Sheltering in Place (SIP) and Painting Party

Last evening, Alex caught me during a suggestible moment and invited me to a Painting Event with her and her daughters. "We can drink wine and paint," she said. "Come on, it will be fun."

I knew they would be doing watercolors and acrylics. "Do you mind if I use oils?" They didn't mind at all, and so this afternoon, I hoicked myself off to the studio to join them, cleaned my filthy work table, and set out a palette of cobalt blue, cadmium red light, cadmium red medium, cadmium yellow medium, and titanium white.

"The theme is 'cactus,'" I was told. Fine. Cactus it is. Howabout cactus in Red Rock Country?

Oh, yes, and every time I accidentally got my hand in my oil paint, we had a ... sip. (*SIP*) This made for a very agreeable afternoon, and since we were in the garage studio, my solvents and paints did not bother anyone at all. This is the result:

 

The Simplest Seder

Normally, we'd sit Seder on the Saturday before Passion Sunday, since the readings for Passion Sunday include Jesus at "The Last Supper" -- which was the Passover meal, that is, a Seder.

Normally, we'd have table friends (haverim) from some of the past 20 years of Seders, new friends, neighbors, guests of former guests gathered around tables in the big front room, for Seders that would begin at 7pm and last until 10pm, with plenty of time after for more wine and conversation.

Normally, I'd begin the day of Seder going to the party rental place for chairs and place-settings, and to Trader Joe's for fresh flowers to arrange for the table.

And normally, after Seder, I'd see the guests off, send the family to bed, and spend slow, quiet, beautiful time putting things away in their rental crates and our things in the dishwasher, getting food into the fridge, pushing the tablecloths into the washer, having a last glass of wine, and remembering the evening.

Not this year, of course. The pandemic has us all locked down, so to speak, so no Seder.

Or so I thought.

We'd decided to roast a lamb shoulder in honor of Passover (which began last night), and eat it with flat breads (basically gorditas) and tzatziki (cucumber and Greek yogurt) and goat cheese spiced with chili-garlic sauce. But before we could begin the meal, Bernie showed up with pages of paper -- printouts of the shortest Seder haggadah I've ever seen. He collected our song books and wine glasses from the Seder basket on the shelf. At that point, Joma screeched, "Are we doing SEDER???" in an ecstasy of delight.

Well, I guess, of course we were.

An emergency candle holder took the place of the usual crystal ones, and Joma picked snapdragons and nasturtiums for the table flowers. Alex lit the candle to start; I was crying too much to be the Table Mother this year. Lillian read the haggadah, the story of the salvation of the Israelites, by God, led by Moses, out of Egypt.

We sang, and raised our glasses of wine, and then had a delicious meal of some of the best lamb I've ever made. Then we concluded the Seder with more song, more wine, and the silly rendition of "Who Knows One?" (That'll be for a later post.) I cried a lot more.

Because I miss the haverim.
Because I miss the preparation and the participation and the peaceful quiet and perfume of the house afterwards.
Because Seder is always good.
That's why I cried, for longing and for joy.

Lillian took care of the clean-up afterwards; this was the first Seder that she was allowed to have wine instead of grape juice, and ya gotta step up when your grandmother is dripping tears. Bernie and I went out to the garage studio and watched the clouds and passers-by until the sun went down.

This morning I got up before it was light enough out for me to see the clock (to take Kermit out) and saw the remains of the Seder on the table, wine and flowers and candlestick.

I am content, and God is good.

Standing Rib Roast? Seriously?

No, that wasn't tonight's evening sky, it was a couple weeks ago. But the feeling you get when you see a rainbow arch across your winter sky is like the feeling I had when I bit into my first nibble of my first attempt at a standing rib roast this afternoon.

Number One, I couldn't afford a standing rib roast. Number Two, I didn't know how to cook one. Number Three, wasn't about to ruin an expensive cut of meat with a culinary mishap.

But this year, things were different. Our Save Mart supermarket has been introducing a line of beef called Angus 43. It was heartbreaking when they stopped carrying Harris Ranch Beef (which is incredibly tasty) and I kind of sneered at the Angus 43 when they began advertising it. But when they offered boneless New York strip steak for the absurd price of $5.99/lb, I sprang for a couple ... and was pleasantly surprised. Tender, good flavor, okay. They've gradually reeled me in, and when they put standing rib roasts on sale for $6.99/lb, I began salivating and researching.

As it turns out, it is so dang simple to make that there is simply no reason to take the family out for a luxury dinner of prime rib.

We scored a little-ish 5-pound standing rib roast, let it sit on the counter for a couple hours to come to room temperature. I rubbed it with extra virgin olive oil, then seasoned the fat cap with salt, pepper, and finely ground garlic powder. It was already tied at the store, so I shoved it into the oven, ribs-side down in a shallow baking pan, for 25 minutes at 450 degrees. After that, with its now gorgeously browned exterior, it gets the temp taken back to 350 until the interior reaches 120 degrees. Then out it comes, gets wrapped in heavy duty aluminum foil, and "rests" for about 20 minutes while you get the rest of the meal finished.

PERFECTION!!!!

