"Above the Horizon: Part the Last"






My great-aunt Ethel and Grandma Dorothy as girls in Montana











The Saturday after his mother's memorial service, my Finnish father, who would regularly answer the direct question of "What are you thinking right now?" with "I don't know," talked to me about his life. As it turns out, he was more than just my parent, the guy who mowed the lawn and directed choirs and churned out homemade pear walnut ice cream (using Thomas Jefferson's recipe); he was a fully-historied human being with a holster of experiences I'd not known about.

Francis and Dorothy as a young couple, holding new baby Larry; my dad is the three-year-old in the front.

On that Saturday night, as Dad and I sat at the dining room table alone, I learned that my grandfather--reputed as gentle and taciturn in family lore--had, through wordless reproach, made my father feel stupid, even worthless, for my dad had the ill luck to be born with a beautiful tenor voice into a world where handwork was valued. On the ranch, that this boy, my young father, would someday sing Die Fledermaus was secondary to his inability to fix a broken combine.




My dad (looking a bit uncomfortable), my grandma Dorothy, my grandpa Francis, and my uncle Larry

Because of family expectations, my elegant, artistic dad spent his teen years on the back of a tractor, circling in the fields; it was then and there that he began to shout songs to the clouds, angling for any activity that would make the time pass and draw his attention from the worry of a mechanical breakdown--which would require he seek help from big men in dirt-covered overalls, men who would squint with quiet scorn at his "useless," tapered pianist's fingers.

That night, as words poured forth from my father, he admitted to me, "My father and I never had conflict. We always got along. But we were never close. In fact, Dad would never assign me chores or tell me what to do on the farm--I could have stayed in the house all day, as far as he was concerned. It was Mom who, to keep peace, would notice what needed doing and then send me out to work. I've noticed that Finnish families, maybe all Scandinavian families, are matriarchies in which the women take the initiative. And the men like it that way. They're comfortable with letting someone else take the lead and make sure things get done; that's one of the things I like best about your mother and what my dad liked best about my mom."

Awash in my dad's reflections, I also learned that after high school, Dad was going to attend the University of Montana-Missoula but first won a scholarship for the summer to Billings Business School for being the 3rd-fastest typist in the state. So he took shorthand there and a vocabulary-building class in the mornings. He lived that summer just outside of Billings on his Aunt Louise's farm (she who sang "How Great Thou Art" at the memorial), where he slept in the bunkhouse with his cousin Stanley. Everyday, Louise made my dad a lunch to take to school: a baloney sandwich. Part of the agreement about his living in Billings that summer and being released from ranch chores was that he would have to work, so he got a job with Service Candy and spent his afternoons filling vending machines with candy and cigarettes.

Then, one day, Phillip Turner, the conductor of the choir at the private liberal arts college in Billings, Rocky Mountain College, came into Service Candy and said he'd heard about my dad's voice (from whom, no one knows) and asked that he consider attending Rocky that fall. When Dad said that he already had a scholarship to attend the university in Missoula, and he needed that money, Mr. Turner pointed out that Rocky had a "valedictorian scholarship" for $300, and my dad would qualify for that. Thus, in the July before he started college, my dad changed his plans. Grandma liked the idea of Rocky, as it was a church-affiliated college. With her approval, his course was reoriented.

A year later, having completed his freshman year at Rocky, Dad was ready to get away from Billings--more accurately, to get away from the ranch that was a mere 40 miles from Billings, a place he was still dutybound to each weekend, a place with an endless expectation of willing work. Plotting his escape, my dad applied to three Minnesota schools (liking the fact that his dad had grown up there): Hamline, Macalester, and Carleton. Ultimately, he decided on Hamline...but his folks told him he couldn't go--they'd not help him.

He said he was going anyway. And he did.

For the next three years, every semester, just when Dad didn't know how he would pay the tuition, a check for $500, the exact amount of tuition, would come in the mail from his mother, my grandma Dorothy. Even thirty-five years later, both of Dorothy's sons remembered fondly, "If it weren't for Mom's egg money, we never would have gone to college."

My dad during the Hamline years and then in a professional picture a few years later


If it weren't for my father's talking that night in the wake of his mother's death, I never would have known that my grandma, the woman who, at the end of her life, needed an elevating chair to help her stand up, had loved to dance. My grandfather would not dance, being too shy, but while he leaned against the wall, she would circle 'round the floor at the dances held in the local schoolhouse, turning, swirling with other fellows in the community, a fact that made her two sons elbow each other and snigger that another man was touching their mother, and she was having fun at it, too.

Because of the words her death inspired in my father that night, I don't picture Grandma Dorothy in heaven as I remember her on earth--sitting in a purple recliner with an oxygen tank next to her, complaining of dizziness, elevated blood sugar, shortness of breath.


Instead, I see her younger,

more vital,

kicking up her heels

against the backdrop of a broad Montana horizon

as she waits for her cows to come Home.

"Above the Horizon: Part Three"

In the hour before the church service that would publicly memorialize my grandmother, we immediate family members left the windy cemetery and headed back to her bungalow, where she had lived since moving off the ranch more than thirty years earlier. As we all rattled around in her house, eating bars and leaning against her kitchen counters just as we had in adolescence, I had a few minutes to consider my cousins and who they'd become.

Strangely, although I grew up close to these cousins, geographically, they always felt distant, perhaps because their father's life had diverged so dramatically from my own father's. These two sons of Dorothy always got along, always remained companions to each other, yet one, my uncle Larry, followed the life of ranching and eventually long-haul trucking. On the other hand, my dad became a choral conductor and opera singer. At best, their common ground was yodeling.

As well, my dad had one wife in his lifetime, while Larry had several, eventually ending up with three children of varying parentage and, for awhile, a fourth--a step-daughter who remained in his life as long as his marriage to her mother did. Ultimately, I was left with three cousins: Shelley, Mary, and Luke. They weren't given every opportunity, and none of them had a constant mother. In fact, Shelley and Mary's mother left them when they were toddlers to return to her "career" tending bar in a casino. At that point, it was my grandma Dorothy who stepped in and essentially raised those girls.

Thus, it made sense, on a day of memorial for Dorothy, that I would look to Shelley and Mary's lives as evidence of Grandma's impact. Mary, who lived with Grandma even through the rebellious years of high school, had attended cosmetology school before marrying. Her husband's job took them to Nevada for some years, to a place Mary hated so much that she finally looked up one day and said, "God, if you get me out of Nevada, I'm yours forever." Damned if God and his minions didn't get her husband transferred to Washington, causing Mary and the Lord to strike up a little thing on the side. Luckily, Mary found a way to merge her two passions in life: she shaves "PTL" (as in "Praise the Lord") into the hair on the back of her sons' heads--or, in more spartan months, just a cross. You have no idea how much it pained me to type that previous sentence, incidentally.

Less shackled to her faith and her razor, Shelley, too, married well and is raising successful children. Luke, like the girls, was largely brought up by my grandma; he entered the service and likes nothing more than restoring old cars and, speculation has it, growing marijuana. While I have hardly any relationship with these cousins today, due to our lack of anything in common (blank looks greeted me the one time I ventured a "So, read any good books lately?"), I took a minute, leaning against the counter, to marvel at these cousins, and I credit my grandma with giving them the wherewithal to resist taking up knives in their adulthood and randomly stabbing people who might be loitering outside the Rockvale Cafe, waiting for a booth for five. Indeed, I had a little moment, there by the frying pan in Grandma's kitchen, watching a box elder bug crawl along the linoleum, one in which my bar-fueled brain had a flash: with family in the midst of grief, it doesn't necessarily matter if people have a lot in common--just one commonality can carry the day.

