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.

Disappointment

Back to freewriting, did one of my exercises today. I found myself back to the young girl's voice that I use frequently. Here's what I wrote based on the prompt from Anna Quindlen.

Anna Quindlen, “Black and Blue,” p. 260.

“I loved the shit out of you, and look what you did to me.”

It was Saturday morning and Mama was going down to Carlene’s to get her hair done because she was having people come over that night for Uncle Willie’s birthday. On Friday she had brought home a yellow sheet cake from the Food Lion all decorated with chocolate icing and a bunch of hearts and “Happy Birthday Willie” written in green icing in a fancy script. Uncle Willie was Mama’s little brother. Their mama and daddy had died in a car wreck almost 10 years before and I was only a baby so I didn’t even remember them. Uncle Willie was the night janitor at the bus station. He was a bit tetched and he didn’t go far in school or anything so Mama watched out for him as best she could and every year she had a nice birthday party for him and invited all the neighbors. I was watching cartoons when Mama got out of bed and rushed out of the house, saying, “Now you stay here and watch Jeralyn and the boys until I get back. And I don’t want to come back here to a pig sty or any dirty diapers, you hear me?” “Yes, Mama, I hear you. When will you be back?” The door slammed without an answer from her. Mama was in one of her bad moods. I thought maybe I could make her happy if she came home to a clean house. So I put Jeralyn in the playpen and started scrubbing. I did all the dishes, made the beds, ran the vacuum cleaner, and polished the furniture. I kept screaming at the boys not to make a mess and changed the baby’s diaper even when it wasn’t dirty. It was noon and Mama still wasn’t home. I fed the baby and put her down for a nap and started folding laundry. It was 3 o’clock and Mama still wasn’t home. I wiped down the kitchen floor again because the boys were spilling juice and throwing crackers at one another. I finally got them to sit still to watch a movie on the TV while I sat by the coffee table and worked on a school project. Mama came home just before dark, her hair bright red and sprayed, and wearing a new green dress with a slit up the side, carrying boxes of food from Mamie’s BBQ. “Is that what you’ve been doing all day,” she shrieked, “just sitting in front of the TV?” “No, Mama,” I said, “I’ve been . . . “She didn’t hear me. She was in the kitchen getting out plates and napkins to set out before the company arrived. She pushed open the kitchen door, saying, “You go do something with yourself, Margaret Ann. I don’t want you embarrassing me in front of company by looking like that. I don’t know why you don’t care about your appearance.” I went into my room and looked in my closet. I hated the fancy clothes Mama had bought for me. I felt like some other person when I had to dress in those things. I opened the door to my parakeet’s cage and said, “Well, Chiffon, she didn’t even notice. Guess it didn’t work again.” I got Chiffon out of her cage and climbed under the covers of my bed with her and cried as she sat on my finger. Mama threw open my bedroom door. “What the hell are you doing? Are you some sort of anti-social retard or something? I told you to get dressed. Then get out here and help me. All I do for you and this is the thanks I get? Look at you. What have I done to deserve having a child like you? You’ve been the biggest disappointment of my life. I loved the shit out of you, and look what you did to me.”

Feet

When life gets tough some people take drugs or drink alcohol; others run screaming to a therapist's couch. Life has been really tough for me lately. So today I found consolation in a pedicure. Why not? This is not a new phenomenon. I wrote a piece about feet that's in my book, still unpublished. I'm working on getting it published but in the meantime, here are some of my thoughts on feet and a great pasta recipe. The recipe relates to the essay. Trust me.

Such Beautiful Feet

I need to rest on the sofa to let my pedicure dry thoroughly. I got the pedicure on Saturday morning. It’s now Tuesday and I have another week and a half left. The woman who did the pedicure said that it takes two weeks to dry. I’m pretty sure that’s what she said although she said it in Vietnamese and she seemed to be speaking to her co-worker rather than to me. In two weeks I’ll get another pedicure and I’ll have to start the drying cycle all over again. This is a grueling maintenance program. I just hope someone sees how great my feet look. But no one sees my feet anymore. Actually, the other women in my yoga class see my feet but I don’t think they notice the pedicure.

I love pedicures. Maybe if I admit this guilty pleasure, perhaps I can let it go, live without it. I already know I can live without it because I did for the first 50 years of my life. I could blame it on my daughter—she’s the one who got me started. The first couple of times I got pedicures with her when I visited her in Austin. But now I have found local sources and I even do it without her. God help me, it didn’t make me feel better to admit it. It just makes me want to drive by the nail salon for a fix, maybe sniff some polish remover.