Was that Christmas dinner? No, this is Christmas Eve Eve, and we're making a big homemade taco spread for Christmas. This was just for fun, a continuation of the kitchen experimentation of the weekend.

One last thing, about the internal temperature of the meat. We use a Taylor Meat Thermometer with a probe whose cord comes conveniently out the side of the oven door. Good for roasts, good for chickens in the oven, only about $20. An alarm sounds when the temp approaches 20 degrees of the desired temp, again (a bit more frantically) when the temp is 10 degrees off, and then beeps like a banshee when it gets to the proper temperature.

No, that wasn't the last thing. We got the roast with ribs attached, the whole thing tied up with cotton cooking string. Without the string, the ribs fall off. Without the ribs, you have to use a rack.

If you use a rack, you have to wash the rack, and you don't have the bones to gnaw as a snack the next day.

For your next birthday, ask for a standing rib roast to cook.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks for a Grand Thanksgiving

What is this? A ham for Thanksgiving?

Yes, Joma is a ham any time there is a camera in the room. Very proud of her first year as Bread Shredder. While she tore bread up for stuffing, I made some pie shells in the oven, getting ready for Legendary Pumpkin Pie.  And I didn't do much else all day, except for one thing, which I'll speak of in a bit.

In an unusual fit of preparedness, on Wednesday I made the celery-and-onion seasoning for the stuffing, and with a little extra time on my hands, stewed giblets for broth as well. Thus on Thanksgiving morning, pie shells were all I had to do.

Alex and Lil tackled the turkey; we always remove the legs and wings and cook them in foil separately so they don't dry out. The turkey is stuffed and trussed up -- looks kind of odd, but it works.

I think this is really the first year that Lil had a chance to handle the turkey. I KNOW it was the first time I let her handle the Victorinox chef's knife she used to cut the wings away. My job was to "supervise" -- that is, to pace back and forth between the kitchen to sweat about people cutting themselves and the living room to swear at stupid calls in football games and ask John about rules that made me swear in confusion.

When it was the opportune time for the pumpkin pie, I walked away, and found something else to do, finally leaving Alex and Lil to the family tradition. They did a fine job of it, too.

What remained of my required attention was the turkey gravy. Bernie had two cups of his excellent homemade chicken broth in the fridge, so I combined that with my giblet juice, added a bit of salt and some thyme, and reduced the broth by about half before adding it to the drippings in the turkey roaster. A slurry of cornstarch and water, and the gravy was done. It was The Best Gravy I've ever made.

Bernie took a swing at a new dish, too: in addition to his cranberry sauce, he made a similar side dish with pomegranates. WONDERFUL!

With peace and family, and great food, it was a delightful Thanksgiving celebration. I'm thankful that we're a family together, and will add in an extra thanks for the continuing blessing of my gravy by Fr. Schmalhofer.

Beagle-Jack Russell Terrier... No, He's Not

This is Eperis.

Eperis is the name of a handsome bard in some story, don't ask me more, I don't know. He's not my dog, but he is the new dog in the house.

He's a border collie/Queensland heeler cross, and you can see the border collie in his skulk as he prepares to herd the cat, and the Aussie glint in his eye shouts of dingoes and Australian shepherds.

Ep is definitely going to be an alpha dog; as a pup that makes him a bit of an ass. Fortunately for him, the ears are adorable, and his body is as soft and pliable as a jellyfish. He has incredible all-four-feet-leap upward mobility. If you pet him, he tries to roll over before lying down, and doesn't mind when he hits the floor.

He came to this household at five months old, neutered, vaccinated, and free. "He's never been outside this farmyard," said the previous owner. "I wanted to do a lot with him, but I just haven't had the time."

You take that kind of talk with a grain of salt, because here is an adorable pup -- why kick him to the curb? So far, the reason isn't apparent.

"He loves everybody. He'll never make a watchdog," the previous owner added. Hmm. This dog barks if he hears neighbors talking, or if anyone walks on our sidewalk. I wonder what she thought a watchdog does?

So far, he's as cute as a bug, fun to play with, and bides well with the household.

Eperis.
Epidemic.
Epiglottis.
Epicenter.
Ep.

Howie despises him and pretends he doesn't exist, but that's sensible, since Ep is going to be an alpha, and Howie knows he hasn't got it in himself to fight for Top Dog position. "I don't see you, I don't have to fight you."

There's great old dog wisdom in that.

After Seder

The night before this picture was taken, when our haverim (sometimes spelled chaverim) guests have left, I change into pajama pants and my softest, comfiest shirt.

We prepare for Seder (a Passover celebration) all week before participating in the ritual and dinner on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, and that Saturday is a flurry of work and adrenaline-pumping anticipation from about 6:30 in the morning: waking up, showering, setting out our nice clothes, picking up the rental chairs, dishes, stemware, and flatware; running the vacuum everywhere (Howie sheds heavily in the spring), mopping, wiping dirty little fingermarks off all the appliances, picking up flowers at the florist (and arranging them), cooking lamb and lasagna casserole, getting ice and whatever else we forgot at the store, moving furniture out of the front rooms ... crazy! Then the guests arrive around six, and everyone is eager to break into the wine and hear about all the "family news." Wine bottles are opened, the guests forget that we rent stemware and drag out the old mismatched wine glasses from the top dusty shelf, the kids descend on the noshes like locusts, and suddenly the kitchen is trashed in every empty space and counters are full of potluck offerings.