After an hour of kitchen chat and gnosh, we wiped the crumbs off our chins and went to the memorial service at the Lutheran church. At the front of the church, an 8" x 10" photo of my grandma presided up front, which struck the worst part of me as a little hokey, but it ended up being quite affecting--it felt very personal to be confronted with Grandma's steady gaze as the pastor spoke of her life on the plains, about her always knowing if even one of the cows was missing at the end of the day--not because she knew how many cows there were but because she recognized each of their faces--and about her being a helpmate to my grandpa.

Even more, the pastor talked of my grandma's last days, as her health faded. When she entered the hospital, she just wanted to "go home." Later, when she was moved to an assisted-care facility, she was sure it was just a matter of time before she would go home. But my dad knew her stay there would be until the end, which turned out to be only two days. He felt guilty about that. Thus, when the pastor finally said, "Now Dorothy has gone Home," fluttering shudders of sobbing passed through my dad. Sitting next to him, pressed against him, with no gusts of wind to distract me, I eyed the hymnals and hoped my left thigh felt warm.

Most moving was when the soloist sang "How Great Thou Art." My grandma's older sister, Louise, had been suffering from Alzheimer's for seven years and was living in a memory-care home. By the time of Dorothy's death, Louise did not recognize any family members, except sometimes my mom (not a blood relation...but occasionally she would pull my mom to her and ask, "Who are all these people?" when her sisters were visiting). We had not thought Louise would be at the service that day and, in fact, were unaware that one of her daughters had brought her--until that song. The soloist's notes rang through the church, but after the first measure, he had a partner in Louise. Her voice, little used, croaked out the song along with him from her pew; she warbled a final duet. Strikingly, she'd forgotten everything else, from her own children to how to tie her shoes, but she remembered her hymns. For everyone in the room, it was humbling. After the service, greeting us over coffee in the basement of the church, Louise's daughter announced proudly, "Mom never did need a songbook."

As we made the rounds during the post-service reception, I grasped how important it was that I had made the trip to Montana, despite my initial reservations. With my sister in the Peace Corps in Moldova at that time, and my Air Forcean brother stationed overseas, too, I was Dad's only kid that day. My father was not terribly touchy, but he kept me firmly by his side throughout the coffee hour, introducing me to every passing soul. At one point, my dad's 8th grade teacher, Miss Huddleston, came up with her twin, Velma. I asked Miss Huddleston if my dad had been a good student for her. "Oh, yes, he played the piano for our class so nicely!" I pressed her further: "You mean he never misbehaved?" She assured me, "Oh, not Donnie! He was always very well behaved. But that Larry was another story..."

After the memorial service, we went back to Grandma's house, where Mary and Shelley's families were staying. We ate deli meats. We watched the kids play Nintendo. We sneaked glances at interesting bits of inheritance. We marveled at how much Stuff a person can fit into closets (Grandma never threw away a letter or card; she kept every aluminum top off of every yogurt she ate; she didn't throw away milk containers; she had underwear in her dresser that was nothing more than shreds of fabric woven together with safety pins). We leafed through photographs, wondering who some of those faces belonged to, wondering why our mothers had let us wear such hideous orange-striped pants in the '70s,

and we wondered if the presence of these pictures in her house had kept Grandma firm on the earth,

even when she'd left them in drawers for years,

even when her eyesight had failed.




Grandpa, Grandma, Larry, and my dad (looking rather fey)

(my grandma, Dorothy, third from the left, surrounded by her sisters in 1951; she was 36 in this photo, 5 years younger than I am now. Sweet Carol Channing, but I'm actually holding up pretty well. This is also the photo that one of my favorite large galpals once spotted hanging on the wall, a photo that caused her to holler out, "All I see is a line of breasts and hips; you didn't stand a chance did you, hon?")

-------------------------------------------------
"Above the Horizon: Part Two"

We both interred and memorialized Grandma Dorothy on January 13th of 1999.

Well.

By day's end, any self-possession I'd started out with had been adroitly flayed by the Ginsu knife that was my dad's grief. His face had such a beautiful composition of lies and planes and dignity and character, and at the gravesite that day, during the interring of his mother's ashes, all those lines crumpled upon themselves into the most terrible mask of agony.

He affected me so much that I couldn't bear to look at him, for fear I'd have to drop to the frozen ground and pound my fists with the pain of seeing my uncomplaining, silent father attempting to keep his composure. Instead, I gloried at the backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains--a view that would prove sustaining when I stood in the same spot four years later, in February of 2003, interring my dad's ashes next to those of his father, mother, and brother--and then distractedly browsed the surrounding tombstones, musing at how many Finns were buried on this Western plains hill. The sole thing that commanded my attention entirely was the unrelenting torrent of wind, a wind that caused the lanky pastor to yell out his words, lest they be blown away before reaching our ears.

His vestments flapping in the wind like Grandma's laundry had, the pastor stood, raised, on the cement outline of the family plot and asked if anyone wanted to add some words of rememberance. For a few minutes, it was silent.

Then, of the eighteen immediates huddled in a bunch against the blasting gusts, those least disposed to words spoke up. First, my grandma's niece (my dad's cousin), Sandy, contributed, "Dorothy was a kind lady." From there, Dorothy's sister, my great-aunt Ethel, observed, "She was a hard worker." It was Ethel who, alongside Dorothy, had milked the ranch's 80 dairy cows, morning and night, throughout their childhood. In such a case, being yoked to a "hard worker" was good fortune, indeed.

Furthering the tribute, my grandma's youngest sister, Ruthie, agreed: "She worked hard. And she was unselfish. She cared."

After that, no one else spoke. At the time, I fretted about the lack of commemorative words, thinking that at my gravesite--at anyone's gravesite--there should be inspired, seemingly-spontaneous, even lengthy words of regret and ongoing devotion; for myself, I fancy a mass outpouring of bereavement, a stampede of verbal processing, so heartfelt that the sky will hear and know that I had been below it for even a short while.

However, my hard-working, unselfish grandma would not have countenanced or even understood such a luxury of words and public emotion. A few carefully-measured sentences, stoically acknowledged, were more than full tribute for this deceased.

After the graveside interment, we had about an hour before the memorial service proper.

"Above the Horizon: Part One"








I never felt particularly close to my paternal grandmother. She was pessimistic; she groused that I sat on the couch and read too much ("Don't you ever go outside?"); and the candy jar in her living room only ever housed lemon drops and restaurant-style peppermint circles, which are the Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of the candy world: ubiquitous and completely without redemption.

However, she knew how to cook a goose, and I respected the fact that she was--and remains--the only person I've ever known who could actually cook my goose (and trust me, it's needed a good basting on occasion). Also, she was, fundamentally, a good person, and especially in junior high, a big part of me understood that finding a fundamentally good person was a rarity. I didn't "get" Grandma--we'd never hitch up into a shoulder-to-shoulder percolation of "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang--we'd never hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, a you don't stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.

But Grandma was all right.

In the 7th grade, when I was assigned a biology project to collect and identify a slew of wildflowers, it was my grandma (having never sat on the couch and read all day thanks to the 80 cows on her Montana ranch with bulbous udders that had them lowing for relief twice a day) who walked the acres with me, plucking flowers out of the ground and handing them over for cataloguing with a terse, "Think this one's called Shepherd's Purse."

So when she died in January of 1999, at the age of 83, her passing meant something. On a deeply personal level, I wasn't affected, to tell you true. But she was emblematic of something bygone, and that fact moves me still.

