Gus McCrae

On my bulletin board I have a vintage photo of a cowboy wearing chaps and playing an old banjo for a woman who is sitting on a crate, beaming at the cowboy. The cowboy looks like Elvis. It’s probably not an original photo of Elvis in cowboy gear playing a banjo because I bought it at a flea market for three dollars or something. And besides, the names Dutch and Georg [sic] are written on the back of the photo. Can there be any more perfect man than a cowboy in chaps who’s playing an old banjo? Oh, heart be still. (My cat just jumped up on my desk and puked real puke, not a hairball, on my pile of paperwork. Thanks.)

Anyway, back to the cowboy. I’ve got a thing for cowboys. I think it goes back to Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove. Last week on NPR someone was interviewing Robert Duvall and he said that one of his two favorite roles was Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. There has never been a man, real or imagined, more charming than Gus McCrae. In my mind Robert Duvall is Gus McCrae. I've read Larry McMurtry's epic novel several times and always saw Robert Duvall oozing from the pages. No one else could ever be Gus. I met Robert Duvall once. I actually sat directly behind him at a local musical-comedy performance. There I was, sitting behind him, thinking how I just wanted to be Lori Darlin’ and play cards with Gus for a poke. I almost slipped and asked Robert Duvall if he wanted to go for a poke, but reality overtook me. Why the blazes she preferred Jake Spoon to Gus I’ll never understand. Lori Darlin’ was so young and foolish.

I'm going to go cook up a pot of beans and watch Lonesome Dove. Here's the baked bean recipe.

Norinne’s Baked Beans

2 pounds canned pork and beans in tomato sauce
4 slices bacon, chopped
½ cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon prepared mustard

Cook bacon until crisp and set aside. Reserve 2 tablespoons bacon grease and sauté onion in grease until tender. Put baked beans in an oven-proof casserole with bacon and cooked onion. Add brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Bake uncovered at 325 degrees for 1 ½ to 1 ¾ hours.

Bonita and Joe

A brief explanation . . . I've been asked about this writing exercise I do. It's freewriting. I close my eyes, take a book off my bookshelves, and with eyes still closed open the book to a page and put my finger down. Whatever sentence is there is the prompt for what I write. I just write, don't do paragraphs, don't go back and rewrite. The sentence I find becomes the last sentence in whatever I write. It's just an exercise in creativity. Here's what I did today.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, p. 55:

“Joe bit down hard on his cigar and beamed all around, but he never said a word.”

Bonita Mae said that Mr. Joe B. Easterday satisfies her every need but she failed to provide details on exactly what those every needs might be. Bonita Mae’s hair had just been curled and tinted the color of carrots and she walked with a wiggle in a baby blue dress with white polka dots, a low neckline, and row of ruffles. She was leaving Luanne’s House of Beauty and she handed Luanne a 50 dollar bill and told her to keep the change. As Bonita Mae walked toward the door, Luanne spotted Joe Easterday standing outside. He was leaning against the rear fin of his big shiny new white Cadillac, smoking a cigar, wearing white pants, white shoes, and a baby blue sports jacket that exactly matched the blue of Bonita’s dress. Luanne said, “Well, Miss Bonita Mae, is that Joe Easterday waiting outside for you?” That’s when Bonita looked back over her shoulder and waved like a beauty queen at the girls in the beauty parlor and made the pronouncement about Mr. Joe B. Easterday taking care of her every need. Then she giggled and said, “He’s such a lovely man.” The door closed behind Bonita Mae. Ethel Franklin, who was getting a permanent wave, said, “He might be a lovely man but I do believe her every need is C-A-S-H, cash dollars.” The ladies had held a grudge against Bonita Mae Tucker for years and years, even before Bonita landed the first of her four husbands. The grudge went way back to the time Bonita did that modeling and they all saw her in the magazine ad for the bum booster panty girdle. No one ever verified that it was Bonita in the ad, but it sure looked like her from behind, even though her face was barely visible in the photograph. And they were certain that she had a lifetime supply of the infamous panty girdles and she used them to her advantage. Mr. Joe B. Easterday had no idea that he was walking right in to her trap. Joe Easterday had recently retired from the family funeral business. His sister, the former Esther Easterday, met Mr. Leroy Jenkins at a conference on the crematory business and married him at the tender age of 56 after a brief whirlwind romance. Joe didn’t agree with Esther and Leroy about moving into the cremation business so he sold his share of the family business to the newlyweds and retired. Joe had driven black cars and he had worn black suits nearly every day for the past 60 years. The day he sold his share of the business he bought all new clothes and a white Cadillac. And he started courting Bonita Mae Tucker. He felt like his life was just beginning. He opened the car door for Bonita Mae and patted her on the bottom as she slid into the front seat. Joe bit down hard on his cigar and beamed all around, but he never said a word.

