Father’s Day

Posted on November 27, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

I wasn’t really that into taking movies of the family when the kids were young, but when I did, I REALLY did. Not always, but often, I would just set the camera up and let ‘er roll.  Which means two hours of birthday parties, two hours of Christmas morning.  Those are pretty tedious to transfer to DVD – I have to cut something out, and it’s not an easy process in that regard.  Of course, cutting out shots of my butt walking in front of the camera is an easy edit-out.  Other things are not so easy. 

Do I really want to discard forever even one syllable of a toddler’s voice saying “Mom?” even if it is for the fifteenth time on that tape?  Do I really want to erase a spontaneous fist fight between three rowdy boys?  Doesn’t it make the videos of brotherly love even sweeter?  What about the tapes of other people’s kids?  Do they have enough of their own or should I save that unique moment when they were in my camera’s eye?

One tape I opened up yesterday was one I had never seen, and there was no editing to be done.  I was away for Father’s Day in 1995 when the boys, who were 10, 7 and 6 years old, with Joe as the leader, had set up breakfast out in the carport for Al.  The tape started with a tour of the table, which was replete with a tablecloth, two candles, a vase of flowers in a shamrock Lalique vase, a bowl of cereal with bananas beautifully presented with a plate underneath, a glass of water, a glass of orange juice.  The Father of Honor would be seated in his comfy desk chair.  George the Dog walked around and threatened to eat the cereal before Dad came out and constantly got tangled in the legs of the table, worrying me that I would watch as it all came tumbling down.  Then Andy brought Al out, with his eyes closed, down the front steps to the driveway where he was allowed to open his eyes and see Joe’s gift of the American flag flying above him, and was then escorted to his seat at the table.  After Al was seated and eating his breakfast, Joe walked between Andy and Jeff who were anxiously monitoring Al to make sure he was as thrilled as they hoped he would be.  Joe then said that indeed, they had done a good job and patted his little brothers on the head and put his arms around their shoulders.  When the presents were opened inside, Al ended the tape with the pronouncement that it was his best Father’s Day ever.  

Some of the tapes the kids made are unwatchable – a vertiginous mess of feet and ceilings and faces too close to the camera and two others clamoring for their turn as photographer, but that one was a winner, a keeper, the best Father’s Day recording ever.

ADDENDUM:  There is a post script to this story.  I took Al up to the editing room to watch this particular video.  There was one part that we will forever wonder about.  I was clearly out of town.  My present was opened without me there.  What concerns us is that Joe made a comment about “Andy held the ladder really well while I put the flag up.”  Wait a minute.  The flag holder is just below the second story window right over a driveway that goes pretty much straight down.  Because of that wicked slant, it is a challenge for an adult to hold the ladder for another adult when work needs to be done in the vicinity of the second story windows.   Al and I don’t like to think about the scene that turned out just fine, the flag flying, the kids safe.  As Al said “where was the supervision?”  I’m sure there are more stories like that one which we will only hear around future Thanksgiving tables when our sons have decided we are old enough to hear the truth of their escapades.  Yikes.

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Thanksgiving Ghosts

Posted on November 24, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

When Al and I moved to California, I had to give many things up, but Thanksgiving was probably the most difficult at first.  My Mother always hosted Thanksgiving, and the dining room table would have all the leaves in it to accommodate everyone.  The usual cast of characters was: Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Bertha and Uncle Bob, the twins Judy and Joyce, Aunt Tess and my godfather, Howie and with our family that would make about 13 people, I’m sure some years there were others.  I was the “baby” of the crowd, and I still remember all the hoopla with fondness. After dinner the table would be cleared and we’d play Put n Take, a progressive card game played with two or three decks and included piles of pennies.  I loved that game, still do, but there is rarely a crowd big enough to play it.  It was such a great game because even little ones (like me) could play.  

