a few notes about these people

One of these people is still sick, phlegmy and coughing. Laughing even as she loses her voice.

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One of these people brought dinner home on Friday night, a saving grace for a tired Whimsy.

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One of these people is currently stacking boxes of pudding and jello end-to-end across the living room floor.

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One of these people spent a brief 36-hours at home before heading back out to the business salt mines.

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One of these people has learned to kick a ball. She follows the bright red vinyl sphere down the hall, karate-chopping the air high, like a drum major.

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One of these people has been waking in the midnight hours, coughing and sputtering in her sleep as I lie awake and listen, hoping and praying that her body will quiet, that the vigil I keep can allow us both to sleep through the night.

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One of these people has been known to sneak up behind me and wipe her runny nose on the back of my shirt. Or pants. Or arm. Or neck. (Nice to be of service, there.)

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One of these people was missed as soon as he kissed me goodbye, his car still rumbling in the driveway.

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One of these people has the msot delectable cheeks. Wait, that could be both of these people.

bobby flay: grim reaper of dreams

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I give full and complete credit to Chip for this observation. He noticed it first and then totally ruined my bland disinterest by making a casual remark about Bobby Flay, darling of the Food Network and (apparently) Chef Extraordinaire.


About this: Bobby Flay, Iron Chef and quite possibly the only person that works at Food Network (because otherwise wouldn't they, like, restrain themselves from giving ALL the shows to Bobby Flay - at last count he has FOUR count 'em FOUR different shows in rotation on that network)... and I believe he also sold his soul to Wishbone Salad Dressing because he occupied an entire TV CHANNEL 24-7 for several weeks leading up to the Fourth of July. With recipes for SALAD DRESSING.


Anyway. My rant is about one particular show in the Bobby Flay empire: Showdown with Bobby Flay. If you haven't seen it, the basic concept is that Bobby Flay, renowned chef and television personality of the galaxy, "surprises" unsuspecting amateur foodies and small-time chefs by showing up and challenging them to a showdown featuring their signature dish (from chocolate chip cookies to coconut cake to fried chicken). Both Bobby Flay and the chef being showdowned then proceed to each make the dish while a few judges (arranged beforehand) eat the offerings and declare a winner.



Sounds innocuous, right? Well. That's what I used to think.



And then Chip comes along and points out the following:


1. First the obvious: Bobby Flay is a PROFESSIONAL CHEF. With a veritable SEA OF MINIONS (not the lovely creamy kind that I have, either). These are Minions of Cookdom - two are shown on-screen each episode, but I bet that there is a whole slew of scurrying Minions researching the dishes and cooking up various test options and doing their dastardly Minion behind-the-scenes work all the while Bobby Flay just lords it over everyone with his supposed charm and good behavior and VAST KNOWLEDGE OF ALL THINGS RELATED TO FOOD.



2. Whereas the cook being challenged is, like, USUALLY A HOME-TOWN, HOME-TAUGHT COOK. No Minions to speak of. Maybe a hapless kitchen helper or friend standing by wringing their hands and trying to appear competent as the army of Food Network cameras descend on them, (have I mentioned) TOTALLY BY SURPRISE.



3. In some cases, maybe even in MANY cases, the dish that Bobby Flay is trying to copycat and beat is the home-town cook's CLAIM TO FAME. Their one and only SPARK OF FAMEDOM. The thing that other people KNOW THEM FOR. Who the heck is Bobby Flay to TAKE THAT AWAY FROM THEM? He's all, I know that you've been making your great great grandmother's recipe for three generations and everyone from the surrounding five counties comes to your kitchen door to sample it, but dude. I got me some Minions, and they baked up a pie that will KICK YOUR PIE'S TRASH. Take that, hometown cook! May you forever be shamed into telling everyone that your pie is SECOND BEST to Bobby Flay! (mighty fist pump!) ---In my imaginings, Bobby Flay refers to himself in the second person, much like Elmo but with a tiny bit less fur and with, you know, THE MINIONS.



