Her Mom (looking more worried than I think I’ve ever seen her), her Dad (looking more stunned into tenderness than I’ve ever imagined seeing him), and grand-niecelet Madison (looking oblivious), 2012-05-12 (two days after her birthday).
Kin-Smitten
For weeks recently, I was obsessing over the prospect of a block of time now past (March 16-20) loosely referred to as SibFest ’11. Making travel arrangements. Delegating or automating certain must-do everyday tasks because I wouldn’t be around to do them for real (hello, midweek and Friday RAMH posts!). Packing. Touching base with the other participants. Pretending to focus on the day job for eight hours a day…
SibFest ’11 was the second time my sisters, brother, and I turned a chunk of the calendar into an island, insulated by design from our “normal” lives. I’d visited my brother for a few days a couple years ago, and my sisters, too, came by for a day. For SibFest ’11, though, we all traveled to a location roughly midway between New Jersey and Florida.
The plan, you wonder? None. Between arrival and departure, we just winged it.
Here’s what we did, loosely: talked, ate, slept, talked, laughed, talked, ate, drove to the store (or restaurant, or “attraction”), talked, walked around, talked, laughed, slept, talked… Two of us might go out to run an errand, while two of us stayed put. We took some unscheduled time to ourselves each day, with little or no interaction (reading, doing email and other quick online activities, napping). But really, we just made it up as we went along. “What do you want to do now?” “Anybody for a walk?” And so on.
It was great — for me, especially. I mean, I know the other three (who live within an hour of one another) welcomed the opportunity to see me and to “get away from it all.” But when I moved to Florida in ’93 to be with The Missus-to-Be, I never imagined that whole years might pass during which I wouldn’t see Connie, Cindy, and Mike. Not that I’d have decided otherwise, but I never considered the psychological implications of going that long without seeing their eyes light up (or fill, as the case may be). It seemed impossible that they might someday sit at a table with me and talk about people with whom they’ve been friends for ten, fifteen, almost twenty years… but whom I’ve never met.
But that didn’t matter, from mid-day Wednesday through Sunday morning. There we all were at the South Carolina coast.
People who know us have said they’d love to have been a fly on the wall to overhear the conversation at SibFest ’11. But you know what? I think no one but the four of us could have made sense of it for more than ten or fifteen minutes. We fell instantly into the familiar mode: speaking English, yes, but a peculiar sort of English needleworked onto and through a warp and weft of memories — in-jokes, lightning-bolt events in our pasts, old neighborhood characters, things we’d once promised and never delivered, things we’d delivered without advance warning, things small at the time but hugely inflated in retrospect (and vice-versa), wishes and dreams and deliriums and disappointments, people we’d forgotten, places we never got to and places we saw far too often, ice-cream flavors and TV shows, music and gardens, the theater fire, the church, the schoolyard, lilacs and hollyhocks and lacecap hydrangeas, how-come and I-always-wondered transitions, childhood crushes and kids who freaked us out, whatever-happened-to questions, the swallowing up into history of people we’d sat next to for years, first library cards and wardrobe accidents, run-ins with police, misfortunes (and near-fortunes) of love…
The best thing about being alone with the other three? I think it’s the utterly effortless unguardedness. We sometimes talk about competing as siblings — living up to some standard set by one or more of the others — but that’s got nothing to do with how we interact. We don’t have to squeeze words in edgewise. We don’t have to match rhythms, playing catch-up or slow-down. Do, or not, but there really is no try.
What a great, great, great time.
Thanks so much, kids. Love you.
Holidays — Bloody, Cutthroat Holidays
[Note: I don’t know any of the people in the above image (click on it to see it where I first did, in its original form). I found this Santa quite unnerving, though.]
The RAMH regular who goes by the handle “whaddayamean” commented yesterday on a post from back in November. She referred there to a game called a Yankee Swap, which I gather to be the same one enjoyed by The Missus’s family for many years. Down here, though, it’s called the “Dirty Santa” gift exchange.
The idea is that everyone attending a holiday get-together brings a wrapped gift. But you don’t know who will get your gift; indeed, you might even wind up with it yourself.
