Climb Back Up There Boo

"Climb back up there Boo, give it another try".

Dad had decided it was time for me to have a pony; we were test driving a lovely black mare, quite large by pony standards, mean as hell by mine. Horseback riding, to this point, had either been wedged behind Dad, atop his giant palomino, scaled to accommodate Dad's former football player frame, or perched cautiously on Mom's Sunshine's Blonde Bomber, a show horse that was never actually ridden by any of us, but one that photographed well and won plenty of pretty blue ribbons.

Dad brought the mean pony over, I climbed back into the saddle. Over the head and tossed to the side, the candidate threw me at least six times. Five times, at Dad's insistence, I led him to the rail and pulled myself up with the reins. Sore and frustrated I walked out of the ring, closed the gate, and laughed as Dad tried to corral the wild beast. Together we walked him back to the barn, "not this one Dad". He laughed, "nice try Boo".

He taught me everything I know about the person I want to be. Life is much more fun when you swim in the waves.

January 12th, Every Year

If all was right in my world I'd be going to dinner tonight at the club, in the grill room. Jojo would bring a round of cocktails, Mimi would hold hers up in the air and sing out "Jojo, dear, this one is just a tad light" and he'd quickly bring out a wee bit of bourbon to darken things up.

For dinner she'd have liver and onions, I would make a horrible face, and she'd shoosh me off with one hand, her charm bracelet ringing, and say "oh you have never known what's good!". Dinner would be interrupted countless times while she waved at everyone who walked in the grill "hello dear!" and while waving she'd whisper "you know that's a wig" or "that's her third husband" or "don't you think that dress is a bit young for her?". She knew everyone and everyone her, although probably not that she gossiped about each and every one of them.

She'd carefully open her cards, read each word, and tear up about halfway through the Hallmark scribed sentiment. My father would bellow out "MOTHER, please, stop crying, it's a card" and then I'd join her and dad would order another cocktail.

We'd wrap up with her ordering peppermint pie for everyone, with "extra fudge sauce Jojo" and then I'd wheel her through the clubhouse to the front door. Dad would get the car while I got our coats, and lemon drops from the jar on the counter, and then we'd load up the old gal and take her home. And it was always a perfect evening, perfectly predictable, perfectly lovely, and now, perfectly missed.

Happy Birthday my dear old coot, I miss you still.

Originally posted on this date in 2009, my sentiments remain the same. Happy birthday my dear gal.

September First

      There once was a dream,
      Then two, for a team,
Two little misses with bright eyes of blue,
       And fair as June roses,
       With cute turned up noses,
Sweet rounded lips of a ripe cherry hue;
       No love cold be greater,
       Shown by the Creator,
Than to give double, the portions to you.

Mrs. Hortense MacDougall

Poem written by my great grandmother Hortense Smythe MacDougall in the early 1900s, long before my double portions were born on September first, 2004. Happy birthday wonderful girls.

Dammit Allyson It's Mother's Day

He would have said, "God dammit Allyson, it's Mother's Day".

And I would have said, "but Dad it's your birthday".

And he'd guffaw and lean back in his chair, "yes, and it has been for  years. Go, celebrate with your family, you're a mother now, more important than being a daughter".

"But Dad..."

"Although I really don't know about you celebrating Mother's Day, as far as I can see you should just celebrate Father's Day twice. Seems to me that husband of yours does all the hard work."

But he didn't say that, although I know that he would have.

Happy Birthday Dad, Happy Mother's Day Me.

And Dad, Jack does all the laundry.

 

Tall Enough for the Zambezi Zinger: A Fourth Grade Writing Assignment

Racing out in front of the others I arrived triumphantly at the end of the line, a long winding snake of  a line which ended at the entrance to the roller coaster. Never before had I been on one, never before had I been old enough but now I was 10, now I could ride the Zambezi Zinger with my friends. It was all anyone in fourth grade could talk about, some of my friends had been on this thing more than once but now it was my turn; I could not wait to be twisted, spun and shaken into oblivion.

"Step up, back to the stand, right there against the umbrella please", the gatekeeper cried, the only thing standing between me and 180 seconds of unparalleled madness.

Josie, Mary and Jenny all eased through with barely a nod from the teenage sentry. I ducked by but he stopped me, "one minute there missy, back against the umbrella please, you must be 48 inches tall to ride the Zambezi!".