By 10:30, most everyone has left. Bernie was exhausted (he does all the heavy lifting) and I encouraged him to hit the sack. Looking around the kitchen at the mess and chaos, I remembered Cheryl Haimann's poem, "Keeping House," poured myself a big glass of wine over ice, and began doing dishes.

Wash five dishes, have a sip of wine. Remember how many Seders we've celebrated with these table friends: twenty-four. Dry some dishes, wash some more. Another sip, another memory, of how much the children have grown. Gather up the tablecloths (including the one the kids have spilled grape juice all over) and put them in the washer on Pre-Wash. Another sip, and now the pitcher and bowl used for the ritual hand-washing that begins Seder.

But don't put it away. Put it back on the table, beside the candles and the centerpiece, and the matzot, still wrapped in their white muslin cloth, Elijah's cup, and Bernie's yarmulka. Now to finish the dishes -- not so many after all, look around the counters and remember the fine friends who were there a bare hour or so ago, closer than family.

Peek out into the darkened front room and see the symbols of Seder there, listening again to the guests singing "Shalom, Haverim" in a perfect round to finish Seder, beautiful and haunting in our echoey room. (Nice recording; we sing it at a slightly faster tempo.)

In the morning, when I wake, I go out to the room again, and there are the symbols of a beautiful Seder, and I look forward to next year once again.

Farewell, Faithful Hound

Sebastian's all-too-short life ended today, unexpectedly, unfairly, inexplicably. He had to be put to sleep after a week of illness: we and the vet thought it was gastroenteritis, that he had eaten something that disagreed with him, and that in a few days he'd be back to his hungry happy old self. Unfortunately we were wrong. His kidneys just stopped functioning. And now he's gone.

He was John my son-in-law's dog. When John would have nightmares of battlefields and wake disoriented, Sebastian was there on the bed beside him to lick his face; if John thought he heard something odd in the night, Sebastian was his key to what was real and what was dream-farts. When the pain from John's back sent him to lie in bed, Sebastian was always glad to climb onto the bed and snuggle against his daddy. And watch him, waiting for John to open his eyes so that he could sneak a lick on John's eyeballs.

He was Lillian's dog. He was her first puppy, her playmate in the pool (for hours at a time), her warm pet to share a couch with while she listened to music or watched videos on her tablet. He was her trainer on how to be a dog owner, how to walk with a dog on a leash.

He was Alex's dog. All the dogs she had in her life before were my dogs, Bernie's dogs. Sebastian was her first doggy clay to train, and what a perfect gentleman she made of him. She taught him to heel, to sit, to lie down; she taught him to fetch and release a toy, to pick up any object and put it in John's hand so that he wouldn't have to bend as often. He was her Good Little Dog.

He was our dog, too. From the time he was a puppy, one of his favorite things was to shove himself between people's legs. I'd tickle him in the ribs when he did that, and he would stomp and huff with pleasure. He would climb into Bernie's lap for close-up cuddling. He was once even a Peek of the Week on the Piker Press, and later I used his eyes for part of the illustration for Kimberly Zeidner's story, "Paradoxica."

Sebastian, you've left a big hole in our household, and we will miss you so much.

Light and Shadow

In the early morning hours of June, my Japanese maple reproduces itself in shadows on the back of the house, a dark replica.

The charcoal-colored stars move and dance in the morning breeze that blows in from the Bay Area, but you can't touch them; it's only a trick of the light, only real to the eye. The actual tree is as high as the roof, with red leaves in the spring turning green as summer approaches. We watch carefully to see the first tiny red buds in February, lament the scorched edges of the leaves during July's inevitable 110 degree heat wave, stroke the graceful branches when we walk past it on the pool deck.

Nearly three years after my mother's death from Alzheimer's, I'm still working on coming to grips with what the disease did to her. Nothing about Alzheimer's is fair; plaques of a protein begin cutting off brain function, nerve by nerve: memories go, and recognition, and body function. As the nerves are cut off, they die of starvation. The victim is tied into an ever-decreasing circle, populated by ghosts and strangers. What are they saying? Why have they come for me? Is it any wonder that Alzheimer's patients are so aggressive, so angry, so determined to fight? All that's left is that fight or flight response, and there's nowhere left to run.

My God, my mother got so mean when the disease began to take her. She said things that hurt me so badly that I'd cry afterwards -- not even things about me, but just hearing such viciousness coming from her now-husky voice was like a serrated dagger slashing at the figure I'd known and admired most of my life.

I look at the shadows on the wall, the outline of the Japanese maple given a manner of shape by the absence of light. That was what my mother became: not a reality but an illusion. And illusion is not what I should remember. The illusion changes and disappears within an hour; Alzheimer's tormented us for years, but in the end, Alzheimer's need not last. For Mom, it's gone and done, and it can never touch her again. She doesn't need to be a shadow in my mind.

