Enduring Love

 

My parents have been married for more than 50 years. Together, they made and raised ten children.

This past Autumn, my mom had a fall. Though it didn't seem serious at first, it turned out that she shattered a good bit of one entire leg and ankle, and a good bit of the lower part of her other leg and ankle. She had to stay in a nursing home for several months while she recuperated. Since my parents were married, I don’t think they've ever been separated more than one or two nights—and those separations were mostly due to my mom being in the hospital after having one of us.

While my mom was in the nursing home, my parents had a routine: my dad would have breakfast at home, and then come in and take my mom down to the cafeteria for breakfast and keep her company while she ate. Then, they would keep each other company in her room until it was time for her morning physical therapy. My dad would go home and do laundry, get clean clothes for my mom, and do other little chores that needed doing. He would go back and take my mom down for lunch, and then they'd keep each other company in her room until it was time for her afternoon physical therapy. Because the afternoon session was shorter than the morning session, my dad would stay and go for a walk on the grounds. Later, when she only had one physical therapy session in the mornings, they would both go for walks in the afternoon—my dad pushing my mom in her wheelchair. After the afternoon, they'd have dinner together in the cafeteria, and then they'd watch TV until visiting hours were over, and my dad would go home. The door to my mom's room, of course, was always open, to allow the caregivers to keep watch, dispense medicine, and help my mom when she needed help.

"It works pretty well," I remember my dad saying over the phone, once things had settled down into this routine. "The meals are only a buck-thirty-five for me!," he'd say, proudly. "And they're not half-bad!" My father is a most generous person—but one of his mottos could easily be, "situations in life that do not warrant thrift are very few, if any."

When I was home a couple months ago, Beloved and I were talking with my parents about that time. I mentioned how it seemed they had such a nice routine, and were able to see so much of each other. "Oh gosh," my mom said, "we missed each other so much."

After a pause, while she looked at the ground, ruminating, she laughed, then said, "You wanna know something? When we'd get in the elevators to go to the cafeteria, and were alone, we would just kind of—go at it, I guess you would say—make out." She laughed and  shook her head in embarrassment and looked at my dad. He wore a bemused expression on his face, but was looking decidedly off into the middle distance. "Sometimes," she continued, laughing, "we'd have a real crisis of conscience, because there'd be this little old lady, or an old retired priest, you know, hobbling down the hall towards the elevator, trying to catch it. And we'd wanna say to each other, 'quick, hit the button to close the doors!'" She laughed even harder and said, "sometimes, I DID say it."

After we all laughed, she looked at my dad and said again, "we just missed each other so much."

Trees

One of the things I love about my current neighborhood is all the mature trees. I love looking at them throughout the seasons; even in the winter, they are beautiful. This weekend, I didn't feel very well, so instead of tending to my to-do list, I lounged on our back deck and, in between napping and reading, I looked up at the trees and watched their branches swaying in the breeze—sometimes, it seemed from my vantage point, precipitously.

I also remembered from my childhood a large tree in our neighborhood. I could see it from the swing-set in our backyard. I was a huge swinger. I would swing every day during the summer, often for hours, singing to myself (and possibly—but not probably—for the benefit of any of my brothers and sisters and neighbor kids who were around). Looking straight ahead, I could see through the small, square, covered back porch of our long-suffering and always-patient neighbor Mrs. Roberts to the kitchen window of the Seidlemans' house. After breakfast and lunch, I would see Mrs. Seidelman at the sink, washing out their dishes. She would wave merrily to me, and I would wave back to her.

But if I looked to just a bit to the left, there was the huge, full, storybook tree, far off in the distance. I have no idea what kind of tree it was, but it looked like it was miles away (though it couldn't have been more than a few blocks), and magical. With my bat eyes, I could see the individual leaves rippling in the breezes, and I would imagine the lands that lay beyond. One of my favorite fantasies was of a meadow, green and beautiful, with birds, and butterflies, and dragonflies that didn't fly too close, and my mom with a picnic basket. She wasn't harried and hurried as she was so often taking care of the ten of us. She was sitting relaxed on the ground, her legs sort of side saddle. My dad was there, too, with a ball and bat, ready to play baseball.

We really did have picnics when I was growing up, along the banks of the Fox River. We really would play baseball, or Frisbee, and often, my dad would help us fish (anything we caught, we took home, froze, and ate during Lent). I don't really know how my parents were able to wrangle this…ten kids, a picnic, games..and make it fun? Because it was fun. Maybe like the trees, they understood how to sometimes let the breeze run through them playfully, and how to sway in the strong winds just so.

