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I love good food.  I love to cook and am pretty good at it.  But I’ve always been afraid of baking bread.

First of all, the nature of yeast is confounding.  Animal?  Vegetable?  Sea monkey?  We didn’t do much real baking at our house, so the yeast packets were written in Aramaic.  This should’ve been the first indicator of death, but who thinks about little grains of stinky sand as being alive in the first place?  Even if the leavening was hale and hearty, I worried about the exact temperature of lukewarm.  FYI, there is no ‘lukewarm’ indicator on a baby thermometer, which was older than me and probably didn’t work anyway.  Proofing?  Strange little verb.  Chances are, I either cooked the rascals before they could start farting into my dough, or froze their non-existent nuts off. Read more

Our friend set becomes a bit more stable as we approach 50, but there are always the fashionably late drop-ins.  The main set understands my life in the same way they understand photosynthesis and Japanese auto mechanics: there’s a handshake understanding of the principles, but no one spends much time wondering about the details.  It simply Is.  Then the occasional newbie stumbles in and things need to be explained.  No one undamaged can still be unmarried at age 47.  The simple fact that you’re unmarried is its own damage.  So far, I’ve led the kind of life that has never much cared for convention.  I’ve not spent more than five or six minutes a year thinking about white dresses and custom-died shoes (or all that devoted hair-pulling that comes afterward), and the marriage prep work needs to be a near full-time endeavor for us girls from a young age.   

In order to be a Married Woman, you have to be on the platform by the time you’re about 17.  Not that you’re going to catch a marriage train, per se.  No, you have to catch one of the many trains that will take you to a marriageable state: the 3:15 to Naïve.  The 3:45 to Easily Charmed.  You stand there without getting on board, waiting for a state less humiliating: The 4:10 to Quixotic.  There’s the bullet train to The Maternal Clock, but whatever you do don’t confuse it with the 4:25 to Maternally Pressured.  There are no cushions on the seats and you spend half the trip shoveling coal to convince her that you’re serious.  Then there’s the 4:30 to Oops, but who knows where that one ends up.  There are those who think to stow away on Oops, but they’ve really only caught the 4:45 to Desperate.  No ticket needed for that one. 

A few of us board the 4:45 to Why Buy The Cow, knowing it’s just an over-priced dinner train that goes in a big circle.  At 6:30, it dumps you back out onto the platform, raccoon eyes and panties in hand, to find you’ve missed both the 5:10 and the 5:25 express to Practical, as well as the 5:50 to Finally Ready.  So you open your Jane Austen compendium, queue up the Out of Africa soundtrack on the iPod and settle in to wait for the 8:05 to Grateful.  But the Grateful brakeman is getting a knob job from a rider who wanted an upgrade to Blissfully Ignorant and he misses your stop.

Well, tomorrow’s another day.  You stroll the grounds of Pemberly and fly low over the savannah.  You live a full and generous life while protecting your freedom like some new age Paul Revere.  A few friends may find their way back from Quixotic after extended stays in Disenchanted or Abused.  They’ll sit with you on the platform with their vodka stingers and their cigarettes, making cruel sport of the 17-year-olds swanning around; an army of wry smiles minding the timetables for you without being too obvious about it.  You hop freights to Proud, Interesting, Fearless, and Independent, but those don’t seem to be good marriage states, either.  The trains go in big circles just like the free milk one.  Soon, you’re back with the cacklers ordering another stinger. 

And one day you realize that this is good.  You are the fat and happy god of your own little universe, and what you’ve made is lovely.  There’s not one grain of sand on your planet or crinkle near your eye that you’d trade for wedded bliss.  This is your train and anyone is welcome to take it for a ride or even stay aboard for a while, whichever they prefer, and that’s good, too.  No one here is waiting; there are no tickets to be punched.  What is is what you’ve made and it is good.

