Winter Cheer

The Handsome Man and I just returned from a chilly walk around the neighborhood with Chaco. It felt so much later in the evening than it really was. Two short months ago, Handsome and I were playing tennis on the park court at 7:55 PM. Tonight the streets were deserted and the air was cold even through three smart layers and a parka.

Beautiful night, all the same, with the stars on Orion's belt low in the dark eastern sky and twinkling like the Christmas lights everyone seems to have put up already.

For our part, I don't think Handsome and I will be going the route of outdoor Christmas lights, despite the abundant supply his mother keeps at the ready. Since we've been together, Handsome and I haven't ever done outdoor Christmas decor, period, so it's not like we'll be foregoing some tradition if we don't hang the rafters and windows and trees in the yard with lights. (For my money, I'd rather get a motion sensor light for the front porch.) I would adore some of those giant ornaments to hang on the tall pine by the front walkway -- so tasteful and old-fashioned and quietly cheery.

Meanwhile, I didn't bother to take down last year's indoor Christmas lights, at least the white lights ringing the dining room. Too sparkly wonderful to end. And I'm excited about bringing home a tree and hanging it with lights and with our growing collection of ornaments, including one or two new items that we'll make or buy this season. I'm looking forward to the fresh and wintry smell of spruce, and the Christmas tree's tall presence in the living room, positioned strategically near a window so that people driving by might see the sparkle and smile to themselves.

I'm looking forward to all the extra smiles of the season.

Wild Goose-Chasing

Is it wrong that we let Chaco chase the flocks of geese at City Park yesterday? He really, really enjoyed it!

Um, No Soup Group This Week

Did that need saying?

It's a holiday tomorrow. We're taking the Holiday Week.

Oh, hadn't you heard of the Holiday Week?

It's what the busy and reasonable women of Soup Group do with their non-urgent volunteer activities on the day before a national holiday. Like, "Well, obviously we won't be having Soup Group during Thanksgiving week..."

Because we've all got a lot of other shit going on, what with it being the week of Thanksgiving and everything. They're a bunch of moms and grandmas, my Soup Group. Hello? They're busy during Thanksgiving week. And reasonable people such as these soup friends of mine are not going to pile one thing on top of the other. No. We're going to manage our lives intelligently and plan ahead: we cooked extra soup last week, the freezer is full.

No Soup Group this week.

But do have a happy Holiday Week. I hope you get things done.

Thanksgiving Prep

There was a time in my adult life when I would spend Thanksgiving with my grandmother, Meemo, my mom's mom.

It was a tradition that began after the weakest Thanksgiving ever, Thanksgiving 1997. I had graduated from college, dropped out of grad school, and moved back to Denver. That year, my parents bailed out to the mountains for Thanksgiving with my uncle and aunt, leaving me and my brother stunned to find that we were on our own for Thanksgiving, being explicitly not invited to join the elders at elevation. Frere and I tried (a little belligerently) to rally. We'll have our own Thanksgiving, we said. We'll do it ourselves.

So with Frere, and my best pal, and Frere's young family, I celebrated Thanksgiving 1997 with a late and lousy meal at my parents' house, where I was living at the time. Some important things were overcooked, some important things were undercooked, and both cheer and ambience were noticeably absent from our proceedings. I vowed internally to have a better option next year, and with gritted teeth, started to craft a plan for a meaningful Thanksgiving tradition of my own.

And I was successful in that goal. Every year thereafter for Thanksgiving, I'd fly down to Meemo's house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For a few days, I would visit with family, watch cable, and be overfed. I'd spend hours cooking Creole specialties with Meemo in her pretty, yellow kitchen. I'd spend hours lolling on her bed with her watching tv after dark (we liked Emeril, Wheel of Fortune and the news). I relished the hours I got to spend hearing stories about her life and telling her stories about my life. And on Thanksgiving Day, Meemo and I would gather with the relatives at my aunt's house to celebrate with a decadent feast fit for kings, or Romans, or Southerners, I guess. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I went alone and basked in the attention. I went with my boyfriend in 2000, and came back subsequent years with that same handsome man, now playing the role of husband.

Then in 2005, three days before my 30th birthday, my grandmother passed away suddenly.

(And I still want to kick somebody.)

So, naturally, I spent Thanksgiving 2005 and Thanksgiving 2006 surly and isolated and drinking about it.