Missed Cues Leading to Disaster

I haven't blogged in awhile because of three events that I can't turn away from, and I wasn't sure what to say.  

One of the events is the Trayvon Martin shooting. Another is the horrific massacre in Afghanistan. A third is the appalling killings in Toulouse, France.

Other commentators have discussed these events with insight, so I don't have much (or anything) to add. I guess the only thing I have to contribute is what I see as the common elements in all three incidents: missed cues, mental illness, guns, and a sense that some human beings are "other." 

High Standards

 

I was walking down the street in Washington, DC today, and a disgruntled man was commenting on me and quite a few other folks walking along the same sidewalk.

"Black mother@$#%$ers! You Black people are mother#$##@ers!," he shouted. "And you white people, YOU'RE mother@#$@#$ers, too! You're ALL mother$%$#ing mother!@#$@ers," he continued, before pausing.

After considering something, chin in hand, he said, very calmly, "Now President Obama…he's good."

At least SOMEbody meets that fellow's standards.

MARITAL LAW DECLARED IN POLAND

When I was a little girl, I loved sitting at my father's elbow at the dining room table as he ate lunch. He worked just a few blocks away, so would come home for lunch, and while he ate, he would read the paper—the Chicago Tribune. I would, too. In between articles, I would watch as he ate his soup, transfixed by the little indentation in the side of his forehead that would appear and disappear as he chewed. Everyone has this indentation, but I didn't know that then, and to me, it was just one more amazing thing about my amazing father.

The Polish Solidarity movement was a big story—huge—in Chicago. The city had the largest population of Polish people anywhere in the world—more Polish people, even, than in any city in Poland. The pope was also Polish, and Ronald Reagan was President. You put these ingredients together and present them to a Catholic household and man were we hooked: it was the second greatest story ever told, practically! Every day, the latest developments in Poland splashed across the front page. My father always read that section first, and I would read "Tempo," the lifestyle section, until he was done.

It's hard to believe with today's fast-moving modes of communication, but when I was growing up, the newspaper usually had the very latest information about any developing news story. Even the radio news announcers got their information from the newspapers. I waited with anticipation for lunchtime to come and for my father to unfurl the newspaper, just so I could get a glimpse of the headlines and know what had happened in Poland.

One day, my father snapped the paper open after he had read the front page. Reading from the side, I saw a headline in all capital letters, "MARITAL LAW DECLARED IN POLAND." I could tell from the hugeness of the words that this was a big deal, but what did it mean? My mind worked on it. Given what had happened in Poland already, I figured it was some sort of new law that made it illegal for people to gather. Specifically, married people, since that's what "marital" meant. Since married people where no longer able to live together, because that would be a gathering, how did it work? Did the wife stay at home with the kids, and the husband went to his mom's house? What if his mom lived far away? What about mass? Would the husband and wife have to go to separate parishes? What about the kids? Wouldn't they miss their dads? It should be possible for the husband and wife to stay in the same house as long as they weren't in the same room, I thought, since that wouldn't be gathering, technically, but I figured those dastardly communists wouldn't allow it! So how would the Solidarity movement prevail if married people couldn't even be together? They were so bad, those communists!

Worried, I asked my dad, "What will the people in Poland do?" My dad answered that they'd have to meet in secret, and risk disobeying the law. My subsequent questions—about the logistics for moms and dads, and what would happen to couples who were engaged to be married—served only to utterly baffle him. Slowly, his face stopped looking engaged and started looking confused. My voice started faltering, so I started in about the kids, and how they'd miss their dads, and how the dads maybe didn't have a place to stay. Finally, my dad interrupted me and said, completely confused, "what are you talking about, hon?"

My eyes felt like they wanted to cry. "Well," I mumbled, "it says in the paper they declared marital law in Poland…" I snuck a peek at him and he looked even more confused. Slowly, his gaze left my face and started moving upwards, to the ceiling—almost as if he were sifting through all his brain parts to find the right tool to solve this conundrum. Suddenly, his face cleared, and he started laughing and laughing.

Now, my dad has many laughs, but this one was his big, booming one. It's his, "isn't life wonderful?" laugh. I knew when I heard it all would be well, but I also felt a rising panic. I looked at him with my own confused face. When he finally gained control of himself, he put his face right in front of mine and bellowed: "MARTIAL—MARTIAL LAW. Not—" and here he broke off, laughing again—"marital law."