Restaurant review

I’ve never written a restaurant review before but I feel compelled now. It’s a one word review—horrendous! Can I give it negative stars? The restaurant is in Bethesda, Maryland. It’s a dirty restaurant-tavern in a strip mall. The only thing I can say positive about it is that the band was great. That was pure dumb luck. I hope the band never plays there again.

When I arrived, 8:30 Saturday night, there was one person sitting at a table in the dining section and two people in the bar area. Obviously not a hot restaurant for reasons I would soon discover. They had two choices of beer on draft—Bud and Bud Light. Woohoo! As an alternative they had a selection of about 12 bottled beers but they were out of almost everything on the list. Also turns out the beer was almost lukewarm. I didn’t bother to complain. When my friends arrived and tried to order wine, we found out that they had two wine choices—some kind of red wine and some kind of white wine. The server wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem unreasonable to expect a bar to have at least a modest selection of alcohol. It was an unreasonable expectation.

The food was as bad as the drink selection. My friends ordered the mozzarella sticks. Awful, over-cooked, and greasy with genuine ketchup dipping sauce. One of the reviews I read beforehand actually said that the French fries were good so we took a chance and got an order of fries. Wrong—they were awful, limp, undercooked, frozen fries. There was some sort of chicken salsa salad on the menu so I asked the server if they had chips and salsa. She looked at me like I had three heads.

At 9 o’clock the band came on. The band was fabulous but at 9:30 the restaurant owner asked them to take a break. A handful of people had come in and sat in the bar area after we arrived, including a couple wearing hockey shirts. The man in the orange hockey shirt was really, really drunk and was creating a commotion. The hockey shirt woman explained to us that he had been drinking all day, “Beer, then liquor, more beer, more liquor, more beer . . .” She assured us that she was driving. When the band stopped playing only a half hour into their set, the hockey shirt man selected music from the jukebox and was playing air guitar with stick from the pool table. Apparently the owner had asked the band to stop playing until the hockey shirt guy wore himself down. My friends and I wanted to hear the band instead of the jukebox so we asked to speak to the owner. The conversation went something like this.

I said: We don’t think it’s fair that you’re not letting the band play because you’re accommodating this drunk guy.

Owner said: Well, you’re going to have to suffer the consequences if I let the band start playing again. (Drunk guy in hockey shirt) is here all the time and I know he’s going to act up.

I said: Okay, guess we don’t need to stay any longer. We came to hear the band.

Owner said: How many times have you been married?

I said: Once. (But why did I even bother to answer him?)

Owner said: Did he die?

I said: Yes, he did.

Owner said: I figured as much.

At which point my friends are in shock, the owner turns off the jukebox, the band starts playing again, and drunk guy in hockey shirt defies the owner’s prediction and sits quietly and watches the band.

But that’s not all. When the band started playing again, hockey shirt woman started dancing with another woman who came into the bar. The other woman looked like a washed-out stripper. She had a humungous bosom that was amply exposed and she and hockey shirt woman were dirty dancing. The grungy guys hanging out in the bar were getting quite a show to go with their warm Bud Light and greasy cheese sticks. Who ever would have thought seemingly upscale, stuffy Bethesda could be so raunchy?

You just can’t make up this stuff.

Wait Until It Stops

Glen Echo Park is absolutely one of my favorite places and--lucky me--it's only about 10 minutes from my house. It's an old amusement park that was taken over by the National Park Service a few years ago and preserved. My parents used to take the trolley there when they were young and they danced in the Spanish Ballroom. And when I was a kid, we used to go there, often with groups from church. All of the rides except for the beautiful Dentzel carousel are gone now. The Crystal Pool is gone, so is the cuddle-up and the bumper cars and the roller coaster where I surely was going to die one day in a freak accident. In place of the rides there are now performance spaces and art studios. The Spanish Ballroom has been restored and is the site for dancing almost every night of the week. I've taken many classes at the park and especially love being there when it's quiet. It's such a magical place.

I love this old photo of the carousel at Glen Echo and I'm amused by the warning painted on the base of the carousel: "WAIT UNTIL IT STOPS." Good adage to consider about life in general--don't dismount until it stops.

There's a piece in my draft book about dancing at Glen Echo that hopefully captures some of my feelings about being in that magical place. Here it is.

A prayer of joy . . .