But in the last few years, I have come to understand that's not how Meemo would want me to play it. I never thought I was "honoring her memory" by acting that way, I just didn't know what else to do on Thanksgiving Day when I was supposed to have plans with her. Mom finally called me out, at some point, and I had to agree, Yeah, Meemo would want me to hold my head up. If she could weigh in on it, Meemo probably would want me to spend Thanksgiving with "Alta" -- my mom. Thanksgiving with Alta is something Meemo would love to do, if she could.

So in the last couple of years, I've been showing up for Thanksgiving dinner with my Mom & Dad, brother, nieces, and other local family and friends. I say "showing up" because while I typically aim to scintillate in social situations (youknowhowwedo), I'm nothing but a presence on Thanksgiving. I'll put on a dress, I'll bring mashed potatoes, I'll bow my head for prayer. But I'm waiting for it to be over.

Thanksgiving 2009? I'm not aiming for a lot more than showing up again this year. Frere's divorce has just become final, my uncle recently had to file for bankruptcy, the Handsome Man and I are entering another holiday season childless and not pregnant. Thanksgiving 2009 and I are hardly making eye contact at this point.

But here's one thing I plan to do this year to try and make the holiday a little special for me. I'm thinking maybe this year I'll have the heart to come home and watch the last and only video I took of Meemo, from Thanksgiving 2004 -- which was an awesome Thanksgiving, if it had to be the last one. It was great. And from it, I have my grandma on video, talking one-on-one with me about her visit to Denver the previous summer, and about her childhood in New Roads, and about her satisfaction with her life.

I haven't watched it since 2005, but I remember that in the video, Meemo talks about me. She talks about a conversation she had with my Baton Rouge aunt after the two of them visited us, the Denver clan, the summer before. And what Meemo said was that they agreed: "Alta's got a daughter, child."

I remember it word for word.

And it will be nice to hear it again.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Spot On

I think this e-card is hilarious.



I just can't believe that it exists.

But then I'm fairly surprised to find myself in a situation where that message is applicable.

Maybe I'm just having trouble with credulity.

(No, I didn't send anyone the card.)

Most Days

I spend a lot of time being afraid. (It's a disorder.)

To my credit, I spend about an equal amount of time trying not to be afraid.

This means, using the above photo as an illustration, I've developed a lot of habits and strategies designed to make me feel less like the terrified pair in the first row, and more like the chill sista in the second row: "Yeah, baby," I imagine her saying to her small companion, "it's just a roller coaster."

I'm reminded of that part in the fantastic 80s movie Parenthood when Steve Martin is feeling terribly exposed and yanked around by life's events, and his wife (played by Mary Steenburgen) compares life to a roller coaster, explaining that the ups and downs are the whole point, and the trick is to learn to enjoy the ride.

Returning to the photo: I do hope some day to become so acclimated to life's permutations that I'll relate most strongly to the back rows of white folks who have their hands thrown recklessly in the air. "Whooo-hoooo!" we'll be hollering together on that day.


Photo credit: thingsyoucantdocokedup.tumbler.com

She Won't Be Emailing You Anytime Soon

Mom asked me yesterday if I could do something for her.

"Something like what?" I asked.

"Could you go into the internet for me and get me a wild rice stuffing recipe?" she asked.

She went on to say that she has lost her favorite stuffing recipe, and she knows that I use the internet to get recipes, and she’s already bought the wild rice...

But my attention had been diverted when asked me to go “into the internet” for her. Like the internet is a trendy fashion boutique with obnoxiously loud house music playing. Or a basement root cellar, and she's got a bum leg.

What I actually pictured when she said it was me ripping open the seams on Google, and dropping myself down a bright tunnel of binary code where I’d find Chuck from Dooce posing with noodles on his head, and Guy Kawasaki sprinting away in a black pullover.



Photo credit: shashbellamkondo

My Trust-Gratitude-Inspiration Friday

I needed to get that last post out of the way so that I can focus on:

Trust!

Gratitude!

Inspiration!

Friday!

(In that vein, I wonder if there’s a post I can do to rid myself of exhaustion, because I’m pretty beat right now, and these are big concepts to take on while nodding off...)

Trust hasn’t been my strong suit this week. Let me come back to that.

Gratitude: I’m extremely grateful that the biopsy on my mole came back negative. And I’m also thankful that the hole they left in me is healing beautifully and not even itching as much as it was for a couple days there. (Handsome kept telling me, That means it’s healing. I kept telling him, That only goes so far, dude.)

Inspiration: I’m inspired this week by me. Or, rather, by you, The Preferred Daughter. I know I’ve been talking some trash (in this post, for example, and this one). But somehow with this blog, I’ve been significantly more likely to write, these days, and that’s good for both my emotional health and for my writing craft. In fact, I have found that many of my projects are being fueled by happy little bursts of energy that come from my pride in seeing myself doing this. That’s at once cheesy and self-congratulatory, which is a nauseating combination, I'll acknowledge. But it also happens to be true, so it stands.

