Confessions of an Eggplant

Mama Bennett Goes Home

2006-11-11T21:48:00.000-06:00

Sixteen months ago, Mama Bennett's doctors told her to get her affairs in order following a severe internal bleeding episode and subsequent diagnosis of terminal liver disease. The situation was tenuous and I immediately flew out west to say my goodbyes.

Sixteen months ago.

Since then I've been in regular contact, either by phone or e-mail, with Aunt Bee and Aunt Ess. They both discouraged visits due to Mama B's decline and fear of having Lovett and Dora see her in such shape. We weighed the options and acquiesced but her demise hung over our heads like a dark cloud. For sixteen months.

About a month ago, Aunt Bee called Zelda in desperation. Times were tough, she needed some relief, and felt like the kids might brighten the place up. Lovett had a couple of in-service days coming up at school so we flew out early on a Saturday morning. Having said my goodbyes sixteen months ago, I wasn't looking forward to having to do it again, but sometimes you can't get around the hard stuff.

We had a great visit. Mama B's mind was sharp, she ate well (for her condition), the kids kept the farm hopping, riding the golf cart and chasing the dogs around. On Tuesday morning, Lovett and I flew home. The next Tuesday, Zelda and Dora flew home.

On Wednesday night, Aunt Bee called to tell us that it was just a matter of time. Shortly after Zelda and Dora left the day before, Mama B had become unresponsive. Aunt Bee asked if we wanted a call if she died in the night. We told her we did.

At 2:00 a.m., the phone rang.

I had been aware that this moment was coming. For sixteen months. When it came, I was blown away at how profound one death could be. We've lost more than 2800 soldiers in Iraq. More than 2900 people died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Two-hundred-fifty thousand people died in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. None of those deaths affected me like the death of a frail, eighty-one year-old woman in the basement apartment of a farm house on the Eastern Plains of Colorado.

Appropriately, Mama Bennett died during an uncharacteristically heavy autumn blizzard. She would have loved that. It was almost morning before they took her away. We changed airline reservations three times because the blizzard so impacted the schedules at the funeral home and the cemetery.

Which was not a bad thing.

Mama Bennett had asked me, sixteen months ago, to preach her funeral. I had been thinking about it since. For sixteen months. And I had yet to write a word.

Granted, procrastination is one of my hobbies. But sixteen months? You'd think that with that amount of time I'd have come up with something. But I didn't. I couldn't. I could not even begin to write a eulogy for someone who was not dead. Every cell in my body screamed No! each time I tried. So I gave up. I knew when the time came and I was under a deadline I could do it. At least that was my hope.

So we scheduled our flight out on Sunday, and Saturday I hunkered down at [local chain coffee shop that's not Starbucks] and wrote.

On Monday, we met with the hospice chaplain to go over the service. Mama B had fallen in love with her hospice caregivers and wanted the chaplain to have a part.

On Tuesday, we had a private visitation at the funeral home. Papa B insisted that he had to see her one last time before we buried her. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I've always hated the funeral home visitation cliche "doesn't she look gooood?" but in Mama Bennett's case it was true. She had withered to nearly nothing but she looked so much better than the last time I had seen her, two weeks before. Then, when she was lying in her bed, I hugged her and kissed her forehead and told her, "I'll see you again." She smiled at me and said "I know." I knew I would never see her again in this life, and she did, too. It was such an easier goodbye than the one sixteen months before. None of us knew how much time she had left then and it was painful and emotional. Two weeks ago, it had been hopeful. Tuesday it was painful again.

It was a large room with just a few of us - Papa B, Aunt Bee, Aunt Ess, Uncle Cee, Zelda, the kids, and me. Some of us had brought things to place in her casket and I took mine up just before we left. I lost sight of the hopefulness I'd felt two weeks earlier. A measure of finality overwhelmed me as I touched her bony arm; her cold cheek.

Wednesday was a brisk day, sunny, but breezy. She'd requested a simple graveside service, which is about all that's allowed at the national cemetery where we buried her (Papa B is a veteran). We lined up our cars at a staging area, awaiting instructions from the cemetery staff. When our time came, we were lead to a small chapel, open on one side, with only six or eight chairs. A good many friends of Aunt Bee and Ess, the hospice staff, and some friends Mama B had made during her short stay in Colorado were there. I was really anxious about speaking because of the difficulty of the viewing, but I made it fine. The hard work had been done in the coffee shop, on the plane, and in Aunt Bee's home office on the computer.

I shared a little of who Mama B was, read some of her favorite scriptures, and addressed each of us as a family. I felt it important to give us all permission to grieve. I'm convinced we have Egyptian blood in us because we're all experts on denial (de-Nile, get it?) and I wanted to address that. Also, Mama B was not perfect. She said and did things that hurt us and we said and did things that hurt her and I wanted to acknowledge that. I closed with one of her favorite poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, and the hospice chaplain prayed.

Later, we went to find her grave, which I almost wish we hadn't. The cemetery had done maybe twenty funerals that day, all in one section, with no sod, no marker, nothing but red dirt. Place, though, is important to me, and I've seen the grave, I know where it is, and if I never make it there again I have no regrets.

There is an interesting angle to this story concerning Mrs. DePaul (my mother; Mama B's daughter) but I'll save that for another time.

Godspeed, Mama Bennett. I'll see you again.

Let's try this again

2006-09-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

It's been a long, hot, dry summer in Birmingham. No hotter here than anywhere else, and really, no hotter than it is normally between June and September. As for dry, the media and the Water Works kept talking about the "drought", but the meteorologists kept reminding us that we were in what our agrarian fathers called a dry spell. As my last post date will attest, the dry spell affected my blogosphere as well as my biosphere. Let me try to catch you up.

***

Both kids had birthdays. Lovett turned 14 and had a music-themed birthday party, dragging his drum kit into the living room and jamming with some of his friends over cheeseburgers. I bought him a DVD of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, and he now quotes whole scenes of dialogue and lapses unexpectedly into an annoying scouser accent. Dora turned 6 and had a Little House on the Prairie-themed birthday party. Zelda built a makeshift covered wagon in the backyard, and a few of Dora's hardier friends slept around it in tents. When Dora insisted that I, as Pa, sleep with them, I pointed to my brick-encased bedroom and said, "That's my little house on the prairie," though I did build and tend the fire until midnight.

***

I am vicariously enjoying America's return to regular space missions through the eyes of my kids. I was a space fiend as a child, and both Lovett and Dora have a keen interest. We regularly go outside for the space station fly-overs (find the next one for your location here), and we are faithful viewers of NASA TV. I've stayed up late every night of the STS-115 mission in a valiant attempt to reclaim some of my childhood enthusiasm for the space program. Man, if Al Gore had just invented the internet twenty years earlier...

***

Lovett is back in public school for the first time in two years. He is in the eighth grade. It has been a challenge so far. I love the kid - he's smart, witty, creative, etc., but I gotta say that math is a foreign language to him. Often I've told him over a set of math problems to hire somebody to balance his checkbook and never, under any circumstances, try to design a bridge. I told him he could draw a bridge, write a poem about a bridge, sing a song about a bridge, but leave the bridge implementation to those pointy-headed kids in his class who actually understand the simplification of fractions. We'll all be safer.

***

I talked to my mother one day last week. First time since Dora's birthday last year (please look in archives for related posts if you're curious. I'm too lazy, or don't have the heart, to post links). Here is the transcript of the call:
Chris: Sticky Widgets, this is Chris.
Mrs. DePaul: Hey.
C: Hey.
MD: Listen, we need to know what to get Dora for her birthday.
C: Uhhmmm...
MD: Well, just think about it. We're on our way out of town so just leave a message on our answering machine. You know we use that as our caller id so if you don't say anything we don't know it's you. I don't get up until 2 or 2:30, so just leave a message.
C: OK, I'll think about it.
MD: Just leave a message. Ok, bye. (Click)

***

I'm on a spiritual journey of sorts. I've taken the month of September as a sabbatical from church. It had gotten so that my entire "Christian" identity was tied up in the institution, and I need to get away from that. I normally feel incredible guilt if I'm not "doing" something, but it never seemed to bother me when I wasn't "being," if that makes any sense. I don't know how long this will take but I've promised myself to be patient with me and I'm trusting that the Father will be too. "Being" before "doing." Relationship before ritual. Hunger instead of duty.

***

Well, I think you're caught up. If I think of anything else I'll post it. Here's to blogger regularity.

Birmingham or Bombay?

2006-06-28T21:07:00.000-05:00

The DePauls aren't your typical suburban family as far as running around goes, but we do our fair share. Zelda leads a small group on Monday night, I led (past-tense, more in a bit) one on Tuesday, Lovett has drum lessons on Wednesday, and Zelda's writing team meets on Thursday. Lately the schedule has improved as obligations are met and fall by the wayside. We've tried to be selective about how we replace time commitments that have freed up. I've enjoyed the change in schedule.

So it surprised me when Zelda added a yoga class a few weeks ago.

Her friend Mae teaches the class. It didn't really affect me at first because it meets on Tuesday, same as my small group. Zelda made arrangements for the kids and went her way and I went mine. I could tell that she enjoyed herself but my experience with yoga (read: none) left me without a clue as to what she enjoyed about it other than she started breathing funny before getting out of bed in the morning.

She was excited when my small group drew to a close because she wanted me to join her for yoga. I thought, What the heck? as we usually encourage our kids to try different things. The class starts at 5:30 and it's a stretch to get there on time from where we are (stretch, get it? Man, I kill me...) so Zelda picked me up at my office. Traffic was horrible and we were running late, but Mae called and said she was running late, too, so I relaxed a bit. Big mistake.

We arrived at the dance studio and I strolled leisurely into the restroom to change from my baggy old man chinos and yellow polo shirt into my baggy old man shorts and a yellow mission trip t-shirt. Wash my face, check the hair, perform the miracle of turning Diet Mountain Dew into water, and man, I'm ready to yoga.

Zelda met me in the hallway. "Will you come on, they've already started!"

What? Started? I thought Mae was late. Well, apparently not. But we were. Which meant that I, Chris DePaul, yoga-novice squared, was banished to the front row empty mat, nearly in the center of the room.

I was not happy. Zelda took to her mat and began funny breathing with the rest of the class. A smooth jazz soundtrack wafted at a much lower jazz-worthy volume than I'm accustomed. Mae was slinking around whispering instructions. In Latin. I had no one to look at, since everyone was behind me, and I could faintly hear the whine of dork meters alarming throughout the over-the-mountain suburbs at my yoga futility.

I was uncomfortable, I must say, in not knowing the lingo, or the positions, or the motions, being late, out front, etc., etc.

Mae: Now take a deep breath in through the nose down from your xyphoid glottus and let it out slowly through the nose, compressing your maximus platypus into your occipital flywheel and touching your lateral rhomboid to your left shoulder.

Chris: Uh, is there somewhere I could put my keys? Did they disinfect this mat after the last occipital flywheel was compressed on it? Aw, man, I think my maximus platypus is going to sleep. Has anyone ever died of mortification during a yoga class?

Then I saw my way out. Mae brought her baby to class and the little doll was beginning to fuss. As I tried to figure out how to keep the blood flowing through my legs while sitting on my keys, I visualized myself scooping baby up and rescuing us both to the higher ground of the hallway, away from the raging torrent of exhaling xyphoid glotti. A perfect plan. Probably some resistance from Mae, but if I picked my opening correctly I could be halfway to the door before she knew what hit her, my lateral rhomboid aglow with new flowing blood.

Then my conscience got the best of me. Sure, I could quit, but I'd let Zelda down, and Mae, and for all I know all the other nose-breathing mat monkeys. But most of all, I'd let myself down. Avoidance has been a coping mechanism of mine for a long, long time. I come from a long line of avoiders, almost professionals, certainly with the consistency and passion of a calling. I briefly thought of that and remembered how hard I've tried in the recent past to break some of those old habits and chains. About the time I convinced myself to stay, Zelda poked me and whispered, Watch Mae. Mae had laid baby down and was now showing us the moves she wanted us to make. Having someone to look at helped me catch on to what was happening. Nothing was beyond my ability to handle, stretch-wise, and before I knew it time was up and the mat monkeys were rolling up their mats (alas, without disinfectant. I guess that answers that.).

Zelda, Mae and baby, and I crossed over the mountain to our favorite Indian restaurant. I ordered some Lamb Jalferizi that was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Set my maximus platypus on fire.

Ah, that's a language I understand.

"Be still, son!"

2006-05-06T23:04:00.000-05:00

Lovett and I went to the Regions Charity Classic golf tournament at Ross Bridge Resort today.

Neither of us know that much about golf. My company is one of the sponsors and we get free tickets every year and I hate to waste free tickets.

Formerly, the tournament was the Bruno's Memorial Classic at Greystone Golf and Country Club, an intimate course with people's backyards bordering the cart path. The Ross Bridge course is huge. I used to like walking the entire Greystone course, but I gave up at Ross Bridge. Maybe I'm getting old or something.

A couple of funny things happened to us. First, we were standing in the shade to the left of the fifteenth fairway. It was a perfect spot. Picture a long, thin pond across the fairway, the fifteenth hole a couple of hundred yards to the right, the fifteenth tee a couple of hundred yards to the left on the side of a high hill. Across the thin pond to the right is the fourteenth tee, and to the left the fourteenth hole. A good to-fer, something that wasn't possible at Greystone.

We watched a couple of threesomes play the two holes. Then up steps Mike Sullivan, who whacks his tee shot, which not surprisingly, I lost. I commented to Lovett, "I hope that thing doesn't come up here." As soon as I stopped talking I heard a whistle over my head and a plop in the woods behind me. We turned and not twenty feet behind us lay the ball on the other side of the cart path. Sullivan hit another tee shot but when he saw that the ball wasn't very far in the woods he played it. (Apparently you can do this. Not knowing golf I'm not sure about the rule. He bogeyed the hole, I know that.)

Then, we walked around to thirteen and arrived as a threesome was on the green. Thirteen's hole is high above the cart path. From the path I could see the golfers only from the waist up. As the marshal signaled for silence, I stopped in the path, but Lovett kept walking up the slope towards the ropes. It was too late for me to stop him. Jim Dent was addressing the ball ("Hello, ball!") when suddenly he stood upright. He's 6'3'', so when he stands up, you notice. The three caddies turn to Lovett and yell, "Be still, son!" Lovett stopped dead in his tracks, Dent bent back over the ball, missed the putt, and then knocked it in.

We got some pretty good mileage out of that one, believe me. It was "be still, son" this and "be still, son" that the rest of the day. Lovett's attitude was, "It's just a game, what's the big deal?" until I kidded him that he probably cost Jim Dent $100,000. Then, I looked at the scorecard after we got home and saw that Dent is tied for 38th and that he birdied the hole. So Lovett only cost him an eagle. Is that bad?

We walked around some more and one of the marshals heading off duty handed Lovett the "quiet paddle" that he raises to quiet the crowd. Except here in Alabama the paddles say "Hush Y'all" (isn't that cute?). Lovett raised it high the rest of the afternoon, anytime he suspected that someone was about to break a rule. Funny man (the man in the picture is not Lovett, though he may be funny, too).

Last night, Lovett and I were eating a late supper at Krystal when somehow the discussion got around to CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and which one introduced the other to Christianity and how Lewis loved allegory but Tolkien didn't and how they read their work to one another. This has nothing to do with golf but I just wonder how many men were privileged to have a conversation like that with their thirteen-year-old sons last night?

United 93

2006-05-04T11:46:00.000-05:00

Last night I had some time to myself so I decided to go to a movie. Regular readers (if I have any left due to my sporadic postings) know that I don't go to many movies and that I don't go to any just to be going. So I intentionally wanted to see United 93. I don't recall that I knew they were even filming it. I became aware of it when it was released and I read about the controversy it generated. Too soon after 9/11? Trivializing a tragic event? Exploitative of the victims and their families?

From the very beginning it was apparent that this was no ordinary movie.

The director, Paul Greengrass, had his work cut out for him. The story is familiar. The outcome is known and it is not a happy ending. And I believe he handled it magnificently. He didn't have to try very hard to get the audience emotionally involved. To the contrary, his main job was not to patronize us with maudlin sentimentality and false drama. And so he presented the story with just the facts. No opening credits. No intrusive soundtrack. Fade in to terrorists praying in their hotel rooms. Cut to airport arrivals. Rudimentary security checkpoints. Gates. Op Centers. ATC towers. Boston ATC loses contact with a plane. Controller thinks he heard hijacker's voice but he can't be sure. Smoke from the World Trade Center. Small private plane? Contact lost with another plane. Where is the military? Where is the president? Can we engage these hijacked planes?

What he successfully did was take me back to that day. The disbelief. The confusion. The shock. Is this really happening? Another plane has hit the towers? The Pentagon? Does anybody know what the hell is going on? I became emotional as the reality of those events unfolded. The gaping hole in the first tower. The Newark controllers watching the second plane hit. The CNN camera showing the smoke from the Pentagon from a camera somewhere near the Old Executive building near the White House.

He made me remember.

And it hurt. I've never been so ready for a film to be over. To walk out into the fresh air. To see the stars. To hear my kids slam doors. To have someone cut me off on the highway. To be distracted by life again. To forget. But I can't.

The banter of the flight crew and passengers about anniversaries they weren't going to celebrate, restaurants they would never visit, e-mails they would never read, trails they would never hike. The phone calls home. Trying to reach family. Someone. Anyone. Just pray. I love you. Goodbye. The most sobering scene? Closeup of a passenger breathing the Lord's prayer. Cut to a second passenger breathing the Lord's prayer. Cut to a third passenger breathing the Lord's prayer. Cut to the terrorist in the cockpit, flying the plane. Breathing a prayer. Oh, my.

That, my friends, is my definition of art.

Random observations from this latest cinematic experience:

There were no big name actors in this movie. The only person I recognized was the weird old lady who worked the ticket booth on Wings (Fay, maybe?) and had buried several husbands who had all died mysteriously. I think she had one line in this movie.
Some of the acting was a little stilted, I thought at the time, and then when the closing credits ran I saw why. Several people in the film played themselves. Air Traffic Controllers, National Ops Center people (including the guy who decided to shut down all the US air space), military people, etc. I thought that was incredible. I hope it was cathartic for them.
$3.65 for a small popcorn? I don't think so.
I'm not ready for the digital revolution or the reality-based herky-jerky camera shots. This movie, technically speaking, was a 111 minute IMAX movie, and IMAX movies make me want to hurl. I'm still dizzy as I type this.
Coming attractions, thumbs-down: Do we really need remakes of Poseidon Adventure and The Omen? Come on, give us something original.
Coming attractions, thumbs-up: Coming soon, Sean Penn, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslett, and some other people I'm not familiar with, in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Saturday Musings

2006-03-25T23:32:00.000-06:00

Browsing through a book in the New Books section of the library today, I found a folded twenty dollar bill and a check for $578. Fortunately the check was endorsed "For Deposit Only." Who uses a twenty dollar bill and a $578 check as a bookmark? Or a library book as a hiding place for valuables?
I checked out One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (yes, I'm a little behind on my reading). Check out the opening sentence: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Now that's an opening sentence.
I took Lovett (and Marquez) to the skateboard park this afternoon. Watching Lovett try to do an Ollie brought back frustrating reminders of him trying to learn to ride a bike. After we got home, in the back yard, he did one. I don't know who was more happy/relieved, him or me.
Dora had two little girlfriends over for the day. They spent most of the day in the woods behind the house. And in the creek. That's my baby girl.
Buck Owens died today. He was 76, and predictably his obituaries led off with his stint as co-host of Hee-Haw. But Buck had a pretty impressive career before that. His Live at Carnegie Hall album is in my CD collection. His harmonies with Don Rich are hauntingly tight. Don died in a motorcycle accident in 1974. I remember it well.
I finished Bob Spitz's biography of the Beatles this week and I realized how illiterate I am about their music (can literacy be applied to music?). I was still into Sesame Street when the Beatles broke up, so most of my familiarity with them is the yeah, yeah, yeah stuff. So I polled a couple of co-workers who are a decade older than me about their favorite Beatles albums. One chose Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, while the other chose The Beatles (The White Album) and Sgt. Pepper. So I ordered Sgt. Pepper and Revolver. Apparently, I'm behind on my music too.

The DePauls go looking for some culture

2006-03-15T22:29:00.000-06:00

Birmingham gets a bad rap as a cultural backwater, mostly from yahoos that consider guys in tight pants and helmets running into each other as high art.

The DePauls, of course, know otherwise. Because of the medical and technological communities, this is as diverse a city as you'd ever want. We have partaken in some interesting cultural events in the past few days.

Sunday was my birthday and we went to Dreamland for lunch. Highlights from lunch: watching Lovett actually eat two ribs (see, Doug, I'm getting there!), and watching Dora's face as she phonetically sounded out the "No Farting" neon sign that hangs above the grill.