She died in Montana, a handful of miles from her birthplace: a sod dugout on the family ranch, that passle of acres where she spent the majority of her life milking cows, feeding cows, cooking beans to feed the pigs, baking pies to sell to local restaurants. At 18, she married a Finn, and they raised two sons on their ranch of nearly a thousand acres (small stakes in Montana terms). In sum, she was a classic 20th Century Western woman, placing value on work and work again over words and emotions and how big and open the sky loomed above.

Despite my recognition that Grandma had represented something classic, her death came just as I was facing the first week of a new semester, just as personal debt was at an all-time high, just as I was willing to acknowledge that I had never felt intensely linked to this grandmother. I wasn't sure I'd be flying to Montana to attend her funeral.

Then a sage, in the form of a friend, planted herself firmly in front of my head-down horizon and made my flight to Billings possible, telling me, "Funerals and the like, these kind of things are more important than you know. I think you need to go do this."

I made my way to Billings to find that my friend had been smack-on right. On that trip, I found that, even though I hadn't felt a one-on-one connection with Grandma Dorothy, I could, after her death, appreciate anew all those she had left behind, the crazy-quilt of individuals who were patched together due to her life, stitched more tightly in her absence.

Wednesday, January 13th, 1999, was my grandma's day of memorial.

"Token Diet"

Loathing my general wideness, I decided to try out "The Subway Diet." It worked for that Jared dude, after all, and he looked pretty trim and tidy wearing his khakis and specs in all those commercials. So I committed to the Subway.

But damn if I couldn't choke down all those metal parts. The sliding doors gagged me, and those resistant passenger seats just wouldn't break down, no matter how long I chewed.

After I broke a toof and gained approximately one subterranean ton of weight, I abandoned it as hopeless. I don't know which the hell transit system that Jared was munching on, but it sure wasn't the high-fat retired-Chicago-El cars that I was parceling out onto my dinner plate, bolt by bolt.

Why is dieting always so complicated? All I'd really wanted was a diet where I could eat a sandwich--turkey on wheat, piled high with veggies, perhaps.

Now I've got a spare tire hanging around my middle and a pile of shocks and plexiglass windows hanging out in my crisper drawer.

The good news is that I've just caught wind of something called the "South Beach" diet. Feeling optimistic, I'm thinking that sucking down a gruel of sand has got to be more gratifying than choking on a salad of screws ever was.

"In Which Jim, Who Has Previously Guest Blogged in This Space, Suggests His Lack of a Boyfriend Might Affect His Views on Social Issues, Specifically the State of California's Recent Legalization of Gay Marriage"

So, yea, my pal Jim (aka iJim) used to live in Duluth; he was my boss. Tired of the town and the faculty he oversaw, for we are a wearying lot, Jim packed up his crisp white shirts last year and moved to Palm Springs, California, where he'd taken a job as a dean at a more-arid institution. In his estimation, this was a move up. After all, he was fleeing Duluth's Northwoodsy fellas who wear red plaid flannel to weddings and heading towards a desert that was raining men sporting tight tank tops.

Nearly a year after his move Westward, Jim takes stock of his new state. He writes:

Jocelyn’s fans want to know: what does iJim think of the gay marriage ruling in California?

What’s that? You didn’t ask. Well, that’s fine, ‘cause I don’t care very much either way.

Well, that’s how I felt at first. Sure, this is historic. And so I changed my Facebook status to: iJim is “excited about gay marriage in California, although he’s received no offers.” Many of my friends are really excited about it. Many of my coupled friends.

It’s exciting for those who have a non-US-born partner (Tim and Alistair, Claire and Barbara). Or those without health insurance who might now be able to add them to their policies (Bob and James). Now that I think of it, there are more of these couples than I realized.

But for me--eh.

Maybe it’s because I’m new to California. Had this happened in my former home of Minnesota, I’d be more interested. I’d certainly be more surprised.

Plus I live in Palm Springs, where it’s 104 degrees. It’s hard to get worked up about anything in this heat. And I feel a bit remote, at least two hours from a real city. If I were in Los Angeles, where there was a rally at the corner of San Vicente and Santa Monica Boulevard, I’d probably go. But just to look at the boys.

Or maybe it’s because I’m single and bitter. Maybe I can’t see anything except through the lens of how this affects me today. But I’m not bitter. And not that self-centered. But if I had a boyfriend…

In graduate school, I thought I was Radical Queerrr. Didn’t believe in monogamy. (A shy guy, I practiced it by default.) Didn’t believe in “mimicking heterosexual social structures.” I wrote one or more screeds on the topic. I think I was just cynical then. I was certainly on the early path to Curmudgeonville, where I now blissfully reside next to Joce. (Call me Gloomeo.)

I didn’t believe that the state (or the State) had any business sanctioning one type of relationship over another. I still believe this. A majority (4 to 3) of the California Supreme Court sort of agreed, saying the state had no “compelling interest” in recognizing straight marriage and not gay marriage.

The decision also decrees that California must recognize gay marriages performed in other states. Maybe that will apply to Canadian marriages, too. David and Daniel will be glad. (Daniel will say he’s “fuckin’ ecstatic.” He may even use his jazz hands.) They got married in Vancouver and live in California.

And, you don’t have to be a resident of California to get gay-married in California. Will Palm Springs be the gay-marriage Las Vegas? Drive-in gay-wedding chapels with Cher impersonators officiating. I shudder.

Yet. The decision goes even further. According to the Los Angeles Times: “The majority opinion, by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, declared that any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will from this point on be constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate by race or gender, making the state's high court the first in the nation to adopt such a stringent standard.” (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage16-2008may16,0,6182317.story)

So before I go too far into raining on the “marriage equality” parade, I should think about the ramifications. Court rulings are about establishing precedent and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, about protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Already, there is a movement in California to get an anti-gay-marriage clause into the constitution. Given that the state has a long history of silly propositions being approved by the public, they just might win.

That would be wrong.

That would be, as Christopher Isherwood put it, living under “the heterosexual dictatorship.”

So maybe I care after all.

Now, about that boyfriend…

"What Color Are My Parachute Pants?"

It all started with the brown rice.

There was a muttered conversation with Groom, a little talk that went something like, "Yea, okay, we eat a cow a week, so maybe sometimes we need to compensate by ingesting something uber healthy, like, you know, whole-wheat pasta."

Then we ate some whole-wheat pasta, and pretty quickly I decided I'd rather suck shag carpet through a twirly straw than ever eat another bowl of that whole-wheat schmutz.

So we held to The Principle but moved to brown rice. As Groomeo cooked it up that first night, I twitched around the kitchen, stomach growling, wondering what in the world of ultimate nachos I'd be having for dinner after my obligatory taste of the brown rice, which would, doubtlessly, be followed by dramatic retching into the garbage disposal.

However.

It seems.

When you cook up brown rice and then top it with--and Nostradamus never predicted this in all his crystal ballifying--stir-fried bok choy and soy sauce, it's

how you say

somewhat less than

varmint-inducing...

to the point that it's

hella good.

Nowadays, when the menu is announced, and the words "brown rice and bok choy" are uttered, I do one of my specialized and intricately-choreographed versions of the Happy Dance: the one that goes jazz hands, chasse, chasse, chasse, high kick, standing-half-moon, all capped off with a quick cherry-picker.

As I stand there, curtsying, accepting bouquets, panting, I sometimes think, "Me head is a leetle woozy here. There is some serious identity shifting going on. What's happened to the old 'If it ain't fried in powdered sugar and topped with bacon whipped cream, I ain't eatin' it' Jocelyn of yore?" Truth is, I hardly know myself.

Complicating things is the ongoing Polenta Polemic.