Back at Trust: Hmmm. I think it counts, but I’m not totally sure how to put this... I’ve been trusting lately that if I just keep showing up, that’s enough. I don’t have to be great. I don’t have to be enthusiastic. I don’t have to be particularly skilled. I just have to show up, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I don’t have to do it well, I just have to do it. This idea has had broad application in my life recently, and I think I’m better for it. More grounded. Anyway, I’ll take it.

So there you go. A little tepid, but present and accounted for: TGIF by The Preferred Daughter.

Happy Friday!

Harumph

To the loutish construction workers across the street:

It has not gone unnoticed that you haven't ever catcalled me when I've been accompanied by my husband or my German shepherd.

So, your behavior just now was not only tacky. It's also pretty weak.

Reaction

My mouth literally fell open.

Everything around me sort of faded white and started to buzz.

I got scared. I felt a sudden, faint panic, as though something bad was happening to me.

Something bad is happening to EP. Again. Her mom has breast cancer.

I don’t even have clear feelings, just these primitive flashes of sensing -- being a daughter, being a mother, being a mother and a daughter, experiencing loss.

And then, like a rush, fear.

Oh my god I’d be so scared. I’m scared right now. And my ears are still buzzing.

Yes, I prayed a jumbled wish for her family’s well-being. “Make her mom be okay,” I heard myself begin, “make it better.” And then I balked at hearing myself giving God commands. But what does God expect us to want? Not knowing what to ask, I ultimately prayed my go-to prayer: that God’s will be done and that those impacted be able to handle it with some grace.

I am uncomfortably aware, however, that “God’s will be done” is not what I prayed when it was my mother’s life in question. In fact, I don’t remember praying at all until I was in the hospital, sitting next to Mom’s bed, and the doctor was saying that she’d be fine. Then I prayed, in gratitude, and with a sagging, exhausted relief.

But I really haven’t had my prayers on straight since then. That would be five months now. Angry at God for five months now for even threatening me with losing her.

So no, this reaction of mine isn't entirely about EP and her mom, though I'm urgently wishing them well.

I guess...I guess I right away have to figure out how to do something other than be this scared all over again. I have to remember to breathe from deep down in that red chakra. I have to stop bracing myself, literally, relax my shoulders and arms. And I can try, I have to try to stop that chaotic mental cyclone of fearful thoughts, that spiral in which I’ll find myself tangled up later tonight, sleepless and aggravated, unless I choose a more serene approach now.

I’m sure there are exceptions, but in my experience, people who get caught up in their fear and worry generally are not terribly effective. And if there’s a bad situation that can be helped, I’d rather be effective than scared. If I get to choose.

In actuality, I’m probably going to have to settle for being effective WHILE scared. Because the fear isn’t going away. And really, at this point, all I’m hoping for is to keep it locked up in the drunk tank till it calms down.

That said, I am aware that at some point I’m going to have to actually deal with these feelings.

Top Ten Reasons I Do Soup Group

So why is Soup Group a priority for me?

Well, the first answer is that it's my mom's group. She didn't start it, but she was one of the original soup-makers, three years ago now, and she participated in Soup Group for a year before I started. I was very surprised back then that Mom had gotten involved and stayed so committed to this volunteer project. It's hands-on work, the soup-making, and Mom's volunteer (and professional) contributions have always been much more administrative or managerial. She served on the vestry at our old church, for example, and when I was growing up, it seemed that most of her volunteer obligations were in the form of oversight and planning committees.

Soup Group is straight-up manual labor, dude. It's (at least) three hours on your feet, crying onion-chopping tears, flushing red from the heat of the stove. Now, it ain't heavy lifting, for the most part, and it's largely risk-less. No one has lost a leg at Soup Group, or even, thankfully, been burned badly. But it's tiring.

So why do it?

Following in no particular order, are my top ten reasons for doing Soup Group:

10. I'm learning so much about cooking! Cooking from scratch, cooking with more experienced cooks, cooking in bulk quantities. I feel enriched by my growing knowledge about something I love so much (i.e., food).

9. Soup Group is woman time. Soup Group is a female space, with the occasional male volunteer hour simply serving as the exception that proves the rule. So I get my girl talk and that camaraderie for the morning.

8. I enjoy spending time with my elders. The rest of the Soup Group is made up of ladies much closer in age to Mom than to me, and none of us pretends anything different. I like how they boss me around. I like to hear their stories and their perspectives, which are different than mine. I especially like to have all this go down in a kitchen environment. Reminds me of time spent with Meemo, with Grandma.

