Who’s ready for school to open back up?
Oh, this. This makes my heart thankful.
It’s a good thing I was the only one in the office Wednesday afternoon, because I clicked this link and within two minutes I was sobbing into a wad of tissues.
Yes, I know it’s an ad for a bank. Yes, I know it’s a year old. Yes, I know it’s all staged. But that doesn’t make it not beautiful.
Take five minutes away from the bustle of today and let yourself travel to this bright town square in Spain. Let the Ode to Joy start small and let it grow in your chest, let it leak out of your eyes and make your shoulders shake. It’s joy. That’s the path joy takes. Joy doesn’t start with the crescendo. It begins with a single note. That’s why it’s hard to spot sometimes in its early stages.
Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, is my favorite piece of music, #1, hands down, not even close. That’s why I chose it for the recessional music when Fartbuster and I got married. And why I chose it as the recessional music when Richard and I got married.
Then a short while later, his parents and I were planning his memorial service with the priest and there in the list of suggested music for the recessional was “Ode to Joy.” Joy? At a funeral?
I chose it. (wait…gotta do some more crying…)
I don’t remember everything from that service, but I do remember the way that music swelled from the organ after all the words had been said. I remember the soaring sound made by hundreds of our friends and family as they sang the modern English lyrics: “Ever singing march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife; Joyful music lifts us sunward in the triumph song of life!” I felt a great sense of relief that the service had been perfectly fitting for Richard. I felt…joy. Joy at having had that one thing go right. The music carried me out of the sanctuary and on to the next part of life.
I wish you joy today. Among all the leftovers and hangovers and overdrafts and overpasses–STOP. Like those people in the square in Spain, all they had to do was stop and listen to joy.
Now cut me some white meat and pass the cranberry sauce!
Sunday brunch at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien. It’s become a tradition for my sister and me when we go to New York.
The waiter brings us a little amuse bouche of fruit smoothie in adorable tall shot glasses. Highly collectible glasses…if you know what I mean. (If you don’t, read my story A Red Marble Sink and you’ll understand why my sister gets nervous around me and labeled glasses.) In a place that charges $15 for a glass of orange juice, the glass should come with it…right?
So I’m eyeing the cute glass when Gay gives me a blistering stink eye. I jokingly slide it across the table towards my lap.
“Don’t. You. DARE.”
As we’re giggling about it, the waiter flits by and whisks the glasses off the table.
Gay snorts and says, “Ha Ha! You’re too late!”
Aw, man.
We’re a little out of focus but our boots look cute!
Yesterday I wrote about Dora; today I’m thinking about Boots. But not Dora’s blue monkey with the red boots.
One night last week, we limped back to the apartment after walking around New York all day. My sister flopped down on the couch. She propped her elegant black leather boots up on the Ikea coffee table. “Hey, Vivi–come over here for a second.”
Vivi looked up at her from the plastic safari animals that she was arranging on the carpet. “Why?”
Gay laughed. “I need you to do me a favor. Help me get these boots off.” Vivi gave her a quizzical look and went back to the safari.
My sister managed to tug one boot but it was a struggle. I stepped up. I cupped one hand around the heel, braced my other hand across the arch then gave a gentle tug. The boot slipped right off. It’s been 35 years since I helped someone take off a boot, but I didn’t have to think. It’s all about coming at it from the right angle.
I told Vivi, “You have to learn how to pull boots off if you’re the shortest person in the family. I used to help Papa pull off his boots when he came home from working all day.”
My dad wore real cowboy boots, boots for working around actual cows. Heavy cows, skittish cows, cows with sharp hooves, cows that manufacture manure. Boots that spent some nights out on the porch, airing out. About once a year, he’d bring home a new pair of boots in a sharp-sided square box with the Dingo label on the outside. Or Justin. Not Luchesse or Tony Lama, no ostrich skin or Lone Star cutouts. Brown leather with a squarish heel. These were boots you could pick up at the feed store.
That reminds me of a joke: How can you tell the difference between a real cowboy and a fake cowboy? With a real cowboy, the shit’s on the outside of his boots.
Hey, that reminds me of another joke: He’s so stupid he couldn’t pour shit out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
That goes to show you: I associate boots with manure. Cow shit is just part of growing up around cows. No big deal. Nothing personal. But here’s the funny part. A little whiff of cow manure, mixed with some hay and sunshine–that’s one of my favorite smells. It takes me back to hanging on the side of a cow pen fence or climbing out of the truck to open a gate.
Helping my sister with her boots made me happy. It took me back to a time when I was small but useful. I had a job to do in our family and it gave my dad some relief at the end of a long day.
What’s the smell that takes your right back to being a kid?
There’s not a section on economy airline travel.
After four magical days exploring New York City with my daughter and my sister, today I hit a bit of a low point on our flight back to Atlanta. There was bad behavior and bad language, in two languages. I blame Dora the Explorer.