With all my might I eased up from my heels, camouflaging as best I could the obvious deficit between the top of my head and the top of my ticket to happiness.

"Hmmm, you don't seem to reach the top do you?"

A bit more of a push from the heel and I was almost there, "oh no, I'm tall enough, I'm 10. Today is my birthday".

He shook his head, "sorry kiddo, but for your safety you must be as tall as my umbrella, please step this way", and he opened the gate hidden behind him, the one used by people who were not brave enough to face the Zambezi head on, the coward gate. My friends stepped into the car and lowered the bar, I stepped out, finding my 6'3" father waiting for me. He was worried that I wouldn't pass the height requirement and offered to walk me over to the Funcular, the one loop roller coaster sized just for children.

Turns out I hated roller coasters, still do.

Mary and Kate's language arts writing assignment this week was to write a short essay about a birthday celebration, including descriptive language and conflict. This is my take on fourth grade, with a nod to my daughter who is struggling this year with being the shortest one in her class.

Happy Birthday

Cheers!

A Story About My Dad

I love this picture of my Dad.

My grandmother loved to tell me stories about Dad in college, how he would call and ask if he could bring a friend home and then show up with 8 others. How the boys would sleep on the floor, all over the house, and she would cook for them all weekend, and then send them back to school with food to last for months. How the boys loved to visit and spend time with Dad's younger sister, and how much he hated his friends "making eyes" at Lynda.

When Dad died we had a memorial service at his club, which was his request, rather than a sad and weepy funeral in a church he had lost touch with years before. Many of his friends spoke, as did I, and it became just what he hoped for: a roast and celebration of his amazing life. Bo, a friend from college, told stories about Dad eating "fish" on Friday, a chicken fried steak from Worman's, on which he had sprinkled water, to bless it. He remembered the first drill of freshman year when all the underclassmen were removed from their beds in the middle of the night: 29 young men from west Texas in t-shirts and boxers and my Dad, in monogrammed pajamas.

It was always that way.

My dad was happiest when he was with his friends. He was the cook, the tour guide, the chauffeur and the host. And he was always, almost always, appropriately dressed.

My dad was the same guy at 62 that he was at 18. Monogrammed pajamas became monogrammed robes, chicken fried steak was still a sacred food, and his friends, we know, loved him just as much as he loved them.

It's good to know who you are, even if you need your initials on your sleeve to remind you.

Happy birthday Dad.

Always Playing Catch Up

When I was six my best friend was Stephanie, who lived next door. Next to her lived the Flemings who had, it seemed, 42 children, but not one that was our age. The closest was Susan who was two years younger than we were, which, when you are six, seemed an enormous valley of years. We were in kindergarten, Susan did not even go to school. We were allowed to ride our bikes up and down our street, Susan could not even ride a bike. Susan followed us around, so certainly in awe of our older and wiser six year old selves.

On her fifth birthday Susan proudly told Stephanie and me that she was almost caught up, that on her next birthday she would be same age as we were. We smiled and hugged our little friend, "silly girl, you never catch up, you will always be younger than we are!".

It's true, we always get older but we never catch up. What was a catastrophic age gap then seems like nothing as Susan would now be three years older than my husband, who is doing his best to catch up today. Young in spirit but graying at the temples, the old man is growing up. Happy birthday Jack, enjoy your weekend!

Sur La Table, Sur La Birthday

My birthday is rolling around again in a few days. Because my husband, who dislikes all celebrations that involve gift giving, finds my birthday, where he is really expected to come up with something, the most painful of them all, I try to offer some subtle suggestions. He is really very lucky; a perfectly fine birthday gift is a good book, one that he took the time to pick out just for me, knowing me well enough to know what I like to read. He has now convinced himself that we are in grave danger of falling, all of us, into the apartment downstairs due the weight of the books in our home, so has mandated a moratorium on book buying, which has not affected, one bit, my personal book shopping, but it has his. Thus, I have had to be a bit more creative. In mid May I left the Williams Sonoma catalog on the dining room table, which he promptly tossed in the recycling. Last week I flipped through the mail while he watched baseball, casually pointing out all the amazing baking gadgets available at Sur La Table.

"You don't bake".
"I might if I had this bundt pan".
"Allyson, you have a bundt pan. When was the last time you made a bundt?"