7. My participation in Soup Group is a concession to God, who maybe would like to see me "in church" more often. This way, I'm technically "in church" every week for Soup Group. No, I'm not attending service, but I do feel like I'm following the letter, if not the spirit, of some law (that still matters to me, apparently)...

6. I feel good about supporting the clinic in Baghdad. If there's war and destruction taking place in my name, I want to be intentional about something positive happening in my name as well. And if our soup proceeds are meager while the destruction is great, then at least I can say that the soup proceeds came from my heart and my hands, which you can't say about the destruction.

5. Our soups build community among the church parishioners. While we're cooking, the priests and the Sunday School teacher and people attending Bible Study all pop in the kitchen to breathe our fragrant air and find out what's the soup of the day. On Sundays, (I hear tell that) people are reminded about the soup during the service, and discuss it during reception. "We" give updates to the congregation on how much money has been sent, and we read aloud the notices and post the pictures that we receive from the clinic. It's a shared effort.

4. It's a neat group of women. Sher always has a joke; Mom hums and sings to herself; Rhondda brings an almost businesslike, level-headed practicality; Elizabeth is wonderfully direct; Irene feels like a good friend; Jody is subtly perceptive and so kind. I like how diverse our personalities are, and how similar our values. I like that we manage to make decisions through an informal (if sometimes grudging) consensus. I like hanging in there together with them.

3. Nobody besides me wants to do the recipes! They'd be willing, in my absence, to do the selection and conversions and inventory and list-making. I'm not saying it wouldn't happen. But they're really glad they don't have to.

2. Volunteering is the right thing to do. When my mind elects to wander over the territory of my faults, community service is conspicuously absent from the landscape. I get to tell myself I'm doing some good.

1. It's one more way I get to spend time with my mom. I love her.

Today's Soup: Thanksgiving Corn Chowder with Bacon

A dairy-free chowder, this soup is rich with veggies and seasonings including potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, home-roasted red peppers, mild green chiles, fresh cilantro, thyme, cumin, chili powder and paprika. Perhaps surprisingly, it's not spicy at all. Flavorful and truly delish, this recipe is one of our Soup Group specialties.

Sometimes I get nervous about making soup at Soup Group, and will consider ditching. In the land of Soup Group, it's my job to identify each week's soup recipe, convert it - as is usually necessary - to bulk yield, and develop a shopping list based on needed ingredients and our existing inventory. All this takes place before each Wednesday's cooking session. And it means that I am the one to blame if the recipe turns out crap, like if I forget to include or recalculate an ingredient (each of which has happened), or if the cooking instructions are unclear, or if the cupboard doesn't hold the expected ingredients, or if the flavor of the soup doesn't turn out right.

And it's not that the Soup Group ladies are mean or cruel about these failures when they happen (which is infrequent, these days). And it's not that I don't have experience with "pressure" situations - multi-million dollar projects, special events with multiple moving parts, the care and feeding of VIPs. No, it's the shame. I could have done better. I should have done better. It's just literacy and arithmetic, after all. And then I feel stupid for feeling ashamed. It's just a volunteer job, after all.

But anything worth doing is worth doing well.

How much angst and anxiety have been caused by the internalization of that saying, I wonder. Plenty, in my own life. But I think that commitment to excellence (or, to basic competence) also has spurred me on to success in any number of arenas that really matter to me. And that's the trick: exorcising your drive for excellence only in the areas that really matter. This starts with bothering to identify what are the areas in your life that really matter. After that, the task is just to treat those areas as your priority.

Not Gay Porn

On popular blogs, the authors tend to avoid certain expressions or manipulate the lettering of these expressions, so that the blog isn't tapped as part of internet search results for pornographic or otherwise non-applicable terms.

The Preferred Daughter is not a popular blog, so I think I've got nothing to worry about on that front.

A recurring theme today: My problems lie elsewhere.

