I was looking for a poem about
Christmas to send to a few people,
whether they liked it or not.
I wanted one with cold and clear stars,
A voice singing something about
Angels;
And animals waiting to speak at
Midnight.
And love, which I believe really is
All we need.
When we lived in Mexico, we both made a concentrated effort to speak Spanish to the Mexicans. (They tried equally hard to speak English to us.) Our efforts had mixed results.
In general, my Spanish vocabulary and grammar exceeded Sheila’s. She is half Mexican, but she is from Michigan and was raised as a non-Spanish speaking Midwesterner, whereas I spent a good part of my childhood on the Tex-Mex border.
Prior to our arrival in Mexico, She only knew such important words as taco, enchilada, margarita, cerveza, gracias, corazon (heart) and alma (soul). Just a few words, but they took her places and won her friends.
We arrived in October, and by the time Thanksgiving was almost upon us, Sheila had learned the Spanish word for “turkey,” which is pavo. She had also somehow caught on to the word polvo, which means “dust.” You can sense where this is going, can’t you?
Sondra, a young neighbor whom we employed as a three-times-a-week maid, spoke less English than Sheila spoke Spanish, but by and large they managed to communicate with smiles, gestures, and eye rolls, the latter sometimes launched in my direction. They bonded.
A day or two before Thanksgiving, Sondra arrived in the morning and started sweeping the tile floor. With the usual smiles and gestures, Sheila proudly trotted out her new Spanish word, pavo, and sweetly informed Sondra that there were many turkeys on the floor over by the windows.
Now Sondra had respect for her elders and her employers, and she was also patient and gracious with mistakes in Spanish. But at the startling news of the many turkeys on the floor, her normally kind and serene expression turned to total mystification mixed with concern. Her new boss was perhaps a little loco.
Sondra turned to me for help, and saw the big grin on my face as I choked out “No es ‘pavo’! Polvo!” before bursting into giggles. I explained that Sheila was thinking about the gringo custom of Thanksgiving, Dia de Accion de Gracias, where one serves pavo, when she meant to say the word for “dust.” Sondra’s face cleared with relief. “Ay, Senorita Cheela!” she laughed and clucked, shaking her head with affection.
We have never forgotten the Spanish words for turkey and dust, and I had to share the memory with you. May your pavo be delicious, and if there’s a little polvo on the floor, who cares? It’s the corazon that’s important.
We’ve all kind of wondered, right? Did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone? What about the detailed symbology in Dan Brown’s popular suspense thrillers? For me, those are fun reads. I think it’s perfectly normal to be intrigued (briefly) with potential conspiracies from time to time and there’s nothing like a good old edge of the seat conspiracy thriller at the movies.
Then there’s the wacko obsessive paranoid crazy person, combined with a dash of pathological liar. We met her on Saturday. A neighbor of ours asked us out to lunch with another friend of hers, who will be pet/housesitting our friend’s dog next week. We were unprepared, as it turned out, for the meeting.
For two plus hours, “Tamara” held forth. If we had been able to break free from horrified paralysis and interject a comment or two, it would have been difficult to interrupt her stream of consciousness monologue on the following topics: microwaved water (poisonous), scalar weaponry (You don’t know what that is? I will tell you, and let you know the five countries that employ it), Jesus’ face on the ocean floor, the successful manipulation of weather by They and Them, the meaningful “fact” that cell mitochondria (she called them “mitrochondria”) are supported by cross-shaped structures, the purposeful connection between Jewish holidays and the conception and gestation of a human fetus, and the cause of her brain aneurysm and subsequent miraculous survival. Oh, and this woman drinks decaf expresso. Because, she asked rhetorically, can you imagine someone like her on caffeine?
I will make just a few comments now that lunch is mercifully over. Microwaved water is not poisonous, and no, it does not stunt the growth of plants. Really. Scalar weaponry, which apparently involves electromagnetism and invisible domes similar to the ones used on Crest toothpaste commercials decades ago, does not exist even though in 1986 “they” did a practice run over Atlanta, Georgia. You would have known about the scalar dome over Atlanta, but you didn’t, because it was only a practice run, see.