Howie, my godfather, didn’t usually play the card game.  This is because Howie was a professional musician, and made his living playing piano.  A real honest to God piano man.  After the meal he would sit down and either play while we played cards or many times we would just all adjourn to the living room and Howie would play the standards for an hour or so.  He would just melt from one song into another, no music, all in his head.  I took piano lessons from age 7 on, so I was mesmerized.   I’d sit on the couch snuggled up with one or another of my relatives and just listen.  I always hated it when he’d start to talk because I knew the concert was ending. 

I was pleased to realize while transferring VHS to DVD that when we were all much older, Howie in his late 70’s, he came to California when Mom was visiting and I set up a camera while he played piano for us one last time.  My own children sat on the couch, mesmerized, as I had, while he played.  He complained that he wasn’t able to play the way he used to, but it sounded fabulous to us.  I made a copy of the DVD for Mom and sent it off to her, knowing that it would probably make her cry but figuring it was worth it.  She said it wasn’t until she went to the bathroom and the DVD was still playing, that for one brief shining moment it was if he was in the living room playing, that everyone was sitting in the living room, that she was only taking a break from the party to use the bathroom.   Where had the time gone?  How did we get here so many years later?  How could it all be over?

So now I say my little prayer of thanks for Thanksgivings of the past, especially for Howie and his piano music, that now only floats around the universe, hopefully waiting for us to get to the other side so we can hear it once more, for all eternity.

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Techno Queen

Posted on November 21, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

Ok I figured out how to use the gadget I bought last year that allows me to make DVDs out of my VHS tapes that have been deteriorating in the closet for twenty five years.  Its’ pretty cool now that I understand the process.   Step one, push the button that makes it go from the VCR to the computer.  Walk away and come back later.  Step two, choose which scenes you want to make into a movie, push the button to make it “write” the movie, walk away and come back later.   Save it in a file and put in a DVD and open the Windows DVD maker and open the file, push the button to make the DVD, walk away and come back later and with any luck I get a DVD that works on the TV and most computers (except Andy’s apparently, but that’s his computer he tells me). 

I am ecstatic about this.  Not only because I will finally get all these tapes that are taking up room, but that I will get to relive it all: find out Al really did have hair at one time, that we had a lot of fun, that my sons were and are a gift to me from God.  I was thinking tonight – what if the boys produce grandsons that look just like them?  This happens of course, and it is difficult but fun to imagine.  My friend Jeanne just told me that her mother, who has had a stroke recently, now refers to her great grandson as “little Alec” because he looks just like her grandson.  Then there is that little issue of maybe it won’t be grandsons – man, I wouldn’t know where to start with a little girl Sondag.  Contemplating it blows me away. 

Expect a lot of crazy talk now that I’m working on this project – who knows what revelations about motherhood and life and eternity will come rolling out of these tapes as I watch them again for the first time in a long, long time.

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Why I Am Like I Am

Posted on November 20, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

Someone sent me one of those Saturday morning quizzes via email where I had to rate myself and it would tell me which movie star I was.  I ended up being Doris Day.  This just made me laugh out loud.  I LOVED Doris Day movies.  It didn’t even disturb me when we learned Rock Hudson was gay.  It didn’t matter. He was an excellent actor.  I believed him when he finally got to kiss Doris, and her amazing eyes sparkled without the benefit of digital enhancement.  

The way I have always figured it, every neurosis I have regarding man/woman relationships can be traced back to either Cinderella or Doris Day movies.  I even went through a period in my early married life when I refused to watch romantic comedies at all because they had previously ruined my life by giving me a false sense of reality and made me desperately sad that my fantasies were all proven to be total nonsense.  As much as I loved the chemistry between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the 1980’s, I had to stop watching them – such exhilirating scenes would never happen again post marriage.  That final scene in You’ve Got Mail was enough for me.  I started watching The Terminator and never looked back.

