Alexander’s Graduation Dinner

Some days, no matter what you do, your days just don’t go the way you think they will. I got up, sat at the computer and told myself a dozen times, “I won’t be spending all day on genealogy. I won’t be looking over my grandparents and great grandparents’ files and fooling around.” This ploy of mine didn’t work even the tiniest bit. Instead, I looked up at 3:45 and I was *still*, after eight hours, plodding along with “hints” on ancestry.com. The trouble is like my old friend Mike, playing Civilization. At three in the morning, his wife calls him to come to bed. “But Joyce, my people *need* me,” he complained. Yeah. They don’t need me all that much.

Today was Alexander’s High school graduation dinner. About 2 PM, I realized we had this planned, and that we had completely forgotten this was happening. He wanted to go to a place called Memsahib, up in Rockville, Maryland. we got there in good time, considering we left during rush hour. It took about 45 minutes to take a spin up the beltway. If Highway 495 is the clock circling Washington DC, Rockville is at about 11:30. We had reservations but were early.

The bonus was finding a used bookstore, a quite good one, in the strip mall where the restaurant is. People may not know this, but I adore bookstores. I love the smell of them. I love the chatter of the staff with the customers. I love how you can buy 400 pages of paper for $2, and feel like you’ve got the better side of the deal. I love that you aren’t online when you walk into a bookstore, and I love most that the rest of my family loves them as much as I do. If we didn’t have to get back for our reservations, I would have spent another hour there.

But alas, Daniel’s bladder was full. We walked in at seven PM and the restaurant was empty, except for the staff. They ignored us while they talked for a couple minutes, planning their night or whatever. There was a sign that told us to “Please wait to be seated” even though, well, we could have sat anywhere we liked. Daniel made a bee line for the men’s room and the rest of us sat on couches honeycombed around low tables. The woman explained that the meal is *prix fixe*, five courses were served, and that she washed our hands with an ewer and a basin. Fingers are our utensils, you see. All the food was served on gigantic (3′ diameter) plates and the only silverware we encountered were nutcrackers and big serving spoons for the entree. We ate goat for dinner. And tandoori chicken. We had a rice pudding. we enjoyed a fruit and nut course, and three cold salad appetizers (eggplant, carrot, and cucumber). There was lots of bread, and I had a gigantic bottle of Indian beer. It was quite a night, and we left the restaurant stuffed and gassy.

Here is a part of the night’s conversation. Alex asked me “Dad, what are the three unities that Aristotle talks about that makes perfect drama? There is unity of place, unity of time and… what is the third one?” Daniel said: “Nobody cares. Aristotle was wrong. Besides, he thought vultures had three testicles.”

Bollywood dances were showing on the big screen television. Swirls of greens and reds and oranges and whites. I am pretty sure there is not any sort of plot in a Bollywood song; although the videos *want* you to believe there is one. Just lots of swirl and improbably cute dance moves and fast cutaways to make sure you never see the dancers sweat. Extremely hot women and men spinning around in loose-fitting clothes. Except the women. They get midriffs bared and generally tighter fitting clothes than the men. It’s addictive to watch them dance. I admit, I am the sort of guy who, if cricket is playing on the television at a restaurant, I will watch, even thought I know nothing about cricket. We all noticed a dark haired actor/dancer with a white goatee, who seemed both young and old at once. He was in about three of the videos. His eyebrows were jet black, like Daniel’s. we noted that Alex sports invisibrows, and is rapidly getting an invisible hairline as well.

Daniel was pleased to find that someone put a pine tree air freshener in the bathroom urinal.

Alex complained when, back in his high school days, he used the word “divergent” in a paper and the teacher circled it, telling him he used it incorrectly. He used it precisely right, of course, in the mathematical sense of the term. When a curve nears infinity but never quite reaches a line, this is divergence. He used it to describe Apple’s profit margins. He also talked about asymptotes, that sicko.

We lasted until 9:30, an entire 2 1/2 hours from the time we walked into the restaurant. It was fully dark when we left, and it rained off-and-on as we drove back.  Everyone was too full to talk much so we listened to 80s music to help our digestions.

Moments before we arrived home, Daniel announced to everyone in the car “You know? Skeletons can’t play trombones, because they don’t have lips.”

And truer words were never spoken.

