Lucky Eddie

I was the only kid in the church who wasn't scared to death of him, his gravelly voice and his slow, stern way of pronouncing things. Everyone's horror was 6th grade CCD, because Father Nester taught it. There could be no goofing off.

Because my parents loved him so, and because my dad decided while Father Nester was our pastor that he was giong to study to be a deacon, we had a really strange, close relationship with him. On rare occasions that we went out to dinner and he didn't wear his collar (this is a guy who ALWAYS wore a black suit jacket with his collar and shirt, and hardly ever even wore a short sleeved black shirt. He was seriously Old School.) the waiters always thought he was a great uncle or a grandfather. Essentially, that's what he became.

He was at the wedding, and Robin took several wonderful shots of him (I'll check and see if I have any on the computer, because they're truly great). This is the guy my husband and I stopped by in the limo to bring to the wedding reception on our way from the church--the one I ran up the stairs to meet. He's been in the nursing home (fortunately they have a priest wing) for the past couple of months, because he's getting goofy....the medical term is dementia, but apparently the legal term for people who run or inspect nursing homes is "goofy."

Last night at 1:30 we got a phone call from the nursing home--my dad is his legal power of attorney, since he's outlived most of his family except a few nephews in St. Louis and California--saying he'd fallen, and they were taking him to the hospital. And that was all they could tell us. 4:30, when we'd finally all just gotten back to sleep, the doctor called from the hospital and told us he'd hit his head, and my dad gave him some permissions for procedures (can we do an MRI? can we give him oxygen? what if we need to do surgery? does he have a living will, what are his resuscitation wishes, etc etc....all covering their bases.) He hadn't broken his hip again, but he'd whacked his head pretty hard. Again, that's all we knew. So we went back to bed.

My dad just got back from the hospital. He is alive, but prognosis is not good.

He's got a pretty large subdural hematoma on the right side.....and a couple of other little bleeders. They don't know whether it resulted from the fall, or caused the fall. It's hard to tell. They decided not to operate, because they're not sure if they can stop the bleeding, and even if they could it wouldn't make him any better. He's conscious, but sleeping (quite possibly related to having been up in the middle of the night, and who knows how conscious he was through everything.) They have him on oxygen, and they're going to move him from ICU tomorrow, and wait and see. Watch and pray.

He was talking to my dad last week about how he doesn't like where he's staying, and he wants to "sneak away quietly, like a pussycat," to live somewhere. I only hope that's what he's doing now, and that he's going home. This man has a faith that has been sorely tested. He entered the priesthood relatively late, in his thirties. Before that, he was married, and lost his wife. He was an alcoholic for a number of years, but has been in recovery for longer than I've been alive (which explains the constant cups of coffee). He's the only father my mom has known since her own father died when she was five, and the best father figure my dad has had, even though his father lived until 1996. He's my second grandfather. But if there was ever any doubt in this man's mind or in his heart that there was a God, and he was a loving and gracious God, and that this God had a son who could make everything all right, he never showed it to anyone. Even his dying is a lesson he's teaching with slow, patient dignity and a quiet sense of humour. I can guarantee you that the first thing he's going to ask if he wakes up is, "Will someone take me outside so I can have a butt?"

I'll miss him when he goes. Chesterfields and all.

Mikey

I loves me some Mikey. We spent many long hours together in his hospital room throwing butter pats on the ceiling, skate-boarding on his IV pole, and sticking oranges when he found out he was diabetic in high school. That's how they teach you to use syringes--they give you a bag of syringes and an orange. Good times. They took them away when we started playing darts with them. (In return, Mike showed up on my hospital doorstep with a pint of my favourite Ben & Jerry's, his beloved Tigger slippers, and hours and hours of taped X-Files episodes when I had cancer. He let me keep the Tigger slippers, which made me cry. He graduated high school wearing those things. They were legend.)

I also recall one demented evening right after high school graduation when I went back into Mike's room to get something I'd forgotten, after starting the car and taking off my shoes (I drove barefoot in high school. Actually, in high school I did most things barefoot), and I didn't bother to turn the light on because I knew where whatever it was, was......and I knocked over his sharps bucket.

So there's me, whining at the top of my lungs, "Miiiiiikeeeeeeeey! I just dumped a big bucket of syringes on the floor and I can't reach the light switch!!!!!!" and then standing perfectly still in the middle of the room until he heard me and came inside. Where he proceeded to turn the light on and stand in the doorway and laugh his ass off at me.

Mike is also the friend whose father once went to Chincoteague Island in his red VW bus and came back with an auctioned wild pony where the seats had been. True story. We have pictures.

Runs With Carrots

Yesterday I was accused yet again of being a veritable font of useless information. This, when Mom and I spontaneously broke into "The Battle of New Orleans" at the dinner table.

