My Future Husband
The Future Me
In my next life, I’d like to be a girl-bird. That way, for a change, I can let the males of the species preen and prance and display and try to impress me with their great beauty, dancing, and nest-building prowess, while I kick back — comfortable, relaxed, and happy in my plain brown feathers.
The Eel, The Eel, What a Rotten Deal
Camp Seabow Songbook
A Work in Progress by Ann Clark [formerly Patty Clark]
From my memories at Camp Seabow, @1962 – 1967
Some of the following songs were sang only on the bus or in the dining hall (Noble Duke of York), some were exclusive to Camp Seabow, some were simply old folk songs, and I suspect that some of them came from Mrs. Armand’s childhood. How many do YOU remember?
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She sat on the veranda and ate chocolates, ate chocolates, ate chocolates,
she sat on the veranda and ate chocolates, ate chocolates.
He sat down beside her and smoked his cigar [repeat etc.]
She sat there beside him and played her guitar…
He told her he loved her but oh how he lied…
She told him she loved him, but she did not lie…
They went to be married, but she up and dies…
He went to the funeral, but just for the ride…
She went up to heaven and flip flop she flied…
He went down below her and sizzled and fried…
The moral of this tale is never to lie…
Or you, too, may perish and sizzle and fry…
601 Pages of Amazing
I hesitate to foist books on friends. What I love will either be loved with the same ferocity (as when I asked my friend Ranse to read London’s “Call of the Wild”) or it will be sheepishly returned with some variation of “Sorry, I didn’t have time” (translation: I hated it by page two). It’s a crap shoot.
I fell in love with John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” just about ten years ago after it was recommended to me by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, and have spoken of it enthusiastically to those I think may appreciate it, but I’ve stopped pushing it and I’ve stopped loaning it. However, in doing some Life Coach work this week I was asked to write about the common themes in my favorite books, movies, and poetry, and I pulled out my treasured copy of EOE and re-read the passage which resonated so deeply with me that it was absolutely life-changing.
The balance of this blog post is just that: my favorite passage from Steinbeck’s novel.
(more…)
During psychology class today we were having a discussion about the “bystander effect” — that particular phenomenon which, in 1964, led to 38 people ignoring the screams of Kitty Genovese when she was being brutally murdered. The professor was showing other famous case studies on the effect and asking us questions.
At one point a girl sitting just behind me raised her hand and provided a brief but insightful answer. When the professor asked her to repeat what she’d just said but loudly enough for the entire class (of 61 students) to hear, the girl shook her head, smiled shyly and said, “Never mind then,” adding, “I’m not the kind of person who speaks out.”
At which point my brain made a noise like the arm of a record player scratching over the entire surface of an LP. I was horrified, hearing a 20-year-old female college student announcing to the world that she doesn’t, can’t and/or won’t add her voice to any discussion. I wanted to stop the class right there and impart 30+ years of experience to her on the spot. I wanted to get all wise-old-auntie on her: “Oh honey. You have a big noisy mind in there, cooking up all sorts of fabulous ideas and points of view and opinions, and the most important thing happening in this room right now is happening between your ears. You said something good, and meaningful and worth sharing! But even if your comment hadn’t been that interesting, you should have said it anyway. Loudly. From now on, I want you to speak up and speak out. I want you to look around the room while you do so, make eye contact with a few people, smile confidently. Let them know that you, [insert name here], plan to be taken seriously. That you have something to say. You let them know you have a VOICE and you plan to use it so they’d better listen up or else. I’m talkin’ here; you shut up!” Like that.
Of course I didn’t. Didn’t stop the class; didn’t change her mind or her life. I can’t. She has to learn that lesson in her own time and in her own way — if she ever does. If she doesn’t, she’s going to spend an entire lifetime being just another bystander.
The American Woman's Cook Book
When I was a bright-eyed bride of 19, someone gave me the orange-bindered Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, which became my education into the world of kitchen wizardry. I still remember the deep sense of power that would wash over me as I’d flip through its pages — I could make Black Forest Cherry Cake! I could make Steak Diane! I grew up in a home where every night’s dinner was standard 1950s fare; my Mom is a whiz with these dishes and, hearty and good though they are, they aren’t exactly adventurous.
