I'm Not Tebowing; My Shoelace is Untied

I am worse than the average three year old when it comes to shoe laces. Due to my various foot issues, I have to wear lace-up shoes, at least most of the time. That would not be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that my shoes keep coming untied. Sometimes it’s because I step on the ends of the laces, causing the bow to pull out, but most of the time they just work their way loose for reasons known only to themselves and God.

It’s almost always my right shoe, too. You would think if it were the way I tie my shoes, both bows would come undone roughly the same amount of the time, but no. And yes, I have tried double knotting the bows, and it gives me maybe an additional thirty minutes before the bow comes undone and I have to stop and tie it up again. So if you come upon me somewhere kneeling with my head bent, looking like this, I am not praying. I am tying my shoe. Again. I don’t even pray for my shoes to stay tied. I mean, the Lord helps those who help themselves, right?

It’s not that I have any objections to public prayer. If you want to kneel, or daven, or paint Matthew 6:5 under your eyes on game day, I won’t make a fuss. Public displays of piety , especially Christian ones, are common. When Juicy J and DJ Paul won the Oscar in 2006 for their song It’s Hard Out Here for A Pimp, Juicy J’s first words were, “Thank you, Jesus”. So if you want to establish your bona fides as your kind of Christian, not one of those people who write lyrics like, 

Its f***'d up where I live but this is how it is
It maybe new to you but it been like this for years
Its blood sweat tears when it comes down to this shit
I'm tryna get rich before I leave up out this b****
I'm tryna have thangs but its on aon [sic] a pimp but I'm praying and hoping to god I don't slip.”

I can see how your public displays of piety have to get more and more out there, given that all kinds of people, even rappers and hip-hop artists, feel entitled to say, “Thank you, Jesus”. That’s the nature of arms races. They push us to extremes. Jesus would understand.

It’s just that if I see you kneeling with your head bowed, I’m going to think you’re tying your shoes.

Loot

My son spends Christmas Eve with his dad and stepmother’s family when he is in town. His stepmother’s family has a large Christmas Eve family brunch and that’s when they do their gift exchange. In the past, John and I have spent Christmas Eve going to see the bonfires on the levee and then to the 11 PM service at our church. We usually get home around the time that Neal does, so in the past we have opened our gifts around midnight and then slept late the next morning before having yeast-raised pancakes for breakfast.

This year, Neal decided to stay overnight with his dad. He came back to our house after noon Christmas Day, giving him just enough time to fix his spinach madeleine in time for our 2 PM dinner. So we didn’t open gifts until 3:30 or so.

When you get to be my age and have to devote a lot of time to divesting yourself of all the stuff you have collected in a life time so as not to be overwhelmed with it, the fun part of exchanging presents is giving gifts, not getting them. Four years ago at Christmas, present buying was easy. Then as now, LSU was selected for the BCS Championship Game, which, just as now, was in New Orleans. So gift selection was simple: I spent a small fortune on Stub Hub buying 2 tickets to the game, one for Neal and one for John. 

I put John’s ticket in a small box, wrapped in LSU wrapping paper. I put that box in a larger box, wrapped in neutral paper, and put that box in a larger box, and so on five boxes deep. They read “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy Anniversary”, “Happy Birthday” and “Happy Father’s Day”, in order of decreasing size.

For Neal, I did the same thing, with “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day”, “Happy Easter” and “Happy Birthday”, in order of decreasing size. Only inside the smallest box was a gift card for an electronic’s store.

I keep forgetting my son isn’t a spoiled teen any more. I was expecting him to anticipate a ticket and whine about it (good-naturedly) when none was forthcoming. However, he simply congratulated John on getting the ticket and admired his own gifts (an LSU tie and some electronic device he had wanted). Later, I had him help me set the table (another Christmas tradition, since table setting was his first chore as a toddler). After handing him the napkins and silver, I handed him a sign I had made thanking me for the ticket, with the ticket clipped to it, and said, “And you are going to need this sign to hold up when you go to the game.”

They were both ecstatic, as was I when LSU held up their end of the bargain and walloped the Ohio State University for the national championship.