4. I further have a problem with the time Bobby Flay is able to research and prepare for the showdown. The hometown cook is told that they are being featured on a Food Network special about their particular dish. They do a little cooking segment with the cameras, and then have some kind of public celebration with their nearest and dearest friends to eat their creation. It's at the shindig that Bobby Flay busts in and dashes their dreams of starring in a Food Network special and announces BOBBY FLAY IN THE HOUSE! YOU WILL EAT BOBBY FLAY'S DUST AND BREAD CRUMBS (MIXED WITH A COMBINATION OF RED PEPPERS AND CILANTRO)! Prior to this interruption, though, Bobby Flay is given acres of time to prepare and practice and perfect his challenging dish. Also, though they don't necessarily show it on screen, I suspect the Minions are dispatched to the hometown cook's kitchen and root cellar to spy out any and all secrets.



Doesn't it all just seem... UNFAIR? And sort of STACKED AGAINST THE HOMETOWN HERO? Now that I have all these thoughts about how Bobby Flay will only be content when any and all left on the face of the earth worship him as the Best Chef of All Time Forever and Ever Amen--- I watch for little signs of cracks in the facade--- in Bobby Flay and the hometown chefs.



There's an episode where he's doing a challenge for clam chowder and the hometown chef is mad. You can just tell. It's all over his face, and the cameras can't skip past it quick enough. I don't blame him. I'd be mad too. Here's this dude who lives and breathes to make awesome clam chowder. And he's excited to be telling Food Network about it. It's a huge deal, right? And then here's our favorite freaking Iron Chef, Bobby Flay--- waltzing in at the back and suddenly it isn't a show about this guy's chowder, it's Bobby I'm Going to Make Better Chowder Than You Flay. Doing his level best to steal poor chowder guy's thunder Or there's the sweet little grandma who bakes pineapple upside down cake. It's like the one and only bright spot of goodness in her unassuming life, the one thing she offers to friends and family as her GIFT, something she can give them of her hands and heart and her veritable SOUL and then here's Bobby Flay, "Bobby Flay is going to CUT YOU, Grandma--- take THAT old woman! I can beat your pineapple upside down cake and then I'm going to go eat some spicy peppers! Bobby Flay is the destroyer of your SOUL!"

How much do you want to bet that Bobby Flay sits in his apartment on the weekends, trolling local newspapers for budding chefs and local food celebrities. Anyone who is eeking by with a small slice of notoriety. And BOBBY FLAY WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT, NO HE WON'T. So he calls up some of his Minions and his lackeys at Food Network to get on it. Clearly someone (a grandma? a 70-year-old hairy dude who lives to smoke meat? a woman from San Antonio, Texas who makes awesome tacos?) needs to be schooled. No one is better than Bobby Flay. NO ONE.

I make a pretty decent cupcake, and I'm starting to worry that Bobby Flay is going to burn through every chef's heart and soul, and start to run through the common masses. All I'm saying is that if Bobby Flay shows up at our next backyard barbecue and is all BOBBY FLAY CHALLENGES YOU TO A SHOWDOWN, I'm going to have to punch him in the throat.

So before that happens, I've decided that the Food Network folks need to take this in another direction altogether. Stop all the cooking. It's just pointless. Instead, I want to see Bobby Flay and Hometown Chef/Grandma/Angry Chowder Guy just wrastling it up in some mud or jello. Or how about we consider a demolition derby: last car still running is the winner? Sounds like a much better deal to me.

vigil

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There is a brown vinyl looks-like-woodgrain photo album propped on the bottom shelf of Bean's bookcase. It is filled with small squares of photos, the kind no one makes anymore, pictures of my childhood. There are images of me eating cake and picking kittens up by their tails and my grandparents - all four of them, now gone. There are little snaps of Life With Whimsy: funny sleeping poses and too-big ballerina tutus and standing naked as a jaybird in the kitchen sink. These pictures represent every bit of documentation from my childhood, notes from my mother in the margins, a few bits of ephemera floating free at the back of the book. The love and tenderness is palpable in each snapshot. When you sit down with this book, the love escapes the book binding and rises in a cloud of comfort. Occasionally I will sift through the book, and in doing so I live my childhood in fast forward. I watch myself grow from scrunchy-faced newborn to pixie-haired schoolgirl in just a few turns of vinyl page. My first few months on the planet represented in a handful of pictures and nothing more. Time and camera film as editor for my life experience.

I've asked my mom a few times about offhand memories not living in the photo book--- things I said or my first steps or my favorite game to play when I was two. I don't blame her for it, but she doesn't remember these things. Time and four children do that to a person, and besides, there's a book--- myself living on in perpetuity as a chubby-cheeked toddler and the one-year-old with the long brown curls. I satisfy my curiosity by looking at Bean, knowing that she and I have so many similarities. I wonder how much of myself is mirrored back at me when I look in her sweet face.

