Excessively Wordy

I was born a poor black child.

/ wvfurandroot / 7 Comments
First Day of School

First Day of School

Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s birthday is coming up and it’s weighing heavily on my mind since I won’t get to see him. I feel entitled to tell a cute kid story.

The Boy had his first best friend during kindergarten. It was kind of karmic that his best friend was the nephew of my old high school best friend. Anyway. This little kid was nearly as cute as mine and together they were a rowdy bunch of joy. At the end of each school day all I heard was Michael this and Michael that punctuated by peals of giggles.

One day when I picked The Boy up, he slung the car door open, threw his backpack and slumped in the seat. After peering at him for a bit as he crossed his arms and batted tears away, I asked him what was wrong.

We had a fight. He’s a big dummy and we’re not friends any more.

Oh my. What happened?

And the story unfolded.

This is how I understood it, but I could be wrong. There were a lot of sobs between details.

Cherokee Boy

Teepee Boy

He and Michael were teeter-tottering or jungle-gyming or something along those lines when Michael made a disparaging comment about black people. Incensed, Chef Boy ‘R Mine attempted to correct Michael’s faulty intelligence. When this did no good, The Boy pointed out to Michael that we’re all born black and some of us turn lighter shades including white and some of us stay black.

Well. I can tell you I was a bit nonplussed.

So I asked for his references on that point of fact. Turns out, it was his baby book.

Chef Boy ‘R Mine was significantly premature. In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), there was a ton of electronic equipment as well as numerous footcandles of fluorescent lighting. I had an electronic flash on my SLR camera that kept malfunctioning, I think, because of all the equipment. My solution to the problem was to take multiple pictures at multiple aperture settings and hope for the best. It turns out that didn’t really do any good. None of the pictures depicts Child of Mine the way he looked. He was a dusky red with touches of jaundice typical of preemies.

Preemie

Preemie

His first few weeks were precarious and I couldn’t part with any of the photos. I took hundreds in those first few days and all of them awful. They’re duly assembled in a photo album along with the rest of Chef Boy ‘R Mine’s first year of life. He loved to look at that photo album. As soon as he was big enough to hold it by himself, he would get it, crawl on the couch, and slowly turn the pages – asking questions about when he was a baby. It was sweet.

Turns out, he thought he was born black. His dusky red came out a cocoa color in the photos. I didn’t really see that aspect – I saw my miracle baby still breathing. I knew the color in all the photos was off, but I never made the connection.

He did. It was a logical conclusion not worthy of even asking about.

So I gently told him that of course Michael was wrong to dislike someone just because they were black, but I also told him that he was wrong about everyone being born black. Try explaining to a 5-year-old the problems of a  malfunctioning electronic flash in fluorescent lighting when trying to photograph a baby in a plexiglass isolette.

Anyway. Throughout the explanations, his and mine, I had to muffle laughter. He was so upset and so dreadfully serious. Ex of Mine, who wasn’t an ex yet, came home and I dragged him into the bedroom to tell him the story. Heartily amused, we both had to work hard to project ourselves as Sober Caring Parents.

We had another earnest conversation at the dinner table with The Boy. By the time we were done, he seemed much calmer and was able to sleep in his customary dead-to-the-world-scare-mom-to-death way.

At this stage of life, we were living in a largely unfinished barn and experiencing significant financial stress. It’s correct to describe us as poor.

Once the child was asleep, we settled into the couch and turned on the tube. Steve Martin’s classic, The Jerk, was just starting. I had forgotten the opening bit – I hadn’t seen the movie in years. We were there just in time to hear, I was born a poor black child.

The ensuing hysteria was epic. We laughed until we cried; we clung onto each as waves of laughter convulsed us. When one of us would settle down, gasping for breath, the other one would break into another set of hearty guffaws and the hysteria began again. At one time, we rolled off the sofa, sprawled on the floor and stamped our feet in laughter. Only because The Boy sleeps like a dead person did we not wake him up.

We were still laughing the next day.

And so was Chef Boy ‘R Mine since he and Michael resolved their differences and resumed best-friendship.

