Mothers and aunts

When my grandmother got old, and we didn't feel great about the crime in her neighborhood, my folks and my aunt decided she had to move. My aunt and mother must have worked something out, because we were fortunate enough to have grandma move in around the corner. And then, fairly soon after, my Aunt Jennie left her Flatbush apartment to move to Lincoln Place.

We'd go visit them and drink weak tea, eat cookies, and tease my grandmother, or look at my great aunt's afghans or needlepoint. Grandma was always getting us to sign a petition or take some pamphets on a sane nuclear policy -- her home was a haven in which all of us wildly diverse idionsyncratic nieces and sisters and cousins sat peacably at dinner, trading stories, teasing each other, linked in love. Sibling rivalry dared not speak its name.

If my mother had lived, my sister and I probably would have battled to get her to move in with us. So it is with the women and the few elderly men on that side of our family.

Isn't she lucky to have children who both wish that she'd live with them? said a friend of another, older friend we both think is fabulous. But I think it's more than luck that both her kids would love to have Peg. It is a mystery -- one created long ago, in a mother's compassion, humor, and ability to love through rage and chill and thunder into reconciliation. She is the tie that binds these children.

Public and private

I was a little flip with the DQ's drama teacher. I had once had aspirations to going on the wicked stage as an adolescent, I said to her. But I became a minister and journalist instead.

"It's all about performance" I said smugly. Of course, acting isn't "all about performance" any more than journalism is -- and ordination is supposed to be a calling, isn't it? I think we all have a calling -- or maybe that they change as we transition from one place in our pilgrimage to another. Putting clergy in that artifically high place only means that when we/they fall, we/they fall from a higher place. And sometimes a call has nothing to do with work -- it might be a vocation to being a parent, or a niece, or one who serves.

But sometimes it IS all about performance, Fr. Cutie in Florida being a case in point. As with many clergy who end up compromised, his public persona was one thing -- and his private behavior another. It's probably no accident he got caught. Rare the man or woman who can juggle two personalities for a long time without the stress becoming too much.

Bus stop

I didn't intend to be at the bus stop at all this morning. I had told Mr. C that if I was still showering, he should walk up himself. I don't think he heard me say that his lunch was in front of the door. He actually had to walk over it to get out.

When I realized he had not taken his cheese and grapes, I dashed out in my car, with roughly 3 minutes to spare. Watching him run for the bus with the other local kids, I had a moment of envy -- for their gossip, their homework assignments, their boundaried concerns.

So much is still possible for a ten year old or a 13 year old. Decades older, we know how much we can't control. But I didn't ponder myself into a blue funk. I turned around the car in the street and went home -- to find that somehow one of our cats had seemingly pushed the lock on our screen door -- and now smugly slept on my son's bed or the couch, while I pulled and poked and finally snuck in through the back door. Fooled him, I thought -- sometimes I can still beat the cats at their own game. But not all the time. Particularly when I don't know how to play.

Scrambled eggs?

When I told my ex that I thought I came from a pretty eccentric family, he laughed. That's a revelation?, he asked.

Actually, it's not. But sometimes the facts stare me in the face.

Take my aunt. Aunt Marilyn moved to Los Angeles about three years ago to be near her kids. She'd lived in Brooklyn all of her life, so leaving her old house, relatives and friends was very brave. But she didn't seem scared. She's got a sense of adventure that makes her very flexible -- and a penchant, like my mother, for attracting peculiar situations.

And she's adjusted very well. A former high school drama teacher, she still recruits people for amateur productions -- in Brooklyn, she held them in her living room or a local church. Somehow she's run into a traveling veterinarian who is a friend of a famous dog trainer and "whisperer", Cesar Millan. Apparently this veterinarian has gotten Cesar interested in filming Aunt Marilyn and her aged mutt, who has recently broken a leg. "I'm going to be the wicked owner" she tells me, unsure of whether she wants this kind of fame at 81.

But that doesn't explain the chickens. You see, my aunt's dog broke his leg chasing a chicken. Now, one wouldn't expect to see chickens who live and reproduce right off Ventura Boulevard. In fact, no one knows how they get there. And Marilyn's not pleased when the folks who stop and want to pose with the poultry talk about "her chickens." But she knows she can't get Animal Control to come get them -- some of her neighbors would be distressed.

I don't wonder how they got there. Anyone who knows my aunt, or knew my mom, wouldn't wonder, either.

Steaking your future

Here's a sobering article on what might happens if you eat too much red meat(from the New York Times).

I have to say that I don't know a lot of carnivores anymore -- most of my friends make meat a part of a meal, but not the main part. It seems as though that's one health message that has gotten through to folks.

I'll be looking for the one that talks about what can happen to you if you eat too much chocolate!

Friday already?

I can't believe I haven't posted since Monday. It was that kind of a week. Getting to work and realizing I hadn't moved my "favorites" from PC to laptop -- thus having to run home and finish the post I'd left half-written on the PC. Racing to Paoli for a morning apppointment and finding only dark offices -- and realizing half way home I was supposed to be there this afternoon.

Anyway, here's a great article by the NYT's David Brooks on how to become a genius: practice, practice, practice. OK, I'm being a little silly. You need to be a little smart -- brighter than the average guy or gal, but not neccesarily unusually smart.

Brooks strips away some of the glitz from achievement and I personally feel that's a good thing. If you are a romantic, however, you probably won't like his argument that achievement is also perspiration. It takes away some of the romance -- but allows for more realism.

Spring

It certainly didn't promise to be a lovely evening. I didn't even try to argue myself out of it -- when the temperature hit 80 in the house this morning and I started to sweat, I went right to the air conditioning -- understanding the irony of the fact that soon the mid Atlantic region may be back in the 60s.

But as I bade the DQ goodbye at the base of our road on her way up to friend's house for dinner, I reveled in the tranquility, the horses in the field, the thwack of bats as children played baseball on the elementary school grounds. As odd as our weather has been, spring is still miraculous -- coming in chilly rain and blazing sun, winds that make the basketball hoop fall over, and the quiet of the evening as the sun sets. Well, not quite -- the frogs are having a great old time by the pond at the school -- or maybe they are yelling at one another. Hard for this human to tell as she runs by and wonders, and tries to catch a peep...I mean, a peek!