Go Call Yer Mom

Been thinking about a provocative little article I read at the auto body shop while I was waiting for my sweet, sporty rental. (You want cute? Me in a shiny new car is cute.)

The article was in Real Simple magazine, and it was titled “Ten Questions to Ask Your Mother Now”. The body shop arguably wasn’t the time or place, but they were good questions.

I see my mother just about every weekday for our morning walk with Chaco. We cover a lot of ground, conversationally, and I like to think we know each other pretty well. We have our ups and downs, sure, but ours is not a troubled relationship. She’s my favorite sounding board, my number one choir for preaching to. (The fact that I’m cognizant of how annoyed she’d be by the preposition at the end of that last sentence demonstrates how she’s my grammatical superego as well.) Love her.

Even with all that, I’d like to hear my mom’s answer to every single one of the questions listed in the article.

Gonna get on it.

I’m acutely aware of how lucky I am to be able to ask her these questions in person, and to see her expressions when she responds. I can sit beside her, and feel the warmth of her next to me. I can make her laugh, or make her lunch, or make her proud, anytime I like. My mom, herself, like so many others, doesn’t have that luxury anymore.

If I knew how to end this post without being a downer, I would have published it already.

Go call yer mom!

This Year's Gumbo

My family has an annual New Year’s tradition that I love.

Our longstanding custom is for Mom and Dad to host the Colorado relatives (i.e., Dad, his two siblings and their families) on January first for a New Year’s celebration where Mom serves seafood gumbo. There is no separating these elements, and there will be no compromising: It will be January first, Mom and Dad will be hosting, and on the menu will be Mom’s rapturous seafood gumbo. This has being going on for over 35 years, without exception.

It’s who we are. It’s in my blood.

And if you understand that, you might understand that as far as I’m concerned, it’s not really the New Year until all the gumbo is gone.

Mom makes a big pot, cher. Some years, if we haven’t crowded the dinner table with out-of-town relatives, extended in-laws and cherished friends, there is some gumbo leftover at the end of the night. That represents a jackpot for the Denver relatives (i.e., me and Frere) who get sent home with tupperware containers of rice and gumbo, rolls, sometimes salad.

The homemade goodness of the take-home gumbo provides a nice cushion against the last of the celebrating and socializing that will go on before normal routines are resumed. Because Oh my God, am I tired by January second. I love my family and I am so glad to see so many cherished friends during the holiday season. This year was another year of blessed, plus blessed. But it was an advanced-level social schedule, especially for a reclusive curmudgeon like myself, especially when you add in the rich foods, late nights and extra boozing.

On our walk last night, The Handsome Man and I were comparing notes on how raggedy we felt.

“I feel like I have something in my stomach, and it’s hot, and it’s just been sitting there for the last five days.”

“I feel like there’s a film all over my skin, just a thin layer of toxins, like I’m dirty.”

Yeah, once again Handsome and I were under-equipped for the entirely welcome holiday onslaught. Fortunately, we’re through the insanity now, and back on the also entirely welcome solid ground of our normal level (i.e., intermediate level) of socializing. That’s weekend plans for big events, weeknite plans with small groups, easy-peasy professional obligations, you know.

Fittingly, Joe and I are polishing off the last of the gumbo tonight. In honor of the new year, I’ve been reviewing the year that has passed, and giving more thought to the year ahead. And I find I sort of want to do a midnight countdown and sing Auld Lang Syne.

The Best Part

Did I mention that my niece X demolished the Casa Bonita donkey pinata in just two swipes? A whole crowd of children waiting to get their three hits each, and X takes out the thing on her second try.

A proud moment for the family.

This Week's Soup: Indian Green Pea with Coconut Milk

Gobs of green peas double-pureed with potatoes, onions, veggie stock, coconut milk, ginger, green chiles, coriander, roasted cumin, cilantro, lemon juice...

It was a pain in the ass to make. But the vegetarian raved about it, so maybe we got some payoff.

Tonight the family celebrated my niece X’s 9th birthday at...wait for it...Casa Bonita! (At least it wasn’t Chuck E. Cheese.)

Frere and I regularly hosted our birthday parties at Casa Bonita when we were small (through, like, 1985 when Celebrity Sports Center and its sweet-ass water slides became the venue of choice). For all the years we held our “Destination: Casa Bonita” parties, Frere and I and all our little friends thought it was great and so much fun.