The Boy’s explanation of racial differences is funny, but it’s also rather adroit. We are all born the same, but its life’s experiences that make us different. We’re a multitude of colors and that shouldn’t have a bearing on our lives, but it does. I like my boy’s attitude about it all. He didn’t think he was luckier for having been born, more or less, “white” – he thought no more of it than he did of the fact that he’d been born bald and now he had hair. It was just something that happened like his having brown eyes when Mom and Dad’s were green and blue, respectively.

Amusement Park Birthday

Amusement Park Birthday

Damn, he was a cute kid – that little white boy who was born a poor black child. I miss him and it looks like I won’t see him on his birthday this year. I’ve only missed one other and I wasn’t happy about that either.

His birth was far and away the best day of my life.  Hands down.  He won’t be here, but I’ll celebrate anyway.

Damn he was cute. I miss him. Oh, wait. I already said that.

I miss him.

2009 Gardenpalooza (update)

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments
Mmmmmmmmmmm....I'm in love (again).
Mmmmmmmmmmm….I’m in love (again).

Well, my crushes are coming fast and furious. First it was the daffodils then the redbud and mock orange, not to mention the irises, daisies, peony, and petunias. Being a Poor Person of Considerable Poverty ™, it is damned inconvenient to have this kind of energy for – and commitment to – the garden without enough money to do it right. I’m making do with annuals, for the most part, and some seed.

The latest crush is the dahlia. I am just knocked out by this beauty. She’s not in the ground yet due to the monsoon season that is upon us.

wave petunias
wave petunias

I go to the hardware store for something like a bag of potting soil and come home with a car full of plants. I’ve indulged in lobelia, gerbera daisies, petunias, dusty miller,  moss roses, a rose bush, clematis, stuff I don’t know the name of, and some kick-ass geraniums. I’ve never been much fond of geraniums, but those floral geneticists are getting pretty good with them.  They’re much more aesthetically pleasing these days.

I completely lost all sense of fiscal responsibility and came home with wisteria on Monday. The blooms have come and gone, but next year – oh my, next year!

retaining wall bed
retaining wall bed

Against all odds and contrary to my personal history, I’ve managed to get both morning glory and moonflower seeds to germinate. I’m hesitant to take things for granted given that I’ve had no luck with either for 20 years, but I will be much pleased if they do grow and thrive.

Trudy, the little brat, is still digging up my one bed. There must be chipmunks nesting near by. We are getting ready to come to blows if she doesn’t begin seeing things my way.

I didn’t get around to planting anything until Monday, other than some hostas and lily-of-the-valley, due to bed preparation. On Saturday and Sunday, I broke ground in some of the nastiest hard clay and gravel any of y’all have ever seen. Monday morning, I ripped out the carpet roses and sloppily put them in a shady bed I won’t get to filling until next year. At this stage, I don’t care if they die. I de-leafed, cleaned up debris, washed the lawn furniture, and evicted some of the wasp nests.

Bone weary, I was.

rain on the roses

rain on the roses

Those of us around here know that there have been waves of downpours. Having lived in the tropics, I know a monsoon when I see one. Truly, it’s been amazing. Having done all that work, I was determined to get stuff in the ground.

I’ve been gardening in the rain. As I sit here typing this, I have mud-splattered arms, oak pollen in my hair, and my jeans aren’t even recognizable as denim. I’m filthy and very happy.

Still, I have toted timbers in the rain, I have dragged 10 bags of topsoil out of my car in the rain, I planted a flat of begonias and another of petunias and yet another of lobelia in the rain.

garden gate
garden gate

I filled baskets with moss roses in the rain and have two to go, plus I got some that were already filled. I hung humming bird feeders and Boston ferns in the rain. I put down grass seed. I planted two creeping junipers in the rain.  And I have daisies, Siberian irises, balloon flowers, columbine, wild delphinium, ivy and vinca to transplant. Besides all that, I have pots of this and that to get in the ground after I level the landscape timbers. This rain needs to stop – there’s only so much I can do in rain storms so fierce I’m soaked to the skin in seconds. Naked gardening can be fun, but it’s not quite warm enough for that – yet.

Wild Delphinium
wild delphinium

After 4 years of back breaking work punctuated by months of inertia, my dream of a white garden (with punches of blue and purple) is being realized. Having viewed planning as anathema for most of my life, I’m starting to see the merits. If you have goals and plan them out, it feels pretty damn good when they begin to unfold. (It also makes decisions at the nursery easier.) There’s still a lot to do.