After lunch we went to see two special exhibits at the Birmingham Museum of Art: French Drawings and Ethiopian Paintings. They were extraordinary, however, we were more intrigued by a fabric panel exhibit called Through the Eye of the Needle: the Fabric Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz. Mrs. Krinitz was a Polish Jew who eluded the Nazis and later told her story through a series of 36 fabric panels that defy description. This was absolutely one of the most touching exhibits I've ever seen. You can scroll through images of these panels here, but it is like watching Gone with the Wind on a video iPod. It doesn't do them justice, but unless a trip to the 'Ham is in your future, they will have to do. Below is No. 7 The Nazis Arrive.

Tonight, we celebrated the Hindu Festival of Colors, Holi, at a local Indian restaurant called Taj India. Our reservation was at 7, and upon entering the crowded dining room our faces were splotched with colored powder. We ate from an interesting buffet. There were cauliflower pieces in some sort of batter that was tasty. Then there were disks of mashed potatoes mixed with spinach that I could have made a spectacle of myself over. There was a lemon saffron rice that was good, a couple of spicy chicken dishes, and a lamb dish that I liked.

Additionally, they offered complementary glasses of wine. The DePauls aren't imbibers by habit, but what the hay, it was free.

One word: Yuck.

It looked like white wine, but it tasted like Vick's Cough Syrup. Zelda thinks I'm nuts, and I tried several times to like it, but the more I sipped the more screwed up my face became, and with the splotches of purple powder all over it I'm sure I looked like a raisin in the making.

Before the weekend, I'd never heard of Holi, but I'm glad now I have. We'll look for it next year, and it makes me want to keep eyes and ears open for similar festivals within other cultures in town.

Wine-free, of course.

Ch.ch.changes

2006-03-14T22:32:00.000-06:00

I am currently celebrating/mourning a huge shift in the "pour yourself into other people and have them do the same to you" portion of my life.

Though I feel a tremendous freedom and relief, it is sad at the same time. Grief, I believe they call it.

One by-product of this freedom, however, is that my creative juices are beginning to flow again. I'm excited about that. I'm interested to see where that carries me now that I have time to work with it without feeling guilty about spending time on something not apart of my "calling." I have more Maddie to come, a lot more, and I have two characters that are candidates for Ficcion, one of which is the most provocative I've ever dealt with.

Funny thing about freedom. Right after mine became quantifiable, no less than three doors popped open, three doors that have been closed for a long time. It was almost as though they were taunting me, seducing me, sirens trying to rob me of my new-found serenity. But I didn't bite. For once in my life I set a boundary and stuck to it. I refuse to settle for busyness, just for the sake of busyness. The only interruption I will accept is from my muse.

Speak to me, thy fleeting fancy. Whisper thy gifts in my ear. Blow the winds of inspiration through my hair. Sprinkle me with thy magic dust.

It is appointed unto man...

2006-03-02T21:00:00.000-06:00

I'm not a creature of habit but I do have three weekday morning rituals: popping the top on a Diet Mountain Dew, checking e-mail, and surfing the obituary section of my hometown newspaper, looking for dearly departed old family friends.

Yesterday I saw the name of a former classmate's brother, two years younger than me. Killed in an automobile accident. Left a wife and two small children.

Sigh.

The rest of the day I was in a zone of nostalgia. I caught myself thinking of people I haven't seen or thought of in years. Mysteriously, sympathetically (morbidly?) I vicariously put myself into the family's schedule of arrangements and visitations, trying to whisper prayers for them each step of the way. It was exhausting and depressing.

I was awakened this morning around 1:30 a.m. I began to pray for them again, and when finished, I could tell I was not about to drift off to sleep any time soon. The mood was too heavy. So I got up, climbed the stairs to the attic, and searched for the box that contains my high school yearbooks.

I haven't looked for or at those things in years. I squatted down beneath the rafters, leaning against the vent pipe of the water heater, and I stared at my past until the arches in my feet began to burn and my eyes began to water in the glare of the bare bulb and the blizzard of sheetrock dust and insulation. When physically I could stand no more, I toted the four heavy volumes back to the bedroom, and for the next hour and a half continued to flip the yellowing pages. About 3:30 a.m., I forced myself to try to sleep, and I must have, for mere minutes later the alarm went off.

At the office, I settled in with my Dew and e-mail and then linked over to the obits.

Would you believe the first name on the page was of a former cheerleader, two years ahead of me, whose pictures I had seen in my freshman and sophomore annuals less than five hours previous? Forty-two years old. Two children.

Oy.

Tomorrow, I think I'll try a Dr. Pepper. Ignore the e-mail until lunchtime.

And skip the obits all together.

Giant, postscript

2006-02-12T22:32:00.000-06:00

I made it to the end.

To her credit, Miss Ferber toned down the snootiness, though pockets remained throughout. She also had an annoying practice of sentence fragments and an odd use of descriptive lists: The table was laden with containers of mustard ketchup salt pepper sugar creamer. Odd, I thought.

I enjoyed the story, though, and her historical asides. Still, though it pains me to say, the movie version is a better story, and it tells it better.

But now I know.

Giant, indeed

2006-02-06T17:52:00.000-06:00

In the latest installment of Maddie's Dress, Maddie talks Gary into ditching their planned date to the fair in favor of the movie Giant at the drive-in.

Giant is a sweeping epic by film director George Stevens. It stars, among others, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Dennis Hopper, Mercedes McCambridge, Earl Holliman, Chill Wills, Jane Withers, Sal Mineo, and a bunch of cattle. Er, herd of cattle.

The movie was released in 1956, way before my time, but I was first exposed to it as a youngster on Superstation WTBS from Atlanta. Officially, it is 201 minutes long, but it lasts about four and a half hours on TV. It is quite a spectacle. I'd love to see it on the big screen.

I've known for some time that Gary and Maddie would not make it to the fair, but I didn't know what would distract them until the drive-in idea came to me in an unexpected fly-by from my muse. It made perfect sense to me that the changes in Leslie Benedict's world would trigger the desire to escape in Maddie. It is your call as to whether the idea was contrived or hokey. It worked for me, though.

Mr. and Mrs. DePaul introduced me to the movie, though I don't know the story of their attachment to it. Mrs. DePaul had a copy of the novel Giant, by Edna Ferber, that she stored, of all places, on the top shelf of a monstrous bookshelf/toybox contraption Papa Bennett had built in the room I eventually shared with my younger brother. I remember staring at it at night before going to sleep, though I don't remember one time ever picking it up.

I came across a copy at the library Saturday, and I checked it out.

Oh, my.

The book came out in 1952 (again, way before my time), though the prose germinated a generation before that, at least. Read this, the opening paragraph of chapter 2:

Though they had been only an hour on the road the thought of this verdant haven tormented Mrs. Mott Snyth as she and her husband tore with cycloramic speed past miles and miles of Reata fence and field and range. The highway poured into the maw of the big car, the torrid wind seared the purpling face of Vashti Snyth and --now that he had removed his big cream Stetson-- tossed the little white curls that so incongruously crowned the unlined and seemingly guileless face of Pinky, her husband. Vashti Snyth's vast busom heaved, her hands fluttered with the vague almost infantile gestures of the hypothyroid.

Huh?

It'll be a miracle if I make it all the way through this. I'm unused to writing like this. Which brings up some questions:

What happened to writing of this sort and the likes of Taylor Caldwell, Ayn Rand, etc.?
Did TV kill it, or movies? These ladies were contemporaries of Hemingway, for instance, and he didn't write this way.
Or, is writing of this sort still produced, but my "infantile" attention span has steered me away from it?
Is it as hard on the "ear" to others as it is to mine? I realize Miss Ferber was a prolific author, not to mention a Pulitzer prize winner, and I am a modest, untrained blogger, but come on.
What makes good writing today, as this was considered in its day, and where on that spectrum do my amateur efforts lie?

Unless the remaining chapters prove otherwise, Giant will join The Godfather and Forrest Gump on the DePaul list of movies that are better than the books that inspired them.

Lovett DePaul, Working Man

2006-01-31T16:24:00.000-06:00

My perusal of Saturday morning's newspaper was interrupted by the telephone answering machine broadcasting BF's plea for temporary help.

BF is an acquaintance of mine: mid-fifties, never married, and, in the year I've known him, down on his luck, due to a few poor choices. But for the grace of God...

BF runs a "business" from the back of his pickup truck, waterproofing foundations for houses under construction. He gets jobs word-of-mouth, and last weekend he had a doozy: two solid concrete foundations, side-by-side, a pretty tight deadline, and a helper that couldn't make it.

(Construction Aside: Apparently, solid concrete foundations are more deadline intensive than concrete block foundations because the excavator can backfill them immediately, whereas concrete block foundations cannot be backfilled until the walls and roofs are in place or else the walls will collapse. The waterproofer can take his time with them. I've now told you more than I know about the "construction bidness". )

BF wondered if Lovett would be interested in pushing a paint roller for a couple of hours, and I wondered the same thing as I walked to his room to ask him, my houseshoes clicking across the hardwood in rhythm with the clacking X-box controller in Lovett's hands.

But he was interested. I got him to call BF for details and directions to the job site, and I dropped him off a few minutes later with instructions for BF to keep an eye on him.

I must say I had mixed feelings as I drove away. Lovett had already made me proud by taking down perfect driving directions to the site. This was no small feat, given that I've instructed him on how to take out the trash twice a week for the past 187 weeks. But it struck me halfway home that this wasn't some piddly little chore around the house. This was A Job. A.Real.World.Job. An if-an-OSHA-inspector-appears-then-someone-could-go-to-jail job. As I tried to pray for Lovett, I was both excited and frightened for him. Excited, because of the "rite of passage" freedom that is tasted once someone starts earning his own way, a freedom I hope Lovett becomes addicted to. Frightened, because I've been in The.Real.World. long enough to know what a shock it can be to someone as privileged as Lovett. He goes to the pantry when he's hungry and he gets something to eat. He flips a switch and a light comes on. Every time. He turns a faucet and water comes out. Every time. I'm not sure he knows that two-thirds of the world lives on less money than the cost of the electricity to power his X-box and TV. That they work hard and still can't get ahead. Like BF, who not only operates from his truck, but sometimes also sleeps there.

It also frightened me because Lovett was venturing out from under my world view. Is he ready for that? Have I prepared him enough to handle the things the world will throw at him? Have I let my obsessions that he flip a light switch off once in a while and that he put empty food wrappers in the trash can instead of on the kitchen counter and that he wash the woefully overpriced blue jeans he bought with his Christmas money at [trendy with the hip kids boutique] at least once every twelve times he wears them get in the way of preparing him for reality? It didn't help much when I got home and told Zelda where Lovett was and she asked me what I had sent him for lunch. Lunch?

So I busied myself about the house, washing the windows and puttering in the garage, expecting Lovett to give it a couple of hours and call me to come get him. By four-thirty, I began to wonder about him, so I drove over to the site. There he was, rolling away. I could tell they'd made great progress that day. BF thanked him for his hard work and paid him. Then BF began to make statements like "I don't hold grudges," and "I've already forgotten about it," and "it takes time to learn these things."

On the way home, I asked Lovett about BF's parting discussion:

C: What was that about?

L: BF is a little grumpy.

C: Grumpy? What was he grumpy about?

L: He said I was too slow.

C (feigning surprise): Slow? Really? What else?

L: And that I wasted waterproofing stuff.

C (masking shock): Really? What does BF do when he gets grumpy?

L: He yells.

C: He yelled at you?

L: Yeah.

C: How did that make you feel?

L: I was like, whatever. I tried not to get mad.

C: But you kept going?

L: Yeah.

For the rest of the evening, Lovett said things like, "I'm not trying to talk about BF, but..." as he expounded on another life lesson learned on the job site. The most substantial? At lunch Sunday:

L: I don't mean to talk bad about BF...

C: ...but...

L: ...but he doesn't think much of Mexicans.

C (recalling his own subjections to BF's Latino-disparaging comments): What gave you that idea?

L: He was always fussing about how they poured the foundation. Not very nice.

C: What did you think when he said things like that?

L: Made me angry.

C: Did it shock you that someone would talk like that?

L: Yeah.

Let me tell you, I felt validated as a parent. Zelda and I grew up among some of the most bigoted people imaginable, and rather than dismissing them with a flippant "well, that's just the times they came from," we've worked hard to eradicate those thoughts, feelings, and words from our home. It hasn't been easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

I was so proud of Lovett that after lunch I drove him to [trendy with the hip kids boutique] and let him blow most of his pay. I didn't even give him the requisite DePaul lecture about the value of money and how it is a lot easier to spend when someone else earns it and, my personal favorite, wait until you have a full-time job and have to work every day.

I just let him enjoy the fruit of his labor, and I enjoyed mine.

Chapter Six of Maddie's Dress...

2006-01-23T21:16:00.000-06:00

... is finally available. Enjoy.

Confessions, indeed

2006-01-19T22:49:00.000-06:00

I've been on somewhat of a sabbatical. Not from writing, just posting. For the past month I've diligently plodded along in the next chapter of Maddie's Dress. I'm much later posting the chapter than I'd planned, but life and art have collided, and the result is something I didn't expect.

If you've been with me for a while, you're aware of accounts I've posted of a perplexingly painful rift in my extended family (if not, read this and then this). Well, a week before Christmas, it got uglier. All the silence and avoidance Mrs. DePaul was giving us due to Zelda's letter came spilling out in a rage at Zelda, unfortunately witnessed by Lovett and Dora. The next day, Mr. DePaul let me have it over the phone. According to him, I'm a liar, my principles are based on futile ignorance, I'm too open with my children, and I put myself in the middle of this mess, so if I'm hurt over it, I have no one to blame but myself.

According to me, Mr. DePaul is a bitter, angry old man. So there.

What's this have to do with Maddie, you ask? Well, Maddie, Gary, and the rest of the Perkins are composites of several people I've known, some more than others, if you get my meaning. Given the current state of relational affairs, Maddie has taken an unexpected turn. Her story is a little harsher than when I started it. I have mixed feelings about that. But I am working hard, for anyone who cares. I have 2500 words in the new chapter, and I have at least 1000 more. So be patient, please. Good art doesn't come cheaply.

Edgar Nim's Checklist for Phoning the Wife

2005-12-14T22:02:00.000-06:00

Call a couple of buddies to gossip about wife
Hang up when good and worked up
Switch to Eeyore voice
Practice Eeyore voice on wife's receptionist
Talk low and all serious-like
Never laugh - remember that you're not talking to the "buds"
Get defensive at the first sign of trouble
Play the "you never understand me" card
Cut wife off in mid-sentence by loudly slamming phone
Curse under breath
Hang up on wife's return phone call
Ignore subsequent phone calls
Turn down phone ringer
Huff out of office
Take 2.5 hour lunch

Mr. Edgar Nim

2005-12-07T22:09:00.000-06:00

My close neighbor at the cubicle farm is a man I'll refer to as Edgar Nim.

Technically, we are not on the same team. Our paths have crossed at the whim of a corporate office manager. If I ever find that office manager, well, he/she just better watch out.

Mr. Nim is, to put it kindly, a piece of work. I coined the surname Nim from an acrostic that best describes him - No Internal Monologue. Every vapid thought that breezes through his pea brain passes through his lips at a volume two orders of magnitude louder than the rest of us Internal Monologuists.

He comes in early and leaves early (mercifully). He spends most of his time on the phone. He has three "friends" that he plays against one another for attention. Every mundane occurance in his life is extolled thrice - sick dogs, leaky roofs, overdrawn checking accounts, fights with the wife. He is Willard Scott, Dr. Phil, Dave Ramsey, Tim Russert, and Al Michaels rolled into one. He is an expert at everyone's job but his. Have one or two teammates of his out of the office, and his clients are out of luck. But have a cold front approach and he can read the radar better than the local meteorologists.

He lives in a run down (to hear him tell it) shack on some property his father-in-law divided up. We know all his wife's siblings names, and their kids, and which ones are sorry and which ones are tolerable. We know the extra-curricular activities of his children, and how he resents having to support them. We hear him get out of lunch dates with his wife by telling her how swamped he is and then he immediately dials one of his buddies to make plans for lunch with them. We hear him talk about one buddy to another, then turn around and call the other buddy to talk about the first. Today, I swear I thought I heard my seventh grade homeroom teacher calling roll.

Every little thing about Mr. Nim infuriates me. I can't even make eye contact with him in the hallway. He is human fingernails on my chalkboard. He is a grain of sand in my oyster. He is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He drives me insane. He gets on my last nerve.

Hence his assigned first name - Edgar.

Edgar is one of those people that Rick Warren refers to in Purpose Driven Life as EGR people. Extra Grace Required. You have them in your life, I'm sure. People who stand a little too close when they talk to you. Or they tell you the same stories and relate the same problems and ailments every time you see them. Or they are habitually late. Or loud. Or they are undependable. Critical. Needy. Annoying. Dishonest. Two-faced. Loud.

Mr. Nim is my thorn in the flesh, a constant reminder that grace is not just for the lovely (for who among us is truly lovely?). It is a hard truth that I face five days a week, nine to four-thirty.

I wonder who considers me their Edgar?

Walk the Line

2005-11-26T19:58:00.000-06:00

I'm not a big moviegoer, but I've been to two movies in the last two weeks. Last Saturday I took Dora to see Chicken Little while Lovett saw the new Harry Potter movie. Today, Zelda, Lovett, and I saw Walk the Line while Dora was painting a ceramic unicorn at a birthday party.

It was a pretty good movie. I'm not a big Reese Witherspoon fan, but she is cuter than June Carter was, so that helped. I have never seen Joaquin Phoenix in anything, but sometimes he was dead-on J.R. Cash. Shelby Lynne was good as J.R.'s mama. With her beehive 60's hairdo and eyeglasses she could have passed for Lurleen Wallace.

A couple of observations struck me during the movie, though:

Is there a requirement that musician's biopics include a scene of the subject making a phone call from backstage during a show?
And that they pass out on stage?
And that they receive a dressing-room visit from the voluptuous young woman in the front row from the previous scene?
And that the memory of a dead relative haunts them?

Flashbacks from my past include:

Hearing the song Jackson. That song is one of the first musical memories I have. The phrase hotter than a pepper sprout doesn't escape your psyche easily.
J.R. quotes Foghorn Leghorn in two scenes - Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered for just such an emergency. It used to crack me up when I heard F.L. say that.
The movie ended before J.R. and June got married, which preceded Cash's television show, one of my first TV memories. The Statler Brothers got their big break on Cash's show. Mr. and Mrs. DePaul were big Statler Brothers fans. They wrote a song about their experience entitled We Got Paid by Cash. On a trip home from Indianapolis in the summer of '75, several Statler Brothers albums that she hadn't seen in Alabama rode home in my mother's lap.
Mama Bennett's father fell in a pile of burning leaves once, when he was in his seventies. He crawled back to the house and smeared a jar of Bama mayonnaise on his legs to soothe the burns. I never hear Ring of Fire without thinking of that. This incident may rear its head again in a future Ficcion piece. I'm just saying...

A lot of suggested adultery, drinking, and drug use (well, duh) was in the movie, but suprisingly (and thankfully), with the exception of one f-bomb and one passing reference to Elvis's preoccupation with female ..., er, ...parts, the language didn't burn my ears. But the music rocked.

This movie wins the Eggplant seal of approval, for what it's worth.

Requiem for a Rat Snake

2005-11-22T21:32:00.000-06:00

Remember the rat snake I mentioned when I wrote about Dora's birthday?

Well, it died. Rather, she died. I saw the article in Saturday's paper, including a picture of a young man I immediately recognized as the emcee of the hands-on portion of the party. I was torn between showing the picture to Dora and having to explain why it was in the paper or just tossing it aside without mentioning it to her. I decided to show her, and though she was sad, she took it very well.

The article stated that a funeral service for the snake would be held at Ruffner Mountain Nature Center on Monday. Monday was cold and rainy but Zelda decided to take the kids anyway. There was a small crowd there, mostly RMNC staff, but the local media was well represented. My kids became the media darlings of the funeral. A newspaper article in today's paper quoted Lovett and pictured Dora, while Lovett was featured in a TV report this evening. Dora took a ceramic angel that she dropped in the grave. Lovett shared how he had enjoyed seeing the snake at his seventh birthday party and how she had helped him avoid a fear of snakes (something he obviously didn't get from his father).

Dora and Lovett, celebrities. And they owe their fame to a fifteen-year-old dead rat snake.

RIP, Lady Gray.

A poem, read at the funeral:

The Snake
Richard Edwards

I hate the snake
I hate the snake
I hate the way it trails and writhes
And slithers on its belly in the dirty dirt and creeps
I hate the snake
I hate its beady eye that never sleeps.

I love the snake
I love the snake
I love the way it pours and glides
And esses through the desert and loops necklaces on trees
I love the snake
Its zigs and zags, its ins and outs, its ease.

I hate the snake
I hate the snake
I hate its flickering liquorice tongue
Its hide and sneak, its hissiness, its picnic-wrecking spite
I hate its yawn
Its needle fangs, their glitter and their bite.