Groom lived for a short while in one of those Carolinas y'all keep down there. While hallucinating in the humidity, he learned to love some funky mush dish called "grits." No, not pronounced "oatmeal Jell-o." Try this: "g-r-e-e-e-e-t-z." Yes, that's it.

So throughout our marriage, he has sometimes pointed to the sky and shouted, "Look, Joce, a flying hamburger" and then, while I'm distracted out there with my butterfly net, leaping around trying to snag the thing, he has quietly hied off to the stovetop and made busy there, only to be discovered some time later (when I whomp in, dragging my net behind me, looking very disappointed), his head dipped into a saucepan, a wooden spoon hovering in his big paw, his mouth coated in hominal flakes. He tries to look guilty, but mostly he looks supremely blissed out and as though he's just realized he married the wrong semi-solid.

In the interests of us developing a few common interests that might sustain the marriage once the kids grow up and head off to cosmetology school, I agreed last month to try--NO, not grits, that bitch--but polenta, the Bergdorf version of grits.

Swat me to next Wednesday, but polenta is ambrosial.

It might have something to do with all that butter and the fact that His Groomitude cracks some eggs on top and bakes the whole thing into a "hold me, Mommy, for I need comfort food" lather.

At any rate, I find myself in off moments, of which I have a satchelful, dreaming of the polenta. I want to fill the bathtub with it and exfoliate with great vigor. Then I want to eat everything in the bathtub with a small spoon and finish off by licking the porcelain dry.

Yea, it's ugly-bad like that.

This whole business of changing and adapting and tolerating new pleasures, well, it's broadcasting into me a freaked-out noise. I mean, who am I, if I'm not a Double-Stuf-chugging, flank-steak-snarfing, Cheeto-deodorant-wearing whore?


It actually gets worse.

Just tonight, as I was typing up this little note to you, Aunt Hepzibah, I was streaming a little tv on the old laptop, as diversion from my own words (lest I find my self tiresome). Before I knew it, I was grunting at the selected program, "Why do you call it cha-cha-cha, Announcer Man? Isn't it just the cha-cha?"

And then.

I realized.

It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday night.

And I wasn't anywhere near the mosh pit at First Avenue (or, better yet, its smarter younger sister, the Seventh Street Entry), nor was I wearing a pair of Docs and a New York Dolls t-shirt, trying to bum a smoke off the guy at the sound board.

Rather, on this Saturday night, I was alone, tucked under the covers, clad in yoga pants,

WATCHING "DANCING WITH THE STARS."

Worse yet, I was weighing in with opinions--and how could I not, what with the appalling state of Crisitan de la Fuente's posture? Stand up, Senor, if you hope to earn the 10's!

Ultimately, I guess my point here, dear Hepzibah, is that brown rice is a gateway lifestyle slider. You let the brown rice in, and you're just a sneeze away from polenta, just a whiffle away from texting in your vote for Kristi Yamaguchi's jive.

Resist the brown, hipsters. Resist the brown.

"Ka-powie"






In an age when Kevin Federline sets the standard as a guy to admire, I'm feelin' the need to go all revolutionary like Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner did back in the '70s and take a moment to set the bar just a tidge higher.

I can up your K-Fed, culturepeople, and his name is My Cousin Kurt.

The adventures of my road-kill-hound cousin have hit this space before, but, with his latest, I'm afraid he may have garnered Reccuring Supporting Character status on this blog.

Sure, he scrapes moose off the highway; he's a dragonfly expert (yea, he's written a book proving his odonatic knowledge); he builds rustic furniture; he has his teen-aged daughter amusing herself with throwing an atlatl out back of the log house he built...

( This is not My Cousin Kurt, nor is it his teen-aged daughter. But it is an atlatl. If you needed this explanation, is it possible you're kind of dim?)

...but that stuff is so My Cousin Kurt that it hardly bears mentioning in a tribute about why I rank him above Britney's ex.

Here's the source of my abiding admiration:

Last year, one of his daughters was given an audio card--you know, one of those really annoying cards that blares a song every time you open it.

First opening of the card, and the song blares out? How cute! Ain't that just.

Second opening of the card, same song? A little drumbeat on the table.

Third opening--what, again? A sense that it's time to move on and open the next present.

Fourth opening, fer chrissakes? An actual request to stop. opening. the. card.

Fifth freaking opening in two minutes? An exasperated exhale and mounting blood pressure.

Sixth #$%^&&(* opening? A sense of slipping sanity and dialing up one's inner sociopath.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the song being played with every opening of the card, in the case of My Cousin Kurt's kid, was "The Chickendance"?

To give him credit, he made it longer than Dick Cheney would have.

But then, My Cousin, my pal, my boy

finally took "The Chickendance" card out front of the house



and shot it.



My hero.

"Epizeudy Boogie-Woogie"

When I think about the rhythm of my existence, the words "West Coast freestyle" cross my mind, as does a brief Lambadic beat, but ultimately I have to admit the cadence of my life is most aptly labeled "semesterlyish."

Back when I was in college, during the "who'll-shove-Alexis-Carrington-into-a-fountain-this-week?" decade of the '80s, I attended an institution that paced itself by trimesters, each lasting ten weeks. Pretty much, that meant we all felt pregnant for four years, except at the end the only things we expelled from our bodies were plumes of smoke from Camel Lights and fountains of vomit from 3.2 beer.

Later, when I started teaching at the University of Idaho and then the University of Colorado, I made the switch to a sixteen-week schedule. Damn near wore me out, that business. Because seriously, when I was an undergraduate, the mere ten-week schedule was hectic enough, with me juggling absences in my various classes just into that tenth week before each professor started to realize I was actually enrolled in her course. Yup, right about final exam time, I faced down raised eyebrows and questioning looks when I dared to enter the classrooms of the courses I'd been enrolled in for two-and-a-half months. My defense, when the professor stuttered to ask me if I wasn't perhaps in the wrong room, was to glare and act affronted that my constant and active presence had never before registered with that poor, confused professor, even though my only constant activity had actually taken place downtown at the bar.

So you can imagine what those later jobs oriented around sixteen strung-out weeks did to my sense of internal scheduling, particularly because I was the instructor, the one in charge, the one who had to be there, like, nearly every time we had class. Crikey, but that was a whole lot of showing up to do. Fortunately, the beauty of "group work" soon shone its face upon me, and I realized that, so long as I got my carcass into the classroom, I could set them on each other before kicking back for the duration, hefting my feet onto the table and peering under the podium on the off chance that some other instructor had left behind an Entertainment Weekly.

Oh, all right, Matlock. Occasionally I'd address words to the room full of students and make some marks on their papers and do a little jollying along. But, really, sixteen whole weeks of anything is ex-haus-ting, sugar. (Hearty Huzzahs, then, to Da Groomeo, who's kept me on board for nearly nine years now. I stay 'cause he keeps hiding the Nutella.)

Yea, sixteen weeks whups me. But even the ten-week trimester back in the shoulder-pad years highlighted what a fragile and delicate violet is The Jocelyn Who Sways at the Slightest Breeze: at the end of every term, without fail, I'd push through those final exams (introducing myself to the teacher as I exited the room that last time) and, just as I started packing a bag and heading for the airport to grab a flight back to the Homeland, I'd

suddenly

get

swelly-ish tonsils

and a fever.

Indeed, once the push to the end of term was over, my immune system collapsed and invited every random microbe roaming the quad after the previous night's kegger to enter my nostrils for a gnarly in-head continuation of the party. Thus, "end-of-term" always translated to "buy-Theraflu-in-bulk."

Even when I started teaching on that even-more-wearying-sixteen-week-rhythm, I was sure this tendency towards end-of-term illness was simply a Student Syndrome. After all, hadn't I seen how easy it was to be a teacher, how simple it could be to pretend to be engaged in my work? What could possibly be sick-making about filing my nails and pouting out twelve times a week to the tuition-paying kiddles, "No, Jerome, accept is not spelled e-x-c-e-p-t"?