The white garden will be years in the making.

In other news, the cottage garden is as yet untouched. I’m hoping to be finished with this year’s stuff for the white garden by this weekend – at which time, I will be begin ripping out wild rose, honeysuckle, oak saplings, bind weed, and the what-was-I-thinking loosestrife.

I hope this passion continues to burn. Gardening used to be my bliss, my therapist, my hobby, and my exercise. I’m not sure why I got so completely away from it, but I did. (And I’m paying for those years of neglect in so many different ways.)

2009 Gardenpalooza is underway. Woo Hoo!

[Note:  Garden Rant, Sustainable Gardening and The Gardener Guy are three of my favorite gardening sites.  If you check them out, be prepared to lose a lot of time.]

Bread and “it’s a big ol’ goofy world”

/ wvfurandroot / 10 Comments
Bowl, Spoon, Mascot
Bowl, Spoon, Mascot.

Jamie over at Life’s a Feast just blogged about bread baking. Memories of my early efforts are flooding my brain. Even with something as mundane as bread, I’m reminded that it’s a big ol’ goofy world.

John Prine is a peach and most of his songs are national treasures .(I have no idea why I own no John Prine – I must rectify this.)  The title alone of It’s a Big Ol’ Goofy World is a phrase I use often.  My life seems to have taken more twists and turns than can possibly be normal.  It’s a big ol’ goofy world.

In 1972 or so, I decided that no self-respecting hippy wannabe could call her self an Earth Mother without bread making on her resume. (Candle making and macrame are also required, but I never got around to those two.)  So, I pulled out my mother’s ancient cookbook, inherited from an even older relative, and set to.

It was, in keeping with early times of the cookbook, a recipe for basic white bread – the kind of bread that for years and years housewives made weekly to supply the household. It was assumed, I think, that one pretty much knew how to make bread.

Treasured walnut wooden spoon.
Treasured walnut wooden spoon.

Most people need either really, really good directions on the technique or they need someone to show them. Good bread is less about ingredients than it is about how you go about combining those ingredients and working them.

After the lump of Pillsbury flour brick came out of the oven and even the dog wouldn’t eat it, I went on a quest looking for the perfect recipe. I was just 13 and my range was limited. Brick after brick, I didn’t lose enthusiasm for learning how to do this, but I was supremely aggravated. ‘Course I was in the throes of puberty and spent most of my time aggravated about something.

At the time, my parents were in the process of turning a screened-in-porch into a family room. My dad hired one of the Marines under his command to do the wiring – seems the guy was a licensed electrician as well as a grunt.

He was an odd character. One afternoon, I was fussing with bread bricks when he wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. I fussed and fumed and probably threw a few bowls around. He told me I was going about it wrong. One thing led to another and the kind-of-odd, crusty gunny sergeant/electrician showed me how to make bread. Somewhere during the process, my mom wandered into the kitchen and sat at the table watching.

There was great success. I’m sure I celebrated by heading to my bedroom and listening to this:

Here’s the recipe:

2 pkgs of yeast (regular, not fast rising)

¾ cup of warm water

2 cups of lukewarm milk (scalded then cooled)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon butter (softened)

1 tablespoon of salt

7 to 8 cups of white, all-purpose flour (or 6 to 9, it depends)

Besides the bread bowl, you’ll need two standard bread pans, a wooden spoon (for aesthetics because any kind of big spoon will work), measuring spoons and cups, a stove, an oven, dish towels, rolling pin and a stereo.

Continue reading →

Whine in ’09

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments
Tirony
Tirony

I’m thinking that maybe if I have a major, no-holds-barred, massive whine fest, I can find one more hand-hold on the cement block wall that is my life these days and, um, get-a-grip.

Or not.

But in any case, I’m going to rant and rave and more than likely delete 90% of it before rock-and-rolling through this house like the avenging angel of housecleaning. OK, I’m going to commence cleaning after I finish this and after I deal with the flat tire.

It’s always been true that when my life is at its most chaotic, I slow boil on the sofa for a day or two and then get up and do something not particularly helpful to the crisis at hand – something like putting new shelf paper in the pantry or alphabetizing the spices. There’s a peace of sorts in doing something that creates a sense of order, no matter how trivial, but also does no harm. There’s not anything I can do to stop the onslaught of chaos, but I can put clean sheets on the bed. I can wreak genocide on dust bunnies. I can clean out the junk drawer. It’s live-action metaphor that will make me feel empowered to effect some sort of change.

