I would not be in any park long enough to know any of the people in it.

And I would not be remembered.

Who were these people, these new neighbors of mine? I watched in the waning light of an autumn evening as the bikers two trailers away from ours pull a mirrored tray out from under the couch as they cut straws in half.

The windows were open.

“I used to use Burger King straws,” said the dark-eyed one as he slid a driver’s license up and down the mirror. “But I find they lack the finesse of your McDonald’s straw.”

“What’d he say?” asked the girl lying on the floor in front of the TV.

The blond one answered. “He said he finds that the BK straws lack finesse.”

The girl rolled on to her back and lifted her legs toward the ceiling, her hands at the small of her back. “What’s that? What’s binesse?” she said.

The dark-eyed biker put an index finger to one side of his nose, closing off a nostril, and used the straw in question to snort the line he had just laid out.

“It means – “ he stopped short, and his eyes went to the living room window. He lifted a finger, motioned to the front door. The man seated on the stacked beer cases rose quietly.

Heart pounding, I slid out from under the bushes and ran down to the darkness of the creek that ran behind the trailers.

The screen door slammed as I flew into our living room.

My mother called out from the kitchen. “Where have you been?”

“The bikers two doors down prefer McDonald’s straws to Burger King,” I panted.

“Discerning,” my mother muttered. “Wash up for dinner.”

Hey! The People Look Like Ants From Up Here!

When you fly as often as I do, roughly with each new dusty loop of Haley’s Comet, you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find the amazing progress made concerning these new-fangled aeroplanes!

Headphones? Carbonated drinks? And you no longer have to fire up the propellers manually?

Chocks away, ol’ girl!

I don't get in airplanes often, but I spent quite a bit of my childhood in them.

My father was a crop duster when I was small. You remember crop dusters, don’t you? Those crazy young men, flying under power lines, spraying the sugar beets with insecticides?

That was my dad up there.

I spent many afternoons in two-seater airplanes. From the top of the sky, the white clouds below us were scoops of ice cream, the dark clouds where barely visible men waited to throw lightning bolts at unsuspecting two-seaters, hoping to knock out electrical systems.

Up on the Red River Valley, the storms, with no trees to slow them down, no hills to divert them, come upon you quickly.

“Tell me when you see one, Pearl!” my dad would shout over the roar of the Cessna; and I’d stare at the thunderheads, eyes open wide, because you just knew that those men with the thunderbolts moved so fast that something as slow as a blink was all they needed. As Dad explained, I wouldn’t see the men – they were too fast – but I would see the lightning.

“So what are you gonna yell when you see danger, Pearl? What are you gonna say?”

“I’m gonna yell DANGER! THREE O’CLOCK!”

“That’s right,” he’d yell, nodding. “Just like on the clock. You tell me where it is.”

My father was always poised to slip a life lesson into the day.

“There can never be enough lerts in the world, Pearl,” he’d say, thoughtfully. “Ya gotta be a lert.”

And I was the designated lert. I had a role to play, dagnabit; and at five, I took that responsibility seriously, knew that the fate of the two-seater lie in all four of our capable hands: with my father at the yoke and my eyes trained intently on the clouds on the horizon, through our devotion to our duties we landed, rubber-side down, every time.

Of course, it is years later, many years later, and it has become clear to me that my father used those clouds to give me something to do outside of worry, to give me something on which to focus.

We were never hit, of course; and I’m sure my imagination has exaggerated, as is its wont, any danger we were in; but to this day, I keep an eye peeled for the men in the clouds.

Because if you’re not looking for it, you won’t see what’s in front of you.

And because the world needs more lerts.

Have You Considered Having It Removed?

I like to kid about past cases of calling in to work “with an eye problem” – which, of course, meant that I couldn’t see myself going to work that day – but the truth is that I was raised by people who did not believe in doctors.

Doctors? What do you want to see a doctor for?

Doctors were for when you couldn’t stop the bleeding. Otherwise? You’ll be fine! Nothing a little work won’t cure.

“Pearl! Your father’s trying to kill me!”

I remember that day, the day my parents put a wood-burning stove into the basement, the heavy cast iron pipes running from the stove out through the walls to the garage and then out and up the roof.

What do you mean, pay someone else to do it? When they have two arms and two legs apiece? Don’t be silly!

Of course it’s silly to pay someone to do the work that you yourself can do – until your mother yells for you, as mine did, claiming that ol’ Paul was trying to kill her.

He wasn’t really trying to kill her. She just couldn’t keep that pipe up in the air while he attached the whatzit to the doohickey.