Can there be anything more decadent than having someone scrape the crud off of your feet? The women (and an occasional man) who give pedicures seem to take great pride in the dedication and artistry of turning a gnarly pair of feet into feet that are buffed, polished, and suitable for public exposure. If you have never had a pedicure, picture this. First, the technician (yes, the job title is nail technician) soaks your feet in a mini whirlpool tub. Then she cleans under your toenails and around your toes. My brother used to collect this same debris from between his toes and chase me through the house with it. “The big stink’s gonna get you,” he cackled.

I can’t believe that I can pay someone to do this for me. After the cleaning process, the technician scrapes all the dead skin off of the bottom of your feet with a razor—it sounds dreadful but it’s my favorite part of the pedicure. Using the razor is a dangerous procedure, so dangerous that it’s illegal is some states. Maybe that’s why I like it so much—living on the wild side.

The technician usually follows all the cleaning and scraping with a moisturizing massage, and finally polish. The nail salon supplies flimsy plastic flip-flops to wear while the polish is drying. I’ve been tempted to take the temporary shoes home and wear them but it would be a dead giveaway. Everyone would know I got a pedicure. I don’t want people to know I get pedicures. I want them to believe that I am humble enough to maintain my own feet.

Once a man told me I had beautiful feet and it gave me the willies. He was a tour guide at the FBI museum and, out of the blue, he commented on my lovely toes. I had a strange, sinking feeling he was one of those people with a foot fetish. But occasionally sane people will compliment my pedicure and I wonder if they are just trying to find something nice to say. They say, “Your toes are so beautiful,” but isn’t that like the old junior high joke, “You don’t sweat much for a fat girl”?

________________________________________

I once read that women in ancient Rome used to soak their feet in lemon juice and olive oil to keep them beautiful. If my feet were soaking in lemon juice and olive oil I’d start craving this pasta dish from the Amalfi coast—a favorite from my friend Debbie who frequently travels to Italy and brought back this recipe.

Tagliolini With Lemon

14 ounces tagliolini (or other pasta)
¼ cup butter
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup heavy cream
1 dried chili pepper (or ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper)
4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
Zest from one lemon
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice

Cook the pasta.
Melt half the butter, add the wine, and stir until wine evaporates.
Add the cream and the chili pepper.
Drain the pasta and add to the sauce.
Stir in the remaining butter, the Parmesan cheese, the zest and the juice.
Toss gently.

Easter Sunday

I was wide awake before dawn this morning, anticipating the Easter sunrise. I’ve never before had an Easter like this. I am lost.

When I was but a month old I was baptized a Catholic and ever since have said that I am a Catholic. My attendance at church has lapsed occasionally and I briefly explored other Christian churches but repeatedly returned to my comfortable Catholic roots. Catholicism felt like home. For a long time I have said that if Catholicism ever got in the way of my Christianity, that I would abandon Catholicism. That time is now. I have reached my own personal tipping point.

I am no longer proud to call myself a Catholic. I am embarrassed by the leadership of my church in the wake of clergy sex abuse scandals and the obvious cover-ups. I've tried regarding the church leadership as a group of flawed human beings and felt that my allegiance is to God, not to the church's leadership. But in recent weeks, I see photos of the pope, all white and shiny and pompous, and it makes me nauseous to read and hear his lame statements, his lack of accountability, his hiding behind the impenetrable, fearful veil of the papacy like the Wizard of Oz. I no longer trust the church leadership or believe what they say.

The leaders of the Catholic Church are spending more time and energy protecting themselves and weaving webs of deceit than they are teaching the faithful how to life good, moral, Christ-like lives. I think about the adage "What would Jesus do?" I think Jesus would throw the Pharisees out of the temple and he'd sit with the lepers and the sinners, teaching them about God, teaching them about humility and repentance and goodness. The church—my former church—has strayed far from the teachings of Jesus.

Happy Easter to all who believe in the risen Christ. Pray for me, that I find a church that understands how to practice true adherence to his teachings.

To sleep perchance to dream

Today I awoke as the sun was rising—such a luxury. For the past few days I have been awake before dawn, tending to the matters of my father who had open-heart surgery this week. I awoke thinking about yesterday’s events and laughed in retrospect because it seemed so much like a dream. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.