Dancing Fool

The Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo has been closed for renovation for months and it will be many months before it reopens. I loved dancing on that old wooden floor, in the room with no heat or air conditioning, the same room where my parents danced in 1940 before the war. In the early days after my husband left me, I desperately sought something to keep me busy every night of the week, anything to escape the intense loneliness. I first took Irish set dance lessons in the Spanish Ballroom, taught oddly enough by a Japanese man.

I got inspired to dance Cajun and zydeco a couple of years ago when I saw Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie at the Kennedy Center. Geno, a drop-dead gorgeous young black man in a cowboy hat, plays the accordion. People at the Kennedy Center performance danced in the aisles under the chandeliers when he played. It was infectious—I just had to dance. So I signed up for Cajun and zydeco dance classes in the Spanish Ballroom. Now that the old ballroom in being renovated, the class has been moved to the bumper car pavilion, on makeshift concrete dance floor reconstructed of old wood. The protective plastic curtains that normally protect the dance floor from the weather are rolled up during class to let the breeze float through and we dance outside while mosquitoes jitterbug on us and the rats waltz around the shadows.

The instructors put on a recording, a Cajun waltz in a minor key, sung in French. I know enough French to understand—she is too young, her father won’t let her marry, and it’s breaking her heart. The breeze seems cool when we start dancing but we dance for one hour, past two hours, and start to sweat. I wear my red cowboy boots and know that after two hours my feet will be killing me, but still the cowboy boots are perfect because they have leather soles that slide when I am dancing. Often there are more women than men in a class and I sometimes dance alone, imagining I am dancing with a partner. But on this night, dancing on the old wooden floor, there are more men than women. I feel like the belle of the ball.

It sometimes seems awkward to have such intimacy with a complete stranger, to be in the arms of a man whose name I can’t remember. We sweat together. Rich’s shirt is wet with perspiration, Jim wears too much cologne, and Roland is handsome but reeks of garlic. But when I’m dancing with one of them and we coordinate our dancing in perfect rhythm with the music, it’s sweet magic. It seems strange when they just walk away after class, never saying anything, like having a lover get out of my bed and leave without a word. But while I am dancing the music just washes over me and for a time I forget everything else that happened that day. I just dance.

When I’m dancing I don’t feel a little too old or a little too fat or a little too clumsy. I’m part of the music. I don’t feel tired and my feet don’t hurt until I have stopped dancing, then I realize that everything hurts and I’m exhausted. But as long as the music is playing and I’m dancing, it’s all there is.

No sleep

You see, I have this giant issue with sleep. It is now past one a.m. Two and a half hours ago I took a bath, one Excedrin PM, and read a boring book until I felt sleepy. Got the ceiling fan on the right speed, fluffed my favorite pillows, and assumed the position. Then another position and yet another. For an hour. Then I relented and took half of an Ambien. That didn't work so I got my corn husk comfort pillow. That didn't work either. Then after another hour I took another half Ambien. And I remember how much I resented that damned psychiatrist of mine who was able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. So, in honor of my inability to sleep--ever--I'm reprinting here from my yet unpublished book a story about my sleeping psychiatrist. This story and recipe got printed in Texas Monthly a few months ago. I love Texas Monthly and they love me too, but not lately. I'm going to have to send them something new to love. I'll work on that, but in the meantime here's the story with a recipe for addictive ginger snaps. Addictive like those sleeping pills that don't work. Yawn . . . are you getting sleepy? Here's the whole thing . . .

A prayer for healers . . .

Minimum Shrinkage

Lord knows I needed help. My husband had just left me and I was barely functioning. I was desperate for something to pull me through. A physician I knew referred me to Dr. Kruger, a psychiatrist with an excellent reputation.

Dr. Kruger’s office was on the first floor of a tired 1950s-era apartment building in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington. The narrow, dark hallway smelled like cabbage cooking. I imagined gypsies and withered old Hungarian women living behind the metal doors. Dr. Kruger had a small apartment that served as her office—a small windowless waiting area, a larger room where she saw patients, and a dingy bathroom with cracked tiles and a grimy bathtub. I wondered if any of her patients ever felt compelled to bathe before or after their therapy sessions. The wall-to-wall carpet, formerly beige, was stained and had ripples big enough to trip an unwary patient. Old copies of Readers Digest and Ladies Home Journal with large sections torn out were tossed around the waiting area. The cover of a magazine caught my attention—“How to Tell if Your Man is Cheating”—supposedly on page 38, but when I looked inside the pages stopped at 37 and began again at 45. I guess I wasn’t the only one with troubles

Dr. Kruger was in her 60s, a kindly plump woman with a short black pageboy hairstyle, gray roots, and no fashion sense. Her entire wardrobe was polyester. A typical outfit was a pink print top with a black knit insert in the v-neck, an elastic-waist print skirt, and knee-high sheer hose that showed the top elastic when she was seated. She wore white shoes after Labor Day and before Memorial Day. I had no respect for her fashion sense or her décor, but I wasn’t there for either. I needed emotional help.