I helped her to the kitchen, where she sat on the counter with her foot in the sink, the tap running cold as the blood swirled down the drain.

“Ooooh ,” she moaned. “Your father’s trying to kill me!” Mom regained her strength just long enough to yell out “Dammit all, Paul!” before lapsing into the moaning again, studiously avoiding the sight of her own blood.

My mother cannot abide two things: children with runny noses and her own blood.

Your blood? Oh, she was fine with that – might even make her laugh in that frightening yet adorable way she has when she is nervous – but her own blood makes her gag.

“We should probably take you to a doctor,” I said. I showed promise, even as a teenager, of knowing which end was up.

“What? Why?”

“That’s a lot of blood you’re losing there,” I said. “I’ll bet that could take some stitches.”

“Stitches, schmitches,” she said. Mom is nothing if not logical. “Ack. I’m fine,” she said dismissively. “Kevin can help with the rest of that lousy stove.”

He did. Kevin helped with the rest of that lousy stove and Dad went to the store that night and bought Mom a pint of mint-and-chocolate-chip ice cream, the kind of treat that passed in our house as an extravagance, an apology, and a declaration of love.

And she shared it.

And so it is with agitation that I tell you that I actually left work in the middle of the day Monday. Someone has slipped in and filled my head, from the eyeballs up, it seems, with cement, or, quite possibly, a heavier version of those foam packing peanuts.

Whatever it is, it’s making me hurt.

And I know it’s no one’s fault, but I’m kind of hoping that somewhere there will be a bowl of mint-and-chocolate-chip ice cream in it for me.

It’s simple; but then again, sometimes, so am I.

I Remember My Mom Saying They Couldn’t Take Him Back to the Hospital…

Holy Hannah! Have you look at the calendar lately? It’s Friday again!

And in keeping with the foolishness I have insisted on clinging to these last two and-a-half years, we consult the Magic iPod, Bringer of Tunes both Inspired and Insipid, Provider of Toe Tappage, Involuntary Dance Moves and Aural Oracle.

Eeny Meenie Jellie Beanie, the spirits are about to speak! (Sorry, Bullwinkle!)

Easy (Like Sunday Morning) by Faith No More
Diamonds and Rust by Judas Priest
China Girl by David Bowie
Double Dare by Bauhaus
Wind Up by Foo Fighters
Had A Dad by Jane’s Addiction
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis by Tom Waits

Well what have I gotten myself into here? Looks rather foreboding, doesn’t it?

If anyone’s looking for me this weekend, I’ll be spinning counterclockwise, maybe spitting towards the moon and sacrificing a rodent or two to ward off whatever darkness is about to befall me.

You got time for a quick story?

Ahem.

My last official purchase whilst still living at my parents’ house – and the mode by which I left it – was a 1968 Ford Falcon, an old car in great shape.

All it needed was speakers for its intriguing stereo system.

And when I refer to a stereo “system”, let us be clear that the “system” was a radio with a built-in cassette player.

I wasted no time in getting two used speakers at a garage sale.

For two dollars, you just knew they had to be good!

I ran the wires from the radio to the speakers in the back and fell asleep that night with dreams of how I would make this car really cool, maybe dropping the chassis, having my name etched into the glass on the driver’s side window, buying a metal clip with a big feather attached to it for a key chain and similar necessary and perfectly legal things.

When I awoke, however, and went out to drive my new car to my new job, I could not help but notice the number of things that had accumulated in my car overnight.

Sand. Lots of sand. A pair of swim fins. Several empty Budweiser beer cans. A man’s swim trunks. A woman’s bikini top but no bottom.

The mind. She boggles.

There was a note on the front seat from my brother. He is one year younger than I and has been the figurative elbow in my ribs since they brought him home from the hospital. Attached to the note was a single dollar bill.

“Hey, Squirrel. Nice car. Ha ha. Nice stereo. You should get another set of used, blown speakers and double your sound quality! Ha ha. Here’s a dollar for you. Buy yourself some gas. Ha ha ha. Your loving brother, Kevin.”

My brother.

He's a funny guy.

You Should Always Check Your Backseat

I found a quarter and four pennies on my way to the bus stop this morning. Would you believe I picked up all five coins?

You would?

Yeah, there are a lot of people who would’ve left those pennies. I’m fully aware of that, thank you. The thing is, those people would have only 25 cents, whereas I now have 29 cents.

It’s not much in the short term, but talk to me in a couple years.

I’ll be rich. Rich, I tell you!

Speaking of the walk to the bus stop, followed by the inevitable bus ride, what does my iPod have to say about the weekend?