So when Betty Crocker came to live in my old-fashioned San Pablo kitchen — I had to get down on my hands and knees to ignite the pilot light whenever I used the oven — I was positively light-headed with possibility. (In retrospect, perhaps the light-headedness was from inhaling all that natural gas.) In that kitchen I turned out Stuffed Green Peppers and Chicken Breasts Tarragon and Classic Hollandaise Sauce. Chicken Tetrazzini became such a hit with friends and family that the page long ago fell out and I keep it in a folder marked “Favorites.”
Over the years I learned that everyone had his and her go-to kitchen tome. Some swore by Joy of Cooking. Some preferred a separate cookbook for each cuisine. But I stuck with Betty — in more ways than one. Whatever Betty Crocker didn’t offer up in the orange binder, my mom — also Betty — provided in terms of her own recipes. To this day I’ll still call her and ask things like, “Mom, what was the recipe you used for that killer gingerbread you used to make me on rainy days?” Pretty soon, a copy will arrive in the mail. God I love my Mom.
Today I turned to the Betty-binder once more. You see, a few weeks ago Neal started bringing home Safeway pound cakes to snack on. I tasted one and made a noise like “bleh” and “oof” blended together. I told him, “You, good husband, need to partake of a genuine, homemade pound cake and I, good-wife that I am, shall prepare same for your gustatory pleasure.” (Except I think I said, “This tastes like crap. I’m going to make one.”)
So today’s the day. I’ve got the cookbook, the flour, the sugar, the real vanilla extract, eggs, baking powder, shortening, salt, and will. As soon as the butter softens to room temperature (oh, we all remember the day we got too impatient and tried to make our cakes with butter that was still chunky, don’t we?), I’ll get out to that kitchen and make my man a pound cake. I’ll tell you one thing, he’ll never eat another Safeway version.
The funny thing is, when I opened Betty Crocker to that recipe this morning, I noted some oil or butter stains mid-page. Don’t all treasured cookbooks have those? Was it from the time I was making something for company and knocked over the canola? Did I accidentally set the frosting spoon there when I was excited about my cake?
Cookbooks are filled with much more than recipes; they are filled with stories. Today, I’m continuing the saga.
I grew up on the shores of San Pablo Bay. That meant that, except for two predictable heat waves in late May and early September, every non-winter’s day was pretty much cool and windy. Winter brought mild rains. It was the perfect kid-climate. In my neighborhood, we ran around in shorts and sweaters, and our pink-cheeked healthfulness was not from a too-hot sun but, rather, from the brisk slaps of wind coming off the Bay. It was paradise, and it was the kind of climate that became, apparently, so entwined with memories of childhood that they all came tumbling back to me yesterday.
To my lucky-stars delight, we’ve had a relatively cool summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Coastal folks have bundled against the blustery chill, but we inland residents have reveled in postcard-perfect 75 degree days — as they say in Italian, non troppo freddo, non troppo caldo, e perfetto!; not too anything.
And some of those days have been even cooler — like yesterday. I was taking my afternoon walk and suddenly realized I was pretty much wearing the play-costume of my childhood — shorts and a hoodie. The sun was bright but the air was October-brisk and the wind was pinking my cheeks, tangling my air, and making me smile with the memories of a thousand childhood days climbing jungle gyms and calling “ollie ollie oxen free” (even when the Bay winds would sometimes blow those words impotently back into the caller’s face). As I walked, I realized, “This is my play weather.” I smiled to remember.
Global weirding — my phrase for changing weather patterns — has made that predictable climate a thing of the past, a thing of my childhood, along with dial phones, black-and-white television, and spoolies. But yesterday, for a brief moment, I remembered what it was like to be a Bay Area child, to run not just like the wind, but with the wind. It was glorious.
The graduation announcements, which I ordered with great enthusiasm and anticipation, arrived carefully boxed and protected in plastic. I gingerly removed the various wrappings, sat down at my table with my best black pen and the carefully-crafted list of 25 deeply-cherished friends and family members, then mailed out each invitation with a wish that the recipient would share my joy as completely and heart-soaringly as I was sharing the news of my successful attainment of a B.A. in Liberal Studies.