We tried this about 6 years ago. While in Sur La Table I pointed out the most amazingly beautiful cake pan I had ever seen, a sheet pan with daisy outlines, which of course would allow me to make the loveliest cakes ever seen, all moist and delicious, each one with a hint of lemon, to be served at the tea parties I would soon be hosting with my daughters. To date I have made one cake, kind of. What I made was a dense scrubbing utensil which adhered to the daisies like super glue. It hinted not of lemon but of eggs and shook like jello when cut. I made an omelet in a cake pan, to the delight of my husband.

"I want to bake."
"Fine, and when you learn I will buy you a bundt pan, but for now, you are well suited for bundts."

For me, the bundt (which I now say as boondt, and will forever do so, as did the mom in My Big Fat Greek Wedding) is the quintessential baked good, the one thing I feel I should be able to do effortlessly, as in, "oh I just whipped up this vanilla bundt with blueberry glaze, would you like a slice?", but I can't.

The reality is that I am a terrible baker. I'm a decent cook and pretty good at pulling out what I find in the refrigerator, mixing it up with pasta and calling it dinner, but I cannot ever prepare the next course, not if it involves heat, leavening agents and measuring spoons.

"Mom, can we have dessert?"
"Not tonight, you already had something sweet today."
"When?"
"Didn't you have grapes in your lunchbox?"

Early on I lived with the delusion that if I served sweets casually, not as treats, my darlings would grow up similarly to French children who taste wine at a young age; that is to say that sweets would not be a big deal. The problem was that my sweets were not at all sweet, on the rare occasion that I actually baked something. So this theory was soon scrapped en lieu of don't give them sweets and they will not develop a taste for them and their precious teeth will not rot and fall out of their small mouths. That has not worked too well either. It turns out that children really liked baked goods, almost all of them.


We did not eat dessert when I was young. Occasionally Dad would take us for ice cream but my mother has never, not once in her life, baked anything that remotely resembled dessert. When all the other kids brought homemade cupcakes to school on their birthday, I brought Tootsy Rolls. I once took a bag of Milanos as my contribution to a school bake sale (they sold). When it was my turn to bring treats to the Girl Scout meeting, and I begged for something homemade, my mom whipped up graham crackers with pieces of a Hershey bar stuck in the middle (her specialty was graham crackers with applesauce in the middle but that didn't travel well). Things don't change. About every third time I talk to my mother on the phone she says, "I'm really on to this fabulous new dessert idea, you've got to try it! It's just a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a few splashes of Scotch on top, and then finished off with freshly ground pepper. Do you need to write that down Allyson?". Even I've got that one Mom. This is the same woman who routinely suggests that I serve buttermilk mixed with jarred salsa to my children, "honestly, the best soup I have ever had, serve it in mugs!".

The bigger issue is that I want to be a baker. I really want to be the mom who rushes in, powder on her nose, with a large box of freshly baked, and oh so tasty, cupcakes tucked under her arm. It seems logical to me that what I should do, in working to accomplish this goal, is to acquire all the snappy baking gear I can from Sur La Table, store it in our already overburdened kitchen cabinets, and continue to wish that I could be her, the baker mom. It doesn't take much insight to recognize that, as a child who was clearly served one too many vanilla ice creams Scotch sundaes, I just want to give my children something I never had: a bake sale donation that does not say Pepperidge Farm on the outside of the package.

The new summer catalog arrives; I leave it on the kitchen island, open to the cake pop pans.

"You don't bake. What would you do with these?"
"Think about summer, think about how cute those would be decorated with the little flags!"
"Who will do that?"
"Me."
"You don't bake, you would make weaponry with these."

"How about a new cookbook?"


First image, courtesy of Molly's Cupcakes, the wonderful place that saves me when baking is required. The second, from my favorite Sur La Table.

Getting Older with Old Friends

It's a bit disconcerting when you refer to someone you met after you graduated from college as an "old friend".

As it turns out, we are now old, although she is older than me.

The list of what I look for in a friend seems to be formed from a constantly evolving set of criteria. When I was six proximity was key. Mary and Josie lived directly behind us; we all went to the same school, we  loved selling lemonade and we liked to ride bikes but most importantly, I could be at their house, unassisted, in about 30 seconds. They were my best friends.