For example, after our walk this morning, Mom wanted to talk to me about my current career choices. Wait - Why am I even beginning to go into this? I didn't mind talking with my mom about it -- well, yes I did mind, a little, and, out of respect, I had to make a conscious point of allowing her to finish each time she spoke, even when I knew where her comments were headed (and didn't want to hear it). By contrast, I really don't feel like talking about it with you, Blog. In my head, you're far too judgmental. ;)

No, I don't feel like talking about Mom's concerns right now, and I didn't feel like it at the time, either, and I told her why: I've got bigger fish to fry. And my particular bigger fish are not gay porn, but gay porn is what I wanted to write about here today:

I feel I should clarify something from the last post. Now, understand that I have decided that I'm going to just Let It Go as far as any of my discomfort about previous posts. I have decided that I will just release them each to the universe, and Oh Well. If I've got a "clarification," I can write a new post about my current position on any given matter. I have decided that it isn't good practice -- you know, in the absence of any actual audience requesting clarification -- it isn't good practice to second-guess what might have been said before. It hampers forward movement, for one, to be trying continually to refine and clarify the past. It's also a little disrespectful to Past-Crystal who, I can assure you, thought carefully about what she wanted to say at the time. If what resulted was her truth, So Be It. I'll write a new post if I have something different to say. And while I enjoy meta-conversations aplenty, I realize that they are a drag for most.

That's my official policy about my doubts about previous posts...at least when it comes to ME.

However, I think I may have been unclear in my last post about something pertaining to the Handsome Man, and I want to rectify that:

Regarding the scene I describe in my last post, Genre Clues, about waking up to a movie playing on Netflix that I couldn't identify: It is an indication of my groggy state that I suspected gay porn. The Handsome Man, to my knowledge, doesn't partake of gay porn. We haven't ever watched it together, I haven't ever seen it on our Blockbuster or Netflix or hulu viewing histories, and he hasn't ever expressed an interest in watching it. It's just not something he's into. So to the extent that I suspected the movie might be gay porn, it was terrifically funny to me, because I thought he might be watching something that he hadn't REALIZED was gay porn, maybe thinking it was an action flick or something. And I was going to get to explain to him that it was gay porn, and THAT was going to be HILARIOUS! I would have watched the whole movie with him from start to finish just to laugh and point out the gay porn-ness of it all, if that was the case.

(Handsome can be kind of oblivious to the bigger picture sometimes. That might be why our relationship works so well.)

But it was not gay porn. And that was just a tiny bit of a let down, that's how hard I was going to laugh.

And none of this explanation is coming because Handsome gives a shit. HE doesn't think you're overly judgmental, Blog. He didn't say to me, "Hey, in that last post you kind of make it sound like I MIGHT be watching gay porn." Nope. His thing was, "You thought it might be gay porn?" Like, Why would YOU think it was gay porn? And I think I have clarified where I was coming from, so my work is finished here.

Genre Clues

When I dozed off on the couch, snuggled up to the Handsome Man, we were watching tv on Hulu.

When I woke up, hours later, Handsome was watching the end of some French film on Netflix. Initially, I had a hard time even understanding what genre of film it was. Maybe that shouldn’t have been difficult: there was a hip-hop score with driving beats; a gritty urban environment; young, hard-bodied men engaged in close physical combat. But I had just awoken from a sound-sleeping nap, so my perceptions in general were fuzzy. Plus the characters were speaking French, and that sort of threw everything off. I wondered if this was the thrilling climax to a thoughtful, intellectual film. I wondered it was an innovative, European, street-based version of Ultimate Fighting Championship. I wondered if it was some kind of soft core violent gay porn.

Handsome kept his eyes on the subtitles while he gave me a quick summary of the story to date. I watched for a while, and struggled to catch up:

Me: ...So that’s the hero’s sister?

Handsome: Yeah.

Me: And the hero and his friend have just rescued her from being held hostage?

Handsome: Yeah.

(silence, watching the screen)

Me: For how long was she held hostage?

Handsome: Like five years.

(silence, watching the screen)

Me: Rape-y hostage?

Handsome: That’s implied.

Me: How long ago did they rescue her?

Handsome: Like two hours.

(silence, watching the screen)

Me: ...She’s awfully smiley for someone who was just rescued from five years of rape-y hostage two hours ago...

Handsome: ...That’s true.

(silence, watching the screen)

Me: ...And now she’s tongue-kissing the hero’s friend?

Handsome: Yeah.

Me: So it’s an action movie.

Handsome: Basically.

My Trust, Gratitude, Inspiration Friday

I'm beginning to develop a dislike of my blog.

I feel somewhat disloyal to the blog, saying that. But honestly, today I feel like this record is living proof --or public evidence, at least-- of how stupid and disingenuous I can be. I find myself writing shit I don't mean. Or that I don't mean entirely. Or that I might mean today, but almost certainly won't mean tomorrow. Yet there it still is.