The same sweet face that is cataloged and categorized and documented with painstaking detail in these virtual pages on the internet. Where I have a single book, a small smattering of photographs dedicated to telling the Story of Whimsy, Bean has this diary of her life represented at The Creamery. Her smiles and laughs, her foibles and funnies. The times she has driven me crazy and the times she has singlehandedly caused my heart to explode beyond my ribcage for the joyous love that I feel for her. There is such a dramatic difference in the two biographies. Not just in sheer volume, either, but the raw things I say here of inadequacy or worry or bald-faced irritation... I can't imagine coming across something like that scrawled in the margins of my photo album.

And then there's this: the tedious bits of daily life caught here in full digital beauty. I turn the pages of my brown book and am whisked from zero to eight in a few short seconds, but here---- here where I agonize over feedings and sleep issues and doctor visits in painstaking detail, the sheer volume of a child's life is here on these pages and I can feel their weight piling up as she reaches milestone after milestone, birthday atop birthday atop birthday and so on.

Late Monday night I was thinking about all of this, thinking about my experience of motherhood and Bean's simultaneous experience of childhood. It was dark in the bedroom when I burst in on Bean, her face red and her breathing ragged. She was standing over the edge of her crib, doing her level best to throw up in a single spot on the carpet (bless her heart). Damage was done, of course, with bits of it collected in her hair, on her sheets, her blanket, her stuffed buddies. I helped her through the worst of it with towels and blankets I snatched quickly from her closet, then we headed to the bathroom for a warm tub and a hair wash.

As I threw bedding and buddies and any hope of sleep for myself in the washer, I considered that brown photo album and all the things that aren't caught on those pages. The nights my mother spent doing this exact chore, the moments of time for herself that she blew away with a single sigh as I climbed into bed between her and Winston. I thought about the quiet words of comfort she would whisper when I was feeling terrible and sick, how she was able to convey perfect confidence and I never worried that things wouldn't just magically feel better in the morning. She said it was so, and so it was. Every time.

Because it's not in the book, I have no reference to my mother's daily life with me or her reaction to me when I was, um, less than picture perfect. I have no proof of her worries or frustrations or the times she might have wanted to chuck me out the window. I have no idea how it was for her in a house with four children--- each of them so different, each of them with demands of their own, each of them needing the whole of her attention and love and nurturing influence. Without the ability to read these stories in a book or see their photographic evidence, I can only imagine and try to recall my dusty experiences from memory. The things I do imagine, and the memories I am able to resurrect tell me she was (and is) a wonderful mother. Attentive and kind and comforting and so very soft--- her voice, her skin, the way she would rock me on that orange floral chair in the living room.

There is so much here at The Creamery for Bean to visit one day. When she is old enough to read these archives, she will visit those precious few days when she was very much brand new. When I wondered over her milky breath and her perfect skin. When I could get drunk on her paper thin eyelids and listen to her small grunts and snorffles with delight. When Bean is old enough to read these pages, she will visit herself from my perspective. She will see and hear and feel the wonder and beauty of Alice---- and hopefully she will come to know, and be reminded of, how much I adore her. The archives will be hers one day to know what was and what is, and I can only hope that she will feel the love here, palpable and knowing.

But just as my photo album has holes, bits of time and experience missing, there are things that I live in my days with Bean that will never fully be represented here in these pages. Like bringing Bean back to bed in the early morning hours, and my simultaneous delight and irritation at having her get pretzel crumbs in our bedsheets. Like the simplicity of our days together and the fun we have running errands or being in the car or saying hello to the balloon man. And the darkness of a sick little girl, her body limp and exhausted, brought back to sleep in bed next to me.

There is a universal truth about the mother's vigil: no matter how it is captured or conveyed. She worries silently in the dark over the restless body of her child. She runs through the possible solutions, the potions she might provide for relief, the things she needs to gather for her arsenal. She stands tired at her child's door, listening for coughing. She presses a cold cloth to a fevered forehead. She prays for comfort. She watches for morning. And the night is never so long as the night she's living through in that singular moment.