"Ohhhh," I said, my own face clearing. I began to laugh.

Then I said, "but what does martial law mean?" After another fit of laughter, my dad put up his index finger and said, with a gleam in his eye: "pretty much what you thought it meant—but for everyone, not just for husbands and wives."

Peter Frampton Comes Alive!

Last night I went with Beloved to see Peter Frampton playing his "Peter Frampton Comes Alive!" I wasn't really looking forward to it (the tickets were a birthday gift for Beloved), but by the end of it, I really appreciated Frampton—he's a guitar god!! Oh, and he played the planecrash guitar, which was really cool.

It was a really good show. They played the whole album (which I really don't care for—more on that in a minute), took a short break, and then for their encore (which was almost as long as the first part), they played new stuff, including "Black Sun" (which I very much liked) and some instrumentals.

I am not really an electric guitar girl. I like it, I appreciate it, but I always thought it goes just so far. I've seen the error of my ways. For most of his new stuff, there were FOUR electric guitars going, and the drums. And it didn't seem as though anything was missing—very full, very cool sound.

Overall, this is what I would say about Frampton: he's thin on vocals/songs. This is not a diss on his voice, which sounds exactly the same (eerily so). But his strength is CLEARLY music. It's a bit of a shame that he didn't meet with a really great lyricist, because I bet that would have been a band of the century.

Side notes:

·        The fans were all Beloved's age or older (he is a few years older than me, and he was a "young" fan [14] at Frampton's height). Parked around the concert venue, there were all SUVs, mini-vans, and, as I put it, "old white-people cars." 

·        Everyone was so happy—we chatted with the people all around us about how big Frampton was for a period, how every girl had his poster on the wall…like Justin Beiber, someone said...and everyone paused for a moment.

·        During the song, "Show Me the Way" (I want you/to show me the way…I want you/day after day) a woman a few rows in front of us got up and went.to.town dancing. I realized in that moment what it must be like to sit behind me at a Bruce Springsteen concert.

·        There was a couple at the end of the row we were sitting in, and every time someone in our row had to go out or in, which was not often, the woman had a minor fit. I didn't get it—everyone was THRILLED to be there and it was such a happy atmosphere. And you can see where your bloody seating is when you buy the tickets. Crabby people like that piss me off.

Peter Frampton used to look like this, back in the day:

Now he looks like this:

Still handsome; just different without the hair. He has the same arms and legs he had back in the day—very skinny. But when he turned to the side, he had a nice ol' pot belly. I saw just about every woman in the audience turn to her partner and whisper, and I saw every man slightly incline his head. I just knew the women were saying something about Frampton's pot belly, and the men were thinking, "I finally got something on Frampton."

Background (why I didn't like Peter Frampton)

In my house, we had one big record player that was a piece of furniture. That was for my dad's records—no rock records allowed. And we had a portable record player that my older sisters used. They played Peter Frampton all the damn time. I got sick of him. This is also how I got sick of the Beatles and, later, Michael Jackson. But it's also how I fell in love with Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, and BRUCE.

Anyway, I grew up and eventually met Beloved. When we started shacking up, one day I heard some music coming out of our "office" room that was vaguely familiar and vaguely irritating to me. I could see he was rocking out to it, so I didn't say anything. I was going about my tidying business, ignoring the music, when I suddenly heard the words, "woke up this mornin', with a wine glass in my hand/whose wine?/what wine?/where the hell did I dine?"

I interrupted Beloved and asked that he confirm "the stupidest song lyrics of all time." He was aghast and asked me if I knew who Peter Frampton was. "Oh, God!," I said, "that's who that is. I hate that guy," which led to a long lecture about how Peter Frampton was the biggest thing ever and that he was in the top ten all-time greatest guitar players in the world. I just laughed.

Several months later, Beloved and I were training for a century bike ride. For our 75-mile training ride, it was hot, it was hilly as hell, and we were on hour five, I think. Chugging up yet another hill under the hot sun, we were miserable. I suddenly heard Beloved's voice, "woke up this mornin', with a wine glass in my hand…" and I laughed so hard. He kept singing, and as we crested the hill, he raised a fist and sang, "Do youoooo, YOU…feel like I do?!"

So when I saw that Frampton was going on tour, I had to buy tickets for Beloved's birthday. And it was sooooo worth it. Not only did I enjoy the concert, but Beloved's face was alight with joy and delight. He was so excited!