Blogging for the Future

Here is how I find my most productive place to write, during a chaotic day.

First, I shut my eyes, and then I try to take a few deep breaths. That’s right folks: I type with my eyes closed. Then I focus on what the sounds are that are running through my head.There are so many other sounds here in the living room. Alex grunting on the couch; the cat yowling at my feet (apparently we starve the poor guy); and Judi watching the Outlander program she loves so much. Outlander is loud, with people speaking in English/Scottish accents. It’s so compelling. It’s hard to type when Scottish people are compelling.

And then I feel the pressure of the keys against my fingers. They just feel right somehow, the way right things should feel: the pad of my fingertips know the way to go, to produce the messages I want to say, when there is one. sometimes there is just no message though. Sometimes there is just nonsense.

Today, I am thinking about my family history.

I have been thinking of my past; specifically of the old folks I knew, but I didn’t really bother to learn from. Uncle Stanley and Aunt Elizabeth. Wilma Walker. Uncle Bob and Auntie Millie. Enid Hurst. Elma Ismert. My grandma Myrt’s sisters, Elanor and Wanda. These folks were all uncles and aunts and distant cousins. But almost never did I take the time to sit down and have a really good chat with them. Not to discover basic family facts, like birth dates, nor even deeper facts like what their schoolhouses looked like. But what I lament is that I never got to learn if they were sarcastic, or loving (I’m not entirely convinced these two are opposites), or angry, or prideful, or covered in some secret emotion nobody has discovered yet. My list is long. I knew so many of these people ,but I didn’t really know them. I mowed their lawns and did odd chores around their houses: (my great grandmother’s sisters Aunt Gladys & Aunt Mabel, for example) but I let all those opportunities slip past.

It’s too late to complain now. I’m doing what I can to gather up information about them. But how do you really know a person?

Here’s an example of something. My Grandpa’s grandfather was shot and killed by his son. He died in the hospital in Auburn, California. I just found this “Admitted to Placer County Hospital March 12, 1905, Age: 45. Resident of Lincoln. Gunshot Wound – shot by son Claus, age 14. (Doesn’t mention if it was a accident.)” Was my great great grandfather a kind man? the one picture I saw of him and his wife, they seemed happy. She was touching his arm a bit more intimately than you usually see in pictures of that era. But who knows if this is really what he was like? Was he a violent drunk? Was he abusive one moment, and charming the next? Maybe it really was an accident and my Uncle Claus was totally innocent.

And there was another great grandfather, who died around the turn of the century. He joined the Union army in Iowa, marched with his company down to a swamp in Arkansas, got sick, and was shipped home a couple months later. He was given a tombstone by the government for his service. But what service?

This is, partly, why I write blogs today. I don’t want my grand-descendants to say “Who was that guy?” I’d be a series of dates and nothing else. There is a bit of pride involved, but more than this, I feel like I have something to say sometimes. Or do I? I mean, look at today’s blog. It is pretty inconsequential, and I’m typing with my eyes closed, for goodness sake. What kind of information can I push to forward generations with my eyes closed? So that’s my fixation with Genealogy. Maybe one or two people will even remember my name in 2115. Even if I am a footnote, as long as I can leave some kind of imprint on the earth, I guess I can live what that.

Father’s day Wishes, and 4 More Book Reviews

I need to recognize my fathers in this post before I do anything else, both of whom are constantly in my thoughts. My first dad was the one I was born to. The second one raised me from age of seven. They are both precious to me, and have affected me in ways they will never know. One gave me a crazy sense of humor. One gave me a crazy sense of honor. One taught me to love music and books. One taught me to love the countryside where I lived. One is in Arkansas, one resides in Oregon. If I could find the words, I’d give them much more thanks than I am now, but I can’t. All I can say is Happy Father’s Day to both of you.

*****

Maggie Stiefvater. The Raven King series I read all four books in short order this May. It’s about a country girl in Virginia called Blue, who was told by her psychic mother that the first boy she kisses will die. This boy is an unlikely prep school lad, Richard Campbell Gansey III. His fixation on finding the remains of an ancient Welsh king drives the plot. The novels have an ensemble cast of three other prep school kids, Gansey’s best friends: Angry-all-the-time Ronan, hard-working Adam, and pale, ghostly Noah. This book is about magic, but also about relationships. It works quite well. The fourth book fell flat, with lots of loose ends that Stiefvater didn’t tie up to my satisfaction. She has a wonderful command of prose, although she occasionally tends to ramble. Blue is a snappy, sometimes comical, always interesting protagonist. Stiefvater manages to make me happy in ways that Cassandra Clare couldn’t seem to do, even though they are writing the same genre, with characters the same age. 4 Stars of 5 for the whole series.