I love the snake
I love the snake
I love its coiled elastic names
just listen to them: hamadryad, bandy-bandy,
ladder,
Sidewinder, asp
And moccasin and fer de lance and adder
And cascabel
And copperhead

Green mamba, coachwhip, indigo -
So keep your fluffy kittens and your puppy-dogs,
I'll take
The boomslang and
The anaconda. Oh, I love the snake.

Restroom Etiquette

2005-11-17T10:59:00.000-06:00

An actual line in an e-mail received today from the property owner of my office building:

We ask that Tenants please not use the office building's restrooms to discard food items. As you can imagine, the odors are quite unpleasant for many people.

I'm not making this up.

"It's not your birthday!"

2005-11-14T20:13:00.000-06:00

In planning for Zelda's birthday dinner Saturday afternoon, she codependently considered the children as she weighed her choices.

Lovett, as I've chronicled before, is a notoriously picky eater. Painfully picky. "Why don't you wait in the car while we go in and eat?" picky. Dora is not so picky, she's just opinionated. She knows what she likes and where to get it.

Zelda narrowed it down to three choices:

[local Italian bistro with the patio view of the traffic headache that is Highway 280]
[local seafood restaurant with the kicking catfish tenders]
[internationally-famous local rib joint]

Early polls indicated a preference for [seafood], as Zelda had a craving for coconut shrimp. Lovett was excited by this prospect, since he likes the chicken fingers there, though I tell him they fry them in fish grease.

[Aside: Are chicken fingers a product of poultry genetic engineering or something? When I was a child, chickens didn't have fingers. Or lips, either.]

Dora protested because seafood is on her short-list of won't-eats.

Then Zelda leaned toward [ribs], which got Dora's and my attention. Yeah, a thick slab of juicy ribs with vinegary red sauce, tea sweet enough to give a zombie the shakes, and a pint of banana pudding to top it off (eat your heart out, Doug). Dora's chant of "Ribs, ribs, ribs!" was overshadowed only by barfing sounds from Lovett, who, it pains me deeply to report, "doesn't like bbq." The last time we ate at [ribs], he dodged flying sauce from my fingers while picking the onions out of a pint of potato salad with a spork, no less. Zelda responded to his protests with a hearty "it's not your birthday!" but the gagging didn't stop.

Then Zelda mentioned [Italian], home of the piping garlic rolls and gnarly eggplant (!) parmesan, and the more she thought of Dora protesting seafood and Lovett eating melba toast and Sweet'nLow at [ribs], she decided that [Italian] was the way to go.

Which broke Dora's heart. She lay face down on the ottoman and wailed, "I want to go to [ribs]!" She was inconsolable. "It's not your birthday!" Zelda reasoned, but the wailing only got louder. I felt like crying, too, because I realized that [ribs] was now out of the question. Going to [ribs] after an outburst like that would concede all sorts of parental power to a pugnacious five-year-old, and bad as I could taste that sauce hours later in my goatee, I knew it was not to be.

So we ended up at [Italian]. Zelda had a tasty loaded calzone, I had (what else) eggplant parmesan, Dora had spaghetti and meatballs, and Lovett had a cheese calzone (the Italian counterpart to the cheese quesidillas he orders when we go to [local Mexican dive with the hottest salsa on the planet and tea sweet enough to rival that at [ribs]]).

"I have an idea," said Lovett. "After we're done here, can we go ..."

"It's not your birthday!" said Zelda and I, at the same time, as Dora dropped a fully-loaded 7-Up onto the patio floor.

Zelda's Fortieth

2005-11-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

Zelda turned forty today.

It makes me old to think that I have a forty-year-old wife. And that I was around when she turned twenty. And that we've been together over half our lives. Wow.

I think for her first birthday I got her an add-a-bead necklace. Anyone remember those? Yeah, I don't think she was impressed either.

This year has been tough on both of us, as a couple and individually, so I thought it best to test the waters before acquiesing to the pull-something-over-on-someone crap that is mandatory on birthdays that end in zero. Her response? "Under no circumstances am I to be made the center of attention, anywhere, at any time." Rather vague, no? I abided her wishes through firestorms of protest from some of her well-meaning friends, even though they thought me either a cold-hearted bastard or a walking manifestion of male cluelessness, of which I am neither, I must say. Some people just have to learn things for themselves.

Zelda had a prior obligation for tonight, so we did her celebratory dinner Saturday night at [local Italian bistro with the patio view of the traffic headache that is Highway 280]. Yesterday we gifted her with birthday bounty. Zelda is a writer, too, so I gave her a copy of A Writer's Paris: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul as inspiration for her in-progress manuscript, and a copy of Paul McCartney's new CD, just because I heard an interview about it on Morning Edition a few weeks ago. Dora picked out a necklace and earrings from her and Lovett. I think we did well. The sentiment was there, anyway.

Today, Zelda thwarted an attempt at pushiness from an aforementioned friend whom I'd tried to discourage for two weeks. Said friend couldn't fathom that Zelda wanted nothing more than a picnic lunch with her children on her birthday, so that's what they did, with friend and son in tow. I'm expecting an apology from friend. I'm already practicing my I-tried-to-tell-you.

Zelda didn't receive a birthday card from Mrs. DePaul, unless it was lost in the mail. I kinda doubt it.

Anyway, happy fortieth, Zelda. From Chris, with love.

New Fiction in Ficcion de la Berenjena

2005-11-14T19:13:00.000-06:00

Companion Blogs

2005-11-01T21:47:00.000-06:00

Some of you have visited and commented on my installment fiction blog, Maddie's Dress. Thank you. Maddie is a composite of several influential people in my life, and I've been contemplating her circumstances for some time. The first four chapters were written over the past several years, while chapter five is new material. I know generally where I'm going with her, and I hope I'm timely enough with the material that you don't lose interest.

Last night I created a short fiction blog, Ficcion de la Berenjena. If the free online translation programs didn't let me down, that means roughly "Fiction from the Eggplant." I'll occasionally throw a short fiction item out there that I've tinkered with. My only outlet before blogging was to hand these things to Zelda, but she is hardly an impartial audience. My stuff either makes her laugh or cry, but I have that effect on her in normal, everyday life, so that is a poor gauge of literary merit. Let my anonymity free you for candid appraisals. If you think something I post is crap, tell me. Just tell me why. Too sappy? Improbable? Predictable? Preachy? I can take it, I think.

Your time is precious, and that you spend some of it reading my babblings is a priceless reward. Bless you all.

New look for the Eggplant

2005-10-27T22:27:00.000-05:00

Lovett and I went to [upscale suburban strip mall] tonight after gorging ourselves at [semi-authentic neighborhood Mexican restaurant]. Lovett's plan was to spend his Christmas money from Mama Bennett at [chic teen clothier whose wares look like they should be on yard sale racks in someone's driveway but the price tags suggest they were tailored with thread made from precious metals]. My plan was to try to walk off Combo F (tamale, beef burrito, refried beans), chips, and salsa.

I parked near our final destination, [chain mega-bookseller], so we could walk to [chic teen clothier...] and back. Crossing the parking lot to the sidewalk, Lovett punched me and pointed to the faux-turret of [chain mega-bookseller]. There, hanging twenty feet above the pavement in the cool, fall air, it was.

A Christmas wreath.

Dear readers, I kid you not. A Christmas wreath.

But it gets better. At [overpriced, understocked strip mall garden center whose outdoor implements couldn't withstand the rigors of playground sand], there was a Christmas tree. At [chain soap store where the fumes are so bad they keep the front doors propped open even in winter], the window was filled with Christmas trees and stars and twinkly lights.

Holy crap! I cried. It's not even Halloween yet!

Do we really need two months of any holiday? The only one I would remotely like to celebrate for two months is Thanksgiving, but the thought of that many leftovers takes some of the thrill out of that idea. We come close to celebrating Zelda's birthday that long every year, though this year I suspect the festivities will be markedly curtailed (it's the four-oh, but don't let on like I told you). Did they celebrate the end of WWII for two months?

I'm not ready for this. Usually about mid-November I stock up on toiletries and food supplies so I don't have to venture far from home until January. Right now, I'm unprepared, and I'm this close to blaming Jeb Bush or FEMA or somebody for not anticipating my needs.

The war, the Supreme Court, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, bird flu, oil company profits, indictments at the federal (Rove, Libby) and state (Siegleman, Scrushy) levels, Nick and Jessica's rumored split, Tom Cruise's procreation, Asian tsunamis, Pakistani earthquakes...can't we be a little austere this year?

So, what's that got to do with the new look for the Eggplant?

I just felt like a little redecoration was in order. New wreaths at the mall, new template on the blog. My attempt to feel included. Paying my year-end societal dues. My small sacrifice for aesthetic excellence.

And now I close, for I feel a strong urge to run down to [monolithic discount retailer] to stock up on Valentine cards. Surely they are on display by now.

In the moment

2005-10-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days where I couldn't wait for it to end. Trouble is, I felt that way about it on Thursday. And Wednesday, too.

I got an e-mail Tuesday informing me of a meeting agenda that I had to prepare for. It was to be one of those meetings with twenty people sitting around tables staring at each other, bouncing ideas back and forth. The charge was, "be prepared to share your thoughts on..."

And that's where the problem began. The thought of "sharing my thoughts" with aforethought gave me the hives. Well, not literal, red, splotchy hives, but figurative, internal, churning hives.

Here's a normal scenario: Sitting around the tables, staring, bouncing ideas back and forth, me pondering the conversation. An overwhelming compulsion to interject. Nerves tense, heart pounds out of my chest, voice quivers. Blurt and spew incoherence. Search for a crack in the floor. Find none (darn building codes), wonder if window would break if jumped into, wish I was dead.

That's how I handle it if I have no chance to prepare.

This scenario was different, because I had days to prepare. Rehearse. Practice. Dread. It's the rehearsal that is the problem. I run one possible scenario after another through my mind, trying to formulate responses accordingly. Most of which turn out to be wrong. Hence my trepidation over poor responses.

It's like this: I have a part in Hamlet, and I have rehearsed my lines. I know them cold. Backwards and forwards. Pacing in the wings, I await my cue. The lights come up, I hit my mark, I begin to speak, and then I realize that the play I'm in is Macbeth.

It's that bad. And that was the source of my anxiety, Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday night I tried to get away from it all. Zelda, Lovett, and Dora went camping, so I had a night to myself. I loaded up my clipboard and trudged to [local chain mega-bookseller with in-store chain coffee shop] to work on the next Maddie's Dress installment. But I couldn't get past the feeling that I was somewhere else.

And thus, I spend a lot of time. Time spent in replay of the past or rehearsal for the future, but rarely in the moment.

I believe it was Col. Sherman T. Potter, 4077 MASH, who said, "If you're not where you're at, you're no place."

Oy.

Wait a minute, Mr. Postman

2005-10-12T19:44:00.000-05:00

The Cliff Clavins and the Newmans of the world would probably protest the parade of packages delivered daily to DePaul pad. Today there were four, piled in the foyer when I got home.

They are from out west. Big boxes, wrapped in butcher paper, alternately addressed by Aunt Bee and Aunt Ess, for Mama Bennett. She continues to give all her stuff away.

Zelda gets clothes. A few are fashion pieces. A few are wire-hangered anachronisms with the price tags still affixed. Most of them make the trek up to the attic (not on their own, of course). It's truly the thought that counts.

Lovett and Dora get knick-knacks from Mama B's travels, either foreign mission trips or domestic yard sales. Ironically, most of the stuff was moved out west by Aunt Ess and Uncle Cee, costing valuable moving-van space, only to be mailed back to Alabama, costing valuable postal-van space. Mama B's postal budget rivals that of Capital One.

Mama B is on a mission to divvy out her trinkets. As if she's running out of time. She told Aunt Ess she asked the Lord to let her see one more snowfall. Yesterday, they got a foot. And the packages keep coming.

* * *

Some trivia to ponder as I deal with the above:

1. For extra credit, does anyone know the name of the mailman that Dagwood Bumstead knocks down on his way out the door? It took me 2.5 seconds to find an answer in Google (I misspelled Blondie the first time), so I realize as far as challenges go, this is pretty lame.

2. When mentioning the Clavins and Newmans of the world, should they have been written in the possessive, as in Clavin's and Newman's?

3. Is the scenario of moving stuff out west only to mail it back to Alabama really irony as I declared it, or am I guilty of flagrant and ignorant use of cliche?

4. Am I the only one who receives an average of two pieces of mail a day from Capital One? What's in my wallet? What the heck is in theirs? The Clavins and Newmans must be sick of them too.

Please, not another letter

2005-09-30T23:58:00.000-05:00

I called out west on my lunch hour today to see how everyone was doing. Mama Bennett answered the phone.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Papa Bennett was out feeding the alpacas. Aunt Bee and Uncle Ell had gone out of town for an overnight break, and Aunt Ess had taken one of the dogs to the vet. Mama Bennett had the house to herself, and she was cooking dinner. I could almost smell it.

Mama B always cooked. Three meals a day. Everyday. She and Papa B are of a time and place where eating out was never part of their lifestyle. Mama B used to keep a houseful of kids during the day when few parents used daycare. She always cooked a hot lunch, meat and three. So when she told me she was cooking dinner (her word for lunch; your word dinner is supper to her), I knew that she was having a good day.

Sugar, I need to talk to you about something you might not want to talk about, she said, changing the subject from food.

I'm used to that introductory phrase by now. It usually means she's about to give something else away or she wants to tell me what she wants said at her graveside or something like that. So I put on my sympathy ears, ready to hear her heart.

I'm writing your mother a letter.

Oh, crap. Please tell me, not another letter. The last time somebody wrote my mother a letter all hell broke loose. But I didn't say anything.

Let me read it to you.

And she did. She didn't mention that she was sick, or that she was grieving the past. It was the same thoughtful, I miss you, I'm thinking of you, I'm praying for you, letter that Zelda wrote. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I didn't think it would do any good, and I certainly didn't tell her the response that Zelda got.

Do you think this is a good idea? she asked, sincerely.

Yes, I do, I replied, sincerely. You do what you want to do.

Mrs. DePaul will too.

Sigh.

Introducing Maddie's Dress

2005-09-28T19:55:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the rich tradition of Smoke Meat, I would like to introduce you to Maddie's Dress.

Maddie Perkins is trapped -- in the body of a teenage girl, in the home of a bigoted father, in the sanctuary of a legalistic church, on the streets of an insignificant southern town. When Gary Townley comes to town, Maddie sees him as her method of escape, but is a life with him what she's really looking for?

I've been working on this character for several years. I hope by committing myself to the blogosphere I will be motivated to follow her farther down the path of her life.

Check out the first two chapters of Maddie's Dress. I hope you enjoy it.

Someday we'll look back at this and laugh

2005-09-19T21:33:00.000-05:00

Saturday was Dora's fifth birthday.

We interrupt this post as the author mourns the rapid passing of time. Please, look away from your monitor and give Chris a brief moment to compose himself. Thank you.

She wanted to celebrate at Ruffner Mountain Nature Center with a few of her friends so we rented the pavilion and made a day of it. One minute she was playing with Polly Pockets and Barbie dolls and the next minute she was petting an eight-foot rat snake. That's my Dora.

Just as all the animal fun was getting under way, some semi-expected guests showed up. My parents. That's right, all the way from northwest Alabama, Mr. and Mrs. DePaul. I say semi-expected because, though we had mailed them an invitation and though it was their only granddaughter's fifth birthday, we didn't really expect them to come. Let me explain.

My mother hasn't seen or spoken to her mother (previously introduced to you as Mama Bennett, who is slowly dying out west) or her sisters (also previously introduced to you as Aunts Ess and Bee) in over fifteen years. To say the matter is complicated is to understate it exponentially. You have your own families to fret over without being burdened with the details of mine, but please appreciate the enormous drain this has been on my life as I've tried to juggle relationships with all sides while trying to avoid gossip and the supply of ordnance for their self-inflicted wounds of regrets, frustrations, and hopelessness on one side (out west) and utter isolation, disregard, and unknowing on the other (my mother).

While I was out west visiting Mama Bennett in July, Zelda wrote Mrs. DePaul a letter. Aunts Ess and Bee codependently wanted to shield me from having to relay news of Mama Bennett's demise to my mother, so one of them called and left a message on her answering machine. Knowing this, Zelda tried to assure Mrs. DePaul that she understood her grief, and how we and the kids were handling it, and how we were there for her in what must be a difficult, guilt-ridden, remorseful, sobering time. The letter, which I was unaware of but read later, was touching. Mrs. DePaul's response?

[insert sound of crickets chirping]

Nothing.

We called. Left messages on the answering machine. Had the kids leave messages on the answering machine. Zilch.

But at Dora's insistence, Zelda mailed an invitation to the party. And they came. And I felt that my passive-aggressive "since you won't return my phone calls the next move is up to you" tack had paid dividends. That is, up until Mrs. DePaul stiff-armed Zelda as she moved in for a hug. In front of my kids. And Dora's friends. And their parents.

Lovett was upset. He, being thirteen, has been told everything I know about this rift between his grandparents and great-grandparents. And he was miffed that his mother had been so blatantly dissed. I didn't learn until later in the evening how bad it actually had been. Zelda made multiple attempts to get Mrs. DePaul to sit down and talk but was told in no uncertain terms that a climatological change of arctic proportions in the nether regions would have to occur first.

And I, as usual, am in the middle. Between my mother and her mother. Between my mother and her sisters. Between my wife and my mother. Between my kids and their grandmother. Between brokenness and repair. Between heaven and hell.

Happy birthday, Dora. Forgive me for not building a thicker hedge around you. Be patient with me as I try to extract myself from the poor coping skills of my tribe of origin so that I can raise you better. Hold on to your innocence as long as you can. Maybe someday, you will understand all this.

Maybe someday, I will too.

On Katrina

2005-08-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

Pouring through internet reports of the devastating results from Hurricane Katrina, I felt the same dreadful anxiety I felt after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I remember sitting numbly in front of the TV watching the plane fly into the second tower over and over and over again. Today, I found myself repeatedly clicking on links to the articles about levee breaks and looting and loss of life. This afternoon, in the midst of my storm clean-up (final toll: five Radio Flyer wagonloads of leaves and sticks), I put it all together. I'm waiting on it to sink in: this really happened.

Thankfully, the endless, mindless, speculation of TV talking heads is not an option for me this time. I don't know what I would do if tempted with that. I guess I would be numb in my chair, remote control in hand, watching the same looping video over and over. Instead, I'm searching out new sources of information on the web.

As with most tragedies, stories of heroism and sacrifice abound. But there have been many discouraging images from this tragedy. Among them:

the Mississippi family forced into the attic by storm surge who had to tie their five-year-old to the rafters to keep from losing her. When asked why they didn't evacuate, the father replied that the local shelter wouldn't let them enter with their dogs, so they went back home.
the New Orleans boat captain who left the Superdome rather than parting with his stash of beer and cigarettes. He and his sea-worthy girlfriend decided to ride out the storm on his boat near Slidell. His family awaits contact from him.
the looters and car-jackers who are apparently running amok in New Orleans. Maybe more disturbing is one sociologist's explanation that this is a normal response to an oppressive society (i.e. "it's not their fault").
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s conviction that Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is responsible for the hurricane. Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was, according to Kennedy, instrumental in convincing President Bush to ignore the Kyoto Protocol, which caused the global warming that fueled the massive storm.
President Bush's offer of condolence and concern from 2500 feet above sea level in a pimped-out jumbo jet.

Sadly, tragedies like Hurricane Katrina emphasize the utter fallen-ness that we live under. People receive plenty of warning that they refuse to heed, they hang on to minutiae while risking, and often losing, inestimable treasures, they look for someone to blame, they act less like their creator and more like creatures that they are superior to, they try to stay as high above suffering and tragedy as they can, and, unfortunately, they reap what they sow.

As one of my pastor friends often prays, "Forgive me, Father, for were I in the crowd that day, I, too, would have cried for the release of Barabbas."

God, help us all, but especially your thirsty creatures in the chaos that is New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Wedding Surprise

2005-07-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, I ran into a friend who introduced me to her fiancee. I didn't know she was dating anyone, so I asked the requisite questions such as How did you meet?, When did you get engaged?, and When is the big day?

The first two answers were somewhat predictable (went to high school together; over the holidays), but the third answer gave me fleeting pause (we're going to have an engagement party at the end of July and announce our wedding date then). I've never known of anyone doing that before but I quickly shrugged it off, mainly ' cause I'm not really hip, socially-speaking. Zelda and I got married in a pastor's office one morning before Sunday school without telling anyone, so it's not like anyone is beating on our door for successful wedding tips. I just do as I'm told, invitation-wise.

So in that spirit, we received our invitation a few weeks ago and calendared tonight for the engagement party.

As five o'clock rolled around, I dressed in my best silk Hawaiian shirt, beige cargo shorts and New Balance sneaks and drove toward the merriment. After a half-hour of manuevering through a crowd of many strangers (which bothers me somewhat), most of whom were dressed better than me (which doesn't), the happy couple interrupted the kickin' blues band to give the long-awaited announcement: the date of the wedding.