The day started out just fine, thank you very much. Brunch at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien. A stop by FAO Schwartz to buy Vivi a Pegasus and a little purse shaped like a Pomeranian (just some essentials, y’know). One last hour in our sunlit 39th floor apartment that overlooks 42nd Street. A leisurely cab ride to La Guardia, through the Village and the Upper East Side and across the bridge.
But you know, then the airport had to get all airporty. I got the pat down in security–TWICE–because I set off the x-ray alarm. They’re called underwires, folks. You can’t hold up Mount Rushmore with Scotch tape. Then we stopped to grab something to eat…$29.70 for two sandwiches, two sodas and a bag of chips that I thought were cheese but turned out to be horseradish. Then to the gate agent to see if we could get seats together instead of a row apart, since y’know…she’s SIX. So yes, we eventually got seats together, but the only available were in row 36. That very last row–the one you can’t recline because you’re right up against the toilet wall. Oh, and even though I gave the six-year-old the window seat…there’s no window. Vivi went into a tizzy. She had read all of her books already, done all her word searches, eaten her $8 sandwich, packed away the Pegasus. She was DONE. And so was I. But I sucked it up–it’s only a two hour flight, right?
We squeezed into our seats just in time to watch the show that was coming down the center aisle.
From Marc Jacobs Fall 2012 collection. So, like this, only in COACH.
Picture this: a Latina Kim Kardashian, all got up in her best Fifth Avenue getup–luxe hair extensions, brown ostrich feather coat, velveteen kitten ears headband, flowing bell skirt of caramel taffeta. She stalked down the coach-class catwalk swinging two Marc Jacobs bags to clear the way. And guess where she was heading? Seat 35 B. Right in front of me.
The coat was kinda awesome, but it was WAY too much coat for coach. With every motion, the coat generated its own allergic nimbus of brown feather fluff. If the feathers didn’t make you wheeze, her perfume miasma was sure to do the trick. My blood pressure went up immediately. And I started sneezing.
The latest in idiot bird pelts.
So there we were at taxi time: Weepy Windowless Vivi, Sneezy Me, and Senorita Kardashian.
Fourteen seconds after takeoff, she flopped her seat back and reclined into my lap. My seatback was screwed to the toilet wall, so there was nowhere for me to go as the hazy cloud of ostrich motes whooshed my way. I crossed my legs so that she could feel the gentle pressure and realize that a human being was wedged behind her. Nope. A minute later, she decided to shed the coat and did a push-off maneuver on her seat and a helicopter arm rotation that both crunched my legs and grazed my nose.
I fake sneezed in her general direction. No reaction. I might have escalated with the gentlest of shoves to the back of her seat as I reached to get Vivi a notepad from my bag. She said something to her companion in Spanish and gave me the partial over-the-shoulder stink eye. She flipped her hair up into a sloppy bun, then shook it down. Kitten headband in, kitten headband out. All in my lap, mind you. I couldn’t have been closer if I were threading her eyebrows.
Another flop from her and I responded with a teensy knee bump to her seat. She spun around and gave me the mute WTF face. When she saw the crazy as a shithouse rat look in my eye, she swallowed whatever word she was about to say. I pointed to the seat and did a “were you born in a BARN?” gesture from American Sign Language. She replied with something incensed in Spanish. We glared at each other in a stalemate of bitchery.
That’s when I rummaged around in my Dora-based Spanish vocabulary and snarled, “ARRIBA!”
She recoiled like I had slapped her. Her companion tapped her on the arm and whispered something like “I think she might be crazy just give it a rest, OK?” Senorita Kardashian flipped her seat back up and put her eyes forward muy rapido. And that seat stayed arriba the whole flight.
I was ashamed of my behavior, but couldn’t bring myself to make a Lo Siento. After the plane landed, because we were the LAST seats, I had to pretend not to see her for a good 15 minutes. I chirped to Vivi in my best Definitely-Not-Crazy-Mommy! voice and tinkered with my phone while she and her friend talked about how her son only wanted “M & Ms azul” from New York. Amarillo, rojo, verde…azul. They talked a LOT about M&Ms. I got that part–thanks to Dora.
And hey, if she called me crazy bitch, I couldn’t tell. Thanks for that too, Dora.
I got y’back, girl.
Here’s a flashback to something I wrote a long time ago about travel, love, rebuilding trust and writing: “Taking Flight.”
I hope you soar today.
I need to get about 1000 of these made.
Hey, Good Lookin!
OK, you might think I’m crazy to say this, but even a speeding ticket has a bright side! Here’s the story…
My cousin…I should probably leave his name out in case this gets him in trouble some way (but y’all who knew us back when, I’m talking about the really big guy with blond hair, Shannon and Pat’s big brother)…well, anywho, he spent a few years as a state trooper. One summer I got on a streak of bad luck with the cops. I was 37 years old, had been driving since I was 15 and had NEVER had any kind of ticket. Then I got THREE in three months! So I was turning it into a funny story at a family get-together and my cousin said, “Hey, that means you’re attractive!”
Whut?