Before I got married,  I really did believe in happily ever after.  I really did believe in romance.  I really did believe that the magic of the first kiss could last forever.  Then Iwent ahead and got married.  Nothing against Al, we’re solid, and it really did start out that way – making love on the beach in New Hampshire, for example,  but marriage is no magic of the first kiss under the moonlight on a lake in a canoe for all eternity.  It’s more like do you actually expect me to resume kissing you when the kid has just awakened me after puking in his bed and then continued to puke as he cried all the way down the hall on the way to our room, and the only way there would be a happily ever after is to get in the car and not stop driving until I hit the Atlantic Ocean – and I live in California. 

I can remember watching those movies on TV when I’d stay home from school when I was sick.  I loved every minute of it.  She was pretty (I wanted to be pretty.)   The handsome guy liked her (I wanted the handsome guy to like me).  She would bumble in front of him, drop packages, get flustered and he would love her even more (I was very shy as a girl, blushed like crazy, flustered around the boys, would want to die if I ever did something clumsy in front of a boy.  That part actually was true I eventually realized – they DID love me even more the more I blushed and flustered.)

Oh, those movies, always the same.  She would resist his advances.  He would back off but always “run into” her again and again.  She would get irritated by this.  Finally there would be some fiasco that would cause him to come to her rescue, be on her side, save the day.  No matter how hard she would try, the sparkles would start flying out of her eyes and maybe she’d even get a little teary eyed.  How did she do that – cry and sparkle at the same time? 

My other friend emailed back that she is Katherine Hepburn.  This reminded me that somewhere along the line I started watching Tracy/Hepburn movies and I started to identify with her a bit more.  Apparently not enough to take the hopeless romantic out of me, but let’s face it, she had her own brand of wussiness when Spencer Tracy would walk into the room, but she was much more openly hard headed than Doris.  I never quite quit being Doris, but Katherine modeled a sort of assertiveness that I eventually was at least capable of emulating when I wanted to.   No blushing, no flustering. 

I’ve started to watch romantic comedies again.  Now that the kids are grown and the marriage is morphing into something beyond romance and loss of the same, something eternal, something grounded in friendship and unspoken committment to a greater good, it is nice to just sit back and watch something like “27 Dresses” and find that some things haven’t really changed – the bridesmaid wishes she were the bride, the guy who she thought was a jerk is really the one who will rescue her, who will save the day, who will be on her side.  Now that I think of it, perhaps the message wasn’t all that off base, that can pretty much describe marriage in a nutshell.

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Playin’ Hookey

Posted on November 19, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

Al and I played hookey today up in wine country.  I haven’t been there in a very long time, and the fall is my favorite time to be there.  The grape leaves are still on the vine, turning mostly yellow but also burnt orange and red and a little green sprinkled in from the hangers-on.  The grapes are gone – but not quite.  The air is still filled with crushed grapes – it’s hypnotic, somewhat like the fragrant flowers of Hawaii whose aroma permeates the air.  

We stopped at two places for wine tasting.  I’m getting better at it.  I no longer feel intimidated by all the aura around tasting and can quite confidently state: “I don’t like that.”  “It’s okay.”  “I like that.”  That’s about as far as my critiques go.  I’ll never be a wine writer, that’s for sure.  Al challenges me on this description of a tasty cabernet: “What does a ‘muscular entrance’ mean?”  I’m serious, the description actually said that.  Chocolate and baking spices.  Mocha and fruit, but not just any fruit – blackberry, cherry, bananas.   Oh for heaven’s sake.  It tastes like wine.  Grapes. Years ago the wine descriptions were pretty much the same: fruity, oaky, woody.  Now, muscular?  Must be pretty competitive, that vintner writing craft.   On top of all that I’ve got Al next to me going through the whole motions of tasting the wine, which is fine, he knows a lot about wine, but he can get so – Missouri – about it, even to the point of a slight gargle and swish.  Oh for heaven’s sake squared.  I tried swishing but I didn’t notice anything more than wine stinging my tongue so I reverted back to just rolling and swallowing. 