This year I made it clear early on not to expect a repeat. Tickets are selling  on Stub Hub for about the amount of my monthly Social Security check. John wanted the hammer drill and Neal wanted an iPod Nano. I also got some surprise gifts: a cashmere scarf for Neal and a gift card for an office supple store for John, who needs a new printer. John also found Neal a collapsible cart to take to the market, which is several blocks from his flat in London. Neal was thrilled; he and his roommate had been saying they needed such a thing. My husband shares his mom’s gifts for finding handy gadgets. 

Neal bought John the shredder he wanted, in which I took a proprietary interest, since I probably used our existing shredder more than John does. The new one reduces paper to confetti, 8 sheets at a time, and takes on CD’s, DVD”s and credit cards as well.

Neal gave me some coasters. Yes, John got a fancy shredder suitable for a small office and I got coasters. They are handmade, marble coasters, purchased at Agra, India, made from the same marble as the Taj Mahal and inset with lapis lazuli, turquoise, tiger stone, and other semi-precious jewels, each one a little different from the last, but I have fun telling people that my son gave John a new shredder and me a set of coasters.

Not the kind that sing "Charlie Brown"

Neal also gave me the elephant for my elephant collection.

It is strange how events in my life tend to repeat. Many years ago, my dad gave me a set of coasters. It wasn’t exactly a gift, he just needed some to set his ever-present coffee cup on when he came to visit. The coasters were mass produced out of wood and cork, but they were precious to me and I hung on to them until they fell apart or got lost over the years. Now I have a replacement, from his grandson.

I love Christmas. 

The Shopper in Aisle Six

Yesterday I went to Target for a few last minute items for the Christmas menu. I needed evaporated milk for the pumpkin pie, Red Hots or similar cinnamon candy for the cinnamon apples, apples for the cinnamon apples and a pineapple for the Williamsburg centerpiece. Neal is making us Spinach Madeline this year, and I suspected he needed a few other items, but when I left he was taking a bath and I knew from days of old that he could be asleep in the tub for half an hour or so before he emerged.

Cell phones are lovely. By the time I bought a gift certificate at Office Depot and a few toys at the pet store, I figured Neal would be out and coherent, so I called from Target to ask what he needed. He needed chopped frozen spinach, shredded cheese and evaporated milk, and celery and garlic salts but John was checking to see if we had those. Could he call me back?

I picked up an 8 ounce brick of sharp cheddar and was heading to the front of the store when the phone rang. We had the celery and garlic salts at home, but he needed 2 cups of the shredded cheese. I told him I had bought 8 ounces, and that with what we had at home should be enough to shred into 2 cups. “Mom, he said with infinite patience, “They make bags of cheese that is already shredded. I need one of those.” I tried to explain how easy it is to shred cheese, but he was adamant. 

“Okay”, I said, “I am walking back 7 aisles to the back of the store to swap the cheese in for the shredded kind.”

“That’s good,” he replied. “People need to walk more. Now that your foot is better, you need the exercise. You should thank me for this.”

I keep hearing from my younger internet buddies that they have parents who still keep those adult children under their thumbs. Are there classes you can take to learn to exercise that kind of power? Just asking, no reason.

“Do you want three blend cheese, sharp cheddar, mild cheddar?” We settled on sharp, and I went back to my pursuit of evaporated milk, which we both needed. In the process, I passed the aisle with the gin, which I needed, but I can’t drink these days. It interferes with my medication.

We discuss how chopped the chopped spinach needs to be, and I bypass “cut leaf” in favor of old-timey boxes that clearly say “chopped”. (To be fair, my son is a southpaw in a world of right-handed knives and that may contribute to his dislike for shredding, chopping and otherwise prepping food himself. On the other hand, cheese graters are ambidextrous.)

“Love you,” he said before hanging up. “Love you, too” I replied, adding “a little less at the moment than when you are across the ocean”, but only after he had hung up.

“If I were evaporated milk, where would I be?" I mused out loud, then answered myself, “On a beach in Cancun, sunning myself.” I found the evaporated milk. They had two kinds, name brand and house brand, but the only house brand kind they had was fat free. I’m making a fricking pumpkin pie, who would I be fooling with fat free evaporated milk? I think I asked myself that out loud, too.