It’s hard to establish a relationship with a therapist. Most people don’t begin therapy until they are in a desperate situation, hurting badly. So you drag your sorry self to the therapist and start spilling out your pain. The problem is, if after several sessions you decide you aren’t connecting with the therapist, you have to search for another one and start the process all over again. And you’re doing this at a time when you have few emotional resources—otherwise you wouldn’t need a therapist.

Week after week I showed up at Dr. Kruger’s office at four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon. When I arrived often she would be in session with another patient and I could hear what they were saying while I waited. I hated that—if it had been the least bit interesting, I might have enjoyed eavesdropping on the intimate details of someone else’s life. The other patients would leave—always awkward, especially if they suspected I heard part of their session. “Just quit your whining and get over it, for God’s sake, don’t be such a wimp,” is what I often was tempted to say. But I avoided eye contact and said nothing.

Then I got my chance with Dr. Kruger. I only can imagine now what we talked about then. I suppose I did my own whining and blabbering about my husband leaving and what was I going to do with my life. She should have told me to get over it. But Dr. Kruger didn’t really care. Regularly, she fell asleep in our sessions. Not just once, or twice, but probably in half of our sessions. She sat in her special psychiatrist chair, nodding, saying, “Yes. I see. And how did that make you feel?” and her head would begin to fall. I just kept talking, perhaps raised my voice a bit. Eventually she would jerk up her head, with a barely noticeable startle, and like a tape on a replay loop, continued saying, “Yes. I see. And how did that make you feel?” I pretended nothing happened. The last thing I needed in my wounded state was to have a confrontation with my psychiatrist. She was supposed to be my refuge, my support, and I lacked the courage to challenge her. So for several months I tried to ignore her catnaps.

I must have been getting stronger because on one Wednesday afternoon, at about 4:30, she started nodding off again. But this time I just stopped talking. She fell into a deeper sleep and started snoring. My shrink, the one who was supposed to be helping me find some self-esteem, was snoring during our session. This was like something out of a cartoon in the New Yorker. I just sat there, getting angry, watching her sleep. Finally she awoke with a little jump and I said in my best ice-queen voice, “You were asleep.”

“But you stopped talking,” she responded.

I wish I had found the presence to say, “I didn’t know it was my job to keep you awake,” but I barely stifled an unamused chuckle, quickly finished the session, and walked down that dark, narrow, cabbage-scented hall of metal doors, seething.

That was my last session with Dr. Kruger; I left a message on her answering machine saying that I would not be returning. When she sent me a bill for the final session, I wrote her a letter, telling her that I wasn’t going to pay her. “I am offended by your unprofessional behavior,” I wrote, “I deserved better from you. I deserved some respect."

Maybe, in her own way, she was a great therapist—she helped me find some courage.
____________________________________________

I don’t know why I chose this recipe to accompany my piece on the snoring psychiatrist. Maybe it’s because I wish I had come back to her with a brilliant snappish retort. I’m a ginger lover and developed this recipe because I needed a delivery system that would give me a huge hit of ginger. Warning—they’re addictive and I’ve yet to hear of a support group for ginger addicts.

Triple Ginger Snaps

¾ cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
¼ cup molasses
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 ½ teaspoon dry ginger
1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon minced candied ginger
Sugar

Cream butter. Gradually add sugar, beating medium speed with mixer. Add egg and molasses, mix well. Combine flour and dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients gradually to creamed mixture. Stir in candied ginger.

Chill dough 1 hour. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll in sugar.

Bake 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets or on parchment-lined cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.

Makes about 4 dozen.

En français

Crazy old woman that I am, I'm taking a French class. I have no plans to go to France and there is no one outside of my class to whom I can speak French. Mes devoirs (my homework) for this week is to write something, anything, in passé composé (past tense). So I wrote a little story about my grandmother who grew up speaking French. (My grandmother and my mother are in the photo and I'm the baby.) My French needs beaucoup de work. I hope this makes sense.

Quand j’étais une jeune fille j’ai aime bien ma grand-mère. Elle s’est appelée Rose Blain et elle est née à Holyoke, Massachusetts. Bien qu'elle a habite aux États-Unis toute sa vie, elle a parle français en famille. Ses parents, Henri et Marie Langlois Blain, sont nés au Québec. Son père a été laitier qui a eu une petite ferme, mais quand certains de ses vaches ont eu la tuberculose, toutes ses vaches ont été tuées. Depuis grand-père Henri a travaille dans une usine de papier. C’était une vie misérable. Ils étaient pauvres et ils avaient douze enfants dans la famille.