Frere’s children are just as enamored of Casa Bonita as Frere and I were as kids, so I’ve been back a few times as an adult. My niece Fine, who is now 14, had birthday parties there as a kidlet. I’ve gone with out-of-town guests who come thinking it’s something they want to see (they are frequently disappointed, though it’s a disappointment you can laugh through).

On the whole, Casa Bonita is remarkably unchanged from 25 years ago: the strolling mariachi band, the waiter-summoning flags on the tables, the terrible food, the cowboy cliff divers, the rampaging gorilla, who gave me a thrill tonight as he dashed past me and Handsome on the bridge.

Nowadays, I don’t really dig on skee ball. (I totally used to.) A glow-in-the-dark necklace doesn’t make my week. (It totally used to.) And the joint is located in a strip mall, people. It’s impossibly gaudy. The food has always been bad beyond belief.

But the kids were gleeful and adventurous, and even Handsome and I giggled our way through Black Bart’s cave before we left.

Plus, we scored the pink party pavilion at the top of the ramp -- remember the ramps? -- all to ourselves.

Pretty sweet.


Daddo enjoying the festivities
Photo credit: The Preferred Daughter

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

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.

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

Today's Soup: Harvest Sweet Potato & Onion

Sweet Potato, Caramelized Onion & Apple Cider Soup with Fresh Sage and Toasted Walnuts

Made in a blizzard!

On Wednesdays, Mom and I make soup, delicious soups, in bulk, in the industrial kitchen of our church, with a group of other volunteers. (I say "our" church, when in fact I haven't attended a service at St. B's in more than a year. But I was confirmed there. And Joe and I were married there. And it is my parents' church, and they're very active there. And the real old-timers there have known me since I was 16. Plus, I've been making soup there every Wednesday for the past year and a half. So, yeah, "our" church.) The soup is frozen and sold to "our" parishioners with proceeds to benefit a medical and dental clinic located in the heart of Baghdad. The clinic is affiliated with St. George's Episcopal Church in Baghdad but exists to serve (and employs) people of all faiths.

Typically, Mom and I carpool to St B's. My house is en route from Mom & Dad's house to the church, so on most Wednesdays, Mom drives to my house and then I drive us (in her car) to the church. The distance between our houses is usually a 7-minute drive in morning rush hour. Today it took Mom at least twenty minutes to get to my house -- slushy and slippery and snowy, like it was. Then -- ha! -- when I got to the car with my first load of soup-making gear (just the sack of recipes and my purse, really), Mom said that SHE would be our driver for the 10-minute trip to St B's! Of all the unprecedented impulses! And in a blizzard, no less! Like hell, as Mom would say. After muttering my way to and from the house for the second load of soup supplies (2 gallons of my homemade veggie stock), I was prepared to say a firm No Way. But she apparently had come to her senses and was already making her way to the passenger seat.

Phew.

Everybody --including Mom -- agrees that she's a terrible driver. An unusually bad driver. Competent, don't get me wrong. But why would she ever be behind the wheel while there was another licensed driver in the passenger seat? There is not a good answer to that question. Which is precisely what I was muttering to and from the porch: How exactly would I explain this car accident? "What do you mean your mom was driving?" everybody would ask.

So I drove, and I was completely justified in my driverliness when a big ol' SUV did a 180 in front of us heading west on 13th Ave at like 15 miles an hour. Very disturbing, but I was doing all the right things, (i.e., maintaining a safe distance and traveling speed, basically, people. It ain't deep.) so we were fine. Your man in the SUV swerved because he tried to switch lanes while he was going too fast -- yeah, even 15 mph was too fast for the conditions.

Then, when we got to church, the only other ladies at Soup Group were the ones who walk to church, living within close proximity like they do. They were very impressed with Mom and me for being so intrepid and arriving even before they arrived. But they were very worried for us three hours later as we all headed off in near white-out conditions. Mom offered folks a ride home, and Elizabeth was like, "No, thanks." It was the kind of day when it really was a better bet to travel on foot for short distances / side streets.

Such a relief to get home safely. And very nice to get a message saying that my dentist appointment had been cancelled. (By that point, news outlets were advising people to stay home except for only truly necessary business. My teeth, to date, are in great shape, and this appointment represents the second of two cleanings this year. I can reschedule.) I shoveled the walk, played with Chaco (who was beyond enthusiastic about the piles of snow), and took a long hot shower. It is impressive how much hot water is necessary to clean out the smell of caramelizing 40 large onions. That's three shifts of four pans of sliced onions. And a good deal of shampoo. And a bathrobe and easy chair for the rest of the afternoon.

Snow day!