Mama Bennett Goes Home

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

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?

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!"

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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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. $3.65 for a small popcorn? I don't think so.
4. 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.
5. Coming attractions, thumbs-down: Do we really need remakes of Poseidon Adventure and The Omen? Come on, give us something original.
6. 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

1. 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?
   
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
   
6. 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

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

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...

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

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

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:

1. What happened to writing of this sort and the likes of Taylor Caldwell, Ayn Rand, etc.?
2. Did TV kill it, or movies? These ladies were contemporaries of Hemingway, for instance, and he didn't write this way.
3. Or, is writing of this sort still produced, but my "infantile" attention span has steered me away from it?
4. 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.
5. 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

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...

... is finally available. Enjoy.

Confessions, indeed

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

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

Mr. Edgar Nim

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

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

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

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!"

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:

1. [local Italian bistro with the patio view of the traffic headache that is Highway 280]
2. [local seafood restaurant with the kicking catfish tenders]
3. [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

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

Companion Blogs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.