Jim Butcher. The Aeronaut’s Windlass. The first new series by Jim Butcher in a long time, since he has been writing his Dresden Files novels for a lot of years. People live on gigantic spires that stick wayyyy up in the sky. They move between these spires on airships. It’s kind of a cross between Horatio Hornblower and steampunk action. Oh. And there are talking cats of course. It’s in third person point of view, and jumps between characters. Butcher is skilled at his craft, and knows how to tell a story. It’s not an awful book by any means, but it’s not as compelling as either the Dresden Files, or his earlier Codex Alera series. Yet. The man has definitely proven that he knows how to make us care about his characters. 3 stars out of 5, but I’m hoping for more good stuff to come in future installments.

Naomi Novik. His Majesty’s Dragon. Temeraire series; book 1. this is another work of magical fiction set in 1810s England. It’s odd how I’ve read several of these recently. This one has dragons. No magic per se, except what the dragons bring. The creatures have been fully integrated into all cultures across the world, and are fighting in the war against France. Our protagonist, Will Laurence, is a navy man, and he uncovers a dragon’s egg in a captured French ship. When the egg hatches, Laurence bonds with the dragon and is forced to leave his commission. It turns out the egg was bound for Napoleon’s army and the dragon inside, Temeraire is quite powerful. The book is interesting but not so compelling that I have rushed to pick up the second book in the Temeraire series. The aerial battle scenes are exciting. The story arc is done well, but no real surprises jump out at us. Maybe it gets better? Maybe I’ll jump back into this world some day. 3 stars out of 5.

Naomi Novik. Uprooted. Another Novik novel. This book was published recently (2015). Every ten years, in Novik’s alternate version of Poland, a girl must be sent to live with a cranky old wizard called The Dragon. He is scary. But our protagonist, Agnieszka, learns to love him. The whole novel is a a take on the Beauty and the Beast tale, really. Also, there are two different kinds of magic going on; the Dragon’s magic is quite different than the earthy magic (Baba Yaga style) the protagonist finds so easy to do. Agnieszka evolves and becomes stronger. The Dragon is a sourpuss until the very end. I liked the story okay, but nothing leapt out at me and made me want to shake someone by the collar and shout “Read this now!” I don’t find myself wanting to immerse myself in her medieval Slavic world again. 3 Stars of 5.

Another Man’s Trophies

Finally, a trophy I can win!

When I was young, my mom and dad split up. You’ve probably heard part of this story, if not all of it, if you’ve been following my blog. I had five whole years under my belt. My mom, my sister and I continued to live in the house on Windsor Drive in Sacramento. She worked on McLellan Air Force Base to make ends meet.

And while she did her thing for the Uncle Sam, I worked at the local kindergarten. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Simmons, and she had a tall pile of red hair. In my mind today, she looks and talked like Marge Simpson, except with different hair. I doubt she had such yellow skin. That’s just my imagination.

In first grade, my teacher was Miss Hitomi, a very short Japanese American lady. She hugged us every day when it was time to leave class. I liked her a lot. I was supposed to have Mrs. Lamb for second grade but we moved to Oregon, and started at Pistol River school instead. This was in 1975.

I said all that because, after a whole year in Oregon, I spent the summer of 1976 in Sacramento again. My time was split between my dad and both sets of grandparents. It was the bicentennial, and the California State Fair was going on. The bigwigs shot fireworks into the air every single night. Some nights I could even stay up late enough to see them. The Montreal Olympics happened that summer as well. Burger King was giving out posters. I had one of Bruce Jenner, the celebrated decathlete. He was the coolest thing that hot summer.

Evel Knievel fell off his bike much more than managed to jump over canyons for me.

Mostly, I stayed with my grandparents, but my sister and I spent a few nights at my father’s house. He shared a place with a couple other guys. One of them was named Douglas. His friends called him Drugless because, well, you get the picture. In this house was first time I heard Neil Diamond. Not that Neil Diamond has  anything whatsoever to do with this story. But the important bit was this: my dad had trophies.