Before I began blogging, I figured that I would just write about things that I could stand by. Just don't write anything that you can't stand by. That's what I told myself. And I thought for a long time about how that might work. I tend to see both sides of an issue. A lot of my ideas and thoughts are works in progress. And, most significantly perhaps, I don't want anyone I like to dislike me. <-- that was close to honest. Truly honest: I don't want anyone to dislike me. (See how I EASE into the truth? Truth can be a lot for me to take, all at once. But I am nonetheless a fan of Truth, sad as any given Truth may be, so I am committed to ending up there. It just takes me a minute, sometimes.)

So, as I largely couldn't find any personal topic that I could write about, publish on a blog, and still feel good about, I didn't blog.

Instead of blogging, I wondered about What's wrong with me? I mean, do you READ blogs? People go into all sorts of trivial, misinformed, grammatically incorrect and personal matters, over and over again. (Not at the blogs I enjoy, but it does go on.) So the bar is low. And that's not the standard, that's just some context. Standard-wise, I wondered about What kind of a wimp do you have to be to not have any thoughts or ideas that you wouldn't mind sharing. I know I have a problem with sharing, in that sense. I create things that I'm pleased with, even proud of, but the LAST thing I would want to do is expose any of these things to the harsh light of day. So you see how incredibly courageous this site is for me. Ha ha. You probably don't see that at all, and are tired of my whining.

Moving on... Among the blogging public who I admire is Brene Brown, the writer of Ordinary Courage. ("Writer of"? "Host of"? "Writer at"? I don't know.) She does a play on TGIF that she calls Trust Gratitude Inspiration Friday. In her words:

I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, and inspiration.

Every Friday, I'm going to try to be deliberate and mindful about what I'm trusting, what I'm grateful for, and what's inspiring me.

How's that for good spirit! Let's be glad about more than just the end of the work week. Because what's that? It reminds me of that joke about the guy who is hitting his head against the wall, and his friend walks up and says, Hey, why are you hitting your head against a wall? And the guy says, Because it feels so good when I stop.

Tr-Gr-In-Friday is about elevating the weekend-signaling goodness that is Friday by making a point of calling out the positives. It's not just the end of the work week that's great. It's LOTS of moments and aspects of life that are great, including the ability to recognize that they're great. And I buy that with all of my heart.

So I thought, despite a crap morning, I'd give it a go here. Without further ado, here is The Preferred Daughter's first installation of Trust, Gratitude, Inspiration Friday:

I am TRUSTING that underneath this swirl of emotions today -- guilt, frustration, regret, anger, fear, resentment -- lies my true and peaceful self, and she is still me.

I am GRATEFUL for my Handsome Man, who has profound and frequent moments of grace that make me incredibly thankful to share a life and a residence with him.

I am INSPIRED by the terrific work of the author of ("writer at"? *sigh*) Ordinary Courage, who is active in the field of shame study and authenticity promotion. She would say it differently (read: better), and that's okay on Tr-Gr-In-Fr: I'm inspired by her ability to find the right words for the complicated issues she addresses. I'm inspired by her attempts to practice in her everyday life what she preaches in theory. I'm also inspired by her willingness to share that personal journey with the public. In fact, I think that's pretty badass.

And at the end of all that trust and gratitude and inspiration, I feel a little bit like giving myself a break. (This was probably Professor Brown's plan all along...) All I'm doing is trying, yeah, but I give other people credit for trying. Maybe I should get some credit. I'm trying to be authentic, all day long. I'm trying to work through my baggage. I'm trying to be a good person. I'm trying to realize some of my potential. I'm trying to have a personal blog. I'm trying, okay? I've got challenges and blind spots and spelling errors, like most people. But I put a lot of effort into my attempts to do better.

Maybe, at least on Fridays, that's all we'll ask.

No Soup Group This Week

The church freezer is full of soups:

Flu-Fighting Chicken Soup
Spicy Sausage & Lentil Soup
Harvest Sweet Potato & Onion Soup
Texas-Style Turkey Chili

We are at capacity. We will not make another 40 quarts of soup this week, not even 20 quarts. This week, we must focus on SELLING the soups we already have. So no Soup Group on Wednesday.

And that's fine, but I wonder what will be my monumental cooking experience for the week. There's something lovely to me about spending time in front of a stove with multiple burners going. I enjoy the planning. I enjoy the focus. I enjoy the results. :)

It sure ain't the typical night's experience at our house, though. There's just not enough of an audience to make it worthwhile. It continues to surprise me that nobody is clamoring for admission to home-cooked dinners here at Roslyn Street. But they're not. To be fair, family says yes whenever we ask them. But Joe's friends would prefer to go to bars. (Totally inscrutable to me, as I HATE most bars and love to have a reason to stay home.) My friends, meanwhile, are these super-busy, successful professional women who...don't get it. There is no place in their lives for braising for eight hours, for example, so it's like they're uncomfortable with my efforts at same. Doesn't she have anything better to do, they seem to be wondering to themselves as they graciously decline my offerings of seconds. That's another thing: My girlfriends tend to be watching their weight. Beautiful women with oodles of personality, smarts and humor. But: No thanks, I haven't been to the gym all week, they'll demur.