If only it were possible to create the ideal relationship entirely from scratch. Perhaps from a patchwork of other known successes. He’d have my first boyfriend’s hands and lips, my Dad’s sense of humor and innate, practical intelligence, my brother-in-law’s unabashed joy, and my best friend’s sense of curiosity and appreciation of Beauty. He’ll know when to hold me like a dove or a harlot. He’ll have the ability to make me laugh when I’m sure I can’t. He’ll challenge me without knowing it, inspiring more than teaching. He will pull off the road to watch a particularly nice sunset/rise, even when I’m not in the car, and will be left breathless by a low-slung moon in the trees. Read more

From my earliest moments, I remember my mother telling me that there’s nothing I can’t do if I put my mind to it.  I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant at first, but it sounded good.  Later, the oversimplification would gall me.  Particularly when scraping with math homework that neither she nor my dad could help me untangle.  For the most part, however, her programming worked.  I’ve never looked at anything and dismissed it as something I couldn’t do.  It’s never even occurred to me that my womanhood might stand between me and my goals.  If I never climb Everest or become an NFL quarterback, it’s not because I can’t.  I simply don’t want to badly enough.

It’s important to note that this progressive – even downright feminist – idea wasn’t coming from a highly educated or advantaged woman.  My mom was the youngest of four children.  She might have been fourth of five, but her baby sister Mary died very young.  Her mother, whom we quietly suspect suffered from some form of emotional disorder, committed suicide soon after Mary’s death.  The Great Depression was winding down, but things were still difficult for my mother’s family.  Her stoic Irish father worked hard to keep them afloat, but there was little time or patience left for the littlest one at the end of the day.  The saddest picture I’ve ever seen was of my mother’s first communion:  All the other little girls were so happy and proud of their pretty white gloves and new bibles.  Mom was the freckled acorn in the front row with the scuffed shoes looking like she was about to shatter into a million insignificant bits.

Whether through convenience or compassion, she was finally sent to away to live with relatives in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin.  Her aunt and uncle worshipped my mother and freely lavished on her as much love as any little girl could want.

Of course, I didn’t see any of her hard knocks until much later in my own life.  She downplayed the more Dickensian aspects of her childhood, and always focused instead on how lucky she was today.  She had a flawed, complicated, and wonderful husband, two headstrong and slightly crazy daughters, a comfy home with two cars in the garage, and a neurotic wiener dog.  In her eyes, life simply couldn’t be more gratifying than that.

Being so gratified allowed her and my dad the luxury of pride in everything they’d created.  When faced with the notion of their child being a musician or artist, a lot of parents might attempt a course correction.  Mine showed up at every concert, play, or performance and always clapped the loudest – even when I stunk up the joint.  When I decided at age 37 to quit a decent cubicle job and start my own graphic design firm, they clapped even louder. 
 
Naturally, I would never accuse our family of being perfect.  My parents made many mistakes over the years, as we all do.  Our predominantly sunny core seemed to resent the interference of conflict. Every problem suffered death by suffocation, especially those that might be seen as shameful or embarrassing.

But with all of their faults, and despite deep furrows of pain and loss and fear in both my mother and father, they made a conscious decision that their children’s lives would be better.  They instilled in us a kind of light and inner strength.  It’s a confidence that has nothing to do with being superior.  It only comes with knowing that we are profoundly loved.  We are loved even in the face of a tremendous flop or bungled effort or unbelievably stupid choice.  We are loved at our best and our most awful.  It is a ferocious love for another that asserts itself before any love for one’s self, and there is no substitute.

So, armed with this unique brand of cockeyed optimism I’ve sky dived through the world.  I’ve never asked what comes next, or “what if I fail?”  With all my heart, I know that the only failure is not trying.

The moral of the story sounds simple enough: Be good to your kids.  You brought them here, and you’re utterly responsible for who they are to become.  Tell them how marvelous they are, and don’t shrink away from being tough on them when necessary.  Arm them with everything they need to be good humans by setting a good example.  Perhaps most importantly, don’t flaunt your own pains for the sake of arguing theirs away.  Show them that even the worst history can’t stop a beautiful future, if that is what you put your mind to.

There’s no good reason in the world to expect a profit-driven company to send you a bunch of free stuff without attaching little strings to every item.  Such is the paradigm vortex in which I find myself tonight.

Because I have a life, a career, and a social calendar…  Because I see no particular need to set my clock to that of a major entertainment distributorship… Because there are so many more important choices to make every day when I roll out of bed, the very last thing on my mind is to tell Columbia House not to send me their absurd “Director’s Selection” every month. 