All the gifts are piled in the center of the room, and everyone draws a number from a hat or bowl. Then you go around the room, in numerical order, as follows:
Aside: in the instructions below, I’ll drop for readability’s sake my usual obsessively gender-neutral practice of s/he-ing all the pronouns. It was starting to make even me crazy.
Player #1 picks any gift at all from the pile, and opens it. Everyone oohs and aahs, or laughs, and then things get really interesting…
#2 may also pick a gift from among those remaining in the pile. In this case, play moves to #3. But #2 may choose instead to “steal” the gift which #1 opened. In this case, #1 returns to the pile of gifts, and opens another.
Okay, now it’s #3’s turn. She may pick from the pile (you’re seeing a pattern, right?). OR, if desired, she may steal either #1’s gift, OR #2’s. The stealee can now steal someone else’s gift, or return to the dwindling mound of gifts for a fresh one. And so on, and so on.
As with any good game, some caveats are in place to keep things (haha) civilized:
- No one can immediately steal back something which someone stole from her. She can, however, steal it back later. (For example, on #2’s turn above, if 2 steals from 1, 1 has ONLY the option of selecting a new gift. But if 3 then steals from 1, the latter is free to take back whatever 2 stole from him.) (You’re following this, right?)
- No gift can be claimed by more than three owners: the third person who acquires it (even if she has stolen it back) keeps it, for good.
- After all gifts have been opened from the pile, player #1 can then force someone to trade gifts with him.
- Finally, at least around here, they cap the value of each gift: it can’t have cost more than $15.
Part of the fun of the whole thing, for me anyhow, is actually acquiring the gift to bring. You can go practical — bringing a kitchen implement or set of screwdrivers, for instance. Or you can go wacky or enigmatic. (One year, I brought a carved wooden hand, a sort of ornament or decor item, which stood on the wrist. It didn’t do anything. It just stood there.) Or you can opt for the fun approach — bringing a game or childhood toy, even if none of the participants are children.
The (Mostly Bogus?) War Between Men and Women
From Seems to Fit, Chapter 23(ish):
Bonnie loved her own laugh. Or rather, she loved that George and other men loved it, that spontaneous eruption of trills and musical bubbles which erupted from her throat and open mouth when something struck her as especially funny — especially when the something wasn’t meant to be funny. She loved the way it made men’s heads swivel in a restaurant or crowded train, looking for the source of sudden brooksound. This laugh always caught even her by surprise, the first blurt and the ripple of voice and breath which followed quickly on its heels: it felt like a rabble of schoolkids at recess, chasing after and tumbling over one another.
But she also knew the trouble which could follow when that laugh emerged at a moment not funny at all to those around her, to men especially, no matter how deeply ridiculous the moment (and the seriousness with which men regarded it) might be.
How different are men and women? And what, exactly — even approximately — takes place at the vertices where they bump into one another?
I’m not talking physical vertices, of course. (This isn’t that sort of blog.) It’s like… Well, a couple years ago I devoted a blog post to the importance of edges: those (sometimes invisible) lines where two disparate things meet. In simplest geometric terms, an edge occurs where one two-dimensional plane intersects another. (In order to intersect at all, the two planes must “differ” in at least one respect: their angles in space.)
But all kinds of things scrape up against all kinds of other things. The taste of one cupcake ingredient juxtaposed with another. The sound of a musical note against a silence. Countries. Cultures. Ideas.
Are you familiar with the word frotteur? It comes from the French word frottage, rubbing, and is a term applied to someone who derives physical — often sexual — pleasure from rubbing against someone else. While the pleasure isn’t physical (I’m not that far gone), I sometimes think of myself as a frotteur of ideas and facts.
So what the heck is it, exactly, that happens in that narrow, narrow, quark-wide little gap where men and women intersect? Is it a “war”? Is it even friction? Is it even confusion?
(In what follows, please understand that I’m certainly not ignorant of extreme cases — relationships of brutal violence, physical or otherwise, or weird power trips and perversions. I’m just not talking of them for now. I’m talking of “normal” relationships — whatever the hell that means.)
Medical Update
The Stepdaughter and The Missus: both doing fine, albeit exhausted.