Graduation was over a week ago and last night I found myself wondering where each of the 25 announcements is now. Surely my beloved mother has hers either still posted to the front of her refrigerator (where I’d asked her to hang it, in the spirit of “look what my kid did”), or carefully boxed with her other treasures. And I spoke with my doctor last week — she told me that she immediately put hers on display on a shelf in her office, where it remains.
But, people’s time and lives being cluttered enough with their own priorities, I’m certain that the vast majority of my announcements ended up either being recycled along with the empty Pale Ale bottles and Barilla pasta boxes, or shoved in a garbage can — noodles and fish scraps sliding down the Sonoma State University Official Seal.
That’s the way of life: we move on. Jerry Seinfeld, demonstrating his usual keen cultural understanding, wrote into one of his episodes a bit in which a girl he’s seeing (but not that crazy about) gets annoyed with him because she spots in his trash can the card she had sent him, leading him to question just how many days one is obligated to keep greeting cards before being allowed to dispose of them.
He’s brilliant. Because I have the feeling that the more affection people feel for me, the longer they are inclined to hold on to that announcement. Have you ever received a card from someone, opened it, and thrown it directly into the trash? It’s the Greeting Card Lifespan Measure of Meaningful Relationship.
If you’re reading this, and you received one of my announcements, my hope is that the announcement made you smile, that you kept it around for at least a week so you could smile a few more times, and then either tucked it away (if you have space/inclination), or responsibly recycled it so that it could have new life.
Because if recycled, then, much like the graduates themselves, the announcements become reborn as blank sheets of paper upon which new excitements, new invitations, and new worlds of opportunity can be printed and invented. I can’t think of a more perfect commencement — for people or paper.
Last night when Neal and I were talking about my college graduation which will take place today, I told him that while I am excited about it, at some level it will also be somewhat of an ordeal — standing around waiting for the march to begin, long hours sitting in the hot sun, and long-winded speakers to endure. Neal commented that my entire college education had been a sort of trial, and this led to a discussion on the importance of The Ordeal.
Our ordeals used to be ritualized — coming-of-age ceremonies and other rites involving deprivation (often including hunger, thirst, and/or pain) were common amongst tribal peoples and served to bond both participants and their communities. We don’t have many of those now, but there are certain parallels to be found in the child’s dance recital, school plays, office meetings and, yes, graduations.
All of these involve sitting for long periods of time (pain), often without access to refreshment (hunger, thirst), and can result in important participant/survivor bonding. (“Can you believe how long that lasted?!” “No kidding!”)
At 2 p.m. today, I’ll be standing in a line, waiting. At some point, someone will cue us to walk, and we will march to the lawn area, be seated in folding chairs in the hot sun, and remain there until it is our turn to grace the stage and shake the hand, at which point we will return to our chairs for more sitting. Sometime around 5:30 p.m. it will be over and the ensuing celebration will mark the end of the immediate ordeal as well as marking the end of four years of study. “We did it!” might well be code for “We got through a 30-minute speech by an unknown college administrator followed by a 30-minute speech by an unknown fellow graduate who used the words ‘dream’ and ‘success’ no fewer than 127 times!”
It will be good. These are my people, and this is how we celebrate.
Fairly quivering with excitement and anticipation, I drove up to Sonoma State University this morning to pick up the cap and gown which I’d ordered last month. When I arrived at the bookstore, however, there were glitches: first, the curmudgeonly 60-ish clerk at the customer service counter couldn’t find my order at all; then, when he did find it, I was amazed to discover it was encased in a plastic wrapper and no bigger than a shirt package. I had expected the gown to be elegantly suspended from a hanger, protected by a garment bag. (Later, after I got home, I found out that the “gown” was so haphazardly packaged because it’s a polyester/recycled-soda-bottle blend, and you could probably wad the whole thing up and stuff it in a Band-Aid can and it would emerge unwrinkled.)