Strangely, though, the sixteen-week semester, under which I still teach, is far-reaching enough to make everyone in the classroom sick. Sure, we're all sick of each other by about Week 11, but who knew physical sickness would continue to set in at the end of every semester for me, even with the eight-foot buffer I like to call the "No Steppie Here, Tiffany" zone, an eight-foot buffer that happens to exist right in front of the instructorial magic carpet of desk?

It's like all those students actually do come up to ask questions; it's like I actually do circulate the room and look over shoulders, making suggestions. It's like all those gettin'-sick students get me sick, too. It's like there's just as much stress for the teacher at the end of term as there is for the rarely-attending students who are frantically trying to get up to speed after multiple absences ("Um, hi. Are you in this class? What's that? Your name is on the roster? Tiffany, is it? Sure it's not Jocelyn? At any rate, welcome to the final exam!").

It's like, right now, as I type this, we're heading into final exams on campus. It's like I've been hacking, dripping, and snerfling into the keyboard as I type and consider the 50 research papers, 40 Novels finals, and 20 English Lit exams I have to mark in the next week, before I start to chip away at prepping my summer classes.

It's like, my external rhythm may be set at semesterlyish, but my internal rhythm innately functions on a six-week bee-bop. On a six-week calendar, by the time anyone even thinks about coming to class...or getting hostile about a grade...or coughing in the No Steppie zone and turning the instructor into some wan Charles-Dickens-orphling-looking thing...

we are out of there--

textbooks tossed into the bonfire,

cars idling in the Wendy's drive-thru as we await the deliverance of the restorative semi-frozen bev-cream known as The Frosty,

hands beating out a highly-personalized staccato tattoo onto the steering wheel as we wait.

"The Spindly Nasturtiums"

Photos like these remind my head to think nice things


about these miniature people--



lest the only thought in my brain regarding them be,

"Horton hears a tinkle, but what age do y'all need to be before the pee actually goes into the toilet instead of getting mopped up by my pasty white heinie when it hits the seat?"

They have made me Human Charmin, so they do well to pump up the cuteness on occasion and save their own sorry asses.

"I Commend My Spirit"


The thing about being in one's forties is that there's a humbling amount of perspective.

As I look behind me and see the wee charmers nipping at my heels and then look ahead of me and glimpse the sometimes quick and easy slide to the grave, it's hard to have a big-picture sense of importance, consequence, bangin'itude.

But then I remember that night in high school when I went to my dad's college (he didn't actually own it outright; it was more of a time share dealie) to sit on a folding chair out in the middle of the football field.

You might be thinking this was my way of lodging a protest against the game of football--of me staging a sit-in to make the point that human kitchen appliances deliberately slamming themselves together under the guise of "strategy" is a proposition approximately as ludicrous as Owen "Pass the dutchie to the lefthand side" Wilson playing a former soldier of fortune in Drillbit Taylor.

However, that night in the early 1980's, I perched upon a folding chair out on the football field, anticipating something far more exciting than the prospect of getting cuffed and having my limp, Martin-Sheeny body dragged protestingly off to jail. You see, I was poised on the turf to watch Billings, Montana's first ever out-of-the-doors performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was a premiere event I was attending at Rocky Mountain College, there under the big spotlights.

On the 50-yard line.

In my Flashdance-ripped sweatshirt and patterned overalls.

Then the lights fell, and first, there was nothing.

It was like a slow, glowing dream--a dream that my fear seemed to hide deep inside my mind.

What a feeling.


Wait a minute. That feeling wasn't me having rhythm now, nor was it Mary Magdalene despairing that she didn't know how to love the sandal-clad superstar that was Jesus. Nay.

That feeling was my soft contact falling right off my eyeball and landing on my cheek.

Christ on a sports field. The show had just started, and there I was, grabbing my contact off my face, balancing it on my finger, trying not to drop it in the dusk. Within minutes, as I considered and then rejected a sprint to the bathroom (if I missed Judas' entrance, I'd completely lose track of the chain of events that would ultimately lead to Jesus pushing a big rock away from a cave entrance, rubbing his eyes blearily as he peeled the shroud from his body, picking up a few Cadbury eggs from beneath the bushes for sustenance, and then inventing Rolling Rock beer), I watched my contact lens teeter on my finger, buffeted by the wind, as it started to dry out.

What to do? What to do?

With less thought than I had applied to choosing potato cakes over curly fries at the Arby's earlier that day, I popped the thing into my mouth.

For the next two hours, from Gethsemane to King Herod to that cross business, I sucked gently on the lens. Neither speaking to my companions nor shouting "bravo" after the finale, I focused on keeping the lens nestled in its cocooning little cheek bed.

I remained quiet--some might have assumed reflective--all the way home, until I dashed into the basement bathroom, snatched up a bottle of saline solution, and popped that baby out of my mouth, shouting, "Gag, but that was illin'."

Due to my fortitude, though, the next day at school, when my friends asked me how I'd enjoyed the show, I was able to look them directly and clearly in the eye and report, "Actually, I only saw about half of it. But the righthand part of the stage looked great. So did the actors who stood there."


And so whenever I wonder if my life has importance, if I'll leave any mark, if there has been worth to this puny existence of mine,

I remember that night and the example I set for humanity.

Sure, Jesus was bitchin' out there on the football field, but I, with my admirable unflappability, was schweet to the max.

"Just Sayin'"

This Is Just To Say**
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.


This "found" poem, originally a note Williams stuck on the fridge for his wife--is both charmingly clear and provocatively ambiguous, much like Barack Obama on the stump.

On the surface, this poem is just a "Toots, don't even bother looking for those plums, as they are coursing through my personal digestive plumbing this very minute" communique.

More intrepid readers might take their explication in the direction of sex--to the ripe sensuality of those cold plums that creates a desire to plumb through the juice and burrow right down to the pit. In fact, I'm pretty sure Jay-Z married Beyonce the other week just so he could devour the fruit jiggling around in her icebox without ever venturing off-site.

Perhaps equally interesting is the tack of looking at this poem as an apology, specifically as a pro forma apology. Pro-forma apologies go through the motions and creak out the right words, but, because they are rote expressions and lack genuine sentiment, they ring hollow. Famous examples of the pro-forma would be Don Imus' forced public regret after demeaning the Rutgers' women's basketball team and a host of presidents, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton to Current Guy, conceding "mistakes were made."

Personally, I get a bang out of how unapologetic "This Is Just To Say" is. It's pro forma beauty. Williams isn't sincerely asking for his wife's forgiveness; rather, he commands "Forgive me" as he wipes his chin with the napkin. He minimizes her excitement about eating the plums, chuffing that she was "probably" saving them for breakfast.

Now, WCW, I think you and your wife both remember how you stood idly by as she cut off her hair and sold it at a beauty parlor down the avenue, just to earn enough money to buy those plums. Then, when you took the car keys and wouldn't drive her to the store to get the fruit, she walked five miles, each direction, to the Rainbow Foods. At the store, of course they were out of bags, so Wifey then had to trudge all those miles home with the plums stuffed into her arm pits, staving off coughs and sneezes and all fruit-bruising bodily contortions for the entire hour and a half it took her to get back. Naturally, once she arrived home and opened the icebox, she discovered the thing was stuffed with squirrel cadavers that you were "keeping cool" until your next taxidermy session down in the wood-paneled basement. No room for plums in there, you told her. But she was tenacious. That night, after you went to bed, she crept in to the kitchen and took out one, ONE, of your seventeen squirrels and put it in your beer cooler, just so she could tuck her gorgeous plums into the fridge for even a few hours. All she ever wanted was a cold plum for breakfast the next morning, a plum that would take her back to the summer of '35, when she and her mother shared the perfect plum on a picnic blanket one afternoon at the zoo, three days before her mom suffered the aneurysm that cut her life short. These plums were closure, William Williams. There was no "probably" about them.