The immediate crisis — borne mostly by the former, although vicariously by The Missus and the rest of us — finally passed last night, sometime after midnight. Now begins a loooong period of physical and psychological recovery. This has been a sad, scary, tiring week. So very glad to have finally put this much behind us.
Thanks so much to Facebook and Twitter friends for your support over the last few days.
Whether or not you “know” me from those other online milieus, whether or not you have any idea what crisis I’m talking about, I encourage you to learn at least a little — via Google or other resources, online or offline — about the term partial molar pregnancy. It’s not very common; The Stepdaughter’s very good, very experienced doctor said he has seen only three in his long career. But its real and potential impact on a mother-to-be and those around her is wildly disproportionate to its rarity.You, too, may never encounter it firsthand — even second- or third- — but it may not be a bad bit of information to have tucked away in the back of your mind.
A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist (2009 ed.)
Taking off from the first edition… All I’m going to do for the music portion here is just add ten songs (and pray that, over time, I won’t blow the little WordPress audio-player thingie out of the water).
As before, these artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist:
- Peter Robbins et al.: dialogue from A Charlie Brown Christmas
- Anonymous 4: Hodie Christus Natus Est
- Waverly Consort: Three Spanish Villancicos – Dadme Albcrecias
- Perry Como: Home for the Holidays
- Mannheim Steamroller: Joy to the World
- George Winston: The Holly and the Ivy
- Celtic Woman: O Holy Night
- John Denver and the Muppets: The Twelve Days of Christmas
- Al Hirt: Nutty Jingle Bells
- The Roches: Deck the Halls
— 2009: — - Charlotte Church: Mary’s Boy Child
- Madeleine Peyroux/k.d. lang: River
- George Winston: Variations on the Kanon
- Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops: The Toy Trumpet
- Eartha Kitt: Santa Baby
- Mannheim Steamroller: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
- Celtic Woman: The Wexford Carol
- The Brian Setzer Orchestra: Jingle Bells
- Jimmy Boyd: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
- Cumberland Gap Reunion: Silent Night
(Note: The playlist goes automatically from start to finish, once you click the little Play button. To fast-forward to the next number, once a song is playing you’ll find a little fast-forward button to the right of its progress meter. And a fast-rewind to the left, for that matter.)
[audio:00_dialoguefromacharliebrownchristmas.mp3, 01_hodiechristusnatusest_anonymous4.mp3, 02_threespanishvillancicos_dadme_albricias_waverlyconsort.mp3, 03_homefortheholidays_perrycomo.mp3, 04_joytotheworld_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 05_thehollyandtheivy_georgewinston.mp3, 06_oholynight_celticwoman.mp3, 07_12daysofchristmas_denvermuppets.mp3, 08_nuttyjinglebells_alhirt.mp3, 09_deckthehalls_theroches.mp3, 11_marysboychild_charlottechurch.mp3, 12_river_peyrouxlang.mp3, 13_variationsonthekanonbypachelbel_georgewinston.mp3, 14_thetoytrumpet_fiedler.mp3, 15_santababy_earthakitt.mp3,
16_rudolphtherednosedreindeer_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 17_thewexfordcarol_celticwoman.mp3, 18_jinglebells_briansetzerorchestra.mp3, 19_isawmommykissingsantaclaus_jimmyboyd.mp3, 20_silentnight_cumberlandgapreunion.mp3|titles=’A Quirky/Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist’|artists=Various Artists]
16_rudolphtherednosedreindeer_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 17_thewexfordcarol_celticwoman.mp3, 18_jinglebells_briansetzerorchestra.mp3, 19_isawmommykissingsantaclaus_jimmyboyd.mp3, 20_silentnight_cumberlandgapreunion.mp3|titles=’A Quirky/Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist’|artists=Various Artists]
Crossing the Line
First, there’s May 29. As you may have put together by your own clever self, that’s The Missus’s and my anniversary. This has always been an easy date for me to remember, because it was also my Dad’s birthday. Somewhere around here was also my maternal grandmother’s birthday. And finally, because I have many happy childhood memories of Memorial Day — which used to fall every year on May 31 — the very end of the month always seems to carry with it an assertive whiff of celebration and commemoration.