In college geography continued to play an important role in my friend selection, most of my best friends being roommates or those who lived down the hall, but there was more to consider. College friends had to make me laugh, drink beer in dive bars, ride bikes, and understand that there was more to education than what could be learned in a classroom. Commonalities were important; my political science studying self made very few friends in the math department.

When Lisa and I met she was married, lived in an actual house and had a husband who said things like "pick up hotdogs on your way home". It all sounded very grown up and suburban to me. I lived with two other girls in a one bedroom apartment and existed on carry out Chinese food.  Clearly we could never be friends.

It seems I was wrong.

Geography doesn't matter so much anymore. My friends don't live next door but I can still get to them, unassisted, when necessary. I don't spend my evenings in dive bars, at least not as often. My current hang out is the neighborhood coffee shop where I routinely run into some of my favorite new friends. It's tea, rather than lemonade or beer, that occupies the middle part of my life.

Rather than find a good fit for me, I now seem to seek out those who are a good fit for us, for all four of us. People who like my children, and people whose children I like. People who are not afraid to point out to my girls that hanging over a high fence above concrete is not probably a good idea, people that I know will catch them when they fall. People who will ride bikes to the beach with us, and whose children might labor along as mine do, because bike riding is still important, even when you're old.

Just like old friends are important, especially those who evolved with my list and went from being exotic home owners to people who collect Nancy Drew books for my children. Friends who happily spend a cool summer evening at the beach, watching our children play in the sand, celebrating 50 wonderful years of being the kind of person you'd really like to have a drink with, be it lemonade, beer or tea.

Happy Birthday Jack!

Every year on this date the girls and I celebrate Jack’s birthday. Every year Jack, to the best of his ability, ignores us. He has no qualms about growing older, he embraces his forty'hood with gusto, it’s the actual celebrating that he dislikes.

He’s a fun person. He laughs, smiles, and seems to enjoy his life, but he does not celebrate birthdays. He has, begrudgingly over the years, learned to tolerate holidays. I celebrate Arbor Day. I believe birthdays are the most anticipated day of the year, and even after the celebrant has died, I still remember them. It’s an ideological difference we've been negotiating for over ten years. We've both had to sacrifice, we’re working it out.

As part of my acceptance, I have come to understand certain rules that might make the day more enjoyable for him. Primarily we are not allowed to ask, ever, what he might like for his birthday and we are not to expect overwhelming joy as his response at gift opening. He hails from a “what would you like’ kind of family, which has never suited him well. With his birthday coming less than one month after Christmas, this gift giving kindness has become a seemingly insurmountable burden. His mother once sent a brightly colored balloon bouquet to his bank office which may have been the year he formally announced his retirement from birthdays. Last year she sent a box of homemade cookies; he was genuinely thrilled.

With the arrival of children I warned him, he could no longer continue to be such a complete scrooge on his birthday, children expect more. They've been counting down all week, making presents and planning surprises. They started the day with shrieks of happy birthday and a special celebratory banana snowman shaped muffin. They have warned their teacher, please not too much homework tonight, it’s our dad’s birthday. They plan on being quite busy with all the festivities surrounding this wonderful day. If we were to leave Jack in charge, they would have time to finish their complete math workbook, complete the extra credit report on the Constitutional Convention and read the dictionary.

For their sake the newly minted old man will go out to dinner, eat cake and smile when they sing. He will open gifts, feign excitement and delight in playing with Bob the Talking Toilet Paper Roll Doll, "would you like an interest rate swap?"

And maybe next year, after this kind of wild fun, he might just offer a suggestion as to what he would like for his birthday.

Happy birthday Jack; tomorrow is a new day.

Before birthdays were tortuous.

Chicken Pot Pie

It's chicken pot pie day. It's snowing, it's really cold and it's Mimi's birthday. One twelve twelve just came around again as she would be 100 years old today. She should be 100, she lived like she had that kind of time.

Happy Birthday

Thank you for being my friend.

Egg in the Mud

"You come here, you haven't been here in so long", and that, when coming from San Francisco is hard to resist. My side of the world was less exciting, and she was promising a spa day in Napa. I bought my ticket.