After some stalling by the groom-to-be for dramatic effect, the bride-to-be broadcast We're getting married tonight! and as the band cranked back up they ran off the stage to don their wedding togs. Ten minutes later (!), a procession of a groomsman, a maid-of-honor, the groom, the bride and her father met the pastor in the middle of the room and we had a wedding!

Congratulations to the newlyweds, and thanks for the surprise.

Hurricane Dora

2005-07-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Dora hit Birmingham earlier this week. Well, it hit our house. OK, it hit Dora's bedroom. There were no casualties but the damage was extensive.

All of Dora's toys ended up in the floor along with most of her clothes, a couple of towels, and Dora's ever-present collection of sticks, rocks, and leaves. Dora's belongings spilled out into the hallway as she exercised eminent domain in a land-grab for more play space. Barbie dolls and plastic dinosaurs in the entry foyer were the last straw.

Get busy cleaning that room now, instructed a frazzled Zelda.

Ok, mama, chirped the little one.

Zelda set the kitchen timer for one hour and went about putting away her laundry, as did Lovett. When the timer went off, Zelda checked on Dora's progress.

Only there wasn't any. Zelda couldn't tell that a single item had been moved toward its proper place. She promptly grounded Dora from TV for the rest of the afternoon and restricted her to the main impact zone of the hurricane.

When I walked into the house, Dora tackled me with her usual Papa! and I asked her what she had done with her day.

I cleaned my room, she beamed.

You did! I exclaimed, surveying the damage like a FEMA inspector. Well I would hate to see what it would look like if you hadn't.

Then Zelda filled me in on the day's frustrations with quite a hint that my expected reply was to be more than Gee, Honey, what an exasperating day! So after dinner, on my way out to a meeting, I explained the situation to Dora:

When I get home from my meeting, everything that is still in your floor will be bagged up and taken to the attic. No whining, no complaining, no questions asked. Do you understand?

Yes, Papa, Dora fluttered.

Three hours later my meeting concluded and I began a dread-filled drive home. I walked into the house, peaked into Dora's room, and saw that not a thing had been picked up. She had called my bluff. I was Robert Conrad and Dora had knocked the battery off my shoulder.

So I walked into the pantry, grabbed a handful of garbage bags, and walked into her room. Zelda followed me and she picked up Dora's clothes while I went for the toys. Ten minutes and two trips up the attic stairs later, six garbage bags full of stuffed animals, plastic animals, rocks, doll clothes, toy kitchen utensils, hair bows, necklaces, etc. were stowed in Dora's corner of the attic. I came down the stairs, closed the attic door, and prepared for the protest.

But there wasn't one. No screaming. No tantrums. No whining. I called Dora into the foyer as I tried to analyze her response, or better yet, her lack of response.

I took all those toys up to the attic like I said I would.

Uh-huh.

Don't go up there after them.

OK.

You can play with the toys that are left, but when mama tells you to clean up your room again and you don't, I'll take those up there too. Do you understand?

Yep.

Do you have any questions?

Can I have some ice cream?

I was blown away. Perplexed is such an impotent word to describe my state of mind. I am not a particularly materialistic person, and I was ashamed and appalled by the amount of stuff I had to carry upstairs. Could it be that Dora couldn't cope with it either? That it overwhelmed her and shut her down? Or is she simply obstinate? And if she is, wouldn't she have protested, even a little bit?

I am stumped.

But I can see Dora's carpet now.

Between two pastures

2005-07-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

Mama Bennett, feeling cramped last Thursday in her basement apartment, suggested we go outside and see the animals.

Aunt Ess got the golf cart and drove her to the barn. One of the livestock was way over her species' gestational average and they had been concerned about her. She was huge and uncomfortable, but spirits were high as she showed signs of the birth's imminence: restlessness, raised tail, wandering in circles. When she pulled away from the herd and headed for the privacy of the upper pasture, we were sure she was about to deliver.

We had been out for a good half-hour in the blazing sun, but Mama Bennett insisted on following the mother-to-be. I escorted her, hand at her elbow, along the fence line between the pastures to a front row seat for the big occasion, though there was no seat. I asked Mama B if she was ready to go back inside. No, I want to see the baby come.

So we waited. Gradually, a glistening, spindly leg appeared, with a snout not far behind. Papa Bennett was chomping at the bit to help the mother, but Mama Bennett yelled at him to leave her be. I could tell he was tiring of being ordered around, even by a sick, weak wife, but he stood firm between the mother and her pasture-mates who had wandered into her delivery area.

Then, as another leg appeared, the mother squatted down and with a tremendous push got the baby halfway out, his wet head soaking up its first rays of sunshine there between heaven and earth. Another squat, another push, and the baby landed in a heap at the mother's hind feet. Her ordeal was over.

Mama Bennett was enthralled, relieved for the success of the new mother and proud of her own baby's confidence as Aunt Bee rushed in with a towel and began drying off the newborn. Aunt Bee and Papa B stood guard as the baby struggled to find his legs. Time and again, he would get his front legs under him and be almost up on his back legs, being nudged by mama, but either his coordination or his strength failed him and he crumpled back into a tumbleweed on the high plains floor.

Suddenly, Mama Bennett swooned at my side. She'd been standing in the hot sun for some time, her first foray into the wild in several days, and her strength was sapped. Her stomach protruded in front of her as she tried to relieve her aching back. Oh sugar, she said to me, I should never have come out here.

I grabbed her right arm to steady her, shocked by its clammy thinness. She grabbed the top of the fence on the other side, and we shuffled back toward the barn.

We were passed in short order by Aunt Bee, who, concerned that the sun was too intense for the baby, had scooped him up and headed for the shade of the barn. And there I stood, flanked between an eighty-year-old woman in the grip of a terminal illness and a newborn creature not fifteen minutes old. Neither of them seemed to have mastery over their musculature. Both of them relied on the strength of others to protect them from the elements and get them to the safety of the barn. One had just been introduced to the pasture and his new home while the other was making one of her final visits as precious time slipped away. One was on a fast track to growth and development, while the other was on a fast track to atrophy and confinement.

Aunt Bee, the new baby, Mama Bennett, the cycle of life, and me, slow-waltzing between two pastures.

Mama Bennett

2005-07-04T12:01:00.000-05:00

Indulge me this long post, since it has been so long since I last posted (and accept my apologies).

One Sunday in late May, I was on my way to worship, alone - Zelda was on a writing retreat with some friends, and Lovett and Dora spent the weekend with Mr. and Mrs. DePaul. I received a cell phone call from Aunt Bee, informing me that Mama Bennett been rushed to the hospital in the night with a severe bleeding problem (see "Cast of Characters" on the left side of the blog for a who's who of CoaE). Zelda was to return from her retreat that afternoon from the airport that serves Aunt Bee's community, and she immediately changed her flight to check on Mama Bennett.

A phone call from Zelda later in the afternoon confirmed our worst fears. Mama Bennett had undergone emergency surgery to patch a blood clot in her chest cavity, as well as cauterizing a duodenal ulcer, and that recuring problems with her liver weren't helping matters. I met Mr. and Mrs. DePaul with a heavy heart to pick up the kids. I would have to explain to them Mama Bennett's situation as I told them why mama wasn't coming home as expected. It was a tough night.

But Mama Bennett pulled through, and a week later she was back home in the apartment in Aunt Bee's house that she shares with Papa Bennett, her husband of sixty-three years. Mama Bennett slowly improved, and last Wednesday week I booked a plane ticket out out west for mid-July to spend some time with them all.

Then came Aunt Ess's phone call last Friday week.

Mama Bennett's internist called her in to reveal results from earlier testing. After giving her the results, he sent her home to "get her affairs in order," which is 21st century medical euphemism for "your condition is terminal, and we've done all that we can do."

Aunts Bee and Ess were understandably devastated. As were the DePauls, 1800 miles away. We broke it to the children and spent the next several nights crying and praying Dora to sleep. Lovett slipped into a quiet funk. Zelda began planning for the inevitable, a bit morbidly premature perhaps, but that's how she copes. I, on the other hand, was my usual cool self in a crisis, slowing to a glacial pace of life. I did have enough synapses firing, though, to realize that sticking with my planned visit in mid-July just might be too late.

So I flew out last Wednesday.

I wasn't quite prepared for what I encountered. Mama Bennett had gone down considerably since I left her last November. She is so frail, and forgetful, and weak. She is already a shell of the woman I knew as grandmother.

She has been diagnosed with non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, caused by hepatitis-C she picked up on a mission trip probably thirty years ago. She will slowly bleed to death.

To talk with her and Papa Bennett is to wrestle with paradoxes. At times they are at peace with her passing, yet at times grasping for hoped healing. At times they are complimentary of her doctors, yet at times angry at them for undiagnosing her problem for so long and mis-medicating her. At times they are grateful for the phone calls from friends who have been informed of her condition, yet at times they bristle at the intrusions and displays of "premature" grief. At times they brag on the care Aunts Bee and Ess give them, yet at times they complain about their lack of privacy.

At times Mama Bennett reverted to her benevolent-controlling ways, yet at times she couldn't remember who she had just spoken with on the phone, or wanted to argue about whether she had taken her medicine. At times she giggled like a schoolgirl at her clumsiness and forgetfulness, yet at times she despaired as she struggled to remember a friend's name.

I was a paradox as well, oscillating from being frustrated at hearing the same stories for the hundredth time to being melancholy over her dementia. At times I was ready to return home to my world and its challenges until I realized that once I left that place and time it would be lost to me forever.

It would take a lifetime to explain to you what an impact Papa and Mama Bennett, Aunt Bee, and Aunt Ess have had on my life, both positively and negatively. Neither aunt has children. I am the first-born grandson and the only one that is still in contact with them. Neither can I express the relief I felt walking into the house last Wednesday to find Mama Bennett still alive. I had made it. On time. I got four good days with her. She may not remember them, but I will. I hope to get back to see her again before she goes, but if I don't, I know that I did my best, I did what I needed to do, I said my good-bye, and I will see her on the other side someday. I pray that I will mean to someone what she means to me.

Happy Independence Day, Mama Bennett.

Anyone seen my buggy whip?

2005-06-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

We are in the midst of a minor monsoon season in Birmingham. My cheap, plastic, backyard rain-gauge has measured over 4.5" of rain since Sunday. It's been nice sloshing through my yard instead of crunching, and, as a bonus, the temperatures have remained cool.

On one of my regular excursions to the restroom at work today (my oily skin and small bladder make me a frequent visitor, if you'll pardon the overabundance of personal information), I saw something that I haven't seen in probably twenty years.

As I was washing my face, a man came in and set his briefcase on the counter and rounded the corner to the, ummm, facilities. I dried my face and put on my glasses and found myself staring at...

...a pair of galoshes.

That's right, folks, resting atop a soft-sided leather bag - black, vulcanized, injection-molded, rubber galoshes.

It was quite an anachronistic moment, right there in the fourth-floor men's room. Galoshes. Don't see those every day. At least I don't.

They looked heavy-dutier than the galoshes I remember. Of course, there probably have been exponential advances in galosh-technology in the past two decades since I've been as close to a pair as I was these. They were smooth and sturdy, yet pliant enough to hug whatever loafers the man was wearing that he didn't want to get wet. I never saw the man or his shoes, but I must say I was tempted to pick up the galoshes and examine them tactilely, looking for at least a brand-name to link you to a picture, but I estimated that the man was too far along in his, ummm, business, for me to safely do so. Besides, I'm not really into bothering other people's stuff (especially not in the men's room), so it was a fleeting temptation at best.

I am now, however, on a quest for obsolete (or rarely encountered) objects. Anyone seen a buggy whip, a coffee percolator, or a slide rule lately?

Hope you're not too disappointed, Ray McCoy

2005-05-28T21:50:00.000-05:00

The latest 24-hour news crisis, the Buckhead crane standoff, is over.

Carl Edward Roland, a bankrupt former software salesman and homicide suspect, climbed a construction crane in the toney Atlanta neighborhood a couple of days ago, to mixed reviews from area residents, tourists, shoppers, diners, and professionals. Seems he caused quite a bit of gridlock in Buckhead. Having been to Buckhead, I wonder how they could tell the difference from normal, but that's beside the point. For the better part of two days, earthbound heads strained skyward as they pondered his fate.

His alleged crime, strangling his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a pond behind her apartment building, is, to be kind, heinous. I'm not defending or excusing Mr. Roland in any way.

But equally disturbing to me is a quotation in a Los Angeles Times story this morning that The Birmingham News picked up off the wire. Writers Ellen Barry and Jenny Jarvie quote Ray McCoy, a mortgage banker:

I want to see the jump. If he's going to jump, he should jump. He's just wasting everybody's time and money.

Sigh. One life destroyed. Another in the balance. And the effects on Mr. McCoy?

Inconvenience.

Which prompts me to consider:

Do heinous actions like Mr. Roland's prompt attitudes like Mr. McCoy's, or is it the other way around?

In either case, we all lose.

Just one of the symptoms...

2005-05-21T08:50:00.000-05:00

I looked at the date of my last post and was shocked that it was almost two weeks old.

That's one of the symptoms.

I know people who can fill notebooks with their angst, depression, and struggles. They face things head on and pour out their trials onto paper with reckless abandon.

[We interrupt this entry to bring you the latest edition of Chris's ClicheFest: "face things head on," "pour out," and that old stand-by, "reckless abandon." We now resume the regularly scheduled entry.]

I can't do that. My muse leaves town whenever there is a sniff of depression in the air. She's been gone almost two weeks now.

I sat down with a blank piece of paper at the bookstore coffee shop the other night, but she didn't show. I guess all the final-exam crammers and their tutors scared her off. The two paragraphs I coaxed from my rollerball were of the most inane drivel ever penned. I was ashamed of the wasted ink, and had I known of the location of the seedling sired from the tree that gave it's all for the leaf of college-rule, I would have apologized on bended knee. It was that bad.

Today is bright and sunny and there is a gentle breeze blowing after a heavy storm yesterday afternoon. I think I'll go to the golf tournament and tonight's baseball game and see if my muse follows.

For all our sakes.

Know thy audience

2005-05-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

Last night,the Alabama Symphony Orchestra gave a free Mother's Day concert at one of our upscale, outdoor shopping meccas.

Of course, we were there. It was free. And there were fireworks. Did I mention there were free fireworks?

We dragged our bag chairs through a sea of humanity to a relatively open spot stage right. The weather was much improved over the past two weekends. A cool breeze wafted Macaroni Grill garlic to mix with the aroma of tailgaters seated around us. There were people of all ages in the sea of chairs; old people with their older mothers, babies with their young mothers, middle-aged couples with their older children, and of course the pre-teen demographic.

Who were thrilled to be there, let me tell you. One in particular, seated in front of me to my left, stared a hole in the pavement, head in hands, waiting for the fun to end. He listened to his iPod until the batteries went dead, then he took pictures of his hand with his mother's camera phone before launching into a riveting round of Tetris. He was amusing to watch, and I was going to point him out to Lovett, my pre-teen, but Lovett was doing the same thing off to my right. Well, sans iPod and camera phone.

The concert was great. They played a tribute to Ethel Merman, some Edward Elgar, a couple of Latin-flavored compositions of Leroy Anderson, an extended medley from Camelot, and a medley of tunes from movie musicals.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the program immensely. An older man wearing a flannel shirt and a white-haired crewcut ask his daughter (I presume) to dance during one of the Leroy Anderson waltzes, to the delight of the crowd on our side of the parking lot. Several young girls, our Dora included, pirouetted between the chairs during some of the Merman numbers.

The pre-teens were, in a word, underwhelmed, let me tell you. Until the conductor related a story of taking his two young sons shopping for Mother's Day gifts. The punch line of the story was that they couldn't decide which Star Wars action figure to buy her. As the audience laughed, I read between the lines and correctly guessed what was coming next.

In that spirit, we'd like to present for you the Theme from Star Wars by John Williams, said the conductor.

That got their attention. They cheered, they applauded, they participated in the experience. Even before the fireworks.

Bravo, maestro!

Lord, teach me...

2005-04-30T22:20:00.000-05:00

Last night: a funeral home visit. A young couple whose baby died in his sleep.

To a young mother, and a young father, and grieving grandparents: I'll pray for you.

Today: a chance meeting in the bookstore. An old friend whose adult child has moved back home in the throes of an addiction. A crumbling marriage. Three young children.

To a distraught father, searching for answers, and relief: I'll pray for you.

I love words. Words are my life. Yet, as hard as I try, try as I might, my words are not adequate.

Father, forgive my feebleness.

Holy Spirit, interpret my groanings.

Lord, teach me to pray.

You can't judge a book...

2005-04-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

Perusing the library shelves today, I came across several classics that I need to read. I rejected them all.

One had a dingy, smudged cover with dirty finger prints all over the edges. One was printed on what appeared to be grocery sacks during an apparent paper-saving drive from back in the '70's. One had an eery, unpleasant typeface and the prospect of following it for 200+ pages made me nauseated.

Today, I was guilty of judging books by their covers.

Global Warming?!?

2005-04-30T22:03:00.000-05:00

At the time I posted of our trip to last weekend's motorcycle races, it didn't seem important to report the fact that we almost froze to death.

Yes, it was unseasonably cool for the next to last weekend in April, but that wasn't germane to my point. Hence the omission.

This morning, while planning our day's activities, Dora announced that she wanted to go to the bear's game. Since we don't have any playing bears in Birmingham (not even at the zoo), we surmised that she must mean the Baron's game, our double-A farm team of the Chicago White Sox.

So we went to tonight's game. First pitch, 7:03. Almost froze to death, for the second Saturday in a row.

I fully expect to see Olympic slalom qualifying down Red Mountain next Saturday.

Global warming?!? Ain't made it this far south yet.

"See the art in Me"

2005-04-24T19:23:00.000-05:00

Dora and I found ourselves alone this afternoon. She crawled up into my chair to share sunflower seeds and impede my reading.

With Zelda and Lovett gone, the house was unusually quiet. It apparently bothered Dora, so she climbed up on the computer table to retrieve a CD. She picked the self-titled Jars of Clay album and popped it into the player.

We listened to the first four songs at varying volumes (she kept turning it up, I kept turning it down, an expected conflict between a four-year-old and a forty-year-old). When the fifth song started, Dora turned it up and got out of the chair.

And she began to dance.

Not head-shaking, bebopping, gotta-pee-right-now dancing. She became a ballerina. She twirled. She skipped. She jumped. She flew.

She never once hesitated. She never gave a thought to her next move as she followed her muse throughout the kitchen, around the island, and back to the reading corner. She was free. Flowing. Focused. I was floored.

The name of the song was "Art in Me."

Images on the sidewalk speak of dream's descent
Washed away by storms to graves of cynical lament
Dirty canvases to call my own
Protest limericks carved by the old pay phone

In your picture book I'm trying hard to see
Turning endless pages of this tragedy
Sculpting every move you compose a symphony
You plead to everyone, "See the art in Me"

Broken stained-glass windows, the fragments ramble on
Tales of broken souls, an eternity's been won
As critics scorn the thoughts and works of mortal man
My eyes are drawn to you in awe once again

In your picture book I'm trying hard to see
Turning endless pages of this tragedy
Sculpting every move you compose a symphony
You plead to everyone, "See the art in Me"

Thank you, Father, for letting me see the art in You, through Dora's dance.

Ever feel like the world is a tuxedo and you are pair of brown shoes?

2005-04-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

My friend Jay won weekend passes to the AMA Superbike races at Barber Motorsports Park.

He couldn't use the Saturday passes, so he gave them to me. I was thrilled. I had taken Lovett to an auto race there last year, and we fell in love with the place. George Barber made a fortune in the dairy business and turned his hobby of motorcycle collecting into one of the premier road racing tracks in the world, right here in Alabama. Porsche Driving Experience moved their entire operation from Road Atlanta to BMP, and the top road racing series are beginning to take notice of the facility. It is a gorgeous course. In some places, spectators can see 70 percent of the track. Parking is free and free trams take you anywhere you want to go. It is a prime example of what can happen with a little free enterprise and vision in this state of pork procurers and demagogues.

Zelda and Dora wanted to go, so we made a day of it. We saw a lot of practicing, and some qualifying, and two races. Don't ask me who did what, 'cause I really couldn't tell you. Number 1 led the first race the whole time and won. Number 98 and number 1 and number 3 battled for the lead in the second race, and I think number 98 won (at least, his number was at the top of the big pole in the center of the track at the end). I doubt there was a man there that knew as little about motorcycle racing than me. Or women either. My manhood is not threatened by this, however. Sports have had their proper place in my life for a long time. I go to a game, or an event like this, marvel at the participant's skills, and go home when the last out is made or the horn sounds or the checkered flag waves. I don't have a stake in who wins or loses, and that suits me just fine.

So I thought I'd check out the evening news tonight to see what the race winners actually looked like. Now, with a world-class event in Birmingham with live TV coverage, you'd think it would be a pretty big story, wouldn't you?