Ma grand-mère a épousé mon grand-père qui n’a parle pas français et ils ont déménagé à Maryland. Je me souviens que ma grand-mère était très douce à moi. Elle avait un petit moule à tarte et elle m’a aidé faire une petite tarte aux pommes seulement pour moi.

Ah, je me souviens bien ma grand-mère mais elle est morte quand j’avais cinq ans. C'est triste n'est-ce pas? Elle serait fière de savoir que j’ai écrit de sa vie en français.

Charm School

My son Nathan simply refused to let me schedule anything for him that summer. He was about 10 years old and recuperating from a cracked bone in his ankle. He was getting around just fine but his leg was in a cast and he couldn’t go swimming or participate in other sports. His older sister was away at sleep-over camp and he had his mama’s full attention. Poor kid. Since he wasn’t going to enroll in any organized summer activities I took the parental power route and decided that he would not waste the entire summer reading comic books and reorganizing his baseball cards. (I can just hear myself saying that to him in my bossy mom voice.) We were going to devise his own personal enrichment program—what I called “Charm School.” I didn’t go to the extent of trying to ram etiquette down his throat, but I was determined to find ways to expand his mind and hopefully to entertain him at the same time. I don’t recall giving him any veto power over the activities I scheduled but I did try to find angles to the culture that would capture his imagination.

Because we lived in Northern Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital, we had the all the Smithsonian museums and other cultural attractions within minutes of home. We went to the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery to see an exhibition of Asian warrior art—Nathan loved drawing pictures of “guys” fighting battles and so he loved the room-sized paintings of the warriors. We went to the FBI museum to see exhibits on infamous criminals, sawed-off shotguns, and ingenious weapons the bad guys had developed. But in the end, the bad guys got caught by the good guys and justice prevailed. We went to the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia, a real former torpedo factory that was redeveloped into art studios. I gave Nathan my camera and let him take photos. (You can see photos I took of him attached to this posting.) I think I got him to cook too, but have no recollection of what we cooked and I don’t think the cooking thing stuck with him either.

The thing I remember most was that we spent time together doing things that he would like. In a sense it would have been easier for me to have let him sit in front of the television and read comic books. Because I didn’t want him to have a lazy kid summer, I couldn’t be a lazy mom either. And now I remember that special time with my boy. I’m not sure that Charm School had that much influence on him, but I think he turned out to be a charming man.

Zut alors

I would like to file a complaint with l'Académie française about the French number system. If you don’t know what l'Académie is I can save you a trip to Wikipedia. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language.

Sounds pretty serious, n’est-ce pas? Sort of like the Supreme Court in charge of the French language. I don’t think I’ll get far filing a complaint, being a mere mortal and an American to boot.

However I would like to point out to the immortals that perhaps no one has noticed before that the French number system is convoluted. For example, the French word for the number 99 (in English, simply and reasonably ninety-nine) is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. Literally translated this is four-twenty-ten-nine or less literally, four times twenty plus nineteen. The number 60 has its own word—soixante, but after you get past 60 all hell breaks loose. There’s no word for 70—in French it’s 60 plus 10. There’s no word for 80—it’s four times 20. It’s not the vocabulary that throws me off. One has to do math to figure out what the number is in French. Not simply multiplication but a combination of multiplication and addition and you have to do it in the blink of an eye in another language. By the time I’ve figured out what the number is I could have been well into another conversation. And if someone tells me in French how much something costs I’ll have no idea what the real price is. Maybe it’s their way of keeping the non-native speakers confused.

How hard would it be for the French to have separate words for their numbers? I would like to propose to l'Académie that the French develop new words for the numbers 70, 80, and 90. Perhaps seventie, eightie, and ninetie? So the word for the number 99 in French would be ninetie-neuf. That I could understand.

I thank l'Académie française for considering my proposal. And when you consider it, please remember that we saved your derrières in World War II and it's the least you can do. You're welcome.

Foodie

Recently I was notified that I have been accepted into membership in the Foodie Blogroll. There were rigorous admission standards. Well, not that rigorous, but they did require a certain minimum percentage of actual food entries on my blog and I guess I passed the test. Although I haven't posted much about cooking lately, food content is featured on my blog, as it is in my still unpublished book. (Draft is done--about 250 pages, 49 stories and 49 recipes.) I've been working on getting it published. Anyone know an agent? A publisher?

So, in honor of now being a part of the Foodie Blogroll, I'm posting a salad recipe that I developed. Last week at the farm market there were lots of nice little Persian cucumbers. It will be weeks before fresh local peaches arrive, but I'm ready with the recipe.