Where once we had been separated only by a bookcase, we were now over 2,000 miles apart, a thought unimaginable ten years prior. Before email, before Skype, we talked on the phone, constantly, and wrote letters, the wonderful old handwritten kind that now sit in a box in my closet. We met freshman year; I remember quite clearly that she was wearing a lime green suit and white pumps, although she dismisses this, horrified at the idea, and her very comfortable jean and cashmere sweater wearing self seems to negate my memory quite effectively. We were assigned as roommates sophomore year, the girl in the white pumps and the loud girl who wore plaid, which is how she remembers me, an image I cannot dispel. Her second impression, after a thorough scrutiny of my cassette tapes, was that I really liked Billy Joel. She was edgy, she had Flock of Seagulls hair and a taste for new music, crazy stuff like R.E.M. and INXS, I had a bob and John Denver. We were further apart than San Francisco and Chicago.

She spent her nights in the architecture studio, I spent mine at the Wheel. When my late night revelry caused her to oversleep and miss a final I thought we were done. A kind professor, a big heart and my slumbering through the last of Sociology 302 kept us together.

Where she is organized, I am madness. Eventually she learned to sign my name, being the responsible one when we moved from dorm to apartment, and bills had to be paid. As a person who liked to be at the airport two hours before her flight and forced to rely on someone who happily sauntered to the gate as the doors closed, she returned home with a wonderful gift to say thank you for living, only so briefly, on my schedule.

Years later she was at the gate to greet me, of course she was, she had been there for hours. I bet my flight was late. We ate at the garlic restaurant, Johnny Rockets and Hamburger Mary's; we got food poisoning somewhere on the wharf (and lived through it in her Marina neighborhood one bathroom studio apartment), and we rented a car and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge towards Napa Valley.

We stopped in St. Helena, the best small town I have ever seen, and ate sandwiches in the park from a wonderful market, next door to the most amazing kitchen store I could imagine. We were on our way to Calistoga, and the mud baths. Her friends recommended Dr. Wilkinson's Hot Springs, home to the man and the mud. My father was entertained by the entire idea, amused at the idea of the two of us paying money to be immersed in a pile of wet dirt.

Mud smells, and it's hot. It clogs your pores and makes it hard to breathe. With at least a fifty year cushion, we were the youngest people in the room. Every one of us was naked, although it seemed that we were the only ones exhibiting any sense of modesty at all, the rest of the mud sinkers, all seventy plus years of them, wandering from room to room, wearing little but scraps of dried old mud. Forcing yourself, naked, into a pile of warm mud takes youthful stupidity, old determination and strong arms.

My father delighted in this story, "Everyone else was old? And they didn't change the mud? You sat, naked, in used mud?". This had not occurred to me. "Why do you think the mud was so warm? What do you think the old gals did in that mud Allyson? How bad did it smell?". I hung up and called San Francisco, the shriek of horror could be heard across 2,000 miles.

Many years later, when Jack had to call her, on her birthday, to tell her that my father died, she cried, "not today, please not today". But she has shared this day, one of my very favorites, for bringing her into my world, and the worst possible I could imagine, for taking away someone I loved so much. It's become Bill Day, for celebrating and toasting my dad, but it will always be Egg's birthday, a reminder of the passing of time and the value of true friendships.

Twenty six years later we are still friends, best friends.

I wrote this to post on September 25th, but was, of course, late.
Happy birthday my friend!

Like Her Father

"Underwear!"

It's been her standard answer for about two months. Kate, being a bit pragmatic, decided that the very best gift for her father at Christmas was underwear. But she never found any she liked; they weren't soft enough or the right color. Like her father, she is very particular. Christmas passed with nary a pair of underwear under the tree.

Thankfully Jack's birthday is just three weeks after Christmas. And again, when
people ask what she is getting her father for his birthday she screams,"underwear!". But Kate has rarely been a woman of one word, her response is more colorful and animated, going into great detail as to the hows and whys of this specific gift choice.

Edwin the doorman asked this week, "well you know I wanted to buy him underwear for Christmas but I never found any. So I am definitely getting him underwear for his birthday. Maybe green, maybe stripes, or I think I saw some with hearts on there, I think he would really like those." Edwin suggested, given the season, she consider some Chicago Bears themed underwear and Kate agreed, "great idea!".


Her teacher knows what Jack is getting for his birthday, as does the principal, the music teacher, my co-librarian, Mary's teacher, and most of her classmates. Like her father, she is pragmatic, particular and chatty.