She grew that Japanese maple from seed, for me. The tree is a reminder for Alex of her grandmother's prowess at gardening, and a tangible connection with a woman who was brave and bold. Her daughter, Lillian, has never known life without that tree being there. Four generations of our lineage have touched it.

I want to see the tree first, not the shadows. The living, not the illusion. The creature, not the absence of light. And just as the shadows of the Japanese maple are beautiful in their darkness, maybe someday I'll see the precious glimpse of human frailty in my mother's death.

Ten Reasons to Be Thankful Even if I Was Worried about the End of the World

1. California Decembers are still clement enough for geraniums to bloom. Red and green at Christmastime are apropos.

2. Even if the Fiscal Cliff thing were to come to pass, our lifestyle has put us outside the grid. We'd have little impact on our way of life, if any.

3. Our two favorite supermarkets have begun carrying potato chips cooked in olive oil -- this means I can eat them. (I can't eat the ones cooked in sunflower or canola oil, as they make me unpleasantly ill. ) Merry Christmas or Armageddon, I have had potato chips to snack on in the evening!

4. The longest night of the year will shortly be a thing of the past until a year from now. (Daylight Savings Time should be adopted year round. Night-time at 5pm is just stupid.)

5. In seven weeks, I'll be buying tomato plants for the garden. (God willing and the creek don't rise.)

6. My 6-month-old grand-daughter smiles broadly when she sees me, and she just cut her first tooth.

7. My 10-year-old grand-daughter is creative, well-spoken, and a welcome guest in other people's houses. And respectful, and loving.

8. We're getting lots of glorious rain this winter so far. Everything feels damp, but I can live with that. Fill those reservoirs! Max that Sierra snow-pack!

9. Our household is stable, and at peace with one another. Three generations living together can't always say that, but we can. We're a team, and it makes us strong.

10. The "Perfect Ten" is my marriage to Bernie. We've just celebrated 38 years since he asked me to marry him. I still remember how the world changed that day, and how I knew that I would never again feel alone, that I would always have him at my side, that we could conquer anything that life threw at us.

It was a kind of innocent assumption ... we never know how long we'll have with anyone, not really. But on the other hand, for 38 years, we were right.

Happy End of the Mayan Calendar!

Yesterday I was poised to use this photo and bounce my entry off it, but one of the photos I took (in a series of seven) crashed and burned on my computer, saying that it was a file of an unknown type and couldn't be opened.

This scared me so I didn't want to even use my computer. WTF???

Once I found that my files were intact this morning, and that my computer was free of virus buggies, I thought about what I had wanted to say yesterday, and found that the picture of the eucalyptus leaves against the autumn sky was more apropos than I had thought.

I had been remembering my mother. She said, on numerous occasions, that her mother had been a great story-teller, sitting on the front stoop of their apartment building, telling tales to a small group of neighborhood kids who hung on her every word.

Hmm. What stories, Mom? What did she tell stories about?

I know she must have told stories of La Llorona, the weeping ghost seeking her drowned kids, because my mother told it to me. What hispanic kid never shivered in the night, hearing crying sounds on the air, wondering if La Llorona was coming to claim them to replace her dead children?

But.

How many Mexican kids were in that tenement block in Bethlehem, PA, in the 1930s, to cluster around to listen to Josefa Palos tell stories? My mother never mentioned any other Mexican families living there. Mom mentioned Irish and Slovak families, racial epithets tossed as the immigrants sought a balance and foothold in America. But not other Mexicans. How could my grandmother have garnered an audience of non-hispanics, when she didn't speak English?

I know she didn't, because we (very infrequently) visited Uncle Buddy's house, where resided my uncle and Aunt Lucy, three of my cousins, and my grandmother Palos. She did not speak to me or to my sister, or my father; she spoke only to my mother, in low, nearly-whispered tones, in Spanish.

My mother claimed all her lucid life that she learned Spanish in school, because her mother insisted that she and her brothers all spoke English exclusively, to moor them in the country they had been brought to.

I studied enough of language and linguistics to know that was a lie, because even when my mother's mind began to fail, she was fluent in Spanish. In my high school years, she would not speak Spanish to me, saying that I had the accent of a Cuban. I took four years of Spanish in high school, acing every class, and another class or two in college, having exempted out of all the basic courses. Yet by the time I was twenty-five, disuse had paralyzed my ability to communicate in that language. Mom's disuse had no affect on her, ever. She was a native speaker.

See those chewed-up leaves on the tree? Our memories are subject to chewing, the mandibles of regret and remorse and denial munching up the files of what we think we remember. The leaves on that eucalyptus tree don't remember the leaf-cutter bees that snipped at them to make their nests; by and large, most of us have missing chunks of our memories that we don't know are gone, and sometimes, even when we have a visceral knowledge that they are gone, our mighty intellects furnish an alternative memory that seems to make sense.

Some day, I hope to actually meet my grandmother, and give her huge hugs, and jangle all her stories from her, unhindered by language. She will probably think that I am a pest, but then we will mount our horses, she upon her horse Liston, I upon Crow, and we will ride off on the hillsides to gossip about my mother's weirdness, and bridge the long chasm between our lives.