When he handed me my order, I asked, “Is everything here? Gown, cap, and tassels?” He said he hadn’t checked, and started half-heartedly poking through the packages. Taking inventory, I asked politely, “What about my cords? They had told me I would get cords based on my academic status, and I think I’m graduating with honors.” I was amazed he hadn’t mentioned them as part of my regalia packet — he would have let me leave the store without them.
And, in a scene out of the “Twilight Zone,” he said dismissively, “Well, you’d need to show me ID.” I had just shown him my driver’s license when I’d given him my credit card, but I said patiently, “I have my driver’s license…or did you want my Social Security number?” He said, as if this closed the matter, “I was thinking more along the lines of a valid student ID card.” He started to turn away, done with me. I was genuinely baffled — why wasn’t he going to give me my cords?
Neal said, not kindly, “Excuse me. Excuse me. She needs her cords.” Crankypants then pointed us to the other counter and said we’d have to go over there. Shaking my head in amazement at the strangeness of that encounter, I picked up my bags and moved them to the other check-out station, this one staffed by a young, alert, engaged bespectacled guy in his 20s. When I told him I needed my cords, please, he declined my offer of an ID and asked my name and major, which I provided.
He pulled out a big book, and then his eyes got really wide as he noted the three “section” signs [ยงยงยง] adjacent to my name. “Ooooh!” he enthused, “Look at you — summa cum laude ! Gold on gold!” Genuinely impressed (either that, or a gifted drama student), he produced two golden cords and handed them to me with reverence and a giant smile. I could have hugged him but that would have caused talk, so I just beamed “I love you and we shall marry someday” vibes at him as I gathered my things and left.
Two men, two moments, two very different memories. I’m so glad the Universe saved the best for last.
It’s 2:30 p.m. I wander out into the kitchen to get another glass of water. To my disgust, the sink is full of dishes from last night; ordinarily I’d be tuning my portable radio to some rockin’ music and I’d have the kitchen whipped spotless in no time, but today I look at those greasy piles and I have no energy to tackle them. That’s because I have pneumonia. At least that’s what the nurse practitioner at my college’s Student Health Services told me this morning. And because my breathing sounds exactly like an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice cream maker, my entire body hurts and I feel like absolute crap, I’m inclined to believe her.
It started with a cold two weeks ago that never really got better. Then, on Friday, I took my three-hour Statistics final, the culmination of a year-long exercise in stress and frustration. I was feeling kind of sick taking the final, but chalked it up to nervousness. But I got sicker and sicker all weekend, and by last night was running a fever of 101 degrees. If that doesn’t sound so bad it’s because our minds can’t hold on to the memory of pain: you have forgotten what 101 feels like. Your cheeks burn, your eyes blaze, at every joint there’s an invisible gremlin with a hammer and nail, joyfully pounding pain into your battered body. You can’t sleep because there’s too much ouch. Breathing becomes shallow. When your nose is stuffed up, as mine has been, you struggle to suck air in through your mouth, and your gums turn to flypaper. It’s not pretty. Or fun.
All I want to do when I’m this sick is collapse on the couch with my pillow and blanket and distract myself with daytime TV. It’s the only thing that comforts me. I can’t read because I can’t concentrate, and watching “Cheers” reruns requires no concentration. TV helps the time pass more quickly, helps me forget my discomfort, makes me believe there’s hope and laughter somewhere outside my pain-bed, even if it does reside only in a fictional Boston bar. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t like daytime TV, so he sequesters himself in our bedroom and I feel guilty.
Let’s hope the Azithromycin I’m taking washes the bad out of my body truly danged fast, so I can get back to work (no pay for sick days) and back to school (missing even one Biology class is flirting with grade-plummet.) Meanwhile, I guess I’ll go see what’s on Channel 33. You know that show “Becker” is actually pretty funny. If Ted Danson can’t make me forget I have pneumonia, no one can. Well, okay, a lot of people could (Viggo Mortensen and Harrison Ford come to mind) but I had to try and stick this landing somehow, and what do you expect of me? I’m sick. Too sick to do my dirty dishes. And for me, that’s really sick.
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