They must have been high school treasures; stuff he had collected when he was young and cool and was a bit of an athlete. The trophies shined in his bedroom. Little men stood on top of their marble platforms, performing mighty feats of wrestling and track & field, just like the decathlete. My father also had a handful of medals that he’d gleaned from whatever-he-did in high school.

I wanted them SO badly.  I wanted to be like the guys on top of the trophies: strong and fast and made from glimmering bronze. So I asked him, “Can I have them?” No, he told me. I don’t remember the reason he gave me. Maybe he wanted to relive those years, back when he had hair? I can’t be sure.

I threw an awful tantrum of some kind. And I remember cheering myself up by singing the “Crash bang, crack em up, and put ’em back again” jingle from Kenner’s Smash-Up Derby cars. My melody making went on for about a half-hour. I asked my Dad, “Do you like my song?” I’m sure he said yes, even though my ears were screaming no, because when you’re a Dad, this is what you’re supposed to do.

Maybe it was my tantrum, or possibly it was my beautiful song. Whatever the reason, at the end of my summer, my dad presented me with a cardboard box full of trophies. At first I was elated to have his shiny athletic accolades. That lasted for about a half hour before I realized that I didn’t earn them.

What’s the point of having a trophy, if you did nothing to get it? These trophies were not mine. My father was giving me a piece of his past, but I didn’t want the past. I wanted a box of accolades. I wanted people to say “Wow! How did you get that trophy?” So I could reply, in some offhand way, “Oh, you know, I’m a wrestler.” And then I’d put on some dark sunglasses and my fans would ask for my autograph. But, of course, none of that happened.

His hair was fuzzy. I eventually picked his scalp off. GI Joe really needed a helmet after that.

In fact, these things ever turned out the way I expected. The Evel Knievel stunt cycle popped wheelies, but it could not (and would not) transform me into Evel Knievel. The same thing happened when I got my 1970s GI Joe and his yellow rescue copter. I didn’t rescue a single person, and neither did Joe. The soldier just stared straight ahead at me with his lifelike hair and beard, and his eyes never even twitched. His kung fu grip didn’t stop a single bad guy that summer. His copter had a cool crane that, if used carefully,  could rescue a small pile of sticks, one stick at a time. But, I their glory never rubbed off; not even when Evel and Joe traded their super powers. Joe fell off Evel’s bike, and Evel just broke even more bones in his already-fractured frame every time he fell out of Joe’s copter.

When you need to do something, you had better do it yourself. Bruce Jenner won’t hurdle his way into your life. Your dad’s trophies won’t make you a better rescuer. And even the combined powers of Evel Knievel and GI Joe can’t make your sister behave the way you want. They’re all another man’s rewards.

Yet, this is nothing to be sad about. It’s just the way things are. Work for the things you want. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. What, in my life, have I done for 10,000 hours? There are no short cuts. Maybe *then* I’ll get my trophies.

The Crusader

I lay absolutely still, my eyes pinched shut tight, while she crept into my room.  She came closer, closer, daring me to be awake. My heart pounded a frantic rhythm. I was prey. One arm was under my pillow, and my head rested on that arm. This is the way I always slept, so she could never know. I could hear her breathing as she crept closer in the night. What would become of me if she discovered I was alive? Would she eat me? Take another?  I held my breath and feigned sleep even harder, as if that were possible.

Then I felt the hand reach under my pillow, sliding coldly, silently in, silently out. And the presence left. I could hear the sweep of her faerie wings as she exited out my bedroom door.

I breathed again, once I was sure it was safe. Eventually I fell asleep.

In the morning there were 4 whole quarters under my pillow and the tooth, secured inside and envelope under my pillow, was gone.

“I fooled the tooth fairy!” I told Brett the next morning. My chest puffed while the bus hauled us to school. “She thought I was asleep the whole time, and she left me a dollar! I saw her!”

He rolled his eyes. “You still believe in the tooth fairy?” he said.

Brett was one of those guys from picture books–the ones in the white tabard with a red cross. The knight who corrected errors, and killing the hopes and dreams of those who believed differently. An nine year old crusader for truth and justice. Only he was the shortest guy in our class. Shorter than some of the first graders.