But then we come to the small matter of June 4, 1988…
“Just Where Have You Been, Young Man?!?”
So, yes, I disappeared for[…counting…] four days there. (Friday’s whiskey river-based meditation brought to you through the miracle of WordPress’s scheduled-posts feature.) Long story short (so unlike me, I know), for now: I spent the time with The Brother, up in NJ. We were joined Saturday by The Sisters.
That’s the three of them in the photo above (click it to enlarge), channeling Gilbert & Sullivan; and, for reference, a somewhat earlier photo of all four of us in the photo at right.
(If you want to try your hand at morphing them from their 1950-something selves to now, note that the bottom row at the right is in the opposite order from the sequence in the top photo.)
And just to keep things fair — actually more than fair — I’ll include one photo of me (and The Younger of Two Sisters) below the fold.
Dream Talk
Somewhere around here we’ve got one of those little reference books to help you interpret your dreams. You know the ones — structured sort of like a thesaurus, so when you look up a word or phrase (“coffee,” say, or “horror movie” or “lava lamp”) you get an instant read on what that object or experience represents. Especially if you look up more than one dream-thing at a time, and combine the interpretations. (“You are concerned about sleeping too much” + “You need more Citizen Kane and less hockey-mask Jason in your life” + “You vaguely remember your life of 30-40 years ago” = “Dude…”)
I need to find it to look up my two most recent (remembered) dreams. At least they were on different days, so there’s no chance (is there?) that they’re related. Both had a curious visual quality to them — not quite animated, and not quite like viewed as an old scratchy film, but not not quite not animated or scratchy, either.
Sunday morning, minutes before waking
I dream that I am lying in bed, and that I am in that pleasant half-conscious state where one has the option of getting out of bed right that moment or drowsing a little longer. In the dream, I opt to get out of bed finally when I hear dream-voices.
In the dream’s master bathroom, our next-door neighbor (whom I will call Mrs. L) is discussing something with The Missus. Mrs. L has a clipboard in one hand, which she consults or annotates from time to time, and I get the distinct impression that Mrs. L is our landlady (although we don’t rent this house).
My dream-self gets out of bed. Uncharacteristically — so uncharacteristically that I know this must be a dream — I’m not self-conscious about standing there in my underwear. I kind of give the women a little finger-wave and then, because I obviously can’t use the master bathroom at the moment, I walk briskly down the short hall to the guest bathroom.
But you know, there’s something odd about this guest bathroom. Or rather, some things.
The tub is gone. There is no sign a tub ever occupied that part of the bathroom: the wall is blank, the tile floor extends right up to the wall. There is nothing at all in that roughly 3’x6′ area. Nothing hangs on the wall. It’s just… empty.
There is no toilet.
The vanity is lower, only about thigh-high or so, and not as broad as the real thing. It’s like a two-thirds-scale model vanity, in fact. No mirror is on the wall above it.
Everywhere — around the edges where the vanity meets the wall and floors, between the tiles — the grout is fresh.
“Uh, honey?” my dream-self calls. “What happened to the guest bathroom?”
The Missus materializes at my side. “Oh,” she explains, “the pipes were clogged.”
And that’s when I woke up.
[Read more…]
Smile After Smile
They say old habits die hard, and I guess it’s true.
But traditions are a sort of shared old habit, and traditions don’t die hard at all — although they don’t flat-out die, either. Traditions evolve. People come and go. What’s possible replaces what you could never do, and what you used to do all the time gets a lot harder as the muscle aches and stray indecisions of age set in.
So all right, I know: the “Christmas traditions” I remember from my four decades in New Jersey are probably long gone.
(Early in the week, I asked my mother what she’d be making for Christmas dinner — feeling all nostalgic, y’know, for turkey and pies and fruit cake and all that, to say nothing of the many-voiced family sit-down conversation around the table. “Meatball sandwiches,” she said. “What?!?” “Well,” she explained, “it was just getting too complicated trying to get everybody here at the same time, for the same length of time. This way they can drop in whenever they want and stay as long as they want.”)
But the one tradition that lives on — one that I haven’t been able to take part in, not for many years — is just seeing everyone at Christmas.