Quoting sweet, wild, creative Julia Child, "Bon appetit!"

Salad With Curried Dressing and Peaches

½ cup good quality olive oil
¼ cup orange champagne vinegar
2 tablespoons chutney
1 teaspoon garam masala (can substitute sweet curry powder)
1 ripe peach, unpeeled, chopped coarsely
1 small Persian cucumber, sliced thin
¼ cup dried cranberries
½ cup dried sliced bananas
2 tablespoons roasted pistachios
1 head lettuce—tender lettuce like butterhead or green oak
Handful of pea shoots

In mini food processor, mix olive oil, vinegar, chutney, and curry. Blend thoroughly.

In large bowl, gently toss lettuce and pea shoots with peaches, cranberries, cucumber, and bananas. Pour oil/vinegar mixture over lettuce/fruit mixture and toss. Top with pistachios.

Serves 4.

Goals

I just learned an interesting lesson in life—if you can’t attain one of your life goals, then perhaps you need to adjust the goal. Ha! Easy—I just did it. I’ve been going to Weight Watchers off and on forever. I realize that it doesn’t work if you don’t follow the program. I really hate that about Weight Watchers—why can’t you just pay the fee and lose the weight? But I’m so frustrated with not being at my goal weight that today I did something about it, something I didn’t even know was possible until last week. I changed my goal weight. So even though I didn’t lose a single ounce in the past few weeks, I did get closer to my goal weight by moving my goal weight up 7 pounds. Wow, that feels good! They should have given me a star and applauded my success. Actually I told the WW receptionist that I wanted to add 10 pounds to my goal weight but I think she misheard me because she only adjusted it by 7 pounds. Doggonit—I don’t have the nerve to go back and ask her to add another 3 pounds so I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.

This whole thing about aging and weight is so damned frustrating. It’s not bad enough that you get old, joints hurt, skin sags, and you find yourself turning into your own grandmother. Insult added to injury, the metabolism slows down and you can’t eat anything but a couple of grapes wrapped in lettuce, perhaps some green tea and a shrimp. That’s probably 30 points on the Weight Watchers system. I hate counting. But the horrifying thing about weight in post-menopausal women is the new weight distribution routine. Younger women gain weight in their hips and thighs. They just get curvier, even if they’re a little bottom heavy. Older women blow up in the middle, gaining unsightly abdominal bulges and becoming more like potatoes on toothpicks. I have been known to say that I felt like a fat weasel burrowed under my skin and took up residence on my abdomen. I would like to think of it as a playful, rather charming otter instead of a squirmy, obnoxious weasel. It’s a weasel.

Smokers claim they are afraid to quit smoking because they don’t want to gain weight. They may have something there. Of course there are Surgeon General's warnings on packs of cigarettes, but shouldn't there be warnings on bags of potato chips as well? I think I’ll start smoking. How bad can it be?

God heals everything

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5.

By sheer divine guidance I opened my Bible today to the page where my father’s newspaper obituary is tucked between the pages. And long ago I had highlighted in purple the passage from Proverbs about trusting the Lord. Funny that out of all 2000+ pages in my Bible, that’s where I had my father’s death notice and that was exactly the message I needed today. It’s okay. Well, at least it will be okay. God heals everything. It became clear to me that I need to stop trying so hard, to stop thinking that I need to DO SOMETHING to fix everything and just turn it all over to God. Duh. Why didn’t I think of this before? Just let it be. Just feel the hurt, accept the joys and sorrows that are inherent in being a human being, and let time and God’s grace heal me. Thank you Lord for the joys. Be with me through the sorrows.

Blinky McGinnis

My brother Steve can't believe I remember Blinky's phone number. Indeed it was Blinky's number--I even checked it with my father before he died and he verified it. My father remembered such things because he worked as a telephone installer his entire working career. Not only do I remember Blinky's number but I have a photo of Blinky with my brother Steve and me taken the day of my First Communion. Look carefully over my right shoulder and you'll see Blinky in his cage beside the TV. This is a story that Texas Monthly published last year. I swear every word of it is true.

Blinky McGinnis

Blinky was a feisty blue free-range parakeet, the only child of Mary and Mac McGinnis. Mary and Mac were our next-door neighbors on Apache Street. We called them Aunt Mary and Uncle Mac because over the years they became like family to us. I suppose that would make Blinky an unofficial cousin. In one old family photo my brother Steve and I, dressed in our Easter finery, posed beside Blinky’s cage. Blinky was the kid next-door.