Why This Blog Is So Sparse These Days

Joan Maria, sleeping in Dziadzy's arms.

Born on June 14, seven pounds, seven ounces, she has a faint drift of reddish-brown hair; her eye color is still indeterminate. She has the most graceful little fingernails I have ever seen.

When she and her mother came home from the hospital, Sebastian was all a-tremble with curiosity and concern. He very carefully had some quality sniffing time -- matching up Joan's scent with the strange smell that had been on John's shirt after his visits to his wife and newborn daughter. Now Sebastian parks himself by the baby's little sling-chair when Alex brings her out to doze among the bustling rest of the family, and he has a different look in his eye than he's had before; I would heartily advise strangers not to approach that baby too flippantly.

Howie was really intrigued by the carefully-held bundle that was brought into his house, too. Did they bring a cat in? Another dog? He sniffed her, and his expression changed from What is this? to what looked like a big goofy grin. Aw, it's a Baby! Howie has explained in no uncertain terms to the cat that The Cat is not allowed near The Baby.

Now while John and Alex have their hours full with Joan's care, and Lillian can hardly bear to be off doing her own thing in favor of helping with the baby, the household is really not all that disrupted. Joan is amazingly peaceful, still mostly eating and sleeping, only squalling when her diaper is changed.

So then, why is this blog so sparsely posted these days?

Simple. My friend Cathy the Mad Horsewoman has got herself a trusty little steed again, so I've been riding with her three times a week, and it's wearing this old woman right out. So much so that as I looked at the weather this morning, and saw that the temperatures for the next three or four days were going to be well over a hundred degrees, I was relieved that it would be too hot for riding.

I can stay home and snuggle the baby!

P.S. "Dziadzy" is Polish for "Grandfather" and is pronounced judgie.

This Story Begins --"It Was a Dark and Culinary Day..."

We woke to forming clouds this morning. By the time breakfast was ready, it was already overcast, and the temperature was dropping. We didn't much care, as the eggs from the commercial egg place out the road were surprisingly all double-yolkers and the bacon was "ends and pieces" scored from a supermarket in Modesto -- with the best flavor we've found in years at half the price of name brands.

By ten, it was raining, and CHILLY! Freakish weather for June here, and lending itself to indoor pursuits. Alex pulled out a lemon granita experiment for a brunchy snack ... it was heavenly. Shaved ice, melt in your mouth, not too sweet, deliciously flavored by our own lemons. Score!

Bernie worked his lunchtime magic with the griddle and a cabbage,  making us juicy hamburgers and home-made cole slaw. The temperature outside was dropping steadily, and we'd all donned sweatshirts and long pants, and closed the windows as the wind rose. "Do you want me to make a fire in the woodstove, too?" he asked.

When I was done putting up the Piker Press for this week's issue, I printed out Lydia Manx's recipe for spanakopitas, a kind of Greek spinach pie. She's got an article on it for next week's Press, and when she was telling about it at staff meeting, Cheryl raved about the dish and how good it was. I just happened to have an extra bag of spinach in the fridge, and it was still overcast and cold, so what better way to heat up the kitchen than with an oven-baked project?

Instead of using a baking dish, however, I played with another method and made little phyllo triangles stuffed with the spinach/feta cheese/onion/garlic mixture, baked on a cookie sheet. They are dangerously tasty, if a bit time-consuming to make for a novice.

Bernie once again before nightfall charged into the kitchen and made a whipped cream cheese/herb spread for crackers that kicks the ass off the store-bought stuff for about 1/3 the cost.

Seriously, we are going to hurt ourselves.

Playing with Art

 One of the things I've wanted to do this year is to draw or paint more -- to stop my damned fear of performing less than perfectly.

Yesterday, I was thumbing through a magazine and found a picture of Fort Ross -- a place I had never heard of before, but with a little restored church that caught my eye. The idea of sketching it immediately induced a panicky paralysis ... so I opened my Paint program on the laptop and began slathering sloppy virtual paint on a blank screen.

What ensued was not great art, but it was fun. I have no great expectations of myself in Paint. And I kind of liked the surreal sky.

So today, after I'd dithered around the house doing almost nothing, I went out to the studio and grabbed one of the stack of canvases Alex got me for Christmas a couple years ago.

Shakily I put a timid sketch on the white canvas. Then something unexpected happened. Lillian came out to the studio and began to ask me questions. "Is that paint poisonous? Why is there oil under that blue paint?" She was plainly lusting for my oils, but I'm a witch about sharing art supplies, so I didn't care. Instead, I got her a heavy sheet of watercolor paper, found her family's oil pastels, and invited her to art along with me.

Lillian is so bold in her art, and so uncaring of convention that I found myself liberated, and just flung real paint onto the canvas. When I opted not to use colors on the roof that were representational, Lillian piped up that she really liked the red in it. "My cannon looks more like an eel," she said, smiling, not minding that it did. When she began to color her foreground, I noted that she didn't use the color in the photograph, she used a brighter one -- because she liked it better.

I followed suit, using a red.

