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
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