First of all, the Director of WHAT?  Director in Charge of Perpetuating Banal and Utterly Mindless Pop Culture?  Director of Lobotomies with a Hand Shovel?  The Director of Half-Eaten Twinkies Floating in Bong Water?  The Director of FEMA Who Used to Raise Thoroughbred Horses but Decided It Would Be Fun to Manage Federal Emergencies Instead?  Frankly, any of them would be an improvement over the current selection tsar. 

Oddly enough, they have only themselves to blame for my gas.  They set the bar too high.  I recall a time when the aforementioned purveyor of mediocrity would at least let you assign yourself to a category.  When I got my 13 free CDs, they at least let me tell them “I’m kind of a jazz girl.”  I knew there were idiots at the switch whenever the current spit bubble from Kenny G arrived at my door, but the rest of the time I could generally count on something tolerable showing up if I’d happened to have missed my No Thanks window.  Let me tell you, friend: No such categorization buffer exists in the DVD department.

Some brilliant MBA obviously walked into Columbia House and said, “Hey, options are bad and they cost you money!” Or maybe it was “consumers don’t really know what they like, so we need to tell them!”  Well, I know precisely what I like, and it’s the opposite of Spiderman.  The movies I enjoy wouldn’t even share a theater zip code with American Wedding (the desperate attempt at a follow-up to the absurd American Pie).  Other shit stains include that crazed monkey boy Tom Cruise in Collateral, Tom again in The Last Samurai, and the even bigger monkey boy Keanu Reeves in a weird thing called Constantine.  I couldn’t even get beyond the menu screen on that one.  The arrival of each was about as welcome as salmonella poisoning on Christmas.

For as bad as they were, I’m afraid none of them prepared me for the half-plucked turkey I found rotting in my mailbox today: Talladega Nights.  Don’t get me wrong!  Nobody does Big, Stupid, Hairy White Guy like Will Ferrell.  But it’s clinically proven impossible to endure 121 minutes of it.  A ten-minute comedy sketch with Will in a cheerleader outfit is the most normal humans can take.  Getting beyond that qualifies you for any number of jobs at the White House because your tolerance for idiocy is clearly unnatural.

Considering a possible run for office, I decided to watch.  It’s hard to pinpoint what was so gut-wrenchingly bad.  The flavor of awfulness was pervasive, and had an oscillating quality to it much like sitting next to your smelliest uncle on a hot day with his Wal-Mart fan wafting toxic body odor into your nose and eyes with its perky little plastic flags a-fluttering, all impervious to the stench that’s slowly removing your facial flesh.  In fact, it was probably much like the smell to be found on any summer day in Talladega.

Now don’t fool yourself for one minute into thinking that this bleeding heart liberal simply resents the chronic stereotyping of lower-middle class America as stupid, shallow, and feckless.  On the contrary!  I LOVE it.  Especially when they’re all polling republican.  I’m going to start getting legislation in place to move elections to mid July, and all my problems are over!  Nope.  I say, “Gentlemen, start your engines and bring out the Girls Gone Wild,” because it’s the best way to keep all y’all in one place for when Iran finally sends that nuke over here.  I don’t think bin Laden will target us wine-slurpers in Sonoma.  He wants you red, white, and blue-blooded screaming assholes getting a chubby watching cars drive around in circles real fast burning up all of his oil.  But I digress…

Ricky Bobby is a carbon copy of every other Will Farrell character we’ve ever seen.  John C. Reilly does what he does best, which is to play the hapless second fiddle.  Unfortunately for Farrell, the second fiddle frequently upstaged the top banana.  There were only two factors that saved this DVD from the doom of my microwave:  The goofy quotes on the box praising the movie (“America is all about speed.  Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” — Eleanor Roosevelt), and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Euro-trash Formula One driver bent on proving his alternative view of superiority.  I admit to being disappointed at finding my hero in this retched movie, but then it began to make sense… in a sick, witty, and entirely Sacha B. Cohen way, it all made sense.  But I doubt it’s what the producers had in mind.

So I hate Columbia House because it propagates the lowest common denominator of taste.  It kicks the witty, intellectual kid in the balls while clumsily fingering the cheerleader’s panties.  Columbia House takes the absolute worst aspects of American “culture” and splashes it in your lap with some salsa and chips. 