Usually, I only see him like that when he's looking at me.

Things That Probably Won't Happen

I've been wrestling with my ambition demons quite a bit lately. I shan't bore you with all the details even though I desperately want to, but instead I shall provide a short list of things that Probably Won't Happen for me.

1. Making a layer cake that looks good. I make a cake--and I make a good cake, if I do say so myself (IIDSSM). But my layer cakes look a disaster. Usually, when I make them, I leave them in the kitchen because sliced on a plate, you can't really tell that it's all fucked up. It looks good and it tastes good, so done and done. But one dinner party, Beloved came traipsing out with the cake on the plate and expected me to slice and serve at table (note the missing "the," because I am fancy). It was appalling. My guests did not care for the looks of the lopsided nightmare, and of course my serving technique is not good. No one ate much. Afterwards, I made Beloved promise not to do that again.

2. Learning how to speak Spanish, French, German, or Russian--at all, much less fluently, much less "reading and writing fluently."

3. Being "discovered"--period but also being discovered for some talent that comes totally naturally to me. "What? I have the voice of an angel?" or "What, you think I'm a talented and beautiful actress just by the way I'm telling my friend here this hilarious story?" Not going to happen.

I think that's enough for now...and I'm not sad about it. You can't do everything, after all.

 But before I go, I'd like to also set down something that I discovered awhile ago that will DEFINITELY NEVER HAPPEN FOR ME.

I will never look like Juliette Binoche. I know, it's sad.  When I first saw this beautiful actress (in "Blue," an excellent movie), I actually thought it might be possible that my facial features were not totally settled, and that maybe I would start to look like her.

I did not realize this was not going to happen until just a few years ago. I was walking down the street (what else?) when it suddenly hit me, like the voice of God (or reason): "I will never look like Juliette Binoche." I was honestly taken aback. It's as though somewhere, in the back of my mind, I thought it might be possible.

Modern Family

The older I get, the less time I have. Which is why I have to give a shout-out to "Modern Family." The show just makes me laugh and laugh. There really isn't anything I don't like about it, but my favorite character is Gloria, played by Sophia Vergara.

First of all, Gloria is hilarious. Second of all, I love looking at her. She is totally hot!

Can't Decide

I can't decide if it would be more sad if Whitney Houston had died as a recovering, thriving artist.

As it is, knowing how lost she seemed for such a long time, well, that's sad enough.

Robbers in My Neighborhood

So I am very used to walking everywhere. I walked all over Chicago, all over London, and all over DC, and all over any city I have ever visited. I've always been very aware of my surroundings and very tuned-in to any threats.

In my current neighborhood, my walk from the metro to home is broken up by two parts: the busy and the quiet. The busy part is the first quarter of the walk—I walk along a busy street and there's a lot of hustle-bustle. Then I cross a main thoroughfare and get to my neighborhood, which is very quiet. At this point, I usually put on my iPod and listen to one of my podcasts ("StoryCorps," "Selected Shorts," "The Terry Gross Show," or "The Moth" are favorites).  By the time I arrive at my doorstep, I have shaken off the day, had a little storytime, and am ready for a nice evening.

Robbers are a part of life everywhere. And I've always kept an eagle-eye out for them. About a month ago, I read about some robbers who had targeted my neighborhood. That there are robbers about is nothing new—I have always read the police report column in the paper and always find something happening steps away from me (virtually) that is upsetting. But for some reason, these robbers scared me. It may have been because one of the reports was that a woman was robbed as she was walking up to her house. She resisted and she was beaten very badly. This really stuck in my brain, and it scared me.

Maybe it's because one of my happiest moments of any day is when I'm walking up to my house. Happy home! Place of refuge, place of rest, and most important: place where I find Beloved. Imagining being attacked just as you're taking off your mantle of protection is…ugh.

So I got scared. I (of course) stopped listening to my iPod. I walked down the middle of the street. I spied houses where I thought there were actual people in them (so I could run to them if the robbers showed up) versus where there were just lights on to fake robbers out. I stopped being vigilant, and was just scared. It made me mad, too. Stupid robbers!

But I guess my threshold for freaking out was met, and I stopped being scared. I just remained vigilant. They allegedly caught these robbers, but there will be more. I hope I don't ever get robbed (or worse), but even more, I hope I'm not scared between now and then, because what's the point?

I guess this is what you'd call a real "baked potato" kind of story.