“Well, yeah,” I said, scornfully. “Who else would take teeth out from under our pillow? She wore a night gown”

“Duh. Your mom?” He said, with equal scorn. His forefinger circled his ear three times and he stuck his tongue out, the universal symbol someone belonged in the looney bin. The bus stopped to pick up Luke.

“Hey Luke! Brian still believes in the Tooth Fairy!” Brett shared with the skinny kid before he was even seated.

“Really?” Said Luke “Cool. And do you believe in Santa Claus, too?” Luke didn’t care. To Luke, everything was kind of cool.

“Of course I do! Who else brings me presents on Christmas eve?”

Brett had an answer ready. “Maybe the tooth fairy?”

“How could it be my mom?” I demanded. “It couldn’t be her. She wouldn’t lie to me.” Could she?

“You’re a dummy,” said Brett. Luke didn’t say anything. He was good that way. Maybe he was even still a believer.

Somehow I made it through the rest of the school day. I knew that, at any point, I could be laughed at. I liked little kids. They were nicer. My sister understood about Santa, and Tarra would understand how it made my heart warm when Rudolf soared over everyone’s house, when Saint Nick delivered presents to all the good little boys and girls.

On the bus later, Brett started a chant. “Brian believes in San-ta!”

After a few seconds of this, I shouted, “Fine! I don’t believe in Santa! But I believe in the elves.”

“Elves? Elves?” Brett demanded, dripping with derision.

Even the kids who might have been on my side, laughed at me after that.

I cried all the way up the long steep driveway home.

I barely made it inside our house before I confronted my mother. “Was it you? Santa, and the tooth fairy, and all the rest?”

“Oh, Brian,” she sighed.

She brought me into my room, and sat with me on my bed, the one where the tooth fairy had been just the night before, and told me she had been tricking me for all the years of my life.

Santa, she told me, wasn’t real. He was a real person, a good person, but he lived hundreds of years ago. And it’s tradition. “But don’t tell Lori,” she said.  “She’s too little to understand.”

“What about God? And Jesus? I can’t see them but we believe in them, right?”

She sighed again. I think made her do that a lot. “Of course we believe in God. He is real. And Jesus is risen, the way the Bible said.”

“Okay,” I said. I could feel my lower lip quivering.

Of course, I immediately went to find Lori and tell her the news. I didn’t want her to go to Pistol River School, and have her friends laugh at her, the way they made fun of me.

She nodded thoughtfully, sucking her fingertip like a lollipop, and said “Okay.” She was a smarter person than me.

I wasn’t angry or sad to lose Santa. Well, maybe a little. I knew I would keep getting presents. And Granny and Grandpa would come every year, and fill stockings. But I felt small. Very small. Why am I always being tricked? And Brett was right. He had every reason to be right. He had a good family, and his mom knew everything about God, and everything. But why are the people who are right always so mean about it?

If Brett could have killed me right there with his words, he would have. Maybe, he even did, just a little.

Just Slightly Off Plumb

My Grandpa Spurgeon was a man who liked things just so. His house was a tidy one; even his garage was immaculate. His was the kind of house where, if you forgot to use a coaster… well, you just used a coaster, okay? And at meals, a cloth napkin. Everyone got their own slightly-different napkin ring so they didn’t need to be washed after every meal.

Nature or Nurture

When the Russians bred foxes in the 1960s, they discovered they could breed the animals’ fear of humans out of them. Also, their pointed ears began drooping, and their muzzles and tails became less marked by flashes of white. They lost their personality somewhere.  But they became shivering wrecks that peed with excitement every time a human would come near. What is the tradeoff? Droopy foxes that pee for wild foxes that flee?

The Meadow Below

The story below is all true or I’m the son of a goat.

The Swing Set Vandals

I am far, far removed from being a good person and I’m constantly reminded of my slip-ups. I don’t like to berate other people for their faults; possibly because I’m so good at slapping myself for my own, and therefore get more than enough practice. My old sins even keep me up at night sometimes; albeit not last night. I slept pretty well last night. But that’s beside the point.

The Right to be Wrong

Back when I was seventeen, Grandma Mead and Aunt Edith were best frenemies. They were about the same age; separated by a huge hill, and a few miles of road. They spent a lot of time together.