Well, you'd be wrong. As was I. Apparently, the NFL got together today to choose up sides for next season. Which means someone somewhere said the word "football." Which means that the world stopped turning to see where our collegiate gridiron gods would ply their trade at the next level. A bunch of them from Auburn went somewhere, and one from UAB went somewhere else, and the Alabama guy finally got picked to go somewhere, too. They interviewed mama n'them, and the college coaches, and the sportscaster who nicknamed them, and the coaches who picked them, and them, until I begin to feel like I knew them better than some of my own family.

But what about the races?!? I screamed at my TV, like a regular sports fanatic.

There were races at the Barber Motorsports Park today, chimed the weekend sports anchor. And he proceeded to show 15 seconds of racing footage. 15 seconds. They didn't even give the winners time to take their helmets off. I still don't know who won. I guess I'll wait for tomorrow's paper.

You think the Birmingham News heard about the NFL thing today, too?

What'd I do to deserve this?

2005-04-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

We went to [trendy chain deli with the good salad bar] for lunch today.

I filled my salad plate to Neil Diamond's and Barbra Streisand's attempt to out-herniate one another.

My first bite was taken to the strains of Barry Manilow pouring his heart out over somebody named Mandy.

I finished my last bite as someone tightened the vise ahold Michael Bolton's thumb.

Disgustedly, I trudged toward the ice cream machine for some frosty relief.

I found a deli employee with his arm up to the elbow inside the machine, an "out of order" sign over his shoulder.

What did I do to deserve this?

Bilingual Conversation

2005-04-16T21:53:00.000-05:00

I was sitting in the children's section of the library today, determining the check-out worthiness of a stack of books while Dora pestered the caged parakeet, when the cutest little scruffy-headed Chinese girl came around a shelf with a sippy-cup of milk.

Hi! she grinned at me.

Hi! I grinned back.

Her dad followed close behind. I nodded hello to him. Before he could respond, an older little girl came running toward him, clutching a video.

This one, daddy! she cried, holding it aloft for him to bag.

[Uninterpreted response in Chinese], he replied.

But just one more, please daddy? she begged.

[Uninterpreted response in Chinese], he replied, stuffing the video into his book bag.

Birmingham is a multi-cultural city, despite our well-documented racist propensity. UAB attracts medical students and researchers from all over the world. We have large Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Latino populations within the metro area. I grew up not too far from Birmingham (as the crow flies, that is; light-years away culturally and otherwise). I don't remember if I knew a single bilingual family then.

I was blown away today by the little Chinese girl's ability to converse with her father in two languages.

I have trouble conversing with mine in one.

Today's word is...

2005-04-12T21:48:00.000-05:00

I came across two words today that I had read before but couldn't define:

dilettante
esoteric

If you can use either in a sentence without looking them up, you are a better lexicologist than me.

Hawks vs. doves

2005-04-08T23:45:00.000-05:00

I work on the fourth floor of a six-floor building on the bank of a corporate-park lake. The property is beautifully landscaped and forested. We're accustomed to geese, duck, deer, and fish sightings, so I'm always on guard for the next faunal encounter. As I looked out a window at the cubicle farm today, a hawk caught my eye.

He had a death grip on something, so I ran down the hall to my boss's office for a closer look. He had caught a dove, and it was still flopping around trying to free itself. The hawk put a choke hold on it, though, and a few seconds later it was motionless.

And then, three stories above the ground, the hawk started plucking the feathers off the dove, spitting them out to float to the ground like lazy snowflakes.

Dee, a coworker, came to see what had me pressed up against the window. He was visibly upset when he saw the hawk dismembering the dove.

Aww, that's not right! he protested. The hawk, oblivious to fourth-floor criticism, kept on plucking.

Now, Dee, did you have your usual chicken biscuit for breakfast this morning? I asked.

Yes, he answered.

Well, someone did to your chicken what the hawk is doing to that dove, I replied.

Don't say that! Dee squawked. But he realized it was true. And that it is a natural part of life.

I'm anxious to see what Dee brings for breakfast Monday morning.

Awaiting Napolean's return

2005-04-04T21:57:00.000-05:00

The grass is greening, the azaleas are blooming, and the trees are leafing. The goldfinches have on their spring attire, the bluebirds are nesting, and, thank goodness, the time has changed. All that is left to prove to me that spring is really here is the return of the hummingbirds.

I put out my feeders yesterday, filled with a 1:4 sugar:water mixture. They ate it up last fall on their way south. Some days we had six hummers fighting for sipping space - all ruby-throats. Most entertaining was one I dubbed Napolean - the smallest, and meanest, of the crew. My feeders came without perches, so the hummers have to hover to dine; I fashioned a perch from a piece of galvanized wire just to see if they would use it. Napolean claimed it as his command post. He would sit for minutes at a time, without drinking, just to chase away patrons of either feeder. He was quite the little dictator.

We thought we lost him once. The pull cord on my garage door is nylon with a red plastic knob for a handle. He flew into the garage thinking the knob was a flower and knocked himself silly trying to get back outside again. Dora was hysterical, thinking he was dead. I took him around back and held him up to the porch screen. He grabbed on for dear life and spent the night sleeping it off. Next morning, he was back at his post on the perch, menacing every hummer in that dared come close.

It was reported that Hurricane Ivan affected the southerly migration of the ruby-throated hummingbirds last fall. I sure hope not. I'm looking for their return any day. Please let me know if you see one in the Birmingham area. Tell the Little General his nectar is on the house.

"It's a sad day..."

2005-03-31T23:44:00.000-06:00

Overheard phone conversation in adjoining cubicle: "Yeah, that girl in Florida died, and the pope is dying. It's a sad day."

Uh-huh. A friend's younger brother was killed in an automobile accident this morning. I doubt that Larry King, Bill O'Reilly, or Ted Koppel will mention it, though.

It is a sad day.

Where does George Will get his column ideas?

2005-03-31T23:15:00.000-06:00

From the Eggplant, of course.

The Tax Plan to Kill K Street

OK, where are all the deadbeats?!?

2005-03-29T22:21:00.000-06:00

A new IRS study provides a preliminary Tax Gap Estimate for tax year 2001 of between 312 and 353 billion dollars (yes, that's billion with a "b"). The Tax Gap Estimate is the difference between what all taxpayers should have paid versus what they actually paid in a timely manner.

IRS enforcement and receipt of late payments drops the net TGE to between 257 and 298 billion dollars (still billion with a "b").

I'd like to know who all these deadbeats are. I realize it has been many years since I sat in a micro-economics class (or were taxes covered in macro-?), but I don't remember when income tax became optional. How do these people get paid that they can sit on the sidelines when it comes time to file? I'm stumped.

At the risk of exposing my ignorance of economics, this seems to me to be a perfect reason to argue for the national sales tax. Abolish the income tax, declare most necessities such as food, housing, and utilities off-limits so the tax won't be regressive, and tax the remainder at the point of sale. Then, hammer Mr. Cashonly Lawncareman when he buys the souped-up bass boat. Squeeze Mr. Bling Bling Crackdealer when he pimps his ride. Slap Mr. and Mrs. Gotrocks Taxshelter for their round-the-world cruises, etc.

The current income tax has obvious holes (at least 257 billion in 2001) and the flat tax (where you calculate x% of your gross income and send it in) still requires compliance to work. It seems to me that a national sales tax would eliminate the opt-out clause that the underground economy seems to have for our tax system.

Am I wrong here? Or should I go back to writing about my bird feeders?

Three wooden crosses

2005-03-26T09:13:00.000-06:00

Three wooden crosses.

The cup and the bread.

Struggles written on index cards.

People lined up to nail them to a cross.

The sound of hammer and nails.

Good Friday. Good, indeed.

Two Car Lengths at a Time

2005-03-20T20:37:00.000-06:00

I was out early this morning. It was so foggy I couldn't see more than a couple of car lengths ahead of me.

I drove those two car lengths and then I could see two car lengths further down the road. I drove those two and then I could see...well, you get the picture.

I never saw more than two car lengths ahead of me, all the way to my destination. The sun was up, but it was never more than just a dim blob. I could tell that it was there, but just barely.

The fog, my navigation through it, and the sun metaphorically reminded me of the journey of life. The sun is always there, though I don't always see it. I don't know what is three car lengths ahead of me, and if I'm not careful I can run off the road or head-on into someone else, especially if I think I know the way to my destination (since I'm so familiar with the route).

This metaphor also reminded me of a different perspective I received about this one night some time ago on a flight into Birmingham. On descent, while low enough to make out individual houses and cars but still high enough to see whole neighborhoods, I saw a car back out of a driveway and head down a street, its headlights shining on the pavement like thin ice cream cones in front of it. I could see to the end of the street while realizing that the driver could not. I could see the grocery store three blocks over that I imagined was his destination, while realizing that the driver could not.

Someone once described the difference in perspective of time between man and God as man standing on a sidewalk, watching a parade. Man sees the first band come into view, and then the next, and a couple of floats, more bands, some clowns, etc., until the end of the parade passes by. God, however, sees the beginning, middle, and end of the parade at the same time.

Every once in a while I get a glimpse of who I am and who He is, and the fog lifts, and I am grateful.

Winter Patience Rewarded

2005-03-19T18:04:00.000-06:00

I waited all winter for a redbird to appear at my feeders.

Zelda has reported occasional sightings, only I wasn't at home to see it. Getting a phone call at the office stating "there is a redbird on your feeder" isn't quite what I had in mind.

This morning I filled the feeders and came back inside to load the dishwasher. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. Daddy Redbird, munching on sunflower seeds, spitting the hulls on the ground. I grabbed my binoculars for a closer look. Sitting in a small hickory tree behind the feeder was Mama Redbird, waiting her turn. Then, in an explosion of blue, Mr. Bluebird hovered onto the adjacent suet feeder.

Bill Gates can have his billions and Berkshire-Hathaway can be sitting at $87,600 a share, but it doesn't get much better than a redbird on the left and bluebird on the right.

Mr. Potato Head

2005-03-14T17:46:00.000-06:00

Children's eating habits are so enigmatic.

Dora is like a little chick pecking around the barnyard; she only eats a bite or two at a time, but she does it all day long. Rare is the meal where she doesn't want to sample off my plate. The exchange is usually thus:

D: What's that?
C: It's herb-crusted lizard brains in prickly-pear butter.
D: Can I have some?

If I sat down with a bowl of dirt, she'd want a spoonful.

Lovett, on the other hand, is like a python; he eats one dish all in a big lump. We used to have a rule that he try everything once and what he didn't like he didn't have to eat. He just had to try it. We figured that if exposed to an assortment of foods he would build a vast menu of favorites. We were wrong. Were Lovett a condemned criminal, his last meal request would be:

Chicken fingers
Spaghetti noodles (with butter)
Grits (with butter)
Potatoes (with butter)
Butter
Gatorade

It has been an exasperating experience for someone who enjoys food as I do. Growing up, I had a cousin who would circle my grandmother's potluck-laden table every holiday meal to score a piece of ham and a roll. I didn't understand picky eaters then; now I'm raising one.

Yesterday at lunch, Lovett ordered a plain baked potato (a little cheese, a few chives, some bacon bits, and lots of butter) at [chain deli with the great salad bar]. Later in the afternoon, we were knocking around town when he reminded us of a play he wanted to attend. It was too short notice to take him home, feed him supper, and get him to the play, so Zelda wheeled the family wagon into the parking lot of [chain faux-fifties ice cream parlor]. The drive-thru was backed up, so she handed Lovett six dollars and sent him inside to buy his supper. He returned with drink and bag in hand, handing his mother two-seventy-five in change.

Dora, of course, wanted a sample of Lovett's meal, which he, of course, declined to offer, so Zelda intervened by ordering him to pinch off a bite of chicken finger for his sister (Zelda reached the obvious conclusion that he must have ordered chicken fingers based on years of precedence).

L: I don't have any chicken.
C: (shocked) No chicken? What did you order?
L: Large fries.
C: Large fries! You paid three-twenty-five for a coke and LARGE FRIES?!?
L: It's not a coke. It's sweet tea.
C: (bellowing) THAT'S BESIDE THE POINT!

I then gave him an economic lesson.

C: Your potato at lunch was six dollars, rounded off (actually, it was two small potatoes crammed together to look like one large potato). Your potato at supper was three dollars, rounded off. So I paid nine dollars today for THREE potatoes. THAT IS THREE DOLLARS PER POTATO.

I was a raving lunatic on a spud-induced rant, the vicarious starch coarsing through my veins, raising my blood sugar to dangerous, apoplectic levels.

L: (with a twenty-five-cent french fry dangling from his greasy lips) Sorry.

And Dan Quayle thought he had potatoe problems.

The Zoo Crew

2005-03-10T18:16:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, Zelda and Lovett left town on separate retreats, leaving Dora and me with a Saturday to ourselves.

I let her sleep late and when she awoke I asked her what she wanted to do.

Let's go to the zoo and eat a ice cream! she quickly responded.

It was a nice, crisp day for walking through the zoo. We fed the fish and waved to the zebras and marveled at the giraffes; we laughed at the camel and smelled the bison and mourned with Mona the elephant, who's now all alone. We rode the train and the carousel, got mad because the lorikeet exhibit was closed and we couldn't feed them, and watched the flamingos wade in the pond.

We went to McDonald's for cardboard sandwiches and the playground, where I read a novel and Dora made a friend.

At home, we worked in the woods out back, cutting a hurricane-downed tree and hunting our property markers. After dark, Dora reminded me that we forgot to get an ice cream at the zoo.

So we had my favorite, vanilla ice cream covered in honey, for supper.

Dora got her bath, we snuggled awhile in my chair before I carried her airplane-style to her bed, where she fell asleep before her head hit the pillow.

It was a great day of exploration and conversation with my eloquent four-year-old. I answered a thousand questions and we talked about all kinds of things. She is so verbally expressive, thanks in part to her parents who talked to her in complete sentences since she was born and her big brother, who is pretty expressive himself, for the most part.

Lately, though, when they are together, a faunal cacophony breaks out, the likes of which Dr. Seuss, Jane Goodall, and Marlin Perkins could only dream. One merely looks at the other and cues a chorus of hoots, grunts, wheezes, snorts, whinnies, barks, tweets, chirps, and smacks that makes me fear a visit from the Department of the Interior to check my exotic animal permit.

I can't explain these sub-linguistic exchanges; Zelda thinks they've developed some sort of twin-like language, though they are eight years apart in age. All I know is that it flusters the crap out of me, especially in the car, but most especially when I catch them being articulate about something and I remember the latest Animal Symphony in Barf.

Next morning, we picked Lovett up and he told us about his weekend on the way to my truck: who he hung out with, how many girls were there, why he didn't bathe for two days, how the food was, etc. Dora shared part of our weekend with him as I thought how good it was to have three-quarters of my family together again.

We climbed into the front seat, buckled our belts, and I cranked the motor and started backing away.

Dora looked at Lovett. Lovett looked at Dora. Honk! Whee! Snort! Pthththt! Smack! Huuummm! Chortle! Haw! Zhee! Woo! Plink! Doing! Narf!

The zoo crew - reunited.

Please forgive me, Willie Brown

2005-03-02T21:05:00.000-06:00

I saw him across a sea of strangers in the crowded room, and I knew immediately that his name was Willie Brown.

Our assignment had been simple enough. Wrap glue-soaked yarn around an empty jar to make a vase, add a few "flowers" (egg-carton blooms, pipe-cleaner stems, and construction-paper leaves) , draw a card, and address it to a resident of a nearby nursing home whose name we'd randomly drawn from a hat. I unfolded the slip of paper and read the name: Willie Brown.

One spring morning we walked several blocks down tree-lined residential streets to the four-lane highway that "bypassed" downtown. We crossed the highway and climbed the hill, behind the Ford tractor dealership and a local cafe' that served the best hamburger steak in town, to the nursing home.

The nursing home cafeteria was filled with old people and nurses, strangers all. We second-graders took our places against the wall to await instructions on how to distribute our bouquets. I nervously scanned the room and my eyes fell upon the man destined to be my partner.

He was old and black and sat in a wheelchair. He had lost both legs above the knee; his stumps weren't even long enough to hang over the edge of the seat. He was the most alien creature in the room and I was convinced that he was Willie Brown.

I became aware that the program had begun. Someone called out a name. An old person raised a hand. A second-grader peeled off the wall, delivered the gift, and then scurried back across the floor.

Agnes Andrews. Raised hand. Delivered gift.

Milton Baker. Raised hand. Delivered gift.

Willie Brown. Raised hand. The black man. In the wheelchair. With no legs. Of course. I had known it all along.

The wall would not let go of me. The room grew into a cavern. The floor became a desert and each step I took drained more energy from my parched body. There was silence, save for the snickers of my classmates, safe against the wall, staring at my safari to the stranger with no legs.

I finally made it across the room and I shoved the vase and card into the old man's hands. I ran back to the safety of the wall without ever making eye contact with him.

I was so afraid. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't relate to him on even the basest level. I was frustrated. Guilty. Ashamed. Inadequate.

I thought of Willie Brown today. I relived the same feelings as I dealt with a contemporary Willie Brown yesterday. Fear. Shame. Frustration. Inadequacy.

Willie Brown, wherever you are, I hope that someone crossed your path and made your life a little brighter before you moved on. I'm sorry I blew my chance.

Pity is, I don't seem to have learned from the experience.

Ok, Mr. Bluebird, I get the hint

2005-02-27T20:31:00.000-06:00

A cold, steady rain kept me inside all afternoon but it didn't ruin the appetites of the birds outside. I guess if you're a bird you eat, rain or shine.

I had a nice brown creeper on my suet feeder as well as a downy woodpecker, a flock of finches on my thistle feeder, and nary a squirrel to be found. Apparently squirrels don't like the rain. Sissies.

I saw my first bluebird of the year, a fat thing sitting on my neighbor's fence. I've never seen so big a bluebird. He was beautiful. I think he was scouting the area for nesting possibilities, because I saw him more than once on the fence (either that or he has a fat cousin). I was so excited.

Then I sat down with my Sunday paper, and what do you know? The local bird column was all about the bluebird. And then, a bluebird plays a prominent role in a chapter of the Daniel Wallace novel I'm reading, Ray in Reverse.

Ok, I get the hint. I put the paper down and built a birdhouse.

The wood scraps I built it with, ironically, came from my neighbor's fence. The fence is a very nice shadowbox with each section topped with a convex arch. The fence installers, after cutting each piece of the arch, flung the scraps into the woods behind my neighbor's house, and I, being the descendent of various Depression survivors, packrats, and anti-litterers, gathered the scraps for future, undetermined use.

It's not a bad looking birdhouse, if I say so myself. I took woodshop in junior high and high school but carpentry was not to be in my future. I didn't have a blueprint (no pun intended) but the newspaper article said I didn't need one as long as my entry hole was 1 1/2" in diameter. That was the hard part because I was out of jig saw blades. Yes, I have a jig saw, a hand-me-down, avocado-green relic from Mr. DePaul, who is much handier with tools (and blueprints). I used a cheap keyhole saw, so the hole is a little rough and not quite round. We'll see how picky Mr. Bluebird is.

I noticed my grandfather's initials carved into the handle of the handsaw I used to square up my boards, and as I reached into my toolbox for a hammer I grabbed another castoff from Mr. DePaul. I hope Mr. Bluebird appreciates the three generations of craftsmanship that went into his new home, though I doubt he'll care. He probably has getting the missus in the family way on his mind, which is ok by me. That just means more bluebirds.

I have plenty of scrap wood left. Party on, Mr. B.

Chris Rocks the Oscars

2005-02-25T21:49:00.000-06:00

I've paid only peripheral interest to the fallout as comedian Chris Rock was tapped to host this year's Academy Awards show, so forgive me if I don't have all my facts straight.

This is the Internet, after all.

It is amazing that so much attention is paid to the process of producing this mind-numbing spectacle. Often, the annual unveiling of the host rivals the awards themselves for drama. Will it be Billy Crystal, for the 42nd time? How about Steve Martin? He's between book signings. Say, what about Johnny Car... oh, wait, he's dead. A woman? Yeah, we need a woman!

As soon as Chris Rock was announced, the feeding frenzy began. He's too cutting edge for The Academy, some said. I can't believe Cates and Horvitz chose him, he's too controversial. Speculation was that The Academy would step in, say it was all a mistake, and give it to Bob Hop... oh, wait, he's dead, too.

Then the host-to-be opened his mouth. He said that black men don't watch the Oscars. Then he said that straight men don't watch the Oscars. Then he feigned shock that anyone would watch the Oscars.

Which is precisely the reason he has the job. To get people to watch the Oscars.

There is no controversy. Never has been. The producer and director didn't pull a fast one on the staid Academy Powers-That-Be as they sat in wicker chairs on a palm-tree-ringed veranda with blankets on their laps lunching on cold avocado soup and sourdough scones.

People, please get this, once and for all. Hollywood's biggest export is not film. It is hype. Marketing. Artifice.

Too often we fall for it. We even fall for it when we talk about the other one billion Oscar viewers who fall for it. Every single year.

So everyone please calm down.