It's the vigil of motherhood that will never be fully represented in words or pictures or any medium you can name excepting one--- deep inside a mother's heart. I could devote a thousand pages to telling you what it's like and never get it right. I know why there aren't any pictures of my mother caring for me when I was sick, or notes about how long it took her to make my Halloween costumes: because these things are part and parcel of that vigil of motherhood. And there are no words for such things, no picture to tell that story.

Just the love that remains, the cloud of it rising above our heads and hearts, circling the planet.

the kindness of...

Every once in a while, when I'm feeling shaky or sad or particularly vulnerable, I replay this instance in my head: me and Bean at the Phoenix airport on a layover, standing in line at Wendy's and cowering while a hard-to-believe-considering-the-way-he-was-acting fully grown adult male of the species taunted me and made me cry. My favorite part of reliving the memory is two minutes later, when I was standing over to the side of the Wendy's line, doing my best to not dribble a river of snot onto Bean's head while I waited for our order and hoped that the ground would open wide and SWALLOW ME WHOLE. Enter my favorite part: when two women, strangers to me and strangers to each other, laid into the mean green-shirted man, yelling at him and putting him in his place in front of a good sized crowd of on-lookers. HOW DARE YOU MAKE HER CRY? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID? YOU MADE HER CRY! YOU ARE A POOR EXCUSE FOR A MAN. --I actually thrill with the feeling of rescue, these two unknown women, these brave souls who said what I couldn't say in that moment, the women who just a minute before stood in front of me and offered tissue and support and a hug.) I still feel bad that I didn't go back and thank them. (I was too busy crying.)--

I think I cry harder when my misfortune is met with kindness. You know what I mean: how you are holding it all together until some person wiggles out of the background to offer you some sweetness, some gift of a tender mercy that is as close to a ray of sunshine on a dark night as you can get.

Yesterday we were at a large church meeting. Normally we attend church at a smallish building with a smallish congregation of people we know pretty well. But twice a year we meet together in a larger group to gain insight and instruction and edification. Yesterday was such a meeting, held in a different building and a little bit farther away. We arrived early, parking in a quickly-reaching-capacity parking lot and found seats next to the fantastic Wandering Nana and the stupendous Michelle. Bean ate the remains of her breakfast (pancakes) and we waited for the meeting to start. It was a few minutes in that I felt the first twinges of Neck Trouble. I tried shifting my posture, hoping to focus on Bean (finger puppets to keep her quiet) so the neck would just calm down and behave.

But it wouldn't behave. It wanted to MISbehave, in fact. Twinge, twinge, twinge.

I shifted. I stretched. I excused myself and walked around the building.

Twinge, twinge, twinge.

Ouch.

And then I felt the telltale ache and rumble of the muscle spasms begin.

By this time I was sitting next to Chip again and told him what was going on. My biggest concern wasn't so much the pain I was in right that second, but the fact that over the next two weeks Chip is going to be home a total of two-and-a-half days. It's the kind of thing that has me thinking Hmmm - I need to be mobile. Above all else, I need to be mobile. So when he asked me if we should leave, I took a deep breath and said yes. Get me home to ice my neck and lie down and I'll be fine for Two Weeks of Single Parent Duty.

We quietly gathered our things and tucked Bean under Chip's arm and exited, hoping we could get to our car and head for home just as quietly.

Which of course isn't what happened.

What happened instead was this: our car was inextricably barred and trapped by other cars, a little automobile quagmire right there in the parking lot. Chip dispatched me and Bean back to the foyer of the building to wait it out while he tried to move the surrounding cars with his incredible Mind Power and/or figure out a way through the bushes. While he was doing that, Bean and I stood in the foyer and spoke to the Effervescent Michelle and her adorable bud, Benjamin. He monkey-manned around the foyer and she asked if I was okay. I smiled and did something of a shoulder raise like, "Eh--- I will be fine in the long run but right now I just need to lie down." When I filled her in on our Trapped Car she was concerned, offered a ride home. By this time Chip was back inside, and barring a major bit of landscaping renovating done by our Jeep, there was no way we were getting out of the parking lot until the meeting was over.

We smiled at Michelle and quietly walked our way down the hallway, hoping we could find an empty classroom and a door Chip could stand guard over while I helped myself to some floor real estate. It seemed like the reasonable solution.

Let it be known it is never a good idea to underestimate the resources of a friend named Michelle and a cohort named Wandering Nana and their respective husbands.