When Lil had covered her paper, I showed her a magic trick: my paint thinner could transform her oil pastels from sketchy lines to solid color. She was just able to finish her foreground before we went inside to cook dinner, where she was truly helpful, keeping an eye on and stirring the asparagus and mushrooms in their skillet while I focused on frying catfish.

After our dinner, I went back out to the studio to continue painting. Alex and Lil opened the garage door and brushed both shedding dogs, then the Queens all went for a walk. But then something else unexpected happened. One of the kids from next door, Philip, appeared in the driveway with his basketball.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Playing. I don't paint enough, so I'm out here playing with my paints."

"Cool. Did you do all those?" He nodded toward the unfinished stuff on the walls. "That's a lot. They're really good."

Obviously Philip is not an art critic, and he has no idea of what all art I've done, or of how much art I've avoided doing. But he was not the loud and obnoxious punk I've been irritated by in the past. He was absolutely rapt by my brushstrokes; quiet, polite -- indeed, nice. I found I didn't mind him at all, and even pulled out an empty underpainted canvas to show him how using a white canvas was going to make me work more to cover it up, whereas the underpainting of the other canvas (here I sketched some grasses in dark green) actually made things look more interesting.

He left reluctantly at sundown, which was good because I didn't want to send him away, but I did need to get indoors out of the mosquitoes. Bemused, I remembered wondering this morning how on earth I could rise to Pope Benedict's suggested theme for this Lent: "Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works." 

So I get an urge to paint, and God sends me someone I haven't liked much, and the two make a positive change in the world.

Amen.

Dia de los Muertos 2011

Ahh, beets.

Alex grew these beets in the planter box on the sunny side of the front yard. They're all prepped and ready for oven-frying.

We peel them and slice them a little less than half an inch thick, then toss the slices with extra virgin olive oil, then once again with garlic powder. Spread out on a cookie sheet, they're lightly sprinkled with sea salt. After 30 - 35 minutes in a 425 degree oven, they're ready to devour.

When Alex decided that she had to plant beets last spring, I didn't dissuade her. Thought she was nuts, but hey, whatever. The front garden boxes were her canvas for experimentation, not mine. When she told me that beet greens make a good salad, I scoffed -- until I pulled off a beet leaf and tasted it. Where had beets as salad greens been all my life? Good thing she planted them thickly: eating the greens in our salads was the perfect way to thin the crop.

I hadn't done much beeting around since we moved to California. They tend to be expensive here, and I'm not often impressed with the quality. Now that Alex has proven herself to be a worthy beet farmer, though, I'm looking forward to greater beetery.

What do beets have to do with Dia de los Muertos, a day for remembering your dead relatives and friends?

When I was in my twenties, I would often mooch jars of pickled beets from my mother. She was picky about her beets, which she bought in quantity. "Lutz is the variety to look for," she lectured me. "Lutz are nice and tender, hold their color, and taste the best of all." And then she would proceed to make the most delectable pickled beets in the entire world. Sweet, flavorful, crisp -- there was never any argument about eating enough beets. We truly could not get enough.

She learned the process of pickling beets from Dad's aunt, who was called "Sis." Mom pretty much learned all her cooking skills from Sis; she told me she pestered Sis to teach her how to cook because Sis was slowly dying, and Mom on her own had almost enough culinary skills to boil eggs. In my turn, I learned from Mom how to make lima bean pot pie, meat pie, pumpkin pie (did we never eat anything but pie?) and macaroni salad, and of course, lots of other things.

But the one thing I didn't learn how to make was pickled beets.

I don't know why I didn't; maybe she didn't have a recipe per se, or maybe Dad refused to eat some. Or maybe some part of me just assumed that Mom would always be there to make them for me. I don't recall her making them in the last 30 years of her life.

Seeing Alex's harvest of gorgeous beets made Bernie and I remember how good Mom's were, made me remember my mother in a time when Alzheimer's hadn't made her an ill-mannered stranger.

Miss that Mom so much.

An Unusual Treat

I happened to wander into the kitchen while Alex was practicing music for the choir this evening.

She invited me to sing with her, which is a treat -- I don't sing nearly enough these days. Ignoring the croaky nature of my allergy-laden vocal cords, she encouraged me to sing a song that I've known for a long time, and then to learn a new one that she's fallen in love with.

It was fun, it was beautiful!

I'm task-driven, she's goal-oriented (which is not to say that she doesn't do tasks well, or that I don't achieve goals); she exults in new projects and skills, I prefer to do what I have proven I can do and get-offa-my-back-about-new-stuff.

But in a song, we have the same path, the same notes, the same goal. Our melody is the same, and the sweetness of the sound of our voices together reminds me of how I felt about her when I carried her with me before she was born, that sense of accord and harmony. Our notes are the same, and our voices strengthen each other's and make something bigger and more encompassing -- like the structure of this household, two families united to make a fortress against the insanity of the world.

I think that if we can sing more, singularly or together, all of us will begin to sprout new spring shoots and grow in the time to come.

Sing on!

Rest in Peace

Last night, peacefully in her sleep, my mother-in-law passed away. 