If you look it up on the Internet, a tracing of the alleged face of Jesus allegedly seen on the Ocean floor shows a humanoid with a low forehead and a receding chin, more like Neanderthal Man than the commonly accepted artists’ renditions of Christ. I told She that if you could see this face on the Ocean floor and you thought it was really an image of Jesus, it would change your whole relationship with Him. And not for the better, in my humble opinion.
If you don’t believe Tamara about the successful and ill-intentioned manipulation of weather, it seems that somewhere there is a weatherman who used to be with an NBC affiliate in Pocatello, Idaho, and he knows that there isn’t a single flood, hurricane, drought, or even earthquake that wasn’t planned and executed by Them. And if you are still skeptical, consider this: Tamara saw it on Fox News! Yes! It was on Fox News! How could you ever doubt?
I’ve been a religious rebel (the word “maverick” has been ruined for me by politicians) since I was young. Perhaps this fact was foreshadowed when I played an angel in the first grade Christmas play. You can easily see in the large photo of that occasion that my mother has pinned my wings on upside down. The rebel made herself known during a slumber party I had at my house when I was 15. I announced, prompted by what I do not recall, that most probably the first man and the first woman were not really named “Adam” and “Eve.” A near riot ensued, and at least one girl threatened to call her mother to come pick her up in the middle of the night.
All my life, I’ve had trouble finding my footing on a spiritual path; stumbling over traditional church liturgy, much of the Bible, and even the prayer that all who call themselves Christian know by heart. I’ve always felt alone. My belief in the Source of Love has never seemed to be a good enough reason to feel that I really belong in any faith community. And yet I persist. I have longed for validation.
So it was that a few weeks ago, I signed up for a 10-week small group at church called “The Seeker’s Path: Moving Beyond Belief.” One of the major goals of the group is that “each participant will have been able to move beyond any traditional beliefs or practices that have hindered his or her spiritual growth and will have gained a new understanding of, and deeper relationship with, God.”
There are about ten of us. Ninety minutes goes by in a flash. We are safe to expose our hearts and minds to each other. Safe! We are encouraged, but not required, to do journaling and reading and homework assignments. This week one of the homework assignments, #1 on the list of possibilities, was to “write a short poem, haiku, a very brief narrative or simply list key words that summarize your current relationship with God.”
I thought I’d skip that one. Not in the mood. Too hard to pin down. I’d feel a little bit shy. OK, a lot shy. Didn’t wanna. Not going to do it. But walking into the kitchen this morning to get my first cup of coffee, the image of God as a rock star hopped unbidden into my mind. I have no idea where that came from. Heh. I sat down with the coffee and wrote this:
Note To My Rock Star
Love, we’re good together when we’re alone, or with my friends.
We can talk about anything, and we laugh and cry together.
You understand me better than anyone ever has in my whole life.
But when your groupies and go-fers are around, and you’re wearing costumes and makeup and the crowd is screaming your Name, I wonder if I really know you.
I wonder if that song you’re singing was really written for me.
Oh, honey, I’m just bitchin’.
I know your gift is for the world.
“Sleep tight; don’t let the bedbugs bite!” exhorted my beloved grandfather Mac every night before I got in bed as a child. I knew there weren’t really any bedbugs. It was our joke. I passed the saying along to Tara when she was little, but apparently I wasn’t as trustworthy as Mac; she didn’t take kindly to the idea of bedbugs, joke or not. Stories about Tara and bugs, existent and non-existent, are legend, and involve baseball bats and whole rolls of toilet paper.
Bedbugs are not a joke these days. According to all the news media, if you don’t already have them, it’s just a matter of time. Exterminators are paying $10,000 for specially trained bedbug-locating dogs, I saw on TV. We are barraged with warnings and what-to-do on a daily basis.
Yesterday CNN urged against picking up any “free” furniture from curb or alley discards. The same caveat applies to yard sales and the eponymous flea market, I assume.