I cruised the candy aisle twice, but no Red Hots. Their were cinnamon gummy bears, which I bought because I love cinnamon gummy bears, but they won’t melt correctly. Fortunately, there is such a thing as cinnamon extract, which would work better than the Red Hots for flavoring. I can even add some to the whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. (Pumpkin pie, whipped cream, you can see why I thought non-fat evaporated milk would be silly.) 

My favorite checker is there, and her line is short. I hear her telling the customer in front of me, “Target does not do the drama” at Christmas. Uh-oh. Well, she didn't make any such promises about Target's customers.

When I got home, my son looked at the picture on the front of the box of spinach and was concerned it wasn’t chopped finely enough. I tried to explain that pictures on the front of food boxes mean nothing, but he called his stepmother for consultation. She assured him that anything that said “frozen chopped spinach” was perfectly fine.

“Attention associates: We need a clean-up in aisle 6. A customer seems to have melted.”

The Williamsburg centerpiece is the thing with the pineapple on top.

Comings and Goings

Yesterday was supposed to be a happy day. My son was due to come home from London to spend a week with us before flying to Paris to spend New Year’s Eve with friends. His flight was due in a little after 6 PM and we were going to pick him up. We had offered, via email, to take him out for dinner on the way home, but he thought he might be too tired after 16 hours in the air so we bought cold cuts and made potato salad for a fast fix dinner once we got home.

I have finally become used to how little time I get to spend with my son on his visits here. Even when he’s staying with us, he stays up late, sleeps late, and goes to visit friends, his step-siblings families, and of course, his dad and stepmother. We pencil in a few lunches and/or dinners and wave at him as he goes by.

Yesterday morning John’s former boss called looking for a ride to a memorial service. One of John’s former coworkers, the former boss’s secretary, Jane*, had died. The memorial service was in Baker, not far from the airport, actually, at 3PM. The airport is on the opposite end of town from us. We could easily make it to the service, but then we’d have just enough time to bring former boss home, turn around, and head back to the airport. Either that, or former boss could come hang out at the airport with us. He decided to find his own ride.

This has been a very strange December. In addition to John’s uncle and coworker dying within a week of each other, the father of his sister’s oldest friend also died. We spent one Friday a week ago at his funeral in New Orleans. All three of these people had lived long lives. Jane, as the youngest, was about to turn 80. The tragedy in Jane’s story was that her younger daughter Kelly* had died just a few weeks before, of a drug overdose, after a life punctuated by trips to rehab and jail. Jane, who was already doing poorly, quit eating and refused a feeding tube. 

I never met Jane, but I felt as if I knew her. For at least a year, maybe longer, not a day went by without a Jane story from John. Jane was a character. She filled people’s lives with laughter, however unwittingly.

At the memorial service, I heard of another side to Jane. There was the younger Jane riding a horse, getting a music degree, and posing for a “beauty shot” in her bathing suit. There was the Jane who worked hard to support her daughters when she was left on her own. There was the Jane who made sure her grandchildren had hot meals while their mother, as her husband put it, “was away”. There was the Jane who always wanted to look good - and that led to a typical Jane story. One day she called a coworker to see if her could figure out what was wrong with her pencil sharpener. “Miss Jane, what is all this gunk?” he asked. “My eyeliner,” she replied.

Looking at pictures of all these Janes, I was surprised to see that she actually looked the way I expected. “Are you sure I never met her?” I asked John.

After the service, we made it to the airport with time to spare. Neal’s plane actually arrived a little early, in contrast to the flights coming in from the east which were badly delayed by storms. “Do you guys still want to go out to dinner?” he asked. It turned out he had run into some old friends in Dallas who were taking a different plane to Baton Rouge but were going to be at a local campus hangout, the Chimes, later in the evening. If we stopped there for dinner, we could then leave him with his friends and he’d grab a ride home later.

Okay, the cold cuts will keep. We had a nice leisurely dinner. Neal admired a ring I was wearing. “I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I’m leaving it to you in my will.”

“I’d rather have you. Can I swap it for you?”

 After dinner, Neal found his friends and we headed home with his luggage. On the way home, I had to laugh.

“This has to be a new record,” I told John. “He didn’t even make it home before leaving with his friends.”