A storm is rolling in for the weekend and the mist came in over the coastal range that borders wine country early in the morning, and by noon when we walked out of lunch (oysters, fish and shoestring potatoes) it was misting in earnest.  Mist on coastal mountains and vineyards is an evocative sight.  It made me want to pull out my sewing machine right there in the car and start sewing something, preferably next to a fireplace with a blanket on my lap.  Off in the distance the rows of yellow vines climbed up a hillside, looking like golden stairs leading up to the green forest of live oaks at the crest of the hill.  Wisps of clouds danced around amongst the trees and the sky slowly closed in on us.  It was time to head home. 

We are back home now.  It’s really raining.  I’m pleased to see the storms starting as mist – that means it may be a serious winter of endless rain.  You know how I love that cabin fever type of feeling, which makes one eventually appreciate a warm sunny April day.  Of course out here in paradise this also means the flowers will start blooming again.  Our long summer of dryness and deadness ends when the rain comes in and we are treated to hills that rival any in Ireland -green hills and primroses and sometimes many rainbows all at once. 

I can’t complain, but of course I do.

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There Goes the Neighborhood

Posted on November 16, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

I went outside this morning to watch the huge flock of turkeys on the property making all kinds of racket.  One turkey was being particularly protective of another turkey when I walked out the door.   Oh wait.  It’s not a turkey.  It’s the rooster, Jacques.

It is very clear that the rooster is firmly entrenched in the turkey flock.  When the turkeys move on, he moves on.  I don’t know what he does when he gets to Arlene and Bill’s, whether he takes a right turn to go “home” or what.  I am going to have to notify them of this – do they really want their beloved Jacques hanging out with these lawless and rowdy turkeys?  It may very well break their hearts.  They have done everything possible to make a comfortable home for Jacques since he wandered into their yard.  They have provided him with food, with hens, with a name.  How could he do this to them?

The lure of life with the turkeys is hard to resist, I’m sure.  They wander freely and he has bodyguards three times his size to ward off predators.  He can watch the exciting fights without having to get involved.  Maybe he’s even afforded special status because of his unique and glorious feathers, I don’t know.

Now I’m not a roosterist, I have many friends who are roosters. But this is unacceptable.  What next?   Little roosturkeys roaming around the neighborhood?  The turkeys are loud enough without adding a rooster gene to the mix.  All I know is that this is a bad precedent to set for the neighborhood.  We just can’t have all this inter-species canoodling happening here on Highland Road.  Before you know it the cat will be lying down with the dog, the dog will be lying down with the skunk, and the skunk will be thinking he can snuggle up next to us people in front of the fire.  This cannot happen…I guess I’d better go call Arlene…

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Gold Mine

Posted on November 15, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

Wow.  Don’t ask me how this happened but I ended up on craigslist tonight looking for something and it dawned on me that it might be a nice place to mine for ideas to write about.   Was it ever.  Because I’m a bit voyeuristic I decided to start in the Missed Connections and before long I was giggling hysterically.   Romantics live!  In the Missed Connections section of Craigslist! 

“We sat across from each other on the Muni N car, made eye contact, you smiled at me as you walked past me when you got off.  You were very cute – call me if you want to get together.”

“You tall in white shirt at Petco – then you walked past my car and we made eye contact…”

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

All over the place, people falling in love just like in the movies!  If I ever decide to write the great american novel I already have all my character descriptions half done for me by going to the missed connections section.  Story location? Done.  On the N car, headed to Petco, walking on the beach, BART Friday afternoon (wearing a black sweatshirt, well THAT really narrows it down); you name it, it’s there. 

Me, typing on computer at midnight.  You, reading what I wrote the next day.  You seem very nice.  Let’s keep in touch…

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Twister Strikes Again

Posted on November 15, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

I can’t believe I’ve turned into a person who writes about cats, but dang they are hilarious creatures.  Since the mouse in the rain debacle the other night we’ve been insisting she stay in at night. Today she didn’t get out during the day either.  When I got home she started prancing around the back door in the kitchen and it was astonishing how loud she could prance – it sounded like she was stomping around.  I explained to her that she could get eaten and that it just wasn’t going to happen on my watch.   