If asked about her relationship with me, she would have assured one and all that we loved each other. ... Well, if that was how she actually felt about me, why, then, by a law of equality, that was how I actually felt about her, too.

Something about this orchid reminds me of her. Frilly, openly lovely, and yet somehow scary. A hothouse flower with a demeanor like something out of a nightmare.

Regina terrorized every one of her daughters-in-law -- and her two older sons had multiple marriages -- with equal venom. After years of persecution, when we wives of her sons compared notes, we finally realized that it wasn't personal, it was just how she felt about anyone who had the gall to marry one of her sons. A couple of us learned never to answer any question in any other way than what she wanted to hear, and learned to live with the tension and question-dodging. She would have told you that she treated us all like gold, and she believed it to the core of her heart. It was just that they were her sons first, last, and in-between. Law # 1: Don't get between Mother and Son, mentally, physically, or emotionally. Period.

Regina didn't believe in friendships, church work, hobbies, pets, or donations to worthy causes. In her view, the woman of the house belonged to the husband, and her whole waking day and her whole sleeping night was supposed to be about that, even though she complained bitterly about her marriage all the time I knew her. Some of our worst conflicts stemmed from my work with the church, my penchant for cats and dogs, my art, our charity, and especially my having the temerity to have friends with whom I walked or shopped or fished or chatted on the phone. She lived in Lewistown (having moved there from Pittsburgh) for more than 30 years, and never made even one chum to go have tea with. Family was everything to her, and she thought every other person in the world should be that way.

Regina believed in hierarchy, and so there was no question of ever calling her by her name. A few years ago, I asked how her twin Edna was doing, and she pointedly stopped the conversation to correct me to say "Cioci Edna" (pronounced Tcho-chi), even though Edna is not my aunt, and why would you expect a fifty-year-old woman to use a title instead of a name, anyway? Well, Regina, here I am, calling you Regina. Regina, Regina, Regina. So there.

Lord, don't let her haunt me for that.

And yet, this bitter, vain, and domineering woman came to my rescue when times were tough, and my mother was sinking dangerously into the mire of Alzheimer's. When my mother didn't recognize me in those horrible days when we were trying to save my sister, Regina came with us and Mom did recognize Regina, and made the terrible situation a lot less awful than it might have been. In the days of Mom's decline, until Mom could no longer have a conversation on the phone, Regina called her every day, sometimes twice a day, to help keep her tethered to a real existence.

My mom didn't believe in friends, either ... except that maybe, though neither one would have admitted it, they were friends.

Thank you, Regina, for being a friend to my mother when she had so few left.

Thank you, Regina, for running interference and offering support when my sister and I needed it so badly.

For that alone, I will be eternally grateful

Good night, Regina, and may your journey be fruitful, and lead you to everlasting joy.

A Mailing Label

After some months of having my desk out in the kitchen (trying to resolve issues with my new monitor), we moved my desk back to our bedroom again.

[The monitor that came (for free) with my desktop computer kept jiggling the display, and dimming from time to time (most annoying when I was trying to work). Moving to the kitchen and a more stable power outlet seemed to help ... for a while. Finally, I switched out my new monitor for my old monitor (a 2003 Sony) that Lillian had been using. My new monitor works perfectly with her computer, and my old monitor is just fine. Not as glitzy, but I don't need glitz.]

As I was moving the stuff from the desk, a mailing label fell out from under the Plexiglas protector. It was a Priority Mail label that I had printed out last spring, so that I could send stuff to my mother. I remember when I addressed it. I'd been sending Mom a dozen freshly baked oatmeal cookies, and when I got to the Post Office, I could not find the label. I filled out another, and sent the cookies. After I got home I found the original label on the floor by my desk where it had fallen. "I'll just use this the next time," I thought, and stuffed it under the Plexiglas.

There was no next time.

Finding the label, and watching it drop into the waste basket ... well, it hurts still, and I miss her. I miss the woman who was always game for a fishing expedition, who taught me how to make the foods she learned from Dad's family, who sewed me beautiful clothes for school.

I hope she has all kinds of fun things to get into in Heaven.

Dangerous Food

Sunday dinner.

Our SaveMart grocery unveiled an economic incentive package this week: chicken wings for $2.49/lb, boneless chuck roasts for $1.99/lb, catfish nuggets for $1.99/lb ... and tri-tip for $2.47/lb. Oh, and add in a coupon for five pounds of potatoes for 99 cents.

Therefore, Sunday dinner was a super-easy meal: tri-tip, fried potatoes, and salad.

Tri-tip is easy because you just put foil down on a roasting pan, fling in the tri-tip, fat side up, and season it. I use sea salt, garlic powder, and cumin. Into the oven it goes, at 425 degrees for 35 - 40 minutes. (A meat thermometer says, "It's done" at an interior temp of 135 degrees.)

The toughest prep is peeling potatoes. One potato per person, and enough yellow onion, diced, to season lightly (about half a cup.) I have the good fortune to house a Cuisinart, so slicing the potatoes thinly is more like play than work. (Think pumpkin cannons or water balloons.) Vegetable oil in the frying pan, a couple pieces of onion so you know when to dump in the taters. When the onion scouts say they're starting to sizzle, you throw in the rest of the onion, and all of the sliced potatoes.