Everything is a bit blurred in terms of the timing, but at some point late yesterday my father was being moved from one intensive care unit to another. The nurse instructed me to go upstairs to the new unit where my father was being transported. So I went through the rat-maze hallways to find the correct elevator to get me to the correct floor in the correct wing and the correct unit. I walked through the doorway and could see my father on a gurney. The unit nurse told me to go away and wait in the family waiting room until she called me. So I dutifully found the family waiting room, which was housing an entire tribe from one of the tribal regions of Pakistan. They had sleeping pallets on the floor and they were cooking a goat on a grill. I think Osama bin Laden was in the group. (Now wouldn’t that just be the ultimate irony? Osama bin Laden is hiding in a waiting room at the Washington Hospital Center.) So I sat on the floor in the hallway beside a window where I could see in the distance the spires of the National Cathedral. And I cried. Various hospital staff walked past me to go into the adjacent stairway. Some made eye contact, some didn’t. I’ll bet they see crying people sitting on the floor all the time.

Meanwhile, several floors below my sister-in-law was bringing my mother into the hospital emergency room. My mother was having difficulty breathing. The day before, while we were waiting during my father’s surgery, my brother and I kept thinking our pager was going off—we heard rhythmic errwww errwww sounds. It was not the pager; it was my mother wheezing.

So after my father got settled in to the intensive care unit, I saw him and headed down to the emergency room to check in with my mother. I got on the elevator with two EMS guys from Fairfax County. Don’t ask me why they were at the Washington Hospital Center, far from their jurisdiction. They said to follow them and they would direct me to the emergency room. After another rat maze of hallways and double doors, we were deep into a patient treatment area. There were people with bloody heads and tubes coming out of them and all manner of human misery. The EMS guys went one way and told me to go straight ahead and turn right. I think I walked through an MRI scanner somewhere in there and I’m wondering if I’ll get test results. A big burly woman security guard stopped me and asked me for my visitor sticker. Yes, I had one. I could see my mother, just a couple of yards away, sitting in a chair. The security guard said my mother was in a patient holding area and I couldn’t go there. So I shouted to her that my father had been moved and he was doing okay. My sister-in-law, bless her heart, was going to handle my mother’s situation. I went home to sleep.

Rapini

Tried cooking something new today and it turned out great. I bought a beautiful bundle of rapini, also called broccoli rabe, although I understand it's not really related to broccoli but more a leafy green. It was so beautiful I wanted to figure out what to do with it. I did a little research and used what I had on hand to create a new recipe. Love it!


Rapini in Hot Sauce with Ginger and Garlic

1 bunch rapini (cut off tough ends and rinse thoroughly)
1 tablespoon hot pepper oil (my local grocery store sells olive oil with hot peppers that is intended to be a dipping oil)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add rapini, cover and cook for 2 minutes. Drain rapini in colander, chop coarsely and set aside. Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add garlic and ginger just until they sizzle. Add chopped rapini and stir fry for about 2 minutes.

Makes about two servings.

Coconut cake

This month's Better Homes and Gardens has a picture of a coconut cake on the cover. Coconut cake symbolizes spring to me, but I'll bet my coconut cake is better than their coconut cake. I got this recipe from my cousin who is a great cook. However, this recipe is so far from gourmet I should be embarrassed even to post it. But I'm not. If you take it to the spring church picnic you're going to have to give it another name.

Orgasmic Coconut Cake

1 box yellow cake mix (no pudding in the mix or butter recipe cake mix)
1½ cups water
2 eggs
1 teaspoon coconut extract
1 14 ounce bag shredded coconut
1 can Coco Lopez cream of coconut (find in drink mix section of grocery store)
1 regular size container (12 oz.) Cool Whip

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix cake mix, water, eggs, and coconut extract in large mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer for two minutes at medium speed. Add 1 cup shredded coconut to batter and beat until blended. (Reserve remaining coconut for topping.)

Pour cake into a 13 x 9 inch pan coated flour/shortening spray. Bake at 350 degrees for about 32 to 35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool cake in the pan on a wire rack. When cool, punch holes all over cake with a sharp pointed object. Pour cream of coconut into a small bowl, stir to blend thoroughly, then pour over cake very slowly, starting in the middle, filling all the holes. Spread thawed Cool Whip over whole cake and top with coconut. Refrigerate.