The reason for this is that just as we sat down to the second course, Rocky from next door got out and was seen bolting past our house. Sadly, Rocky is not a poodle, or even a boxer, or for that matter a boxer whose last name is, in fact, Marciano. Rocky is a horse. A miniature horse, to be sure, but still nearly as tall as I and weighing a shitload more, as horses do. So, being me, I immediately kicked into mom's moccasins and ran to the fridge to get a bag of carrots and went to head him off at the pass, as Hedley Lamarr says.

The pass turned out to be the railroad tracks.

Actually, he was being a good little horsey and after his head-up, look-at-me, I'm-running, ha-ha, I'm-free-you-fuckers! was heading as fast as his little hooves could carry him back to Marciano's barn. Sadly, no one told him there were two layers of fence preventing that. So I cornered him down the embankment along the first layer of fence, where he looked like he was about to roll his eyes and charge at me, being of course the big bad stallion that he is (not), whereupon he promptly got a look on his face that said, "You have come equipped with those orange crunchy things!" And walked over to me calm as you please and stuck his horsey little head into the pocket of my shorts, where the bag was. So I grabbed his halter and walked him up and down and up and down and up and down, because there was no way he was standing for any of this holding still business, while the idiot stable hand who'd let him escape in the first place went to go get a lead. He also came back with Barbara, who looked at me and calmly said, "Oh good, finders keepers." Um, no. No thank you, Barbara. Really. But very funny.

So while they were discussing how best to get him back to Point A, Rocky and I looked at each other and said, "Really. Well, we got down here," and I held a carrot back behind me with one hand and the lead with the other (because I had tried this with no lead and the only thing that happened is Rocky stepped on the back of mom's shoe and I thought, "This could get ugly,") and the two of us tromped right on up the embankment and onto the railroad tracks, and then had a lovely stroll home again. I was sorely tempted to bring him to the back porch and say, "Mom, Barbara said I could keep him!" but then realised that Mom was in control of both my wine glass and my legal domicile at the moment.

How does this relate, you ask, to "The Battle of New Orleans"? Because mom asked where I went when I followed Rocky and how did I get him out. And after pointing out "the same way we got in there" we both said, "I ran through the briers and I ran through the brambles......." etc.

Dad was about to hide under the table.

The postscript to this is that after my run this morning (not chasing anything, thank you very much) when I went past the barn, Rocky stuck his head out of his stall and tried to stick his head down my running shorts, thinking I might have more of those orange crunchy things.

Ever been frisked by a horse, even a very short one?

Mangoes

Every time I cut mangoes, I think of Samira's father. Ramesh was a round little Indian man, stereotypical in a lot of ways, jolly but also very soft-spoken, and he spoke quickly and decisively, always sure of his opinions. A few years ago he had a stroke the week of his son's wedding that put him in an irreversible coma. (Next week is the anniversary of his death, which gratefully came before the family had to make any decisions about withdrawing life support and feeding)

It was Ramesh who fed me my first mango. It was a little underripe, and so was tart and green and had that strange tingly flavour that green mangoes have. When I demurred at being served the second half of my mango, he castigated me mockingly, "You don't like mangoes? Shame on you! What kind of Indian woman would you be?" This, of course, made us snort with laughter, since we had to constantly remind Ramesh that the reason his wife and I are so pale is because we're both white.

A few months later, Samira and I were visiting her grandmother in North Jersey. Mangoes were in full season now, and we brought some with us. Ramesh had introduced Carolyn to mangoes, too, when he first married her daughter. We brought a plate of the fruit into the living room to snack on with our iced tea, and after a while we noticed Carolyn hadn't had any. We asked her if it was still too green for her, and she got a piously outraged look on her face. "It's not how Ramesh cuts them!" Of course, when we got home we were instructed on Ramesh's Official Particular Way to Cut a Mango So that Carolyn Will Eat It.

I brought mangoes to the funeral home instead of flowers. I knew Samira and her mom would know why, even though I felt stupid piling the three fruits onto a table filled with huge arrangements of lilies. Sure enough, when Carolyn was wheeled into the viewing area, she clucked her tongue at my handiwork. "That's not the way Ramesh would have done it," she said softly, moving the mangoes into the casket with him for cremation.

Look! Green Box!

Once upon a time, a very very long time ago, in a land far far away called "Putnamistan," I was recently engaged and feeling particularly homesick for bulk ginger snap granola from my local non-co-op co-op as I wandered the aisles of the local Stop & Shop. This was before I discovered that the Mrs. Green's that was such a pain in the ass to get too off Route 9A had a (larger) sister store by the Mega K-Mart in Carmel.

Anyway, there I was perusing the natural foods section, which is actually quite substantial for not being a Wegman's. Soy milk, check, Van's vegan wheat-free waffles, check, bizarre flavours of goat's milk yoghurt I wouldn't be caught dead eating, check. Expensive dog food, check. Whole grain bread at an unholy price from The Baker, who goes to my dad's church and sometimes gives him day-old muffins and rolls for free, check.