If you were planning to watch the Oscars before Chris Rock was named the host, by all means watch. Get the firmest sacro-supporting pillow you can find, procure an ample supply of the three V's (Vitamins, Visine, and Vioxx), and hunker down for the duration (hopefully you went through your Oscar-watching drills during the Superbowl pre-game marathon).

If you weren't planning to watch the Oscars until you heard that Chris Rock would be hosting, by all means watch. He'll probably say some funny stuff. May even make some young starlet cry. Odds are that he'll get bleeped. Just don't beat yourself up too badly when it hits you that you fell for the hype.

If you weren't planning to watch the Oscars regardless of who will be the host, then don't watch. Read a book. Watch Prime Minister's Questions on C-SPAN. Go to a movie, even. Just don't pretend that you watched it when all your friends who fell for the hype talk about it on Monday morning. And please, don't try to quote the bleeped jokes off the Drudge Report. You'll never get the inflections right and you'll just look sad.

You know who I always hold out hope that they'll get to host the Oscars? Elvis Pres... oh, wait, he's dead, too?

Giuseppe painted, too?

2005-02-23T22:57:00.000-06:00

Moretti murals surface near coal mine museum

(By the way, my profile photo is of Giuseppe Moretti with a scale model of his Vulcan statue. Now you know.)

I take back some of the nice things I said about MARTA

2005-02-23T22:52:00.000-06:00

Televisions on MARTA trains?

Tombstone, Alabama

2005-02-22T21:31:00.000-06:00

Aunt Bee was blessed with some unseasonably warm weather for her weekend visit.

As well as some rain. She enjoyed listening to the rainfall Sunday night. Apparently it doesn't rain much out west where she lives.

She had told me a couple of weeks ago that she wanted to drive up to our hometown and see how things had changed. I don't get up there much anymore so it sounded like a good idea to me. I asked her what she wanted to see, mentally mapping out the most efficient tour route of schools we'd attended, businesses we'd patronized, and houses we'd lived in or visited the kinfolks in. She predictably named a few of them before mentioning one specifically.

Will you take me to see Foozy?

Foozy. Wow. I hadn't been to see her in several years. Foozy was Aunt Bee's grandmother; my great-grandmother. She was a sweet thing, and I feel robbed that I didn't know her in her prime. She was stricken with Parkinson's disease shortly after I was born; my memories consist of her shuffling along behind an aluminum walker and her sitting cross-legged in a big naugahyde chair wearing a cotton house dress with her thumbs and forefingers clacking together uncontrollably like an ambidextrous telegraph operator. She died over twenty years ago, during my first semester of college. On the day of her funeral I left the college bookstore after spending the astronomical sum of $180 buying textbooks to find a parking ticket on my windshield for having my back bumper hanging over a yellow curb in one of those welcome-to-the-real-world-you-ain't-in-high-school-no-more cosmic coincidences.

Yes, I'll take you to see Foozy, I replied. But that wasn't all. She wanted to see where Foozy's sisters were buried, so I agreed to take her there. And then she wanted to see where her father's (my grandfather's) folks are buried, and I agreed to take her there. And to the schools. And to the businesses. And to the houses.

It was quite a list but I thought it through and had a pretty good route picked out. There were a couple of shortcomings with my plan, however. First, it would take a good bit of time and miles to fit it all in. Second, Zelda, Lovett, and Dora wanted to go as well.

I wasn't worried about Zelda. She has proven time and again that she will follow me anywhere. Dora was a natural concern simply because her age, attention span, and bladder capacity are all in the single digits. Lovett was a concern because, well, because he's Lovett.

Lovett and I often clash during those teachable moments between a father and a son. If I explicitly try to impart some knowledge to him about something, he sometimes rebels with exasperated huffs and eye-rolls. He told me the last time we were at Vulcan Park as I pointed out the cooling towers of Miller Steam Plant on the horizon, Please, dad, no more geography! Being cooped up in a van with him for a couple of hours of intermittent cemetery stops didn't sound like the best possible Saturday, but for Aunt Bee's sake I determined that if I could handle it, he could too.

We quickly checked the first two cemeteries off our list. Cemetery #1 is where Foozy's sisters, their husbands, and some of their kids are buried. We tried to recall whose funerals we had attended and whose we hadn't and why. Our people buried in cemetery #2 died way before we were gleams in anyone's eyes, but I had discovered the graves during genealogical research some years back and thought Aunt Bee would be interested. Back on the road, we did the school, business, house portion of the tour before stopping for a bite to eat to fortify ourselves for cemetery #3.

I drove right to Foozy's grave as if I visit it every day. It was just as I remembered. Foozy and Red, her husband (my great-grandfather), are buried between a dogwood tree and a white pine on a downslope near the edge of the cemetery. Foozy's mother, Mama R, is buried beside her. Mama R died when I was in first grade; her funeral is the first I remember.

Lovett soon wandered off as we stood in reflective silence over the graves. After a while he called me to come check out a soldier's grave marker he had found. Then, he found the grave of someone born in the 1800's, and then someone who lived into their nineties, and then someone with a familiar name. He began to connect husband's graves with those of their wives and then their children. I showed him the grave of a congressman's wife and then a grouping of Jewish merchant's graves, clustered together on a hillside in much the same order as their stores were arranged on Main Street. I showed him the grave of one of my neighbors growing up whose daughter he knows. Suddenly and inexplicably, in between simple stones and ostentatious monuments, the past connected with the present for Lovett, and it was almost all I could do to get him back into the car so we could make the remainder of our stops before dark.

We drove past Foozy's and Red's old house and Mama R's last residence on our way to cemetery #4. I found my great-great-grandfather's grave, and I remembered a story my grandfather told me about how they loaded his grandfather into a wagon after he died to take him to the highway because the ambulance wouldn't come to the farm to get him. It was so cold they had to build a fire to thaw the ground enough to dig his grave, so cold was the winter of '32 in Alabama. As I passed the story to Lovett, it began to rain.

It was an emotional day, for me and Aunt Bee more than the others; for Aunt Bee most of all. After all, she was 1,800 miles away from home and didn't know when she might pass this way again. I was glad I could share it with her, and I was glad that Lovett felt a spark of interest for something that I didn't prompt. I hope he never forgets the day we toured the cemeteries with his great-Aunt Bee. I know I won't.

And yes, Foozy, we still miss you.

Rapid Transit Follies

2005-02-18T23:46:00.000-06:00

The DePauls made a roadtrip to Atlanta today to pick up my Aunt Bee who is visiting from out west.

Aunt Bee doesn't get back this way very often anymore, but she has a professional association meeting in Atlanta next week and she flew in early to spend a long weekend with her favorite nephew and his fam. We were all too happy to meet her at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

It isn't every day that I jump at the chance to go to Atlanta. Atlanta is high on my "been there, done that" list. I mean, one traffic jam on I-285 looks like another, and once you've driven down one street with Peachtree embedded in the name you've driven down them all. To me, the only saving grace to the whole city is their mass transit system, known as MARTA.

As soon as I heard about Aunt Bee's trip I immediately began to contemplate the stress-free journey from the Hamilton E. Holmes station (W5) to the Airport station (S7) with no traffic, parking, or other concerns inherent to our culture's obsession with all things automotive. We left our modest suburban driveway a little before 7:00 a.m., and two hours later we were standing in the drafty Holmes terminal, trying to get the token machine to work.

Now, I had already figured out our fare requirements for the day. Dora, being four, could ride for free, which meant that we need three tokens to get to the airport (me, Zelda, and Lovett) and four to get back (DePauls + Aunt Bee). At $1.75 per, I needed $12.25 to by the seven tokens. I had a twenty, a ten, and a couple of ones in my wallet, and of course, no machine in the building would take my ten. Which meant I had to use my twenty, which meant I purchased four tokens more than I needed. And that griped me. What am I going to do with four extra MARTA tokens? I mentally screamed at the machine(s). Thanks for nothing!

But my private rant notwithstanding, Zelda, Lovett, Dora, and I boarded the train and were soon locomoting through the Atlanta cityscape. Five stops to the Five Points station, a transfer to the southbound train, and seven stops and an escalator ride later we were waving across Delta's baggage claim concourse to Aunt Bee, who had just arrived and retrieved her bags from carousel 5.

Zelda grabbed Aunt Bee's backpack, Lovett grabbed her small carry-on, I grabbed her large rolling suitcase, and Dora grabbed her hand and we all traipsed back to the MARTA station. We were in the airport terminal maybe ten minutes, max. Northbound train to Five Points, transfer to the westbound train, and five stops later we were wheeling luggage toward the exit in anticipation of pointing the DePaul chariot back to the Magic City.

I was about to hoist the big bag chest-high so I could maneuver through the exit turnstile when Aunt Bee uttered some pretty ominous words. You know, I don't think that's my bag. I screeched to a halt before the turnstile and did a did-you-say-what-I-think-you-said 180 degree turn. I sat the bag upright on its wheels and I noticed for the very first time a small white tag containing the name and address of the bag's owner, which unfortunately did not match the name of my Aunt Bee. We had someone else's bag.

I can tell you that all kinds of questions go through your mind when you are standing at an exit turnstile holding someone else's bag, such as:
1. Is there something illegal in this bag that's gonna land my careless, didn't-verify-the-claim-check butt in the Fulton County Jail?
2. Has [unfortunate owner of bag] already left on his/her flight to Brazil for a month-long Amazon expedition without their life-saving supply of insulin?
3. You mean I'm gonna have to ride the train all the way to the airport and back before I can get to Cracker Barrel for lunch?
4. Is that why neither token machine would take my ten and I had to buy four extra tokens?

The answers to those questions are:
1. I don't know
2. I don't know
3. Yes
4. Yes

So off we went. Again. Five stops to the Five Points station, a transfer to the southbound train, and seven stops and an escalator ride. I began to feel like a MARTA regular. I actually thought at one point, man, we're at Oakland City already? We dropped off [unfortunate owner]'s bag at the baggage service counter and backtracked to carousel 5 to find Aunt Bee's bag still traveling around in circles.

I kinda know how the bag felt.

Welcome back to Birmingham, Aunt Bee.

Full Disclosure

2005-02-17T19:36:00.000-06:00

In keeping with the spirit of the times and in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess:

Chris DePaul is a pseudonym, and I'm not really a journalist.

I have never, however, had my likeness used to promote a male escort service. The similiarities end there.

Well, that, and I've never thrown GWB a softball.

Though I am losing my hair. But not like this.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Fourteen stitches and a week later

2005-02-13T23:20:00.000-06:00

Today is seventh day of Zelda's ordeal with her finger and the fourteen stitches.

I finally looked at the finger today.

Y'all think I was trying to be funny about almost passing out in the ER last Monday night. I wish it were true. I've spent the last week peeking around corners to make sure she didn't have the gauze off while she cleaned the wound. I did get close enough to it to help her tie off the new gauze on occasion, but even that was almost too much.

I even got queasy talking with her about it on the phone one day last week.

But today I accepted her offer to look at it. Words cannot describe. Trouble is, there's no observant nurse at my house to grab me by the arm and make me take a big mouthful of crushed ice.

Pardon me while I go stick my head in the freezer.

By the way, my friend who had the emergency surgery went home today. He has a long recovery ahead of him but he's on his way.

Healing, in my little corner of the world, has begun, at least for now. Thank you, Lord.

Crisis situation? Count me out...

2005-02-07T23:01:00.000-06:00

Zelda fell and cut her hand today.

Lovett called me at work to come take her to the emergency room. I pulled up to the house and she was standing in the garage, her left hand wrapped in a beach towel. Not the most pleasant welcome home I've ever received.

The kids were nowhere to be found. Lovett walked Dora to [neighborhood playmate's] house, Zelda explained. Can we go now, please?

A few minutes later I dropped her off near the entrance to the ER and I miraculously found a curbside parking place just around the corner. I confidently strode through the sliding glass doors (well, as confidently as a man can stride while hiding his wife's purse under his coat) with that ER adrenaline flowing through my veins. I gotta tell ya...

...it ain't like it is on TV: doors flying open, gurneys skidding around corners on two wheels with 18-member medical teams hanging on for dear life and pouty, blonde interns yelling Stat! like Parris Island drill instructors. The real ER is peopled with bored clerks typing insurance information, green-around-the-gills flu sufferers holding their bellies, and old folks hobbling back and forth to the restroom. And people sleeping while sitting up. 'Cause in the real ER, you do an awful lot of...

...waiting.

If Zelda had not fashioned a homemade tourniquet to stanch the flow of blood, we might have seen a lot more action, but as it was, even after the triage nurse examined her, we waited for two hours before being called into a room.

And then the fun really started.

Dr. Red Duke danced into Examination Room 10 to have a look-see. I, your humble reporter, tried everything within my power to refrain from having a look-see. I held The Periodic Table at eye-level, effectively blocking Dr. Duke, Zelda, and more importantly, the parts of Zelda that began bleeding when Dr. D ripped the gauze away. Can you bend this finger? Dr. Duke asked. OOOOWWWW!?! Zelda cried. Uh-oh... I moaned, as the room began to spin. I dashed from the room to keep from fainting but the head rush I got from standing up so quickly only made matters worse. I'm gonna faint in front of all these nurses if I keep standing here I reasoned, wondering if my insurance would charge me two co-payments if I did. So I wobbled back into Room 10 and sat down again. Dr. Duke left to retrieve his bone saw from under the seat of his buckboard as I tried with every ounce of strength I had to regain my composure.

I didn't fool a soul.

A nurse, who had seen me standing up against the outside wall, followed me into the room. Are you about to faint? she asked.

Yes, ma'am, I am.

Come on, we got to get you outta here.

I'm afraid to stand up.

You got to go she said as she dragged my pale, clammy butt out of the chair, shoved a cup of ice into my hand, and pushed me outside into the fresh air. When you feel better, you go back to the waiting room she ordered, muttering something about men's and women's thresholds for pain.

So I meekly took a seat in the waiting room along with the other moaning sickfolk. I was being no help to anyone. And I hated it.

I had received a disturbing e-mail earlier in the day that a good friend had been rushed to emergency surgery for a problem we thought had been fixed months ago. Zelda was behind the swinging doors getting bits of glass dug out of her fingers. Some guy across the room was doubled over in pain between trips to the restroom to, well, you know... And I wasn't doing a bit of good for any of them.

I tried to pray but I felt so impotent. What does it mean to pray for one another? To pray for God's presence, which he already promised us? To pray for healing, which may or may not be in His will? To pray for His will, which may mean that they suffer (say it Chris, say it: or that they die)? That He "bless" them and the doctors and nurses? What does that mean?

There, in that waiting room, I felt very, very small.

Emergency! Crisis! Adam, go boil some water! Bill, grab some bandages! Chris, bend over and put your head between your knees! We don't need two invalids.

Intrusion detection

2005-02-05T18:44:00.000-06:00

Zelda had a brilliant idea the other day.

To combat the intrusive squirrel's access to my birdfeeders, she sprayed the poles with nonstick cooking spray. She and Lovett and Dora spent a riotous morning watching the squirrels repeatedly jump on the poles and slide back down to the ground. I was both impressed and pleased with her ingenuity as I heard their report at the dinner table.

The next day, after an apparent predawn war council (intelligence is sketchy on this), the squirrels stepped up the attack. They went after my suet feeder.

The cake was about three-quarters gone (the woodpeckers and nuthatches devour it), so I attributed the squirrel's success to that and bought a new cake on my lunch hour.

This morning I went out to fill the feeders, and the suet feeder was lying on the ground. Open. With the cake missing. The whole cake. AND THE CHAIN.

Boy, was I miffed. A pox on you, squirrels, and your progeny! I cried into the woods. I hope the little buggers get ptomaine poisoning or their peanut allergies kick in or a hawk grabs them as they struggle with the weight of the cake or they get so sick of suet cake that they vow never to touch the stuff again much as I did that Christmas long ago when I devoured one of those huge Hershey's Kisses in a single afternoon and swore off the stuff for many subsequent years.

I feel violated. They took the chain?!?! What an insult. Makes me feel like an idiot.

Speaking of which, I worked for parts of three days this week to update my virus scan subscription.

Perhaps you are familiar with the scenario. Subscription about to expire. Explore renewal options. See updated version of software for a price comparable to the renewal expense. Choose that option. Have internet connection crash during purchase verification. Verify that no purchase was actually made. Attempt purchase again. Download setup. Get error message that you are missing the proxy server info that you just finished typing. Spend twenty minutes on the phone and follow fifteen levels of phone options only to have a prerecorded voice scream a phone number that you frantically write down and call to find it no longer valid but another prerecorded voice directs you to the website that you are looking at but can't find contact information on. Finally send a desperation e-mail to somebody somewhere to get a response thirty-six hours later that is irrelevant to your error message. Then by divine inspiration decide that maybe turning the proxy server off on your connection is the answer and by Gates it is and the sixteen terabyte download begins with a countdown clock that you figure it will be finished about the time your yet-unborn grandchild graduates from high school but you realize your sensitivity to the process and patiently clean the house while the download continues, jiggling the mouse every time you pass the computer so the screen saver doesn't kick on and kill your session. The download finally completes and now you are faced with installing and activating the new version but only after you try five times does it occur to you to uninstall the old version and finally, FINALLY, you have new virus scan software, but wait, you must download the updated definitions, blah, blah blah...

...all because some squirrels somewhere have nothing better to do than write malevolent software with the sole intent to intrude and disrupt your computing environment.

A pox on you, squirrels, and your progeny!

...secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...

2005-02-03T11:20:00.000-06:00

Bumper stickers on adjacent vehicles in a parking lot this morning:

George W. Bush is a Punk-A$$ Chump
George W. Bush Presidential Prayer Team

You know what today is...

2005-02-02T14:53:00.000-06:00

Today is Groundhog Day, that day on which Americans collectively cease exhaling until some rodent up north sees his shadow (or not) which is supposed to portend six more weeks of winter (or not).

Not that I desire to delve into Groundhog Day history, but it must have been awfully cold and boring to have wanted to celebrate that inanity the second year. "Say, Benjamin, shall we jocularly coax the groundhog from his den again this year? Maybe the petticoats will fly as they did last!"

It does help the TV news people, though, fill dead air between the hospital-bed interviews with the poor ladies who give birth to the first babies of the new year and the codependent, enabling postmasters who pay postal clerks overtime to stand curbside offering last-minute postmarks to the goobers who wait until midnight to file their taxes on April 15.

Count me as one who doesn't get it.

It has nothing to do with my like or dislike for the animal kingdom. Zelda has most people we know thinking that I dislike animals, which isn't true. I like animals just fine.

Faithful readers of this blog know of my love for birds. I delight in the folly of my feathered friends as they foray through forest and field. I have four feeders (alliteration continuation is coincidental) up now: one with birdseed, one with sunflower seeds, one with thistle seeds, and a suet feeder. This past weekend I was blessed with three different woodpecker varieties as well as a beautiful white-breasted nuthatch on just the suet feeder.

Last Saturday morning, as I was filling the feeders, I found myself exchanging stares with a four-point buck who was following a doe along the creek in the woods below. I ran back to the house and grabbed Dora so she could see them (she's big on Bambi right now). Our hearts pounded as we stood on the edge of the yard watching their white tails disappear up the hollow (ok, mine was pounding from running, but it thrilled me no less). Dora will never forget it.

I faithfully renew our membership to the Birmingham Zoo every year so we can pop in and out at will (well, during normal business hours). A couple of Saturdays ago, Lovett wanted to go to the library and Dora wanted to go to the zoo, so we compromised and did both. We made a quick pass through the large-animal house to smell, I mean, see, the hippos, elephants, and rhinos, who were all indoors eating hay and expelling digested remnants of same. Then we hopped over to watch the seals being fed. Eat like a horse? It should be eat like a seal. Those things scarf down dozens of whole, formerly-frozen fish without chewing. No wonder they flop around and bark.

I'm glad we got to see the elephants, because in this morning's Birmingham News comes word that Susie died Monday. Susie and Mona have been at the zoo since the 1950s. I marveled at them as a child, as my children have. A few years ago, before Dora was born, Zelda, Lovett, and I attended a fiftieth birthday party for the pair. Lovett loved it (hey, that rhymes). It was during the heat of the summer (it may have even been around July 4) and the zoo staff had prepared huge frozen fruit popsicles for the ladies to nosh. Nothing like a popsicle on your birthday.

And now, Susie is gone, Mona is alone, and Dora will be sad. She already worries about one of our gorillas who underwent heart surgery recently, and she was heartbroken when our grizzly bear grizzled away. I almost want to keep her detached from these animals to protect her but she must learn that death is part of life. I can't shelter her forever.

No, I don't dislike animals. They fascinate me. I don't, however, want to live in the same house with one. That opens a whole other can of worms (to mix a metaphor). I get the "bad daddy" stares from people when they see me turn a deaf ear to Dora's pleas for something furry to shed on my furniture and pee in my floor. I've learned to ignore the stares, though, and search for solace with kindred souls, as scarce as they may be. One solid and faithful soulmate blessed me the other day with her mirthful appreciation of the bumper sticker which says "My karma ran over my dogma."