What's your gym got to do with me?

Which is why I like feeding Handsome's friends. If I can lure them to dinner, they'll throw out a diet real quick in the face of some perfectly seasoned, falling-off-the-bone tender ribs. As it should be.

I need to know more eaters, maybe.

Partial Credit

There I was, drinking beer in a strip mall with my husband...

Now it was an ice-cold glass of my favorite beer in a cute bistro in the design-award-winning strip mall just five minutes from our house. And I do love my multi-faceted, loyal and adoring husband...

But there I was, drinking beer in a strip mall with my husband...

And I thought momentarily about how very far my life has diverged from where I had thought I would be at this time. I'm thinking about my dreams and visions for myself when I was a 16- or even as a 20-year-old girl imagining a 34-year-old self.

(Side note: Facebook is stupid. For past 20 minutes I've been looking at RB's photos of her fabulous trip to Mykonos this August, when I know she didn't post those photos for the likes of me. I only have access to the photos because Facebook has decided that if I'm a friend of DK, who is a friend of RB, that's good enough. Don't be stupid, Facebook. RB doesn't know me. -- And the fact is, she knows me better than she knows some of the other yahoos who now have the privilege of viewing her photos, because at least we have met. But Facebook doesn't know that. Stupid.)

And, yeah, the face-to-face confrontation with the expectations of a 16-year-old me was way more than I could handle, and of course I drank one beer too many, sure, and came home and looked at Facebook.

(Got a screamin' deal on the pitcher of beer, though, so while I may have felt unduly pressured by its pitcherliness to have the third beer, I can't say it wasn't a bargain.)

But to give myself a break, my expectations as a 16-year-old maybe weren't terribly realistic. As I recall, if you boil it down, I really only had two thoughts about my future:

1) I'll be a writer or jazz singer somewhere.

2) My future self will figure out the rest.

If you boil it down, that's what I thought about my future. Inherent in number two was my expectation that I'd have success and confidence and love and children, etc., but I trusted that Future Crystal could be relied upon, in turn, to make the right choices to get us there.

How has "Future Crystal" done in those endeavors? Because that's me, right? How have I done?

Future Crystal is hitting it out of the park, in a lot of ways. I hadn't counted on it being such a complicated matter, figuring out the rest of it. But I've done okay.

If you look at it a certain way, I've made my living by writing, for years now.

And maybe I haven't done too bad at being a jazz singer, either. I mean, for not actually having become a jazz singer. I am, for example, very cool. I have a great voice. I know a lot of jazz numbers. I'm extremely available for rehearsal and performance times. Partial credit?

Ha.

Today's Soup: Texas-Style Turkey Chili

A colorful and fragrant blend of pinto beans, “minced” turkey, red, orange and yellow bell peppers, carrots, celery, herbs & spices, garnished with fresh green parsley on top. So nice.

Today, when Mom came to pick me up for Soup Group, she stayed a while. Our intention was to go to church early in order to get those dry (soaked overnight, but previously dry) pinto beans on the stove to cook. Instead, we ended up hanging out at my house because Mom had been calling but not reaching St B’s office staff, to make sure the building was open. And while Mom felt confident that someone would be there to let us in, she did not feel sufficiently confident to make the journey all the way to church -- 20 minutes from her house. My house, on the other hand, is en route to church for her, and is just 10 minutes away from St B’s, which feels much more pounce-ready.

We were recalling a time last year (it was last soup season; maybe it was earlier this year, but it was last soup season), during a snowstorm, when Mom and I had brought all of our good intentions to St B’s an hour earlier than Soup Group usually starts, and THE CHURCH WAS LOCKED. Nobody was there. We knocked and stewed and then finally just went back to the car to wait until someone showed up with a key.

Come to think of it, maybe Mom and I should have a key. We’re all the time wishing we had a key to get in the church, a key to get in the cabinet where we keep the knives, the code to the copy machine. Okay, it’s totally NOT all the time. And the truth is, there are at least three other people in Soup Group who have a key/code for these things. So, as an entity, the Soup Group is very well-equipped.

It’s just there are these times when Mom and I are trying to do the right thing...