But what the hell do you expect from people who give you stuff for FREE?  Shut up and eat your Fritos.

I sit behind a large picture window and watch the world change in thin lateral strips, a visual victim of mini-blinds that were oh, so chic 10 years ago.  My friend Dave helped me install them while he was here on vacation from Buffalo, NY.  It never occurred to me that it might be rude to draft a houseguest into home improvement projects. I guess I figured that any activity in Portland would be better than watching a week’s worth of old videotapes of “Nova” in Buffalo. 

After he’d gone home, and for years after his visit, he’d want regular updates on the state of My Tree.  His first visit was in Spring, so the ancient dogwood outside the window was in all her whipped-creamy glory while we installed the blinds.  His fixation with trees – well, flora and fauna in general – was one of the things I both loved and loathed about my friend.  At age 48, you’d think David had never seen the effects of Fall.  He seemed constantly surprised by the changing nature of clouds and sunlight.  He would call daily with reports about the Monarch butterfly migration, the Perseid meteor showers, or the activities of his two sadly apartment-bound, but otherwise completely unremarkable cats. 

On my only trip to his side of the country, we drove around for hours exploring the unrelenting vagueness of rural New York.  David was in a perpetual state of near-completion of his doctoral thesis on geography and its affect on socio-economics.  He could (and did) talk for hours about the natural history, the cost/benefit ratios of any current or pending economic development programs, and geo-political atmosphere of each new township.  After fully annotating Hillary Rodham-Clinton’s last self-serving appearance in whatever little backwater we’d entered, he might hit the occasional lull in his lecture.  I’d try to jump in with something pithy and relevant, and the darling would interrupt me to point out the 37th appearance of a red-winged black bird simply because I had mentioned that we don’t see them much on the west coast.  It was a little irritating, but you had to admit that the guy was deeply passionate about life. Even if it was only as an objective observer.

We decided to spend the infamous 1999/2000 New Year’s Eve together.  With so much drama swirling around the event, I thumbed my nose at caution and did it up right.  I booked us at a swanky but uniquely Northwest party in the Columbia River Gorge, hosted by a locally renown brew pub owner.  The McMenamin’s Edgefield Resort started life in 1911 as the regional work farm/poor house, then spent some time as a rather dubious orphanage before falling into disrepair sometime after World War II.  During the financial boom of late 1990s, all 38 acres’ worth of buildings and farmland were restored to a gracious European-style hotel with an Arts and Crafts décor, extensive gardens, a small golf course, onsite massage therapist, a cozily-appointed movie theatre serving beer and pizza with the show, various shops featuring local new age hippie artisans (live glass blowing, tapestries, pottery), with a little 60s counter-culture whimsy splashed here and there in the fun, slightly acid-trippy hand painted interiors.  Being a history buff, dedicated socialist, and a big fan of bands like Fairport Convention and Jefferson Airplane (NOT Starship), I figured Dave would fall in capital-L love with this place.

We checked in and, despite my best efforts to hide it, he happened to see how much I’d paid for the weekend.  To David, frugality is the very backbone of existence. The problem is, I like to do more than exist.  Upon seeing the bill, he immediately became quiet and fidgety. Yes, we could have fed that old orphanage for 6 months on what I paid for 2 nights’ worth of fun and frivolity. So shoot me. The turn of a new millennium only happens… well, once in a millennium!  We head for our room. He is immediately cheesed by the fact that the one little elevator, while thoroughly modern by 1911 standards, doesn’t go all the way to our floor (formerly the staff’s quarters).  We’re forced to take the broad and beautifully hand-painted stairway up the last two flights.  Our room is huge and a little spare, but cozy in that perfect Craftsman way: Simple but heavy furniture, thick carpets and richly-colored upholstery.  David grumbles about the lack of a television and then notices the old plank floors, pointing out that we’re probably making a lot of noise for the people below us.  While he resents the stairs and is uber cautious of every move, he’s now apparently glad we’re on the top floor.