But then you cavorted into the kitchen that morning, your face freshly-shaven, knowing your wife was upstairs ironing your shirt and wouldn't be down for ten more minutes...and you. et. her. hard-won. plums.

That measly note, you know, the one that stressed how delicious were the plums she would never taste, well it screamed past pro forma tacky and plummeted directly into Right Bastard.

You didn't mean a word of apology, you power-tripping ogre.

Or maybe you'd bought the plums a week before, and they were about to go off, and since your wife had the flu and couldn't keep any food down, you went ahead and ate them.
-------------------------------------

Whatever the circumstances behind its writing, the template of this poem and the dismissive logic of its undercut apology have become widely known and spoofed.

For example:

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Koch

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

OR

Sorry But it was Beautiful
by Andrew Vecchione (6th Grade)

Sorry I took your money and burned it
but it looked like the world falling
apart when it crackled and burned.
So I think it was worth it after all
you can't see the world fall apart
every day.

OR, as someone monikered "Anonymous" wrote to J.K. Rowling:

This Is Just To Say

I have killed
the wizard
who was in
your novels

and whose death
you were probably
saving
for book seven

Forgive me
he had it coming
so beardy
and so old

OR

This is Just to Say
by Jason Nicholas

I have pulled the
Pin from that grenade
On the desk.

Forgive me.
I thought it was
My keyring,
And



---------------------------------------------
My drawn-out go at this poem is inspired by fellow blogger Minnesota Matron, whose recent post about an arse-paining student gave me great comfort, in a week when I've been wrangling again with the alcoholic student in one of my classes who caused me to lose much sleep a few months back.

This is Just to Say
by Jocelyn Teacher

I'm sorry you went off your meds
in the '90s
and started to drink constantly

and lie more frequently than you drink
which you probably are unaware of
even as you email me every day that you've
missed class because you were bed-ridden and
your grandmother died repeatedly and your friends
all died, every single one of them.

Forgive me for being a poor teacher, as you
told the dean last week when you appealed the
Failure for Non-Attendance grade I'd assigned.
In your version, my lack of teaching is somehow related to
your having diahrrea for seven weeks which meant you couldn't
come to class.

I'm sorry your absences weren't at all alcohol related.
The dean, and then the registrar, and then the Vice President
might have had some sympathy for that.

A delicious and sweet and cold martini will be great solace to you
during your academic probation
for which you must forgive me.

------------------------
**shout out to National Public Radio's "This American Life" program, which planted much of this in my mind

"Riddle You That"



Overheard tonight here at the compound:

Groom to me: "Wow. Good thing we have these paper towels--because this thing is dripping with honey."



Any guesses?

"Duluth, Minnesota Versus Manhattan, The Island"

Groom and I have been feeling lately that we have too much time and money and not nearly enough stress. It's all "wake up late, stare at the lake, water the seedlings, play some Doodle Dice, go for a trail run, grill a pork roast, read in Jeffrey Toobin's THE NINE about the appalling politicization of the Supreme Court, sit on the curb and chat with the neighbors, and hunker down to await the next hawk migration." Frankly, with the low blood pressure that accompanies such an easy pace, we fear we may live to 95.

And if we're alive at 95, there's a very strong chance that the next Bush generation will have had time to ascend to power. Clearly, we'd go to any lengths to avoid witnessing the reign of facism carried out by "Governor Jenna of Ohio." Indeed, rather than face this prospect, it might be time to undertake some lifespan-shortening.

So we're thinking of moving to Manhattan. There, we could feel the pain of wallet-strapping restaurants, chest-clutching rents, X-ray-thin socialites, and gasps of toxic air--tradeoffs that could kill us younger but still leave behind grinning corpses.

Because His Groomishness and I like to make well-informed decisions, I've been compiling a list of comparisons between Duluth and Manhattan. When the list has reached its final, exhaustive stage, I fully plan to let it slide off the kitchen table and fall behind the radiator, where it will live for three months until the next sweeping up. After the compilation is completed and lost, I'll head outside to lay on a blanket and play Skip-Bo under the apple tree.

1. Hell, the first big difference would be the quality of footwear. In Manhattan, we'd be under constant pressure to have well-shod hooves, no matter the cost or teetering involved. On the other hand, the only pressure in Duluth is to wear water-ready shoes that proudly proclaim, "We ain't afeard of the uglies."


















2. Transportation in Manhattan is all yellow, dirty, and jammed. In Duluth, we're more about not slamming into the forest beasts while mentally figuring out which color of wax to apply to our cross-country skis once we get to the trailhead.













3. New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is an old richie fogart who serves as trustee at the Museum of Modern Art, while Duluth's mayor, Don Ness, is an avid skateboarder who recently learned to finger paint.




















4. In Manhattan, $325,000 will get you a solid chunk of urban grit, while the same, in Duluth, will net a house that serves as a realistic backdrop for games of "I'm Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mistress, and he does so like it when I sport my feather boa atop a saucy smile."
















5. Schools are competitive in Manhattan. If your kid is lucky enough to score an education, it will be spotted with French lessons and staid craft projects like this:













In Duluth, however, we get real with the craft projects. Our preschooler classes work cooperatively and messily to create near-life-sized dinosaurs which are subsequently, upon completion, raffled off and sent home with the "lucky" kid whose name is drawn from a basket woven out of our region's ubiquitous icicles.

Guess what? In our case, the slip of paper with the words Niblet Paco Dinko fairly leapt out of that icicle basket during the drawing, and before we could shout, "Holy Monty Hall, we didn't actually want you to reach in that basket and pull out our kid's name because, fer Christ, even in our relatively-spacious Duluth home, where the pajeebus are we going to put a huge dinosaur?" the thing was loaded into the back of a pick-up truck and driven to our address, where the aforementioned Paco Dinko of Niblet Fame stood jumping and clapping on the front sidewalk as the thing was unloaded, hardly able to believe, at age five, that this life he was living was really so very magical and wondrous.

In true "we don't squawk here in the Midwest but just remain stoic in the face of whatever comes, again and again and again, whether it's the latest Bush generation to seize power or an unexpected preschooler project come home to roost," the Groom and I looked at each other, shrugged, and squeezed the carnivore onto the front porch next to the scooters and trikes.



Try toting this thing home on the Subway, Manhattanites!

Her name is Lily Sparkly Sparkly, and if you err and mistakenly call her Lily Sparkle Sparkle, you will be soundly reproved by an indignant five-year-old who hugs the old paper mache gel quite protectively as he scolds you.

-------------------------

Clearly, then, all the list-making and pro-ing and con-ing was for naught. We'd never manage to fit Lily onto an airplane seat, even in First Class, to make the flight to Manhattan.

Plus, she has a rather sordid history with Michael Bloomburg; should she turn up in his city and sell her tales of pomegranite martinis and ripped camisoles to the tabloids, he'd have to resign.

And damn it if the young Barbara Bush wasn't overheard last week in the Oval Office, yawling, "Daaaady, I shore would like me a mayorship in some big city somewheres, you know, where I could live in a mansion and shop at Barney's and gather 'round me a circle of Wall Street beaux. Any ideas, Daaaaaaady?"