We love-em-as-long-as-they-stay-outside-where-they-belong animal people gotta stick together.

Happy Groundhog Day.

The DePaul's take a holiday

2005-01-27T21:39:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite things about the new year is the tangible phenomenon of vacation days.

I'm blessed by the mercy of my employer and the fruits of my sometimes hard labor to have fifteen days a year to do with what I wish. Last year I used number 15 in early November, so for six weeks I stumbled through the no-more-time-off-the-rest-of-the-year-except-for-company-mandated-holidays fog. I got the two Thanksgiving days and the two Christmas days, but that took the edge off feeling like I got away with something by being off work when everybody else was too.

And then that December miracle occurred, when at 11:59:59 I went from zero to fifteen in one second, a quantum leap attributable to the labor laws and the aroma of capitalism that we in this great country so deeply inhale.

So I have now before me a clean slate, and I don't know what to do.

We haven't a proper holiday in years, me and the missus. Oh, we've been places. Near and far. Round the world. But not for lezhure (pardon my French). This year we vow to change that; we've just not decided how.

Lovett wants to go to Ireland, of all places. He likes the countryside and castle pictures in the bookstore guidebooks, which shocks me because we have to threaten him with a tazer just to go outside to the curb with the garbage can in tow. (Just kidding about the tazer. It's not plugged in. Please don't tell Lovett.) And he wants to hike the Irish countryside. There is hope.

Dora, my hiker and lower-life-form researcher, has more metropolitan aspirations. When she sees photos of the "Eyepull" Tower, she wants to jet to Paris and stand under it in the spot where Zelda and I phoned her and Lovett when she was too little to understand during our whirlwind, 10-hour tour of the City of Lights. She learned that the "Statue of Livery" is in New York City, so she wanted to go there "really bad" until she watched the inauguration on TV and learned that Lovett walked the hallowed halls of our nation's capitol before she was born, so guess where she wants to go now?

Zelda pines for the beach with book and journal, even though she knows how the sand chafes me and the sun entices my inner freckle, though I love the wind and the salt air and the food. But everybody in Birmingham goes to the beach, and the DePaul's strive to avoid what everybody else does (in our understated way, of course).

I'm claustrophobic, so a cruise sounds like punishment; our Baptist brethren would shun us were we to exhibit mouse-eared souvenirs, so Disney is out. Since the Concorde has retired, we'll probably stay on this side of the pond (sorry, Lovett).

So, dear readers, what say ye? Suggestions for my frugal, adventuresome, xenophilic, bookish clan?

Patience, children

2005-01-27T01:10:00.000-06:00

A cold front roared through Birmingham this past weekend with the strongest wind gusts the DePaul's have seen since hurricane Ivan stomped ashore last September.

The worst winds were on Saturday night, which is noteworthy only because about that time my muse blew into, as they used to say in wrestling (or rasslin, depending on your preference), "parts unknown." Every night since then I've put a bowl of milk out on the patio for her, hoping when she finds her way back home she'll know I missed her.

She's disappeared before. Usually she wanders off right after I've committed to a project where I need to muster all the creativity I can squeeze out of whatever corpuscles creativity rides around in. Just when I'm about to panic and renege on my promised output, she whispers in my ear, and I write, and all is well. I've learned to be patient with her, and I ask you, dear reader, to do the same.

Goodnight, Johnny

2005-01-24T18:29:00.000-06:00

Favorite joke told by Carson (paraphrased):
Good news from Sarajevo. The new model Yugo comes equipped with a rear-window defroster so your hand won't get cold while you're pushing it down the street.

Favorite joke told about Carson (paraphrased also; it's been 13 years for crying out loud):
The Tonight Show writers contribute a dollar a day to a pool won by the first writer that Johnny greets on his way into the studio. The pool is up to $25,000.

Things I wish I'd written

2005-01-22T10:14:00.000-06:00

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan on the inaugural address

Times Online - Simon Jenkins on Don Quixote

"Larry" Adams, "Moe" Jefferson, and "Curly" Washington?!?

2005-01-19T13:31:00.000-06:00

Dora ambled over to my chair in the corner the other night to see what I was reading.

"I'm reading David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams," I replied.

(Actually, I told her I'm reading a book about a man named John who used to be president.)

"Is that him?" she asked, pointing to the cover.

"Yes, that's him. He was a really neat man."

"He looks like that guy in [hip, pricey, chain hamburger joint]," she said, pointing to Adams' hair.

"Huh?" I pondered, until I remembered the cardboard cutout standing in the entrance to [hip, pricey, chain hamburger joint].

Dora saw John Adams and thought Larry from the Three Stooges.

Boy, I have a lot of work to do.

Wartime Inauguration

2005-01-19T11:26:00.000-06:00

Enough about FDR's cold chicken salad and unfrosted pound cake.

The frugalities of Roosevelt IV (the inauguration of 1945) as compared to Bush II (tomorrow's inauguration, "the most expensive in history" as NPR always points out) are supposed to show us what a wartime inauguration should look like.

But it's apples and oranges.

In 1945, FDR was a shell of the man he had been twelve years before, at Roosevelt I. His declining health was obvious to everyone around him (within four months he would be dead). The strain of being commander-in-chief for the preceding three years of uncertainty took an enormous toll on him, mentally and physically. The death toll of American troops, staffed primarily by an involuntary draft, numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Domestic life was altered across the board as basic necessities were rationed and entire industries were retooled for war production instead of consumer production. The focus of the entire nation was on the war effort; our sovereignty was at stake.

Not so, 2005. This war is not the focus of the nation. To suggest that the mood of the nation is subdued because of the war is inaccurate. Our everyday lives are not touched by it. We follow our volunteer forces closely if a large body count occurs, but the topic of war is easily pushed aside by college football's BCS controversy, or Janet's wardrobe malfunction, or Martha's incarceration, or Brad and Jen's split, or Trump's fiancée's $100K wedding gown. We eat out, attend sporting events, rack up credit card debt, and gossip about celebrities we know better than our own neighbors while sacrificing nothing for the war effort.

The $40M they'll spend on the inauguration is good economic stimulus. The union guys who built the platforms and the D.C. cops who'll earn overtime pay and the guys who set up (and, ugh, take down) the portable toilets can use the money. The private donors and lobbyist who'll foot the bill need to feel part of the process. It'll help their self-esteem.

So let them party. Let them eat five-tiered, frosted cake. Let them dance. And then let them get back to work and finish the job.

No wonder Ralph Kramden was a grouch

2005-01-18T22:42:00.000-06:00

Is there any lonelier job than driving a bus in Birmingham?

I saw a Greyhound bus on 280 today heading into town. There was one passenger on board. One. She was a middle-aged African-American woman wearing a red hat. She sat three rows behind the driver on his side of the bus, staring straight ahead as he did.

I wonder where she came from. How does it feel to be the only passenger on a bus leaving town? Are you thinking Those fools can stay there if they want but I'm getting out while the gettin's good or are you thinking How come nobody else is leaving?

I wonder where she was going. How does it feel to be the only passenger on a bus arriving in town? Are you excited to be ahead of the crowd, with the opportunities to yourself at your first-come, first-served feet? Or are you questioning your judgment, wondering if you missed the Welcome to Nowheresville sign at the city limits?

How does it feel to be the driver of a one-passenger bus? Gotta be some weird economic indicator karma going on there. This chick's fare won't buy the diesel fuel for this trip, much less pay my salary. What kinda two-bit outfit have I hooked up with? It just ain't cool tooling in a big ole bus like this with only one passenger.

He probably doesn't know it, being an out-of-town Greyhound driver, but it could be worse. He could be driving a MAX bus down 280. They never have any passengers.

"The Jungle," 2005 edition

2005-01-17T17:47:00.000-06:00

Upton Sinclair would be proud of the advances we've made.

Evicting the squirrel

2005-01-13T23:00:00.000-06:00

I hung a new suet feeder in a tree in my backyard earlier this week, and I have yet to see a bird feeding from it. Of course, the fact that I get up only thirty minutes before time for work and I don't get home until dark cuts into my bird-watching this time of year. So I grabbed a quick glance out the window at the feeders on my way to shave this morning. I was appalled.

Hanging upside down from the pole that holds my feeder of sunflower seeds was a long-tailed grey squirrel.

Squirrels are the bane of us bird-feeders. They are greedy, destructive, and messy, but most of all they scare away the birds which defeats the purpose of feeding birds in the first place. Mr. DePaul, my father and bird-feeding mentor, goes to exhaustive lengths to discourage squirrels around his feeders (I hesitate to describe some of his methods on a family-oriented blog). I didn't inherit his disdain for the furry mammals, but when I saw mine this morning, I was a little miffed.

I marched toward the feeder in my house shoes, making eye contact with Mr. Squirrel all the way across the yard. He left only after I was within arm's reach of the pole. Get out and stay out! was my unspoken message that chased him into the woods. I returned to my shaving basin, the sovereignty over my tiny garden kingdom intact.

But I'm sure the squirrel returned, most likely before I left the driveway. And he probably invited all his friends to the buffet just for spite. My presence was merely a temporary deterrence.

The squirrel incident parallels one of my writing struggles. I have an interesting character in mind who is dealing with some past issues of commission and omission in a series of dreams which I'm trying to write in the third person p.o.v. The character wouldn't be a reliable witness if I wrote them in first person because as a retired pastor he would certainly filter them, especially dream number 1.

Which is precisely my problem. I sit down to write the first dream and look out the window to see my internal censor hanging upside down from the feeder pole, digging through my sunflower seeds. He says things like You can't write that. That's vulgar! and Wait until _____ reads this! You'll be finished as a _____. I chase him away like I did the real squirrel this morning, and he shakes his long furry tail all the way into the woods as if to say I'll be back! And he is, as soon as I pick up the story again.

He steals my ideas, destroys my voice, makes a mess of my psyche, and scares away all the little birds I'm trying to attract to my feeders. I can't get rid of him.

If I treated my "squirrel" like Mr. DePaul does his, my children would be orphans.

What a difference a week makes

2005-01-12T22:37:00.000-06:00

Tonight I was sitting in my chair in a quiet corner, watching the wind blow the pansies in the window boxes, a little jazz on the radio, a bowl of popcorn in my lap. Lovett was checking his e-mail, staring intently at the monitor, the click of the keyboard barely audible over Duke Ellington. Dora wandered into the room to tell me about her very first big-girl choir practice. Then she said, "Can I go to sleep on your shoulder?" So I set aside my popcorn bowl, lay my head back as she crawled into my lap, and in three minutes she was sound asleep.

What a difference a week makes.

Last Wednesday, Zelda and I had an important dinner meeting to attend. A minute and a half before we were to walk out the door, I noticed some peanut butter on Dora's shirt. I took her to her room to change it, but nothing I picked out would do. Nothing. A wardrobe malfunction with a four-year-old. I finally picked a shirt for her and made her put it on. She followed me out of her room, protesting, and then she about-faced and came stomping back with a Raggedy Ann doll under each arm, both of which were as tall as she is. "I'm taking these with me," she declared, the air thick with self-appeasement.

"No, you're not," I replied. "They are too big. Find something smaller." To which I headed to the garage to open the car for Lovett, who was uncharacteristically anxious to go somewhere since he had a friend waiting to meet him. I opened the garage door, cranked the DePaul chariot, and waited. No Zelda. No Dora. Not even a Raggedy Ann.

Faced with the prospect of entering late a room full of people, I went back in the house looking for my wayward women. I didn't have to search very hard; I just followed the trail of wails. Dora ran past me into the garage and collapsed on the floor in an hysterical heap. I went to pick her up and she did something she had never done before. She screamed at me. Actually, "scream" is such an impotent word. It was one of those Darth Vader "I am your father" guttural groans that stabbed me right through the heart. I expected her head to start spinning round and round at any moment. I realized quickly that I had a struggle on my hands.

I picked her up and gave her the I'm-bigger-than-you speech as I put her in her car seat and tried to buckle the seatbelt. Mission accomplished without getting kicked anywhere important, I took my frustrations out on the car door, giving it a slam that rattled my teeth. I got behind the wheel, slammed the chariot into reverse, and began backing out of the driveway. And then I caught an earful from Lovett.

Lovett is a wonderful big brother. He has been wrapped around Dora's little finger since day one. He is eight years older than her and when she was a baby and we were trying to get her to go to sleep on her own, he would yell out from his bed, "Am I the only one that hears her crying?" and "Is nobody going to feed her? Are y'all just going to let her die?" He came to her rescue again tonight, wondering aloud if I was proud of myself and why I hadn't let her bring her dolls so we could have avoided this major scene.

So I transformed into a mode that surely was the catalyst for dueling back when black powder pistols were all the rage. I let him have it. I told him how wrong giving in to her would have been, for that night and for the future. I told him how hard I worked to provide a safe and secure home, insulated from the outside world as much as possible, and that I wouldn't stand for her disrespect. Nor his.

And then he got hysterical. About how he didn't feel safe and secure and how upset he was and that I didn't care. I coasted to a stop at the traffic signal at a major crossroads on the way to our destination with a carload of insane, irrational, emotional, and hysterical people, three minutes away from our meeting.

And it hit me. I was at a crossroads not just on the highway, but in my relationship with my kids and within my inner being. I was three minutes away from sending Dora off to childcare in a state of emotional upheaval, wreaking unknown havoc on herself and her caregivers. I was three minutes away from sending Lovett off to find his friend and fend for himself for an hour and a half when not thirty seconds before he had declared his insecurity. I was three minutes away from dragging Zelda and myself into a room full of people, having painted on the happy family masks and pretending that our lives were conflict-free.

When the light changed, I asked the chariot occupants where they wanted to go for supper. Lovett got more upset when he realized he wasn't going to meet his friend as planned, so I offered to go pick his friend up and take him with us. We popped into the local chain deli with the good salad bar, and within five minutes I had my family back. Dora was sharing her fruit cup with me, Lovett and his friend were talking about the latest releases from Hollywood (that neither one will probably get to see).

When we got home, we had long talks with the kids individually. Dora understood the importance of obedience, and Lovett talked through why the incident upset him so. And we healed.

And tonight, the click of the keyboard and Dora's drowsy hiccups on my shoulder bear testament that the healing has held up pretty well so far.

What a difference a week makes.

Keeping the bird feeders full

2005-01-10T18:50:00.000-06:00

If I don't keep my bird feeders filled with fresh seed, the birds go elsewhere to eat. And so it is with the blog as well. Not that I'm blogging for attention or that I recognize that I have any regular readers, but my visitor count doesn't increase if I don't post. Last week I didn't post anything and had very few visitors.

I did keep my bird feeders filled, so don't worry about our feathered friends. I had finches (gold and purple), chickadees, titmice, and Carolina wrens galore.

Speaking of bird feeders, I was working with one yesterday afternoon when Dora waddled across the yard, armed with a couple of dolls and her twirler (what she calls her baton), flip-flops on her feet, and a ziplock bag of Lifesavers clutched in her hand. She was supposed to be laying down with Zelda for a nap; Zelda fell asleep first, and when Dora heard me outside she bolted with her treasures toward freedom.

After finishing up my work, I sat with her in the grass at the back of our yard overlooking the wooded hollow behind our house. The trees were filled with birds waiting for me to leave the vicinity of the feeders; the tiny creek gurgled in the bottom, sunlight reflecting off its rock-lined bed. "Can we go in the woods?" Dora asked.

"Sure," I replied. "Go and get your tennis shoes." (I didn't really say "tennis shoes." What we call them is more like "tinnyshoes," but I didn't think you would understand that term. You would probably understand the term "sneakers," but we sure as heck don't call them that.)

She returned with an armload of shoes and socks and two walking sticks dragging behind her. I shod her and we tumbled down the hill toward the bottom.

Dora is such a paradox. She dresses with earrings, lipstick, plastic high heels, and frou-frou skirts to go outside and hunt bugs. She never passes a mud puddle that she doesn't stamp her feet in (or bury her arms up to the wrists). She is my nature girl, the antithesis of big brother Lovett, my techno-savvy pop-culture walking-Wikipedia, who, had I to guess, was probably running through some intergalactic thingamabob looking for some whozeewhatzis to slice with a light saber.

We romped in the bottom until the sun went below the edge of the hollow above us. It cooled off quickly, but she didn't want to climb home. We balanced on hurricane-downed tree trunks, overturned rocks looking for crawdads, watched the geese and airplanes fly overhead, got our shoes and hands muddy. We fell down, grabbed briars with our pants legs, thumbed our noses at gravity.

A good Sunday afternoon.

Splinter Removal

2005-01-03T20:50:00.000-06:00

I performed one of the more dreaded duties of fatherhood today: splinter removal.

Dora came home from a friend's house yesterday and said she had a splinter but she wouldn't let me look at it. This evening I caught her favoring her middle finger, and I coaxed her out of a peek.

It was red and swollen, and it had to come out.

It was horizontal across the second joint palmside, parallel with the end of her finger. The wound had closed over; there was no accessible exit point. This was going to be bad. An excavation. Code-3 emergency. Certified personnel only.

To say I was merely worried is to understate the lack confidence I had in my excavation skills. I had a flashback to when Lovett was just a little older that Dora is now. He had a splinter deep in the sole of his foot that he wouldn't let go of. Or, more accurately, wouldn't let anyone touch. It, too, had to come out, though, so into the floor we went, Zelda holding him topside and me latched onto his ankle. Oh, the screaming. Shrill, hysterical, pterodactyl-level screaming. Whether I was actually touching him or the splinter or not. Once, a stray sigh of desperation wafted from my nostrils and brushed across the wound, starting the scream cycle over again from the first octave. I thought I would never get the splinter out of his foot and get his voice back down into a comfortable decibel level again. I was dreading a repeat situation with my little princess.

But it didn't happen. Oh, she cried. Ok, she wailed, a little. But she was not hysterical. I comforted her with my tone of voice and usual calmness, as I had done with Lovett, but she responded much differently than he had. I know it hurt her, but she was a trooper. I have seldom been as relieved as I was when I made a desperation grab at the splinter and came out with it. A little soap here, a bandaid there, and something to drink, and my little smiley girl is back to normal.

God help me when her hurts get bigger.

Rocket's red glare

2005-01-01T01:15:00.000-06:00

There were fireworks o'plenty in our neck of the woods this evening. We grabbed some blankets and dragged the lawn chairs out into the backyard to watch the show.

We love fireworks. We love to watch other people's fireworks. We leave the pyrotechnics to the professionals (though we won't turn down an amateur, either). I almost blew my hand off once during an episode of "When Firecrackers Go Bad" so there is the safety angle, and it seems that lighting fireworks is too close to setting dollar bills on fire for my fiscal comfort. Dora doesn't like the loud ones, and she will tell you so. Lovett and I like the boomers that knock our breath out. It doesn't get much better than sitting in the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium (aka "The Hoover Met") after a Birmingham Barons game and getting pounded by an artillery barrage.

Nothing like that tonight, though. Still, lawn chairs, cool air, free fireworks. Plus, we missed Reeg on TV.

It's been a good year so far.

Happy 2005.

Are you Sally?

2004-12-31T14:50:00.000-06:00

Conversation overheard at lunch today:

"Are you Sally?"

"Yep, I'm Sally."

"Forgive me for asking. I don't trust my memory."

"So you're Sally?"

"Yep, I'm Sally."

"Thank you. You're so good to me."

"Are you Sally?"

"Yep, I'm Sally."

"I have to ask questions 'cause I don't trust my memory."

"So you're Sally?"

"Yep, I'm Sally."

"Thank you. The day you were born you made me so happy."

"Are you Sally?"

"Yep, I'm Sally."

"You're so good to me. Thank you."

Thank you, Sally, for taking your mom to lunch today.

The price of a broken promise

2004-12-30T23:15:00.000-06:00

My friend's father's funeral was today, 2:00 p.m.

The last thing I said to her and her mother last night at the funeral home was, "I'll be praying for you tomorrow."

I got hit with a major problem when I walked in the door at work this morning. No time for lunch, or supper either. I didn't get home until 9:30 p.m.

And then I remembered about the funeral. And that I had forgotten my promise. I wonder if, one hundred years from now, the time I spent working on today's problem will offset the damage of the promise I broke?

Local couple photos tsunami in Thailand

2004-12-30T19:04:00.000-06:00

Additional information here.

In the valley of the shadow of death

2004-12-29T23:20:00.000-06:00

A friend's dad passed away yesterday morning.

Zelda, Lovett, Dora, and I went to the funeral home tonight for visitation. Visitation is something I'll never get used to. I never know what to say. It seems sacrilegious to stand within earshot of a casket, catching up with people I haven't seen since the last visitation, but that's what we do. We stand around, offer condolences, extend pleasantries to fellow visitors, and then slip into the night, thankful that we aren't the hosts of this bizarre ritual but mindful that tomorrow night we very well could be.