So anyway, today this meant we had some time to kill at my house. That was a good thing, because, well, because I love my mom in my house, for one. She’s all kinds of good vibes. Usually on Wednesdays, I just keep an eye out and go meet her at the car for my pickup, so it was nice to have her inside alone on a Wednesday for a change.

But also, she hadn’t seen my “new” coffee table. She and Dad got a new coffee table a couple of weeks ago, and that meant that the old coffee table was in play. She offered it to me, I said yes, and she and Uncle D delivered it to me last week or so. And you know what? It just about completed my living room decor. You’ll see, the next time you come over. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. And you’ll know exactly where the room still needs another lamp, or an objet d’art (I’m obsessed with that term today!), or something, because even though the coffee table is great, but there’s something missing in there, even still.

However, there in the living room IS my sweet-ass black guitar. (Her name is Coriander. Nobody knows that but me and The Handsome Man. And my old guitar teacher, if she remembers.) Mom goes something like, “Oh, are you still messing with that thing?”

And I’m like, Her name is Coriander.

Just kidding. I’m like, “Yeah, totally. You wanna hear a song?”

Now, nobody gets that treatment. Mmm, let me rephrase. Handsome and Mom get that treatment. Don’t you come over here thinking that I’m going to offer to play you a song. That’s an unusual privilege.

I’ve been working on a policy that I wouldn’t REFUSE anyone a song, if they asked for it. But after today, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Or, to be a part of my own solution: after today, I’m thinking that’s EXACTLY the policy that needs to be in place. Or, more even, that I need a policy that says ALL visitors MUST be subjected to AT LEAST ONE song on the guitar.

Anyway, she sez, yeah, she’d like to hear a song. And even after I finish my soup notes, and she reaches Carol by phone, and we’re ready to head out the door, she sez, “Right after you play me your song.”

(That’s pretty awesome. At the time, I was caught up in the moment of Oh shit, now I have to play her a song. But here in retrospect, that’s a pretty awesome mom, all these years later. If she had been faking it in 1980, she wouldn’t still be subjecting herself to my fingerpainting, all these years later. Ack. A life of unconditional love.)

So I played a song for my mom.

I played a song for my mom, and I sweated it, dude. The songs that I know how to play on my guitar are, at this point, only the songs that I have composed. These songs by The Preferred Daughter can be divided into three categories: personal, really personal, and not suitable for public consumption. And since I have only about one song per category (heh), that represents a fairly limited repetoire. [How do you spell repetoir? It’s rejecting repatoire. Bullshit - how do you think it’s spelled?]

Mom has heard me play guitar before. (How many people can say that? Three: Handsome, the guitar teacher, and her interloping husband.) A year ago, maybe, I played Mom my love song to Joe. So today I played her my love song to the little baby spirit who’s going to choose us, “us” being me, Handsome, Mom, Dad, our family, this life. My heart fills writing that sentence. Why would I think I could play that song for anybody but Chaco and the next-door-neighbor dog?

But I played that song for my mom.

And my fingers trembled. My right ones, strumming, were much less reliable than my left ones on the frets. My playing is normally not great, admittedly, but the shaking interfered. I was wishing, very early in the song, that I could rush through it, and I was consciously working against that desire, you know, out of respect for the song. And I was chastising myself, throughout, for choosing to play such a personal song. Like I had options. I wondered if she would know what I was singing about. I wondered what she would think of it.

I didn’t look up once. No, despite the good efforts of Mrs. T, my hallowed seventh-grade speech teacher, I did not look up once. I did not polarize my audience. But I notice just now, here, writing this, that nowhere, then or now, did I worry about my voice. In fact, my singing might have been a little shaky and probably was a little soft in places when the strumming went awry (JANGLE went the wire). But check me out, giving myself a break. Yay, guitar.

And thanks to practice and our sweet baby Jesus, I somehow got through it. (Did she SEE my fingers shaking? Oh, shame.) Afterwards, Mom very quietly said something like, “That was very nice.” And we got up and we went off to Soup Group. (Me still shaking, yeah.)

Ha -- I know Soup Group is back in full swing because they’re openly second-guessing me again. *Sigh* But let me confess that I do love to spend time with people who are preoccupied, each in their own way, with making food taste delicious.

Then, as we were leaving, Elizabeth "introduced" me to Judy Ward, who was, to her credit, like, um, YEAH, I’ve met Crystal. Like 20 years ago, she didn’t say. We’re all ladies here.

Good day.

(Yes, of course I see that I have to post the song. Get offa my back.)



* seventh-grade speech teacher

The Morning Walk

Mom & Chaco on the morning walk