Impossible though it may seem, the evening continued downhill from there.  Dinner was tense and unusually quiet while he measured everything against its price tag. Twelve dollars for a plate of pasta suddenly seemed a great travesty even though he wasn’t paying for it.  David insisted on drinking water even though the bottle of champagne at our table was part of the package.  There were five different bands playing around the estate throughout the night but none of them seemed to suit my date: A favorite local funk/blues outfit (too loud), a stellar 18-piece big band (too old), a cool up-and-coming grunge band playing in the estate’s power plant (too young), a beautiful string quartet in the wine bar (too sleepy), and a jazz quartet complete with a torch singer in the scotch/cigar bar (too smoky).  I was more than ready to let him sit in the car with the radio on.  To make matters worse, I couldn’t get drunk.  He wouldn’t have even one cocktail with me, so I’m too busy looking at his half-empty water glass to enjoy my desperate double vodka on the rocks.  I continued plastering the cracks in my brave face for the next five hours. 

Kindly remember that this one night was fraught with more tension and fear than any night could possibly carry without the help of someone like Freddy Kruger or Rush Limbaugh.  Amazingly, nothing crashed.  The world didn’t end.  With neither a bang nor a whimper, the Year 2000 walked in the door, cracked open a beer and wondered what the hell everyone was staring at.  So after throwing a lackluster shrug at the arrival of a new century and having tried so hard to have a good time all night, I was completely worn out.  We trudged back up the two flights of stairs and into our room where I quickly washed my face and put on sweats before crawling into bed.  The only thing missing from my “NO SEX FOR YOU” message was the mud mask and a rattling aspirin bottle.

I found out later that he’d planned on asking me to marry him that night.  That was much later, after the premature evacuation of our intended holiday love nest; after the string of movie theatres allowing me to sit in the dark and not talk to him for most of the first day of the new century; after my praying for his airplane to hurry up so I can go home and change my sheets and enjoy my solitude.  It was a little while after he got home and we fell back into the three daily phone calls about his cats, but not long after I told him that I couldn’t take it anymore.  That’s when he sent an extended email saying that he understood.  He sympathized with my frustration and even admired my long-suffering tolerance of his eccentric ways.  That’s when he told me that he’d intended to propose on New Year’s Eve.  I felt like a heel.  A selfish, shallow, and incredibly grateful heel.

Good thing for me that our nine year friendship, and the genuine love at the core of it, was much bigger than one sour weekend and a botched marriage proposal.  We went on to value every wonderful aspect of one another, even the stuff that drove us completely mad.  So when he died suddenly in December of 2003, it truly was like losing part of myself.  I could look down and see a shark-sized bite taken out of my chest, sometimes forgetting for a moment what had happened. Then the loss and the sadness of his dying all alone would push down on my shoulders and grab my throat. It would throttle me until everything went a little gray. Then I’d cry and peer into the hole in my chest wishing that he’d put me back together.

As weeks passed and what he had of a family sorted through what he had of a life, they found all the little bits of me that David had left behind.  Like bread crumbs, they found my name, my birthday, and parts of my phone numbers and address leading the way into his computers, bank accounts, and his sainted Palm Pilot.  The Weather Channel was streaming up-to-the-minute Portland temperature and rainfall stats to his desktop in Tonawanda. There was a folder on his Palm specifically to help him remember to tell me about interesting books, good articles in the current New Yorker or The Nation, upcoming poetry events or art exhibits at University of Buffalo, and even funny commercials that he’d seen.  David knew I didn’t watch much television, but he was always trying to sell me on how good it can be.  I tried to explain that the only thing more tedious than watching television was to hear about it second-hand.  He and my dad have similar reading tastes, so he would frequently bundle up books he’d read and ship them off to me.  They found two boxes of paperbacks packed up and addressed, apparently waiting for his next trip to the local mail center.  I was the beneficiary of his small pension at the University.  I was everywhere in his life.  Not in the creepy John Hinckley/Jodie Foster way, but in the gentle way of a truly great friendship and enduring love.