Good thing we didn’t worry about bedbugs back in the sixties. In my graduate year of college, four of us lived in an old house near campus, which we furnished with parental discards and the perennial brick and board bookcases. The focal point of decor in our living room was the red and white-checked front seat of an automobile. An old automobile. Two of us were at a flea market when we spotted the seat. Five dollars later, the prize was ours, and it never caused us a moment of worry. We dragged home anything that wasn’t obviously breathing, moving, or sprouting at every opportunity.
It can cost “tens of thousands” of dollars to remove bedbug infestations, trumpet the newscasters. For homeowners, that’s just one more grim fact to add to the endless nightmare of ownership. Your landlord won’t let you have pets or paint the living room red? Move. Homeowners have to worry about thousands of dollars for leaking roofs, dead front lawns, falling trees, worn-out heating and cooling systems, rotted beams, termites, backed up sewer lines, faulty fireplaces, squirrels in the attic, and a plethora of other potential hazards. I gotta say, though, that a bedbug infestation might be worse.
Sleep tight.
We were on our way to the library. Sheila asked, “Have you thought any more about what to take Sue tomorrow?” We have been invited to lunch at Sue’s house.
“Yes,” I said. “I thought we’d take a nice chilled bottle of that ChocoVine.” She grimaced sourly. “What?” I exclaimed. “You don’t like it now? You sure acted like you did!”
“It’s ten dollars,” she said glumly. “I know,” I replied, thinking “What isn’t?”
“Ten,” she grumped. “It’s the new one.”
I’m lucky I didn’t break something. I was alone in the house, dustbusting the rug in the living room, when I did a side-step on my flip-flop and sloooowwwly fell to the floor, hard. On my $50,000 hip replacement. I always wonder, is it better to fall on your titanium hip replacement, or on your regular 66-year-old hip? I’m sure the official answer is “it depends.”
Anyway, I lay there for a few minutes with the dustbuster humming away on its green back and out of reach, thought about the above, and mentally checked over my body parts. She’s cousin Shannon, who is a number of years my junior, fell recently and sustained a terrible shoulder injury. I thought about her, too. I thought about how shocked She would be if she came home an hour later and found me lying there all broken with the dustbuster, now quiet and battery-dead. You never know the time or the place, as She is fond of saying.
But I’m okay this time. Just sore and not laughing quite as heartily as I was about She’s recent visit to the funeral home. She went with her friend Mary, who is 87. Mary had a stroke last month, so she was nervous about not having her “Plans” finalized. They went to get some information.
“So whajuh find out?” I queried later that day. She sat on the couch with her pocket folder from the funeral home. She had a look of determination on her face that made me worry. “I want to get this paid for,” she said. It’s $50.00 down and $101.00 a month for 36 months if you get this insurance policy, and if you die before it’s paid up, that’s all it costs.” “Such a deal,” I snorted. “Where are you going all of a sudden? It would sure pay to die early!” She drew herself up defensively. “This covers quite a lot,” she said, starting to read some of the included “services.” “Three hundred ninety-eight dollars for a bath, comb-out and makeup.” “What!!” I yelled. “I thought you were being cremated!” “Well, it’s for visitation,” she said patiently. “Medical examiner, $50.00.” “Why do you need their medical examiner?” I screeched. “It’s required,” she replied somewhat venomously. “You mean after your own doctor has provided a death certificate, this other guy says ‘Yep, she’s dead’ as you roll past on the conveyor belt to the furnace? Boy, I could do that job,” I snarled. “I am not going to talk to you about this anymore,” she snapped, slapping down the folder.
The next day, she talked things over with the other volunteers at the hospital. When she came home, she’d decided that the funeral home thing was a big rip-off. Of course I had to point out that I was the one who recognized the scam-like schtick right out of the folder, and I made some snarky comments about the snake-oil funeral dude. But we agreed that having our Plans in place was a good idea, and vowed to work on it.
I thought about that when I was lying on the floor. Life comes at you fast, and you never know the time or the place. (That’s another reason for not pre-paying, I said earlier today. How do you know you’ll die in Virginia? Maybe you’ll go to Wyoming and be eaten by a bear. You wouldn’t even need a bath or a comb-out.)
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