To avoid that troubling possibility, we've decided to stay put in Duluth, where we'll continue to wear our ugly Keen shoes; teach our mayor to use scissors; knock about our cheap and crowded house; dodge moose on the roadways--and keep a muzzle on the sparkly dinosaur.

"Aloha Pillow Talk"

I often trudge, stone-faced, through the hours of 9 a.m.-8 p.m.

At 8:01 p.m., however, I go all Tom-Cruise-On-Oprah's-Couch.

Without fail, once darkness falls, the quarter slides into my internal jukebox, and I light up, song lyrics tumbling from my lips; spontaneous-yet-well-choreographed musicals high kicking it in the kitchen; animated one-way conversations with the creators of The Wire perking out of my mouth; grocery lists for the Girl's quinceanera party (in seven years) scritching on to paper; Scrabulous tiles, particularly the "q" without a "u," pouring onto the board; slates of enemies receiving a well-deserved in absentia back-stabbing; blog posts sliding out of the birth canal, still slathered in vernix.

If I were a Magic Treehouse book written by formulaic-yet-educational children's authoress Mary Pope Osborne, I would be entitled Mania in the Moonlight. You would not buy me, even from the clearance shelves at Barnes & Noble. Instead, you would back away slowly, refusing eye contact (How dippy are you for that? I'm a book, you twittering fool. I don't have eyes), easing the blow by feigning an interest in the gnome calendars, magnetic poetry kits, and color sudoku books that lodge up front by the cash registers.



Fortuitously, my night-time energies play nicely into the fact that I'm one of the twenty-nine married women in Minnesota who still look affectionately at their husbands and think, "Yea, I could hit that." Indeed, once I've stretched out and folded up my leg warmers after the high kicks, jazz hands, and pas de bourrees by the refrigerator, I often still have enough steam to go tackle My Man.

As it turns out, when I'm really in the throes of the Night Time Happies, I can also get giggly. Loopy. Babbley and burbley in the boudoir (take that, Mary Pope Osborne).

The other night, my state of laughing gabble just about derailed us. As we lay there, working into an esprit d'amour, I just could not stop yucking and yacking, blicking and blacking. Every time I'd move in for the kiss, a snortle would come blowing out my nostrils.

Yea. I know. Hot.

Finally, I did a few slow breaths and announced, "I just have to stop thinking of things that crack me up. I need a change of mental scenery. So, okay, we're going to..." I stumped around, looking for an appropos locale, "...Sexy Island now."

When I get snortley, I also get prodigiously lame.

Ever my willing playmate, though, Groom joined in. "So what's on Sexy Island?"

"Well, there'd be monkeys, for sure."

Cuz, you know. Monkeys in a Love Fantasy imply, welllllllllllllll, swinging and peeling.

Groom knows my brain; he free associated right into the peeling. "Yea, monkeys. What else?"

Upping the ante, I noted, "I'm pretty sure there's buried treasure on Sexy Island, from some pirates. They're a bad, bad lot, aren't they? Very naughty?"

Groom was with me: "Yea, okay, treasure. I can dig that. And I'll be more than happy to lay hands on your booty and shiver your timbers. "

After that, it was quiet for a beat.

Another beat.

Then the Hot Mess that is Groomeo queried, "But is there poi on Sexy Island?"

-------------------
Afternote, to be read while smoking a cigarette and running a hand through your rumpled hair:

Yes, yes, there was poi bubbling over the fire that night. And what a way to find out that the consistency of poi is often described as being either "two-finger" or "three-finger."

I am a fan of life-long experiential learning.

"Sound of the Funky Drummer"

I am an enormous pain in the hinders.

On the other hand, I am also a tuition-paying student at the Flava Flav School of Elusive Charm.


Flav and me? We tote our clocks; we sport our grillz; we hook up with statuesque Nordic types; we view life as a cost-effective backdrop to our own VH1 reality show; we throw down internal rhymes while honing prosody, cadence, and speed. In fact, we can only be distinguished from each other by the fact that he looks like a crack-addicted tambourine player in the subway, and I look like the long-lost Gabor sister exiting a particularly-harrowing roller coaster ride.

From the School's monthly newsletter, I've also learned that Flava and I share a dislike of getting up in the morning and becoming functional human beings. Sure, we has the kids, but we can't be bothered to raise them until at least mid-morning. Until 10:30 a.m., we just have to tape one of these


on our faces and put a like sign over the vodka and matches, hoping the wee ones are literate enough to decipher the message. If not, the resulting combustion of fire and booze is simply framed, for the benefit of the police, as "science."

Truth is, it's fortunate that Flav is a semi-absentee dad. And it's fortunate that I married the anti-Flav, the stand-up guy named Groomeo.

See, His Groomishness lets me have a lie-in whenever possible. Like the other day, after I'd been up 'til 2 a.m. grading online class assignments (and, admittedly, playing some Webkinz games to earn enough Kinz cash to redecorate the apartment of my birthday-gifted elephant, Cornucopia), I got up the next morning for about 45 minutes with the fam--throwing water and food towards the children--and then went back to bed. Up again at 11 a.m., I felt a fair bit refreshed. (Across the continent, I pictured Flav peacefully wiped out on a slightly-tatty heart-shaped waterbed, mouth wide open, sawing logs with dem toofs of his.)

At 11 a.m., although I was actually upright and speaking in staccato phrases, the kids were all bickery, with thirty seconds of harmony between them being a far-off dream. At one point, two hours into my wakefulness, they were fighting about whose turn it was on the big red balance ball and on what part of the floor the balance ball should sit when it was someone's turn and for how long that someone should be allowed to stay on the balance ball and why it wasn't fair that someone else would always get longer and a better spot on the floor when it was time to be on the balance ball and how they never actually got a turn for anything or a good spot for it, and it was all I could do not to dial 1-800-Flav and get my mentor on a jet to Duluth.

Cuz, Maynard? We may be podunkish here, but truth is that my city of 80,000 happens to be situated perfectly for refueling between California and England-type-lands, which means, hand to heaven, celebrities like Bono sometimes sit on our tarmac for the gassing up. And if Bono can do it, you better believe Flava could situate his wiry buns on some big, cushy seats and sip pomegranate martinis while coming to my aid. As a bonus, the flight attendant would help him re-set his clock when they landed, taking into account the time difference.

At any rate, as the kiddles impersonated Richard Burton and Liz Taylor at their finest that morning, I was hard pressed to be the adult--or even the Sandy Dennis--in the room, in the face of such a quarrelsome duo. I tried a bit of talky-negotiation, but they just ramped up more.

Exasperated, I finally proclaimed, "Well, then, you're both being buttheads, and you deserve each other" before marching up the stairs, where I turned to Groom and asked, "Would you call that my finest parenting moment of the day so far?"

Assuring me it was, and that I could hardly be expected to feel more kindly toward the ingrates, what with my having been up 'til 2 a.m. the night before playing Atomolicious so I could afford to buy my elephant a new reed-and-lily-pad desk, the Groom patted my arm with great affection.

Which is why I'm thinking it's fortunate I married him and not Flav. Were we the sole adults in charge, FF and I would've grated the kids into a bowl of grits (protein-fortification!) years before.

And then we'd have called in the cameras before picking up our spoons.

"Just Where I Am"


I'm typing this while sitting atop a brick red duvet, leaning back against a bright-purple down pillow. On the tv is a re-run of the Saturday Night Live hosted by Tina Fey (blogging troubador Furiousball best described her as "one of the women I'd like to lick the make-up off of" some months back); right now, Carrie Underwood, wearing some pleated and atrocious rip-off of a 1950's cocktail dress, is belting Idol-style and shaking her unnaturally-golden tresses.