He said, “Look, if I pull a woman over for speeding and she’s good looking, I write her a ticket right off the bat, no questions, because I don’t anyone saying I let her off because she was cute. But if I stop a woman and she’s kinda homely, I’ll cut her a break because you know she hasn’t had that many.”
Huh.
So think about the last time you got stopped. If you got a ticket, it’s because YOU’RE HOT.
And if you didn’t get the ticket? Well. You didn’t get the ticket.
Either way, it’s a win, right?
So….last time you got stopped….ticket or no ticket? I got stopped on the way to our beach rental this summer and the officer gave me a warning and let me go. I had three whining kids in the backseat and NO lipstick. Win.
This week is awesome, but dang…I might have bitten off more than I can chew.
How you doin’, Peanut?
Sunday morning, I sat on the edge of Vivi’s bed to wake her up.
“Hey, Vivi! Today’s Cowtail Day. You get to learn how to shoot your new bow!”
“Could you get these kids in their seats so WE CAN GO?”
Her eyes flew open and she chirped, “Huck gets to be a REAL DOG…all day long!” She threw back her covers to reveal some ratty blue sweats with a hole in the knee and an old t-shirt from Brasil. “I slept in this so I could wear it to Cowtail today! I’m ready to go!”
Cowtail is our family’s hunting camp–100 acres of forest land that has been in my grandfather’s family for over a hundred years. When I say “hunting camp,” I am not being coy. I once overheard my stepdaughter telling one of her friends that we were “going to Ashley’s family ranch for the weekend” and I corrected her by saying, “Ranch? Sweetie, it’s some woods with a shack and an outhouse. Let’s not blow things out of proportion.”
Keeping an eye on his babies.
For decades, the land was leased to some strangers for the hunting rights. Then it dawned on the six of us cousins, Pop’s grandchildren, that we could pay the taxes ourselves and keep the place in the family. But the real reason is that Cowtail gives us a place to get our kids dirty. Our kids are growing up on cul de sacs in tidy little neighborhoods. That is NOT the way we grew up. I still remember the Christmas when we got machetes (and a casual admonition to “be careful”) for playing in the woods. We’d build a fort one weekend in the pine woods around our house then by the next weekend forget where it was and build another one. Our same pack of six cousins rode our bikes miles into town, wandered around the cow pastures in search of arrowheads or built a dam over the creek just for something to do. My mom says I called dams “water makin’ machines.”
Now we’re all polished up and living in The City. Our dogs take baths, wear collars and mind their manners. At home, Huck has a nice yard but he has to peek out at the rest of the world through a hole in the fence. He’s only allowed to woof about five times in a row before he gets called back into the house. There’s a fence between him and the river.
“HU-UUUCCCKK!”
Huck loves going to Cowtail. For the first 10 minutes of our car trip, we kept hearing this strange sound like a church bell inside the car. Turned out it was Huck’s happy tail thumping against Carlos’ little metal shovel. We had to stop the car and rearrange the stuff to make the ding-dong stop. At Cowtail, he gets to roam free. He woofs at stuff. He chases squealing kids on four-wheelers down the muddy trails, never losing sight of them. He eats a lot of sandwiches and cookies that drop from little hands. His coat gets pieces of roasted marshmallow stuck in it when the kids use him like a napkin. He wanders across the archery range and eight kids yell, “Hu-uck!” in unison. He gets to be a real dog, all day long.
In the last five years, the boy cousins have made some serious improvements to the shack at Cowtail. It’s got windows and a rain barrel shower and built-in bunks. They called in a couple of favors and got some ‘lectricity strung up. There’s a firepit and a tire swing. This year, Joe added a trampoline some neighbors threw out. The outhouse even has a seat now! They’s even a radio that plays both kinds of music–country AND western!
My kids get so delightfully dirty there. They play in the rain and the mud and the leaves. When Vivi finds a smooth piece of old blue glass, it’s probably from a medicine jar that her great grandmother threw in a trash pile when Teddy Roosevelt was president. Here’s Vivi trying to get marshmallow out of her eyebrow.
Just like Huck, I love going to Cowtail because I get to be real, all day long. Wear my ratty sweats. Shoot arrows at a target without worrying that I might be breaking an ordinance. Pee in an outhouse while a mockingbird yammers at me to get out of her space. Laugh with the same cousins I’ve been laughing with my whole life. Throw logs on the fire. Push the kids up towards the sky on a tractor tire until they scream. Eat sandwiches and roast marshmallows and wipe my hands on my pants. Drink wine out of a cup with my name written on it in Sharpie. Hoot. Holler. Woof at stuff.
Then we load the kids and the dog and the dirty shoes and the leftovers and the leaf collection and the special rocks and the bows and arrows and shovels and really nice sticks. We hug a bunch of necks and talk about when we’re going to do it again. By sundown, we drive a slow mile on a dirt road then bump up onto the paved county road so we can make our way back to The City.
Carlos played so hard this Sunday that this was him FIVE MILES away from Cowtail. That boy done wore hisself plumb out! That’s Huck right behind him in the back of the car. Can’t see him? Yeah, that’s because he was dog tired, too.