My friend and her mother epitomized strength in adversity, though they have been preparing for the inevitable for some months now. I remember when Zelda's mother died. She was sick for almost a year and we knew it was grave and still when the call came it was as if it were a surprise. It was a trying experience, her visitation. Zelda and I didn't grow up together, so practically everyone there was a stranger to me. Most of them said things to Zelda like, "Why didn't y'all call and tell me your mother was sick?" as if we all had spare time and the presence of mind to do such a thing. Then, about a week after the funeral, Zelda's dad began to receive envelopes in the mail containing homemade obituaries that people had cut out of the newspaper and covered with contact paper. It amazed me that more than one person did this, as if Zelda's dad needed a souvenir bookmark to commemorate the occasion or something. I'm sure the people meant well, but at the time it was more than a little creepy.

I guess I'm so uncomfortable with death because I'm so sheltered from it. There aren't homicide bombers on every corner of my neighborhood. Murders happen across town and are no closer than my TV screen. I don't kill any of my own food. I don't go near hospitals unless absolutely necessary. So, death and I aren't on speaking terms.

I cannot begin to comprehend 10,000 of my neighbors dying at once. I can barely cope with one at a time.

Uh, did you keep the receipt for this?

2004-12-27T21:45:00.000-06:00

I've never understood the mentality of having to return unwanted gifts the day after Christmas.

What's the rush? Are people afraid that the junk is going to grow on them if they keep it more than 24 hours? That maybe someone will think they actually like it if they retain possession of it?

I despise the commercialism of Christmas anyway. Especially in our consumer, gotta-have-it-now-whether-I-can-afford-it-or-not society. I personally don't want or need much that I don't already have. My life is too cluttered as it is. I certainly don't need more stuff to make it complete. I don't want to fight crowds to get stuff and I sure don't want to fight them to take stuff back.

Can I redeem my gift cards online?

We moved into a new house this summer and I bought some furniture for Zelda's birthday/Christmas (don't panic, ladies, that's what she asked for). So she wouldn't feel left out on Christmas morning I bought her a small gift for under the tree: Frank Stitt's Southern Table cookbook. Stitt is owner and chef of Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, and many people credit him with catalyzing a cultural renaissance in the Magic City when his restaurant opened in the early '80s.

Now, Zelda and I are both from simple stock. The closest we come to old money is when the convenience store gives us faded, wrinkled bills in change when we buy Icees, our thrice-weekly late-night treat. But I promised Zelda when we were dating that I'd show her the world, and for the most part I've done that. Our families thought we fell off the end of the earth when we moved to the big city. They think they need a passport to visit us. They'd die to know that we spend the occasional $50 on a single meal at fancy, smansy restaurants where the silverware isn't shrink-wrapped in plastic with individual salt and pepper packets. Why, we've even been know to order appetizers: you know, food to eat while you're waiting on your food.

I didn't have any vacation left for the holidays this year, so we treated our hometown as a mini-vacation. Last night we took in Zoolight Safari at the Birmingham Zoo. Half a million Christmas lights and a cold train ride that we look forward to each year. Nothing says Christmas quite like staring at an outline of a multicolored rhinoceros from a slow-moving train in 27 degree weather.

One of our favorite places to eat is Silvertron Cafe in the Forest Park neighborhood. We ate lunch there today. It was one of those laid-back, discussion laden lunches with my family that I really needed. The noon news was on TV over the bar, and Lovett and I discussed this past weekend's travel fiascoes with US Air and Comair, the Ten Commandments Robe, and of course, the Sumatran earthquake and tsunami.

Which makes wanting to stand in customer service lines instead of spending time with my wife and kids all the more mysterious to me.

Not a creature was stirring...

2004-12-25T10:10:00.000-06:00

It is quiet in the house. The communion bread and cup have been passed, the gifts opened, breakfast eaten. Lovett got a video game, so we won't see him again until he's 18. Dora got bunches of doll stuff and a Mary Poppins DVD. Zelda didn't sleep well last night and she is taking a nap. I filled up the bird feeders so the chickadees and titmice and the finches that are still around will have a nice Christmas buffet to jumpstart their little metabolisms in this cold wind.

It is quiet in the house. In my little corner of the world, there is peace. Thank you, Jesus.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Homeland Security: Alert Level Green

2004-12-23T19:32:00.000-06:00

Zelda was busy mixing up some spinach dip when I got home from work this afternoon.

Yummy! I thought, as I read the mail. I love me some good spinach dip.

We sat down to dinner and I dipped a generous portion onto my plate and grabbed a hunk of Hawaiian loaf that Zelda used instead of a bowl. I scooped up some dip and popped it into my mouth. It was, honestly,...

...a little disappointing.

Now, I know good spinach dip when I taste it. I'm a connoisseur of good spinach dip. And Zelda has made good spinach dip many times. Good, as in take-it-to-parties-and-hear-people-brag-on-it-and-beg-for-the-recipe good. We've had to fight off the urge to dig into it in the car on the way to parties before, and pray for leftovers to nosh on the way home.

Unfortunately, the Christmas '04 version wasn't all that. Even with a bag of chips.

I tried to be diplomatic while hiding my disappointment, but there was no way I could finish the mound of green on my plate. I had a flashback to childhood and an eerily similar situation:

I sat down to supper one night and noticed a bowl of something green. I reached for it, for I love green vegetables. Always have. I can't think of one green vegetable that I don't love (well, maybe English peas, which I only like). Okra, broccoli, turnip greens, mustard greens, collard greens, green beans, snow peas, bell peppers, cucumbers, green tomatoes, green onions, cabbage -- I see one of those and I'm all over it. So I grabbed the bowl and raked about half of it onto my plate, clutched my fork and shoveled a big bite of...

...the vilest thing I have ever put into my mouth. "What is this?!?" I choked.

"It's collard kraut," explained Mrs. DePaul. "You like it?"

"No, it's disgusting!"

"Well, you'd better learn to like it, because you're going to eat all of it that's on your plate," said Mr. DePaul.

As I contemplated the impossible task before me, I tried to determine how collards (which I loved, as I've explained) and kraut (ditto, though kraut is not normally green) could be combined into such a culinary travesty. I began to understand that there was no kraut in collard kraut, but that somehow collards had been krauted, which apparently sends them into a defensive mode similar to those poisonous frogs that cause a psychedelic frenzy when dogs lick them.

And then I protested. It had been an honest mistake. I thought it was spinach. I'd never even heard of collard kraut. But Mr. DePaul still made me eat it. For being greedy, I guess.

He made his point. I paused for some time whenever I faced a bowl of anything green. I'd pretend to stir it up while inhaling its bouquet for identification purposes. I even looked twice at green jello. Thirty years later I thought I was safe.

I asked Zelda, "Is this your normal recipe?" which immediately sent her into a defensive mode that would probably have caused a psychadelic frenzy had I licked her, but that wouldn't have been a good example for Lovett and Dora.

She said it was the normal recipe, but I think she left something out. I tried to explain that the mound of uneaten dip on my plate was testament to my expectation of good spinach dip, which up to now her record has been perfect. I don't think she bought it, though.

I think the homeland security alert around my house will be green for the time being.

Stop O'Hair...er, Save Della...er, Help Dr. Dobson!

2004-12-22T19:30:00.000-06:00

I received my thrice-annual e-mail about RM2493, the bogus FCC petition to ban religious broadcasting.

In its earliest incarnation, the blame for this petition was placed in the hands of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, famous atheist. Then, after her mysterious disappearance and subsequent death, the fate of Touched by an Angel was at stake. Now, for whatever reason, Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson gets to carry the mantle of "Protector of the Airwaves."

It would be mildly annoying if this was my first experience with this lame spam. Unfortunately, I've been dealing with it before I knew what e-mail was. I threw away stacks of mimeographed petitions from an information table in a small-church foyer every time they reappeared, after I heard a local radio pastor in the late '80s admonish his listeners for wasting time and energy refuting this non-threat. I haven't forgotten his rebuke.

Between 1975 and 1995, the FCC received over 30 million pieces of mail about this petition. Thirty million. Can you imagine how many hungry people could have been fed using the money that was wasted paying postal workers to sort and deliver 30 million pieces of mail? And the gas, oil, tires, and maintenance on their vehicles? The electricity? The wasted paper? The FCC personnel hired to handle the 30 million pieces that entered their facilities? The storage and landfill space required to handle the mail after the fact? It boggles the mind...

So now, we simply waste internet bandwith on it. Three times a year, on average, in my case. Not to mention the bandwith I waste forwarding the links to Snopes Urban Legends Reference Pages about it. Here, for your enjoyment, are the Snopes and Focus on the Family pages concerning RM2493:

Petition to Ban Religious Broadcasting
Dr. Dobson's Denial

Please remember: Friends don't let friends spam other friends with bogus e-mail petitions. Only you can prevent incendiary misinformation.

Help a brother out.

IV Centenary of Don Quixote

2004-12-20T23:23:00.000-06:00

IV centenary of Don Quixote

Four hundred years ago today, the first edition of Cervantes' Don Quixote rolled off a Madrid printing press (well, maybe rolled is too technically descriptive of the printing process in 1604). Spain and several other European nations will commemorate the fourth centenary of the world's first best-seller with events throughout 2005.

Spanish Culture Ministry

Whuttup, ppl?

2004-12-18T23:13:00.000-06:00

i blog c but i dnt slo dwn fer punk2ashun r spln r grammr r nuthin cuz my ppl reed me jus fine wuhout it. i chat n go 2 da mall n uz all my cellfon mins n i dont need alotawurdz to tell u bowt it. got oc tivod. c u l8tr. by.

(If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.)

Seven Day Forecast

2004-12-17T23:57:00.000-06:00

We are officially in our Birmingham winter weather pattern where the meteorologists forecast the possibility of snow in 5 - 7 days, which causes everyone to storm the grocery stores for milk and bread and to cancel school and concerts and church services in anticipation of travel problems, and when it doesn't snow 5 - 7 days later because all the ingredients didn't come together (which is weatherspeak for it either wasn't cold enough or the moisture didn't arrive in time or the moisture arrived too soon and evaporated in the dry air or the snowpack up north was sparse so the air wasn't as cold as we thought), everyone gets hacked because it was supposed to snow but didn't and they get mad at the incompetent mets, and before you know it, April arrives and we dodge tornadoes until July when the temperature stays at 95 degrees until October when the hurricanes hit and cause massive floods that last until November when the secondary tornado season blows all the warm air away in time for the possibility of snow in 5 - 7 days.

Or, as Calvin Coolidge said, "Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

Do you hear what I hear?

2004-12-14T22:04:00.000-06:00

Zelda and the kids met me at the door this evening with this declaration: "We are clean, we are dressed, and we want to go somewhere."

I had an appointment with my chair and a good book to pass the time until my muse arrived for a writing project I have due in less than two weeks. We're in a pretty good cold snap for December in Birmingham, and there are all those Christmas shoppers "out there," but everyone had their hearts set on a night out, and, well, who am I to break anyone's heart?

We had a nice supper at [trendy, hip, chain bakery] and a quick visit to [chain music store] and [trendy, hip, chain home furnisher] before drifting, as always, to [trendy, hip, chain bookstore].

I heard, while perusing through a stack of dead trees, a slightly off-key violin concerto, and just as I was about to remark to Lovett that it didn't sound like it was coming through the p.a. system, I noticed a violin bow peeking above the New Fiction shelf. I wandered over to the [trendy, hip, chain, in-house coffee shop] to find six violinists and a violist sawing away before their music stands and a black-turtleneck-clad conductor in the corner of the cafe.

The septet was not ready for Carnegie Hall, or the BJCC Concert Hall for that matter. It was as if we had stumbled into a rehearsal session, or a group music lesson, but it was obvious that they all had some experience. They would pluck through a song, say Jingle Bells, finish to a smattering of applause (I'm being generous here), and quickly critique their performance before maestro announced the next selection. Zelda and Lovett lasted through half a song, but Dora was mesmerized and wouldn't budge. Being four, she is still fascinated by most everything, and seven fiddling fiddlers inflamed her fancy.

So we watched. And listened. And an appreciation for the musicians and their art grew on me with each stroke of the bow. They were participating, before my very eyes and ears, in a creative process that began, in some instances, centuries ago as composers drew notes on blank staves. And they were doing so in public, surrounded by apathy. Five feet in one direction stood a man with his back to them, skimming the travel books. Five feet in another direction sat a woman engrossed by a detective novel, and two girls sat at a table next to her, giggling over a makeover magazine, oblivious to the Mozart wafting over their heads.

They inspired me, though. Even though I didn't applaud. (Cut me some slack. I'm still withdrawing from TV, remember? Spectatorship dies a slow, agonizing death.) I was inspired by their courage and their persistence. I was inspired by their certain private realization that they will probably never take the place of Izthak Perlman or Jascha Haifitz in the hearts of the world's music lovers. I was inspired by their refusal to let a missed note here or a botched tempo there rob them of the thrill of the moment when, by their skill, notes leapt from the page and into the air. I was inspired by the consideration they gave to each other's skill level. I was inspired by they way they seemed to enjoy themselves.

I was inspired, for I was able to siphon from my perception of their experience the same conclusions about my experience as a writer (and now a blogger): courage, persistence, a keen awareness that Proust and Wouk and Orwell needn't look over their shoulder for me, the apathy of the internet and all that is being posted around me, reveling in the accomplishments of others, that if I must speak (write), then I must also listen (read).

Even though the closest I ever come to playing Mozart is when I stick a CD in my CD player, I felt a kinship with those musicians tonight. I'm glad I stumbled into their midst.

Remedy for rabbit ears

2004-12-13T21:53:00.000-06:00

The Oxford American is publishing again.

I first subscribed in 1999, and since then The OA has suspended publication more than once due to financial difficulty. Originally published in Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi and Southern literature "god" William Faulkner, it was moved to Little Rock and now it is published from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas, which coincidentally (or maybe not) is situated in Faulkner County.

My only knowledge of Conway, Arkansas, before The OA moved there is as the first nom de étape of Harold Jenkins, who most of the world knows as Conway Twitty. Which is also coincidental, as the most anticipated issue of The OA is the Southern Music Issue and accompanying CD. I don't recall Conway Twitty being on any of the Southern Music CDs I have, but I bet he is this year. I wonder how many people would catch the connection?

I became a subscriber to The New Yorker earlier this year. I had read some great articles on their website and I decided I'd give them a try in my home. It has been a bittersweet experience since they are way left of me, but their in-depth coverage of Iraq and Sudan has been worth it. As a writer, I'm always looking for good, challenging writing, which I find in both magazines. That, and the fact that I don't have satellite or cable TV.

There, I said it. I don't have satellite or cable TV. I made the break back in the summer, when I moved into a new neighborhood. Giving up cable is easy to explain, kind of like replying to a friend's inquiry of "How did you give up Big Macs?" with "Oh, it was easy. I went to prison." Cable doesn't come into our neighborhood, so there wasn't much of a decision to be made there. I never got around to getting the satellite set up, and I've used the experience to get back into the habit of reading. Hence, the magazines, which I read cover to cover (for the most part).

I can't say I've missed TV, though I did go through C-SPAN withdrawals during the election. More entertaining than TV has to be watching the reactions of people when they find out that I watched the World Series with rabbit ears. Priceless.

Welcome back, OA.

Love is waiting there in my beautiful balloon

2004-12-04T20:17:00.000-06:00

Our twelve-year-old son Lovett had a meltdown on me this afternoon in the backyard.

We were doing some chores around the house, it being a warm, sunny December Saturday. I was washing windows, my wife was potting plants, and our four-year-old daughter Dora had some of her teddy bears in a circle in the grass, playing doctor or mama or zookeeper or something. Since no video game controllers or DVD players were within reach, Lovett was unproductively doing "outside" time until his sentence was served.

He got permission from the warden (his mother) to go inside for something to drink. Returning empty-handed, he spouted off, "Can we please go to the grocery store?" which is twelvespeak for "There is nothing to drink in there." The warden suggested he fix himself a glass of water, to which he replied, "I was looking for something a little more refreshing."

"You don't think water is refreshing?" I asked.

"No," he replied, dumbstruck at my preposterousness.

So I did what any other self-respecting father would do while trying to prove a point. I squirted him with the garden hose.

I didn't soak him, just a splash below his left ribcage. I thought it was funny. He did not. He spent the next five minutes trying to retaliate with both a soccer ball and a half-empty can of Fresca I foolishly left more than arm's distance away.

The warden, insulted at the disrespect directed toward her soulmate and hunter-gatherer, sentenced him to twelve-year-old timeout: twenty minutes in a lawn chair to comtemplate the definition of paternal respect.

Now, being a somewhat intelligent, committed teammate in this parenting thing, I didn't appeal the sentence even though I thought it a little overkill. I was humored by my son's feeble attempts at retaliation, and I also realized that I had probably embarassed him in front of his mother. I had tried to be funny and, in his eyes, I failed. Unappreciated humor is no humor at all, and he didn't appreciate the big wet spot on his t-shirt, but I let him serve his time and went on about my business.

I returned to the scene of his incarceration to find warden and inmate in the midst of the post-sentence hearing where the inmate would normally receive his $10 bill and a bus ticket out of town. Lovett, set free, stalked around to the front yard to get away from the rest of us. I could tell he was still upset and I speculated about his next course of action. Would he sit on the front porch and sulk? Would he sneak into the house and cut all my undershorts to ribbons? Would he get on his bike and pedal furiously away, only to be chased by a dog into traffic and be hit by a car? Would he try to hitchhike to a faraway relative's house?

Before I could weigh all his options, he came around the corner of the house pushing my lawnmower. And then it hit me.

I had embarrassed him. I had insulted his "manhood," emasculating him in front of his mother and little sister, who had reacted to his backyard bath with unbridled mirth. And he intended to reclaim his manhood - by mowing the lawn.

So I let him. He didn't do it as well as I would have. In fact, his wavy patterns and underlapped passes made me cringe. But I stayed my tongue, offering him suggestive pointers and encouraging his efforts. I treated him with respect. I spoke to him as an "equal." I let him earn back his masculinity.

And then we heard it.

Now, normally you can't hear much above the four-stroke roar of a lawnmower, but I have one of those old-fashioned, combustionless, ozone-friendly reel mowers which allows me to hear the birds singing as I tonsure my bermudagrass. So the FWHOOSH took us by surprise.

It sounded like a rocket motor being tested. I dismissed it as absurd, since I'm unaware of any nearby rocket-motor testing facilities, until I heard it again. And again. And again. Each time louder than before. I turned FWHOOSH-ward to see a most colorful hot air balloon climbing above the treeline. And it was heading right toward us.

We ran to the front yard for a streetside view unobstructed by neighboring houses. Many of our neighbors up the street were out on the sidewalk gazing into the sky. The balloon continued its course toward our house accompanied by the FWHOOSH of the burner and waves from the four passengers in the gondola.

It was a beautiful balloon, multicolored squares floating above a glistening varnished basket, operated by Air Alabama. As it passed our house it appeared to slip rapidly below the horizon until we noticed that it stopped sinking behind the roofline of the houses down the street. Lovett hopped on his bike and raced toward it, and Dora did the same (as much racing as can be done on training wheels) with me in hot foot-pursuit.

The balloon had landed in a vacant lot behind some under-construction houses in another sector of our subdivision. A crowd had gathered in the yards surrounding the lot and the street filled with cars that had followed the balloon to its resting place. The pilot had already dismounted the gondola and was squeezing the air out of the balloon with the help of the passengers. He patiently answered everyone's questions and shared balloon facts with us as he disassembled his craft and phoned his chase vehicle with directions to the pickup point.

Did you know that balloon pilots have no control over where their balloons go? They are totally at the mercy of the wind. Did you know that balloon pilots are constantly looking for safe places to touch down? Did you know that liquid propane, forced through the burner unlit, cools the burner so that it is safe to handle? Did you know that a balloon basket is just that, a basket? Did you know that a hot air balloon can be folded up and packed into a bag that is about the size of a washing machine? Before today, I didn't, but I found all this out while helping the pilot, passengers, and some neighbors pack the balloon and load it and the gondola into the chaser's pickup truck.

After we returned home, I resumed washing windows and Lovett returned to his X-Box. I walked into his room to wash the inside of his windows and after I'd made a few swipes, he, gazing at the video monitor, said, "That was neat."

"Yes, it was," I replied.

And it was.

Why "eggplant," you ask?

2004-12-02T22:54:00.000-06:00

A most commendable, though obvious, question.

Berenjena, which is Spanish for eggplant, entered my vocabulary through Edith Grossman's translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. A pleasant word for an enigmatic vegetable which stuck with me like honey on a spoon seemed a natural choice for my blog name.

"Confessions of an Eggplant" was chosen as a title on a whim, one of those must-fill-in-the-blanks moments upon initial setup of the blog. But it, too, is fitting. What is an eggplant but a tough-skinned vegetable with a soft inside that is quite bitter until sweated with salt, which renders it, once combined with sauces and cheeses and other complementary ingredients, into a tasty, hearty, and satisfying dish? An eggplant is a metaphor for life. At least it is for my life.

I am the eggplant. Coo-coo-ka-choo.