Last night he unwrapped not one but four pairs of new underwear. It's hard to imagine but the girls were more excited than he was. Graciously he gushed; just what he needed, how did they know? Happy birthday Jack.

Birthdays

Getting older is so much nicer when you are lucky enough to spend your days with these people. Old, certainly, but blessed with friends and family who made turning 40 something you might want to do everyday.

May Day Birthday

Bopaw was born on May 1, 1901 and so, on Saturday, I reminded Mary and Kate that May Day was also their great grandfather's birthday.

Mary thought for a moment and then suggested we bake a cake. Creative, interesting way to get a cake, working the never actually met, 18 years deceased great grandfather angle.

"But mom, if I eat some cake then Bopaw can have some too, because he is in my heart".


Sweeter than cake, every day.

Smoked Jack on White Bread

The research begins a month in advance, even though I do the exact same analysis every year. I post queries to local food websites, read reviews and ultimately select the absolute perfect place to take my husband for his birthday. It's a restricted boundary search, I am looking for the best place to take him, in Chicago, to replicate his beloved Kansas City barbecue. Chicago is a big city, one of the largest I am told, and thus one might think great barbecue would be available on every corner. Not so says the man who fine tuned his taste buds at Arthur Bryant's; Chicago barbecue just does not satisfy when you are aching for burned meat crust soaking in tangy sauce on top of white bread.

Burnt ends at Arthur Bryant's

Last year it was easy, Smoque had just opened, people loved it, there were long lines, absolutely nothing resembling a vegetable, seemingly perfect. He deemed it too clean, and they had a kid's menu, blasphemy. Before that we tried Fat Willy's, plenty of smoke smell when I made my preliminary drive by, somewhat rustic looking, but the horror, they served salad, and there was a waitress. He is always grateful but even I know, you should not find a Caesar salad on any real barbecue menu, lettuce and greasy meat do not co-mingle. Of course I was raised by the supreme beef eater, Gate's sauce was fed to me en lieu of ketchup from a very early age. My father thought Arthur Bryant's was the finest restaurant in the world, and be certain, they do not serve salad. They do not really serve anything, rather they to toss you, from behind a barred counter, an enormous mound of smoked meat on white bread, wrapped in brown paper with a smattering of pickles and a lard soaked fries. There are no waitresses, rather there are men with missing teeth and women who yell to move along when you pause to consider the pork or the brisket. Have both for God's sake but keep the line moving.

One year Uncle Kenny graciously shipped burnt ends and smoked pork with beans and pickles, wrapped in dry ice and delivered to our front door. As the cost was about the same as two plane tickets to Kansas City, I eliminated this as an option for future years. Jack generously plays along, feigning surprise when we pull up in front of Chicago barbecue option number 47; the girls delight in surprising their dad with his favorite food and I delight in offering him meat, once a year. Imagine my horror when I turned the corner this year to find that once again, I had selected salad place. He is kind but never effusive while he quietly scrapes the caramelized onions and horseradish sauce off his brisket. And this year he looked the other way when I dug into my sandwich, one of the finest smoked portobello mushrooms with tomato basil chutney I have ever had.

Perhaps the real hindrance to beef bliss is in allowing the near vegetarian to chose the barbecue. Maybe the greatest gift I could offer would be to put Jack in charge of smoked meat. Happy birthday Jack, will we be spending your birthday in Kansas City next year?

To Always Have Fun

"Do you love him?"

Not at all what I was expecting, and a shock to be asked, but the answer came easily, "yes".
"And do you have fun together? It's important, you know, that you have fun together."

Four days later, when I had to speak at her funeral, my recital of our last real conversation had changed, not ready to admit to my family the truth that she knew. Thrown in with the story about losing her teeth and finding them in a dumpster, I reminded everyone that this woman not only showed me how to have fun, she made certain at the very end that I knew just how important it was to live my life, and how positively this joie de vivre had impacted the way she lived hers for 87 years.

The lesson sticks with me, on days when I want to run and hide, or banish the children to their room, I remember that what I am doing is having fun, even if it masquerades as tireless, and occasionally thankless, mothering.

For the rest of my life I am grateful to the person who knew me well enough to ask the question I was not ready to answer.

"Be good to each other" she said, and we are.