When the bottom layer is lightly browned, you turn them, of course. And then again. And again. Then you turn them down to "Low" and cover them until the family is drooling at the table.

It was a wonderful feast, the tri-tip medium to rare, the fried potatoes downright deadly. The salad was good, too, but the poor thing only ran interference to keep me from scraping all the fried potatoes onto my dish.

** Note: When the tri-tip measures 135 degrees, you take it from the oven and wrap it in foil for 10 minutes while you scream at the family to wash their hands, get the table set, get their drinks, turn the filthy TV off, and sit down and shut up. Then you slice it before you set it on the table, or else mayhem ensues. I've solved the difficult clean up and the wrap by lining the roasting pan with foil, which typical recipes omit because it isn't strictly necessary. **

The only pall on the dining experience was the swat team my husband called in. I did not appreciate the flak-jacketed jerk with helmet and bullhorn pointing at me and roaring, "Step away from the potatoes..."

The Hard Road Beneath Sparkling Water

In the heat of the late morning, we crossed Utah on I-80, and on this straight stretch across the salt flats, watched the shimmering pool of a mirage on the roadway ahead of us, a false promise of coolness and quenched thirst.

How real it looks! There are reflections of land and sky. With a little imagination, you could visualize children flocking to splash in the puddles, or fishermen floating on boats, casting their lines.

Moving my sister to safety in the group home turned out to be a mirage. We all saw the possibilities, the companionship, the fresh air, the exercise, the nurturing -- we saw them as if we could have held them in our hands and passed them around for everyone to look at and rejoice.

My sister's road was quite different. Though she had been moving towards acceptance of her new home, the discovery of the lump in her breast and subsequent visit to the doctor proved too much. Jan stopped eating or drinking completely, refusing to cooperate, and had to be taken to the hospital for rehydration. People think "developmentally disabled" means "stupid," which Jan is definitely NOT. She knows that a lump in the breast means "breast cancer" and she knows that a surgeon means "operation." She's had the input of television as her entertainment for the past 30 years. I suspect that she dealt with the terror in the only way she knew -- to withdraw: maybe the Terror will pass me by.

In the hospital, re-hydrated, she seemed to rally again, even eating some breakfast. But by midnight, she'd retreated into her shadow world even more deeply (more safely) and could not be roused. They took her to the Intensive Care Unit and put her on a ventilator because her breathing was so shallow.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to get used to the new place, and be taken out to hear new and wonderful things, go to the store with people, the fair, concerts and places where she could exercise a little. Get three square meals a day and put some flesh back on her starved frame. In our mirage, I'd get to shop for things for her for Christmas, silly, useless, nice things that our mother would not have tolerated. Pretty clothes. Soft, soft flannel sheets and a girly comforter to keep her warm. I'd visit her as often as I could afford to go back east, without our mother diving in to keep us apart, able to hug her and hold her and shower kisses on her.

Yesterday I cried for our mirage almost all day.

This morning, her doctor called me from the hospital, and told me she was perkier today, and that they thought she could be taken off the ventilator. "She's probably had a small heart attack," the doctor said, "but she seems to be improving." I made sure the doctor knew that Jan hadn't had any physical exercise at all for nearly two years -- except for moving from her chair to the kitchen table (about 10 steps) or to the bathroom (about the same). Her system is unprepared for Life.

I don't know if she'll survive this. I pray that she will, and that our mirage will someday be a reality.

About two hours after the doctor called me, Jan's caseworker sent me an email. Jan was off the ventilator, and having had the tube removed from her throat, was once again vocal and let the entire ICU nursing staff know that she had fired them for incompetence.

Everyone who knows Jan gave a hearty cheer.

Good and Ick

Cleveland. Six hours short of goal.

The cross-country road trip has been both good and bad. We had intended to find campsites and throw up the tent and giggle under the stars, but our first night found us in terrain in which signs exhorted us to check for rattlesnakes and scorpions. Scorpions! Scorpions are funny in comics, but loathsome in any other setting. And they are bugs. They crawl into shit just because they can. Neither of us was happy about the rattlesnake thing, either, but a snake would just as soon avoid something as big as a person; who knows what scorpions would do?

So we pushed on until after dark on the road, and traveled from Ripon, California to Green River, Wyoming, and took a hotel room.

From Green River we made it to Des Moines, Iowa, to spend an all-too-brief visit with Cheryl, Poetry Editor for the Piker Press. (it felt like coming home, but that's a subject for a future post)

Today we basically halved our journey output, due to @#!!#&! (please add your very worst epithets to that symbolic array) construction delays, and thus are brain-fried and ready to rest for a night.

The bad is that we are delayed for a day in reaching our destination.

The good is that these days have allowed us to talk at length about what things need to be done, what things can be done, and what things we actually expect will be done. Had we flown back east, we would have gone from anxiety to panic to turmoil; driving allowed us to go from anxiety to wonder to irritation to wonder to deep discussion to wonder to hating roadwork to wonder to more discussion to ... acceptance of the hard choices we are going to have to make.