Mary and Mac doted on Blinky. When they called him, he would fly to them, land on their shoulders, and give them little affectionate parakeet pecks on the cheek. I swear I’m not making this up. Mac was a chemist whose pants were always hiked up too high and Mary was a soft-spoken, elegant stay-at-home mom to Blinky. Mary spent her days talking to Blinky and keeping an immaculate house. Perhaps it was time consuming to clean up after a bird whose cage door was kept open so he could fly around the house at will. Or perhaps Blinky was potty trained. All the other parakeets in the neighborhood, including my own parakeet Chiffon, envied Blinky. Sadly, my own parakeet was quite ordinary—otherwise I might be writing about Chiffon instead of Blinky.

Blinky was renowned for his extensive vocabulary. I used to swear that he knew what I was saying and would answer questions with the correct answer. Mary and Mac had taught him to say many things, including the usual parakeet things like “pretty boy” and “hello there” but his favorite thing to say was his name and his phone number— “I’m Blinky McGinnis. Hemlock 4-3288.”

One fateful day, Mary went out the basement door to water her tomato plants and Blinky soared out the door, gone from sight in an instant. Mary and Mac were frantic. Mac scoured the neighborhood with binoculars, calling, “Blinky, Blinky, come home.”

Every day Mary drove miles into the city to the Franciscan monastery to say novenas, pleading to God for Blinky to return. Weeks passed and Mary and Mac became more despondent, wondering how long Blinky could survive in the wild, fearing the worst.

One day, before cold weather set in, they got a call from a woman, asking if they had lost a blue parakeet. Seems the woman was working in her yard, several miles from the McGinnis household, when a parakeet landed on her shoulder and said, “I’m Blinky McGinnis. Hemlock 4-3288.” Their prayers were answered—their beloved Blinky came home.

Grief

My father died on the 8th of April and I’m beginning to realize that this grieving ground is where I’m going to be for as long as it takes.

The details that keep coming back to me are strange—for example, I looked at his hands in his final days and they weren’t my father’s hands—they were swollen beyond recognition. I think of the last words he spoke while he was still conscious, when my sister came into the room and he said, “I can’t stand this, Fance.” The image of him attached to all that medical equipment haunts me. I want to remember him talking and standing tall in an ironed white shirt. I want to remember his voice.

In the beginning, in the first few days after his death, I was in shock. Although for nearly two weeks before he died I was running back and forth from the hospital, and day-to-day I witnessed his situation becoming more and more desperate, when the end came I could not quite comprehend the finality. I was with him when he died. I closed his eyes and held down his eyelids until they stayed closed. I was there when the doctor marked his time of death—1:31 p.m. I wept and pleaded with God to take him gently, to lift him into heaven with his final breath. I think about leaving the hospital, walking with the chaplain to the staff elevator, and how I tried to stay in control so I could drive home safely, thinking that I had just seen my dear father for the last time and knowing that life had just changed forever. Yet it’s impossible to take in the reality of it all at once.

In the early days and hours after he died I did what I needed to do. I contacted the funeral home, called family and friends, wrote an obituary for the newspaper, and began to compose his eulogy. Then I withdrew for a couple of days. I turned off my telephone, worked in my garden, and took a long hike along the Potomac River. I was exhausted and I needed solitude. My grief was so great that I could not cope with anyone else’s grief. I couldn’t even bear hearing myself say the words necessary to tell anyone else about his death.

His funeral Mass was held less than one week after his death. I didn’t listen to the words of the hymns or to what the priest was saying. I blocked all of it out to steel myself to deliver the eulogy. I kept thinking that I wanted Daddy to be proud of me and I wanted to deliver a message that honored what was important to him. I made it through the eulogy without breaking apart. My voice cracked only once when I talked about his long marriage to my mother. And no one but me even noticed that my voice cracked.

And on Tuesday, five weeks after the funeral, we took his ashes to Arlington National Cemetery for interment. I thought I was in control, I thought the reality had sunk in enough that I could be gracefully sad. But I wept again, sobbed. Seeing him honored for his years of service in the Coast Guard, seeing them fold the flag and present it to my mother, hearing the bugler playing Taps and the loud 21-gun salute piercing the misty quiet, seeing my brother Steve solemnly carrying our father’s ashes to his final resting place in the wall—all of this made it so real, so final.

Today has been the first day of my life with my father finally laid to rest. The services are over, the guests have gone home, the flowers have dried up. My dad is gone and life is supposed to be back to normal. It doesn’t feel normal. He’s not here and I miss him.