And then there was the cereal aisle. I beheld with wonder the 26 different flavours of Kashi, and the Barbara's Puffins with peanut butter flavour or the cinnamon flavour or the gorilla flavour, and the boxes and boxes of flax flakes. And there it was. Nestled all by itself, up on the top row next to the Peace Cereal brand Vanilla Almond Crisp, was a shining green box. Of Ginger Snap Granola. Six of them, in fact.

Astonishing. I climbed to the top shelf after a few unsuccessful jump-tries and got myself some of this organic goodness (with HEMP!, according to the box). In retrospect, I should have gotten all six. Because when I went back the next week for more, it was gone. Never. To. Be. Seen. Again. Anywhere. Not at Stop & Shop. Not at Mrs. Green's in Mahopac, Carmel, Briarcliff, or Mt. Kisco, because I checked them all. I even looked in the crummy neighbourhood A&P, which of course never has anything, and charges a fortune for the privilege.

I decided sadly I must have been imagining things, and that I'd had a week of imaginary bliss with that tangy ginger zip, probably related to the euphoria of the nearly-married. I'd have to have Mel send some up from Whole Earth if she ever got there.

This morning, on the advice of my sister (the reference librarian, which is a clinical term for "chronic web-surfer who gets paid for getting dressed and going to an office to do what I do all day in my bathrobe") I looked on their website.

And behold, fellow seekers!

I'm so glad I wasn't hallucinating. Because I hate when I do that.

Groundhog Day

Have I mentioned recently the utter destruction that some cute little nibbling bunnies wrought onto my gorgeous Romaine lettuce???? Off with their heads!

Actually the bunnies aren't the problem anywhere except the garden. It's the groundhogs. My dad was cussing at them again last night. Actually so was I. There we were, on the front porch drinking white wine before dinner, watching the little fuckers waddle across the yard, and I was yelling, "Yeah, that's right, you better run! Yeah, you! Don't look at me with those beady little eyes, I'm married to a man with a wall full of shotguns, and he looooves to eat groundhog! He'd be more than happy to come down here and blast your head off with his .22, you furry varmint!"

Which I know I've mentioned to my dad before in just such reference, but last night he looked at me quizzically (or maybe it was drunkenly) and said, "He is? I mean, he does?"

My educated response came via Bill Murray in Caddyshack: I cocked my finger at the groundhog in question and fired. "Au revoir, gophere."

My dad again: "I don't think we should. I mean, those people," he pointed vaguely with his wineglass in the direction of the horse farm across the street, who also now own the two other houses on this side of the road that share our circular driveway, "are like, animal activists and stuff. You know, they buy lots of horses and put them in little cages all day. Plus they have little yappy dogs." (are you kidding? this is even more of a reason.)

Now my dad knows I'm an animal activist too. "I like little furry creatures," I reminded him. "But I'm also a realist. And when something is eating the goddamned foundation of your outbuildings and tunneling under your front porch, you are entitled to blow its furry little head off. It's the way of country life. When ranchers start losing sheep, they're allowed to shoot wolves, which are a protected species. We're talking about groundhogs. Large furry rodents in paper bags, with bad teeth. Trust me. No one will miss them." As a matter of fact, the very reason we have so many groundhogs this year is that our next-door neighbour finally died at the ripe old age of 94, and isn't around anymore to drive around on her tractor and shoot them with her .22. Or, for that matter, poise outside our front porch tunnel with her shovel and a Hav-a-Hart trap and bonk them over the head when they come outside to investigate the shiny new toy.

Seriously. She did this. We called her "Killer Miller." Granny Get Your Gun.

My dad by this point had stopped drinking and was staring at me in rapt attention. I don't know, maybe it was horror that his granola-crunching hippie daughter was advocating the cruel ending of a life at the same time she was cutting full-page Amnesty International ads out of the NY Times. Or maybe it was pride that I'd finally gotten some sense in my head. (Blame it on marrying into a family of hunters, where "vegetarian" is a euphemism for "bad aim.")

"So, does your husband really have a .22?" He finally asked.

"Of course he does. Don't be silly. And that's probably the best choice for this task. But I really think he'd rather use the 30-30 with the night scope. Or maybe the 1917 Mauser his grandfather brought back from World War II," I mused.

As I got up to email him about this, my dad called after me, "Tell him to bring his biggest stock-pot, too." Then he laughed, the kid from Brooklyn making a hunting joke. He didn't notice the expression on my face, because I was already inside.

Because, you see, in my husband's family, they actually do eat groundhog.

Indian Style

One of the things I dread most about moving is the vocabulary. I've just recently come to terms with Mahopac and Oscawana and am even trying to make my peace with Shawangunk--and now I'm faced with Tulpehocken and Manatawny, not to mention remembering that Schnecksville is different from Schwenksville. Lord help me.