So from between the mini-blinds, I watch the first flowers appear on the dogwood tree.  In my head, I give Dave the daily update on how they change from buttery yellow to white as they yawn open. I mention how the new leaf buds seem to make the flowers float in a liquid green haze.  As always, I think he’s happy to hear about it.  I tease him a little for being such a sap, and try not to think about his unremarkable and suddenly orphaned cats licking him goodbye as he lay dying on the floor.  Instead, I keep my heart fixed on the tree, the mercurial Portland sky, the fires of autumn.  And in return for my daily devotionals, he’s giving me his perspective, his wonder, and his passion for life.  Occasionally I look down into the hole in my chest.  I see it slowly filling in with all the best pieces of David, and I realize that we’ve both survived.

Are They Really Crazy?

With only a few weeks to go before the 2004 Republican National Convention and being hot off the John Kerry rally a few days ago, I’m rattled with rhetoric.

I desperately need Yosemite Sam out of the White House.  I’m sure he’s a decent enough fellow and is probably lots of fun at barbecues and family picnics, but he is in no way qualified to be the Leader of the Free World.  And while I’ve pinned all my hopes to Kerry’s old-school legal-eagle and somewhat wishy-washy political lapels, something is missing.  No it’s not his personality, as pundits are so eager to barf out at us.  It is a sense of genuine moral justice with regard to the way America conducts herself on the world stage.

This is a lot bigger than just getting our neighbors’ permission before overthrowing a sovereign government, or living a blatant double standard with regard to the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons.  It’s about respect.  There is a lot of prattling on about regaining the respect of the world community, but not once have I heard anyone talk about OUR RESPECT FOR THE WORLD.

Instead, both candidates are wielding Osama bin Laden and his Jihadi lunatics like their own personal flaming saber.  Each claims to have the better way to deal with these radical Islamists who are absolutely wrong and clearly insane.  Are they?  Not one of our politicians has the courage to talk about the issues behind the madness: Long term, systematic abuse, manipulation and – most critically – McWorld Domination.  Yes, those cagey corporate multinational (or counter-national) puppet masters bent on lining their pockets with the proceeds of mass Americanization of the world culture.

Make no doubt about it: This is Americanization. The word “globalization” is dangerously euphemistic.  I’d consider it more accurate if I could see any influence of non-American culture in my own little sterilized-for-your-protection back yard, but the Corporations don’t want that because they don’t profit from it.  Americans have the money; Americans want to see/feel/taste America everywhere they go. Ergo, Corporations follow the will of the American wallet.  Think about it: if we didn’t buy Happy Meals, they wouldn’t sell them.  Anywhere.

“What?? Corporations aren’t really to blame?”  For as difficult as it is to control the corporate congloms and manipulators, the real challenge is to change the American way of life.  Our response to their little Buy Me bells is positively Pavlovian.  If we exercised just a little bit of self control and (heaven forbid) good judgment, we could set the whole economy on its ear.  But I digress…

For its own completely legitimate reasons, the Islamic culture does not want to be Americanized.  And if we came down off our high and morally bankrupt horse we’d not only understand their concern, but do everything we could to preserve their way of life.  Admittedly, Islam embraces aspects of cultural repression and inequity that we don’t understand or approve of.  But do we honestly believe they will more clearly see the light at gunpoint or from under a tank tread?  What the hell ever happened to leading by example: show the benefit of a just and equitable society by BEING one. 

With the lackadaisical acceptance of preemptive war, being held prisoner indefinitely without benefit of counsel, and our new and improved interrogation techniques, we’ve all but lost our claim to a moral/ethical high ground.  You can say that they pushed us to these depths; that we were forced to adopt otherwise distasteful policies in response to those evil-doers with murder on their minds.  Is justice only for when things are going well?  When the chips are down, do right and wrong become a fuzzy gray security blanket for the bleeding heart liberal?  If so, then our esteemed forefathers weren’t quite as clever as they seemed. 

The ugly but simple fact is that we don’t value the world around us.  It’s our own personal cat box and we’ll shit wherever we please, and you better thank us for the privilege of cleaning it up.  So people get mad and fight back in the only way we seem to understand: with violence and fear.  We temporarily hitch up our drawers, break out the big guns and put our constitution under lock down.  In the process, we’re killing the very things we’re trying to protect: Freedom, liberty, justice.  In succumbing to this level or moral turpitude, our mask slips.  We become even more of what our crazed enemies hate, and less of an America worth defending.

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