Newark

I so badly need to get back to writing. Writing is my lifeline. I've been so consumed with matters of life and death (especially death) that I've slippped away. So I just made myself sit down and do a writing exercise, anything to get me going. A prompt from a brilliant clear thinker, Michael Harrington, a writer whose study on poverty in America, written in the 1960s, had a huge influence on my thinking and my attitudes about society and life and politics. I've taken it in a completely different direction, but it's an exercise and I'm not Michael Harrington. May he rest in peace.

Michael Harrington, “The Other America: Poverty in the United States,” p. 19.

“It is made up of Puerto Ricans and Negroes, alcoholics, drifters, and disturbed people.”

A breeze started to stir the still, humid air, and the leaves on the trees began to quiver. I stood at the bus depot, watching the sky turn gray and threatening. And the sky darkened to the color of a fresh bruise as the wind began to shake the awning and lightning jigged and jagged closer and closer to town. I prayed that the bus would arrive before the storm and I prayed that Delmar wouldn’t just happen to leave work early and drive by the bus depot on his way home from the plant. The bus depot was part of Essie Jenk’s gasoline station, little more than a concrete slab, a ticket window, and an awning. I stood next to the cinderblock wall, as far from the road as I could, cowering between the soda machine and the door to a restroom marked “Whites Only.” The skies opened up and rain poured down just as the bus arrived. The bus stopped, the doors creaked open, and I grabbed my suitcase and ran for the open door. But I couldn’t run fast enough to outrun the rain—I was soaked. The bus driver nodded and took my ticket and I sat down in the first free row I could find, two rows behind the driver. The air in the bus was stifling and sick with the odor of unwashed bodies. But I sat for hours with my head pressed to the window, listening to the windshield wipers, the swish of the wheels in the rain, and a baby crying softly in the back of the bus. My life was about to change forever. In my mind I was going to Boston. I had never been to Boston, never knew anyone who had, but I once had seen a picture of an old church in Boston in the snow and I just felt that was where I needed to be, that is where I could find a new family. We would have Sunday supper and walk in the snow and take care of one another. That was the extent of my escape plan. Into the second day on the bus, we stopped in Newark, New Jersey, where I was going to buy a ticket for another bus that would take me to Boston. Wrapped in a rubber band, buried deep in my purse, I had a roll of dollar bills that I had been saving for months and months as I hatched my escape plan. I looked in my purse and the roll of bills was gone. I searched everywhere, tore through every inch of my suitcase and every inch of the bus where I had been sitting for hours and hours. The driver just shook his head no when I asked him had he seen my money. I had fallen asleep at some point in the trip and thought about that old lady who sat next to me from Richmond to Baltimore, and began to wonder why she got off the bus in such a hurry. So Newark, New Jersey, became my destination, not Boston. There I was in Newark with only a suitcase and a handful of coins. Instead of finding the church in the snow, I found a homeless shelter in dirty city, with no ticket home. If I found a new family, it is far from the family I expected to find in Boston. It is made up of Puerto Ricans and Negroes, alcoholics, drifters, and disturbed people.

Bonneville

He drove a blue Bonneville convertible, quite a hot car for a 17-year-old boy to be driving. There was kidney in his trunk. There’s an explanation for the kidney. His father was a surgeon and for some unexplained reason in the trunk of the car they kept a discarded kidney, floating in a vessel filled with preservative. I have no idea whose kidney it was. Kidney or no kidney, he scared me to death, speeding through the hairpin curves of Georgetown Pike, heading for Great Falls National Park. Maybe I liked him because he scared me. I’d rather believe I liked him because he was smart and funny, but it has been so long that I don’t really remember what the attraction was.

I hadn’t really been on a date with him—I just knew him from a group of boys from the local all-boys Catholic high school. I went to the local all-girls Catholic high school and the only boys we knew were our friends’ brothers, friends of our friends’ brothers, and boys we occasionally met at school “tea” dances. I wanted to go to my junior prom so I gathered my nerve and asked the Bonneville boy if he would go with me. It’s likely that I vomited from anxiety just having to call him on the telephone.

Probably as a gesture of reciprocity, he invited me to a dance at his school—not a prom, but a lesser, more casual dance. I wore my new coat, a grey tweed Chesterfield coat with a black velvet collar. I loved that coat. When we got to the dance, we piled all the coats in a room adjacent to the gym. And when we left, he went to retrieve my coat and couldn’t find it. I went into the room with him and watched as one person after another came, found their coats, and left. We were alone in the room—the Bonneville boy, me, and one coat. It wasn’t my coat—it was a ratty brown coat with a shawl collar and big buttons and it smelled like some other girl who tried to cover the aroma of greasy french fries with cheap cologne. My coat had disappeared and it was the last time I went out with Bonneville boy. I sure liked that coat and it sure was long gone.