I ignored her.  I sat down at the dining room table to eat my salad and watch a little TV.  The next thing I know she’s directly in my line of vision, her piercing green eyes glaring at me.  She is very beautiful.   I suppose cat people know about this stuff but I’m really a newbie, or at least out of practice, and cannot believe how something with a brain the size of a pea can look so superior, so intelligent, so holier-than-thou.  And how she can make me feel as if I should have studied a little harder through all my years of schooling so that maybe now I would get it. 

At one point she went and stood in the foyer, so that if someone happened in the front door she’d be in perfect position to scoot out.   Andy won’t be home until 10 p.m.  I didn’t tell her that.  She walked away.

She’ll finally give up, and walk into the bathroom, where she will expect to have the faucet turned on so she can get a drink.  I did not train this cat, blame it on Andy.  Did I ever tell you about my friend Linda’s cat in New York?  That cat did its business in the guest room toilet and when I lived there for a month and used the guest bathroom she protested by doing her business on the rug right in front of the toilet.  No lie. 

Cats.  They just crack me up.  I’ve fended off the allergies by washing my hands and arms using copious amounts of dish detergent whenever I pick her up, and avoid touching my face, and so far so good.  I’m really glad she’s here.  She makes me laugh, and that’s never a bad thing.   She’s incredibly soft and I really do wish I could cuddle her more – I’d turn her into a sweet little cat before she could catch another mouse.   Thankfully the hives thwart that nonsense and she’ll continue to keep our house mouse-free and we wont’ get too attached to each other.

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Father of the Bride

Posted on November 15, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

We had dinner the other night with Thais and Joe and the topic of conversation rolled around to Missy’s wedding.  Missy is their only daughter, they have two sons besides.  We had a lot of laughs.  Thais is the practical one – is the dress Missy wants worth an extra $$$ – does she really like it that much?  What about the guest list – it has to stop somewhere.  We girls know this routine if we had any kind of traditional wedding.    

According to Joe, his response to any of Missy’s requests is this: “Is that what you want?  Then that’s what you can have.”  Then he laughs with the smile of a man who would give his life for her.    His rationale is “she’s my only daughter” and I can’t argue with that.  Al would be the same way. 

Missy is an independent young woman and is no Bridezilla so there’s no worry that she will take advantage of her position as Daddy’s Little Girl, but I think it’s adorable that Joe, who when we were younger prided himself on being hip and cool and non-conformist, has just slipped right into that role of proud papa, who would do anything for his little girl’s wedding day, like a hand in a glove.  Gotta love him for that.  Of course he’s Italian and we should have expected it. 

I’m singing at the wedding and I won’t consider my job a success unless he’s blubbering into his handkerchief.  It will be my gift to my old friend…

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Books I Want to Read – A Work in Progress

Posted on November 13, 2010 by favoritephilosopher

Architecture of the Novel; A Writer’s Handbook – Jane Vandenburgh

Morphic Resonance, the Nature of Formative Causation, Rupert Sheldrake  In the years since its first publication, Sheldrake has continued his research to demonstrate that the past forms and behavior of organisms influence present organisms through direct immaterial connections across time and space. This can explain why new chemicals become easier to crystallize all over the world the more often their crystals have already formed, and why when laboratory rats have learned how to navigate a maze in one place, rats elsewhere appear to learn it more easily. With more than two decades of new research and data, Rupert Sheldrake makes an even stronger case for the validity of the theory of formative causation that can radically transform how we see our world and our future.

Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal, Joel Salatin Drawing upon 40 years’ experience as an ecological farmer and marketer, Joel Salatin explains with humor and passion why Americans do not have the freedom to choose the food they purchase and eat. From child labor regulations to food inspection, bureaucrats provide themselves sole discretion over what food is available in the local marketplace. Their system favors industrial, global corporate food systems and discourages community-based food commerce, resulting in homogenized selection, mediocre quality, and exposure to non-organic farming practices. Salatin’s expert insight explains why local food is expensive and difficult to find and will illuminate for the reader a deeper understanding of the industrial food complex.

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