Then I think of Jane and Kelly. My son is not on drugs, in and out of prison and rehab. He loves his family, all of his family. We’re lucky, all of us.

Life goes by so fast. There’s no time for keeping score.

*not her real name

Fleur de Lis

The last time we went to Fleur de Lis for pizza, it was also during December. I know that because it led to my thinking that during December, even ordinary events seem “Christmasy”. I find myself wondering what December would be like if there weren’t a major holiday dominating it: the weather getting colder, the days getting shorter, and no lights, decorations, special music or general feeling that the month is headed toward something. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, if you live in the U.S and don’t live in a cave, you can’t avoid the way other people’s Christmas shapes the month.

Before you tell me that December would be like January, I should remind you I live in southeast Louisiana. January 6 is the start of the Carnival season, so we change our red and green wreaths for purple, green and gold, replace “Jingle Bells” with Al Johnson singing “Carnival Time” and keep right on partying. Besides, in January, the days get longer. By the end of the month, that nice cozy feel that late December has to it is disappearing.

But I’m getting sidetracked. I meant to write about the Fleur de Lis. It bills itself as a “family restaurant - children welcome”, but when I first started going there in the 70’s it was to drink with friends. You probably have a bar/pub/restaurant like it somewhere in your town: a place that apparently hasn’t been remodeled since it was built and looks like it wouldn’t pass a health inspection unless the inspector arrived accompanied by a guide dog and holding out a palm, but that the locals all know it and fill it up in droves because the food is good and the drink is better.

The Fleur de Lis is a midcentury modern building (it opened in 1946) with stucco walls painted pink  and a neon flamingo lighting up the front. Inside it’s dark, and the acoustic tiles on the ceiling have been stained by decades of smoke before smoking was banned in restaurants here a few years back. The chrome and vinyl seats look like they could be the originals.

The menu consists of pizza, pizza, and oh, yes, pizza. (Well, there is also something on the menu called pickled eggs.) The pizza is rectangular in shape, with a thin but chewy crust, the way I like it. As the restaurants owners tell the story:

Fleur de Lis was out of town on a gravel road, back in 1946, when my family bought it. It was a cocktail lounge at that time . . .
My grandmother decided to make a small pizza as an appetizer. It was enjoyed so much by the customers she began to sell them. Then she realized they needed to make a larger size. The small pizza was made in pie pans she brought from home. So she brought a cookie sheet and the "square" pizza we are famous for was born. Of course the pizza is actually a rectangle cut into small squares, but everyone loves to refer to them as a square pizza, which is just fine with us.
My parents began to run the restaurant in the 80's. Their goal was  to make it a family restaurant where families are welcome to bring their children; an aspect still important to us today.

So Saturday we went there for pizza again. It was my turn to treat. I didn’t have cash on me, and it turned out (I had forgotten) that they don’t take credit cards, but they do take checks.  We had the large “Round the World”, with no pepperoni on my half and anchovies (for me) on the side. The total tab was under $15.

I think we need to make it a December tradition. 

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” I am rereading A Christmas Carol. The beloved tale that encourages generosity, celebration, family feeling and empathy at Christmas and all other times begins with the words “Marley was dead”.

Having reread the words, “Marley was dead, to begin with” and inspired by Kit Whitfield’s recent deconstructions of first sentences of novels, I begin to think of other first lines, the ones that when you hear them, you can automatically place in their respective works. This is the list I came up with:

• Call me Ishmael.
• Marley was dead, to begin with.
• In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
• There’s my last duchess, painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive.
• I sing of arms and the man*.
• Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.**
• Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
• In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
• "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.”*
• To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman.
• In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.
• The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day.
• The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
• All children, except one, grow up.
• My mind now turns to stories of bodies changed into new forms.

Six of those lines have been translated from other languages, but I think at least four of those should be recognizable anyway. I’ll post sources another time. Feel free to add any of your own in comments.

* That’s not the whole first sentence, but if you are going to recognize it, that’s the part you’ll recognize.

** I know, that’s not the first line of the book, but I would argue that it is the first line of the story.

Little Known Christmas Fact

When the Wise Men traveled to Bethlehem, they brought along a cat, who gave the infant in the stable the gift of comforting purrs.