To quickly recap the last, oh, almost three years, I’ve gotten it into my thick-haired and bespectacled head that the songs played on my Friday morning’s commute have something to do with what will happen during my weekend.

Don’t spoil it for me, now! Be a sport and play along!

Electric Feel by MGMT
Mongoloid by Devo
I Just Want to Celebrate by Rare Earth
I Would Never Wanna be Young Again by Gogol Bordello
Hem of Your Garment by Cake
Tell Me in the Morning by Cold War Kids
Der Kommisar by After The Fire

To me it looks like it’s all the things I normally think.

Plus a margarita. I feel there’s a margarita hidden in there somewhere.

So! Maybe a light story before we all hit the weekend?

When we were all much younger, my father, the King of Clean and Semi-Lame Jokes, had a hard time expressing affection verbally; so rather than tell you how he felt, he would feed you.

Food is love, yes?

Consider the family dinners in your past: Thanksgivings loaded with pies and gravies and those little home-made mints; Easters with hams and asparagus; late-night silliness with Redi-Whip and pickled pork hocks.

I moved out of my parents’ house less than a month after high school graduation, whereupon I graduated to previously unconsidered poverty.

Who moves out with a mattress, a full-length mirror, and a towel? Well, me, for one. Not that it felt that way at first! But within a couple of years, and after the birth of my boy, the need for groceries on a regular basis became apparent.

What? Ask for help? What are you, nuts?

Tuesdays and Thursdays were meatless days, and I had a vegetable garden – The Boy learned early to pick green beans, to eat tomatoes warm while still standing next to the plants, to eat peas whole and in the pod. Still, there was never enough food.

My father caught on to the fact that there could be more in the fridge at my house. Perhaps because my head was always in theirs whenever I dropped in.

It’s just a hunch.

And so it came to be that I started to “find” things in my car following these visits.

The first time, I found a twenty crammed into the crease of the passenger seat.

After that, there were mysterious grocery bags in my backseat. Potatoes, onions, jars of marinated artichoke hearts, sticks of pepperoni, and other various and sundry items appeared without comment.

I suspected my father; and it was proven when I found in a grocery bag in the backseat – mid-July, mind you! – a stick of butter atop a roll of toilet paper.

There’s nothing really to say about that, but I did have the softest bottom for a while…

This went on for almost two years. We have never discussed this, although I did once leave a note taped to his windshield.

“I discover the weirdest things in my car.”

Some things are easy to find.

Twenty-nine cents in the street springs to mind.

And some things are found only upon reflection.

Thanks, Dad.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board

We were not allowed to play with Ouija boards as children.

It was never my idea anyway. I was a wary, superstitious child, worried not only about whatever lived under my bed but how, if necessary, I would get rid of the vampires, werewolves, demons, or various other creature-feature types that may attempt to come through a window while our parents were gone.

The werewolves I thought I could handle – surely there was a gun somewhere in this trailer court? – and a vampire could be avoided entirely with garlic, something we always had plenty of; but I was always particularly concerned about demonic possession. My younger brother and sister – especially my brother! – looked like prime candidates for that sort of thing to me, and I kept a close eye on both of them every time my parents went out.

The odds of finding a priest in some of these trailer parks were pretty slim, after all; and have you met my brother?

He once tied me to a tree and left me there.

Everywhere we lived it seemed someone was staring into a mirror in the dark. “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody –“ Of course you’d have to be crazy to finish that, wouldn’t you? I don’t even recall the point of the whole thing. Why were we saying that?

All I remember is that those two words, repeated three times in a row, were enough to send pre-pubescent girls all over rural Minnesota screaming hysterically toward a light switch.

“But Mom, why can’t we play with a Ouija board?”

“Because a friend of mine had a friend who used it once, and the board told him that he would be killed by Time; and of course he laughed. But sure enough, one day he was out walking and a large clock fell off a building and killed him!”

Had she been smiling when she said that, my mother? Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if she was pulling my leg. All I know is that I’ve never looked at a picture of Big Ben without imagining someone crushed under it, their last thought being “well, I’ll be danged. That lousy board was right…”

I tried to explain this to a nephew once, the delicious-ness of fear, the dark room, a friend lying on a table, everyone gathered around with their fingertips under her body, chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board” over and over until – oh, for cryin’ out loud! – the body began to rise, not seeming to weigh a thing...

“Why would you want to do that?”

“What? Why? Well because, see, there were only four TV stations and you had to go to the theater to see a movie…”

“So you turned out the lights and tried to scare yourselves?”

Hmm. Well, yes. Something like that.

We were just playing around.




And I’m still not allowed to use a Ouija board.