While I reclined delicately in church clothes and stockings on the floor of a large classroom, and while Chip stood judiciously over me lest someone come in and disturb my delicate reclining, and while Bean raced in circles around the room shouting JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!, there was a small marshalling of forces in the outer vicinity.

A few minutes later my view of the ceiling was interrupted with Michelle's husband's head. (In my mind - Hey, there's Dave. Hello Dave. There's the ceiling and Dave and Chip.) Dave offered a ride home. This is the point when The Kindness overtook my better judgement and I started to cry.

The formula:
Whimsy Lying Down in a Weird Public Location x Compromising Position + Extreme Kindness = Water Works

I can't help it.

My tears were just the social lubricant needed to get both Chip and Dave moving in a very quick and efficient manner (I lovingly call it Husband Panic in the Face of Wife Tears).

It was agreed that we would use the Family Michelle/Dave vehicle to get ourselves home, and then Chip would turn around and bring the car back to the church and retrieve our imprisoned Jeep.

As we left the building there were a few Knowing Looks from other conspirators of kindness (I know who you are).

Driving home, we talked about these brands of kindness--- the fact that there wasn't even a small beat of a moment when Chip felt like he couldn't ask Dave and Michelle to use their car, the fact that they said yes without a second thought, the knowing looks of help and commiseration as we failed epically in our attempt at a Quick and Silent Exit (oh the failure). This is the kindness that is evidenced in our lives--- people looking out for the welfare of others.

Nearing the house, we acknowledged that we need to be so much better at offering this kind of help, because it wasn't that things were so blatantly obvious. It's about looking for opportunities to be kind, and then doing it.

Sometimes it's about handing your car keys over to a friend.
Sometimes it's about being someone's voice at a Phoenix airport.
Sometimes it's about making a very readily-accepted plate of brownies.
Sometimes it's about being a listening ear.
Sometimes it's a thousand other things, in a thousand other venues.
But it's always, always, always about being kind.

This is a small offering of thanks to yesterday's co-conspirators and a long belated thanks to the anonymous ladies of the Phoenix Airport. May your days be blessed with kindness in equal measure.

things I will tell my daughter: of teenage boys and a girl's heart

Beware of the boys who are traps, their faces sun-bronze and beautiful, their hands reaching for your hand. These are the boys who will spin the planet madly until you are wobbling free and flying off the earth's crust into the deepest velvet of space. They aren't bad boys necessarily, but they hunger for the frenzy of love spun free in the void.

These are the sensitive boys. The misunderstood boys. The boys who want nothing more than to whisper quietly in the dark until their words find your waiting ear, your hair in a chaos of tangles. These are the boys wearing torn jeans; disaffected, unaffected, a sneer on the lip and a scribbled pocket of poetry.

Beware of the boys who are traps. Their black sneakers and flannel shirts are deeply scented with leaves and the vinyl of their car. They know how to sit still and watch you in the dark.

These are the Lost Boys who took the bus back from Neverland, the ones who refused to learn how to fly. But they talk a good game. They will tell you about spanning the midnight sky and touching the stars. They will breathe on your cheeks until you burn.

The boys who are traps know how to use the knife's edge of a qualifier. They say never and always and only to snip your life's attachments from you like balloon strings until you stand bare and alone in a universe of two.

These are the boys who come along once in a million, once in a lifetime, once upon a time in a twisted fairytale choked with gnarled tree roots. These boys want to keep you for your brightness, for your innocence, for the light you shine in the dark.

If you meet a boy who is a trap, he will carry his own gravity. He will seem dense and inescapable. He has a sticky center, dark as molasses and just as heavy and sweet. It will hold you there as you kick and struggle for the freedom to move.

In his company, this boy who is a trap, you will hope for peace but find none. You will look for safety but find none. You will seek for his salvation but find none. This is when you will want to change him, want to help him, want to heal him. But the boy who is a trap is a desert. He drinks your intentions in deep greedy gulps. He asks for more and offers nothing in return.

The boy who is a trap will sing a siren's song and leave you shipwrecked and broken on a foreign shore. He will catalog your face with the others who gather in his atmosphere as he sails the sea.

The boys who are traps--- they change us, they scar us, they can suck us dry and leave us gasping for air and light and water. They will take something from us if we don't kick free and come back to our senses. Beware the boys who are traps, from one who broke free and didn't look back.