Other times, that screen features the mug of Bawbwa Wawters and her View Crew, Craig Ferguson making me contemplate adultery, and Dinosaur King rocking the youth on Saturday Morning cartoons. Oftentimes, the images on that screen bore rather than entertain, making me glad it's rarely on.

My gaze wanders to the wall-hung quilt my mom made for Dinko (incidentally, the Niblet has also chosen the name "Paco" for himself; to my delight, I get to holler, at dinner time, "Get yer wee rounded tush down here for edamame and eggs, Paco Dinko").


The fabrics in this quilt are from my grandmother's old dresses; Grandma started cutting the pieces for the quilt before she died in 1974. My mom took over her project and finished it in 2007. I think it's a Dresden Plate pattern, and I adore that my mom can sit in front of it and tell a story of her mother wearing a dress made out of the red-and-white gingham, of her mom making dinner in the flowered calico. I look at this quilt and am reminded my mom's enduring devotion to her own mother. I look at this quilt and am profoundly grateful that it will follow my son into his adult life (Mom made another of these for my Girl, too, so no nattering about how maligned she is).

On the stand next to my side of the bed are a couple stacks of books. On the top of one stack is my reading lamp, which is meant for a desk and casts the beam too low for bed reading. So I've hefted the light up to the peak of a stack of five books: a Mrs. Piggle Wiggle (the kids do love hearing about The Showoff Cure), an advance reader's copy of a book "coming in November 2006" (guess I'm running late); The Boys of My Youth, a Jo Ann Beard book gifted to me by my best reading source and finest galpal; The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser, which I'm sifting through a second time, having just read the light fiction The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (boy, did factual history not restrain that version!); and a book of poetry, Mean Time, a Carol Ann Duffy volume gifted to me last Christmas by one of my favorite blog maidens, Glamourpuss. These are the books that sustain my light. In the other stack on my nightstand, I have my active-reading pile: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral; The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, loaned to me by a highly-patient neighbor more than a year ago; and I'll Drink to That, another advance reader's copy--this one a story of the French peasant who brought Beaujolais to the world. All of these, plus five thousand more, are my posse.


Behind me hangs a big painting made by my kids one sun-dappled Fall afternoon almost four years ago, out on the deck. They made that painting on one of those rare afternoons when parenthood--when having young kids--felt as easy and gratifying as an episode of thirtysomething would have had us believe. Everyone was happy. Everyone wanted to be doing what we were doing. Everyone was in a groove, got off The Mommy, and painted. Even better, they painted their feet and hands and skated across the huge swath of paper I'd taped onto the deck. It was painting Olympics. It was my life as a highly-rated and -reviewed one-hour drama.

Over on Groom's side of the bed is everything else, for he is not tidy. He gets the clock radio, as I don't believe in keeping time or getting up in the morning. He gets the Kleenex box, as my nose shouldn't run. He gets the stack of Presidents of the United States cards, the fleece "sleeping bag" that a stuffed animal is supposed to inhabit, the hand salve, the massage lotion, the condom wrappers, the cough drops. On the floor beneath the stand is a waterfall of Cook's Illustrated and Gourmet magazines, fleshed out by a book of NY Times crosswords and a curious bit of non-fiction entitled American Shaolin.


All of this visual gratification inhabits one mere corner of our bedroom, one ten-by-ten foot space. Eleven feet out, there is everything else in the world: the desktop computer; the sleeping children (they of huge blue eyes and mouths that only get wiped when I notice the Oreo crumbs); staircase after staircase; uneven ground in the yard outside; cars that take us to new mundane daily tasks and big life adventures; the fifth largest body of fresh water in the world (two blocks from our house...it collects pack ice in the winter and sparkles with diamond dust in the summer); friends I haven't met yet; traffic weaving helter-skelter across the asphalt.

It's all out there: what I know intimately; what I have yet to encounter; the changes that will be wrought by future decades.

It's all out there. For forty-one years, I have always negotiated the world with a certain confidence, even when I have felt a wreck. At least I've always been able to open the front door and take off on a restorative run, no route in mind, just winding and turning along new roads and paths, letting the alchemy of waving leaves and unexpected deer and Spring wildflowers turn my dross into gold.

But now, at the moment of writing this, I question my future as a place of easy confidence. Rather, I feel paralyzed by uneven terrain, by all the options and vagaries of the world.

Three weeks ago, my optometrist, after a series of tests, joined rank with my childhood optometrist, who noted when I was seven, "If your eyesight keeps up at this rate, you'll be blind by thirty-three."

Actually, the verdict three weeks ago differed a bit (she'd have to be a pretty crappy optometrist to examine this sighted forty-one-year-old and declare me a blind thirty-three-year-old); rather, her musing was, "How are you forty-one with glaucoma?"

At last year's appointment, she'd noticed a not-completely-health optic nerve, but a follow-up test proved things were still within normal range. This year, though, she saw a notch in one of my optic nerves, even clearer in photos of my eyes then taken, backed up by a loss of peripheral vision in a visual field test.

The diagnosis was veering, rather frightfully, towards glaucoma. She wanted me to come back for a couple more tests.

In the two weeks of waiting for those tests, I put the poor Google through its paces. On the positive side, a diagnosis of glaucoma is no longer what it was 20 years ago: a sentence that one is on a steady march to blindness. In fact, there are ways to treat glaucoma these days, most often with thrice-daily eyedrops.

Of course, the eyedrops have possible side effects. Like darkened vision. Loss of libido. Depression.

So, should it prove to be glaucoma, it would seem that I can keep my vision, such as it is, so long as I'm willing to spend the rest of my life as a dried-up, flattened, stumbling husk of a gal.

During the follow-up tests two weeks later, the doc checked my eyes' "superior ridge." The resulting graphic print out shows a suspicious dip in that ridge. On the other hand, other parts of the testing look okay.

The bottom line is that the doc is reluctant to give me a lifetime diagnosis and start me on 50 years of meds unless everything points to glaucoma. Since only 2/3 of the results do, and since the vision decline is so glacial in pace, we're in a holding pattern.

I'll go back in 4 months and retest, and freak it if I can't cram for or cheat on this one.

Trust me, between now and then, and for every day thereafter, well into my audio-book-rich dotage, I'll treasure even the smallest glimpse of the fakey Carrie Underwood, the assiduously-maintained Barbara Walters, the loving quilt on the wall, the grins on the kids' faces, the compost bin in the backyard, the puddles in the alley, the cheese melting on my enchilada, the birch trees flanking the trail, the toilet paper as it swirls down the hole.

I am suddenly and profoundly less casual about it all.

"Species: Dinkus Dorkus"

So have you ever thought to yourself, "Well, now, Martha, hasn't it been an age since we've had a nice photo with the kids? And looksie-looksie: we seem to be at that rare moment in time when everyone is clothed and within yodeling distance of a bath! Yes, let's do."

Clapping your hands together brightly, you line up the troops, warn them sternly that we actually want a nice photo this time--no "Look how Niblet smeared his quesadilla all over his torso; isn't that precious?" pictures today. No, this will be one we can show the great-grandparents next time we brave the 85 degree indoor temperatures and go visit them in The Home.

So everyone's really trying here.

But pretty quickly,


you realize it ain't gonna happen. The vibe is off. Clearly, everyone had way too big a bowl of Slack Muscle Flakes for breakfast.



No matter how much you try to look like regglar folk, attempt after attempt,


everyone seems to be embracing his/her Inner Eejit. We try to look natural, but somehow we continue to look just as creepily "wrong" as Priscilla Presley's post-op face.

So whaddya going to do?


For us, it was back to normal. Dropping all pretense, we ditched the clothes and laid off the bathing.