But really. I can’t take one more damn thing.

Way back when, in another geologic era of my life, I was sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for my appointment and perusing a months-out-of-date copy of Redbook. In the issue was a stress test which I decided to take as it was now well past my appointment and my stress levels were rising as I considered all the things I wasn’t getting done while I waited.

The quiz had things like:

  • If you got married or divorced in the past year, give yourself 4 points.
  • If you moved in the past year, give yourself 2 points, 4 if it was a move of more than 100 miles.
  • If you had a baby in the past year, give yourself 4 points.
  • If you changed jobs in the past year, give yourself 1 point.
  • If you experienced the death of a loved-one, give yourself 3 points, 4 if it was someone in your immediate family.

And so on.

The only questions I didn’t get the maximum points on were the death of a loved one, bankruptcy, legal problems, and life-threatening illness. When I tallied my points, I was in the category of “honey, give it up, do not pass go, do not collect $200, just check into the nearest asylum and get fitted for a straight jacket.”

In retrospect, those were the good old days.

I cannot take one more damn thing.

And yet, every time I utter those words, one more damn thing happens. Some of it is my failure to adequately plan and/or putting my faith and trust in the wrong people. Some of it had nothing to do with me, but affects me nonetheless, and a great deal of it is in the nibbled to death by ducks category.

The past couple of years have been horrific. Really. I can’t take one more damn thing.

Nibbled to death by ducks is an expression I was introduced to about ten years ago. I think it’s British, though I’m not sure. As I understand it, it’s that state of stress brought on by a series – a series that feels eternal –  of minor catastrophes and inconveniences that goes on and on and on. And on. Endlessly on. Pointless, meandering, irritating. Like this paragraph.

I think my life shows that I can handle the big stuff – the really catastrophic oh-my-God shit. While I’d like to do it with more grace and style than I do, I do, some how, time and again, seem to get through it with my sense of humor intact.

To be fair to myself (although it could just be that I’m too stressed to see the trees for the forest), I seem to have more than my share of big stuff. I’ve quit trying to find some meaning in that. OK, mostly quit. These days when I do find myself veering in that direction, I’m most often reminded of the biblical book of Job. If you know your Bible, you know that Job didn’t do a damn thing to deserve any of the stuff inflicted on him – it was all some bizarre pissing contest between Jehovah and Lucifer. Job reacted in such a way that Jehovah won the bet and thus was rewarded in the end.

Now I’m not nearly as blameless as Job and I’m not about to thank Jehovah or any other idea of god for the endless shit that keeps whirling about me. It’s my fervent belief that if there is a sentient creator, he/she/it is not so petty. All this crap is not going to result in a reward in the afterlife or make me a better person or build character.  If that were true, I’d be the second-coming of Mother Teresa already.

Right now, I’m working feverishly to keep my sense of humor. (It’s not for nothing that the Dalai Lama is a fan of the Three Stooges.)  For the first time ever, I really do feel like I’m in danger of losing it. To not be able to laugh is my vision of hell. That’s rock bottom – the point of no return. I think we all have one and yours might be something different, but mine is the ability to laugh. I’m the person who usually doesn’t need a couple of years to find the humor in some catastrophe – those “someday we’ll laugh about this” events. I’m usually the one, often inappropriately, laughing in the middle of it.

The irony of the flat tire I was greeted with yesterday is so in-your-face that if I read it in a piece of fiction, I would roll my eyes at the heavy-handedness of the writer. Yet, it wasn’t until just an hour or so ago that I realized the dark humor of it. I still haven’t had the belly-laugh-until-you-cry moment, but hopefully it’s on the horizon. It is pretty damn funny when you think about it.

No. I’m not going to explain the irony of the tire. It would take too long and require even more whining. But, trust me. It’s pretty funny and I will laugh about it. I will. Even if I have to fake it.

Afterword:  Self-reliant tire-ing is not going well. The rain isn’t helping.  And I’ve yet to begin cleaning which will, perversely, make me feel better even though I hate cleaning with every fiber of my being.