Dropping In

I had an unexpected visitor for lunch today. By unexpected I mean, totally out of the blue.  He landed on my head. Join me and my friend at Stage of Life to see how things turned out.

For Bill - Stepping Up

You married in a family

Of kids all cries and whinies
Became an ace at wiping tears
And cleaning little hinies.

You helped them read and
Tutored math, both adding and dividing
And later on to drive a car
When I went into hiding.

Knots, and rhymes and music notes

All came along the way.
Then college, jobs, financial aid
Made them men today.

One little thing I’ve got to say
I’ll jump in without prep.
Happy Father’s Day my dear
I’m leaving out a Step.

The Princess and The Papa

For Courtney, who is now quite a grown up lady, but somehow, somewhere will always be a five-year-old bundle of freckles.

           My Dad is a real man.  He wears Black and Decker underwear and buys pallets of toilet paper from Sears.  He watches sports on television every Sunday afternoon, even if it’s only putt-putt season, and turns the sound all the way down so that the sportscasting ninnies don’t ruin a beautiful play with color drivel.  He can estimate distance to an eighteenth of an inch and can tell whether a picture is half a bubble off plumb just by squeezing one eye shut and looking through his thumb.  He survived the Depression on beans and biscuits; World War II on courage and luck; and 48 years of marriage on Divine Providence and guesswork.  He taught four children to drive without suffering permanent neurological damage, made us wear more clothes when we were cold, and refused to let us hang on the refrigerator with the door open until we air conditioned the whole neighborhood.

So how can a five-year-old bundle of brown eyes and rosy cheeks crawl up in his lap at fourth down and goal to go and persuade him to read The Cat In The Hat for the four thousandth time without suffering severe blood loss?

This man, who refused to allow scented soap in the shower during my childhood years, now has a cupboard stocked with curly noodle soup, sports animal stickers on his bedroom door, and a maintains a stable of Barbies who loiter in his favorite recliner. When I dropped by Dad’s house last Sunday to comfort the old man in his lonesome existence and retrieve his great-grandaughter, I tripped over three teddy bears and a stuffed cat having a tea party, stumbled on a pair of pink plastic high heeled shoes and a glittery feather boa tossed carelessly in front of a full length mirror, and turned my ankle sliding across a nest of scattered crayons and coloring books piled in the hallway.

“Dad!”  I called, afraid to endanger myself by advancing further.  A trip to my father’s house should not involve my health insurance.  “Have you been finding new ways to entertain yourself or is there a little girl hiding in there?”

Giggles erupted from around the corner.  “We’re in the kitchen,” a small, freckled voice said.  I followed a line of Winnie-the-Pooh stickers posted along the wall at five-year-old eye level and entered the kitchen.  Over a teetering mountain of mall-type bags, a pair of large brown eyes twinkled in my direction. 

“Can you tell we’ve been shopping?” the bag-mountain asked.

Duh. Does the queen wear matching accessories?

“Papa bought me a sticker book, two kinds of bubble gum, and a Shirley Temple video.”

“Shirley Temple?”

“Yeah, she’s a new kid that can dance.”

“If Shirley Temple’s a new kid, we’d better be prepared to dodge wandering bands of Tyrannosaurs on the way home.”

“Papa made me a new kind of cheese sandwich.  You cook it right in the oven.”

            “Sweetie, it’s time to go.  Gather up your 50 most prized possessions and I’ll take you home.”

She hopped down and ran to me, clutching a battered baby doll that looked like it would be at home in Little Orphan Annie’s boarding house.  “I’m ready.”

“What about all your treasures?”

“Oh, Papa bought that stuff for me to play with here.  He already took my other stuff home for me.”

I glanced over at my dad, who was nestled in his recliner recovering from the shopping expedition by snoring loudly through the ballgame.  He cracked one eye open and peered up at me.  “Don’t forget her food.  She has Little Debbie brownies, Beauty and the Beast cookies, and Barbie cupcakes.  With sprinkles.”

Sure, the queen may have matching hat and shoes and the wealth of an entire nation, but the princess has designer snacks and a Papa that can’t say no.

In Cahoots

Collaborating on a novel with your spouse is like sharing a piece of bread that only one of you wants toasted.  When one is heartbent for modern romance and the other is set to strike out down the stony path toward gothic horror, it seems like the easiest thing to do would be to meet congenially in fantasy or science fiction. But by the time the opening sentence finds its place on the electronic media screen, things are already personal.  If redecorating a house together leads down the long and winding road to relationship stress, collaborating on a novel is the short, straight path to dividing your assets.

My husband, Damien Spielberg, took a perfectly lovely and sincere story about the relationship between a maiden apprentice and her mentor and turned it from a lively, endearing romance into a Renaissance Wizarding Extravagana complete with recreational lightning bolt action.  And he made it a screenplay, to boot.

“If we’re going to be in cahoots on this thing, you’ve got to learn to give a little bit,” he said, striking through an entire page of my rich, descriptive prose with a wide-point permanent marker.

I snatched my beloved pages from his jagged claws.  “Cahoots?  You make it sound like a bad western.  We’re collaborating.”  I bit the eraser off my pencil.

“What happened to my colorful description of Abby meeting Bob for the first time?” I asked, wrinkling my brow as I flipped through the pages.

“Here it is,” he said, wiping out another paragraph as he gestured nonchalantly with his Sharpie.  “Scene I.  Abby meets Bob.”

“That’s all?  The humor of the scene comes from Abby, a modern businesswoman accustomed to a sterile and structured environment, coming to terms with the fact that she is competing for a promotion with a man whom she’s just discovered is a 500 year old member of wizarding royalty who is grandfathered into her company’s pension plan.”

“I put wizard in the script notes.  See here in the margin?  Bob wears a pointy hat.”

“A pointy hat? Bob is not a dunce. Bob is a staff-wielding mage who served in some of the most influential governments in history.  He talks to fish!”

“Calm down.  I mentioned the fish.  See here in Scene III.  There’s a nice bit here in the willows by the pond.”

“So how do we know he talks to the fish?”

“Easy.  Dialogue.”

“Dialogue?  You mean a conversation?  This is coming from the man who told me he was in a wreck two hours after he totaled his new car and the rescue team delivered him to the emergency room?  You didn’t call me until the nurse dialed the number for you.”

“And after they gave me enough painkillers to make me count to ten in three languages and sing the Lumberjack song to a burly intern.  But this is different.  It’s Bob talking. Not me.” 

“That’s a good thing.  Otherwise it would be the world’s shortest book.”

“We’re supposed to be working on this together.  Be nice.”

“I’d rather be the dental hygienist in the tiger cage at Ringling Brothers.”

“Need references?”

“Never mind.  Tell me more about our wizard’s wonderful world of words.”

“The only way you can see into the man is to hear him talk.”

“I’ve got to hear to see?  What about my searing description of their awkward encounter in the elevator?”

“I covered that.  In the second scene you see the looks on their faces when she realizes he can read her thoughts and she splashes peanut butter milkshake all over his topcoat, tries to scrape it off with his cane, and accidentally pokes him in the n---.”

“Stop!”

“I was going to say nose. When you see that, you can hear their hearts.”

“Okay, now I have to see to hear.”  I turn a page in my narrative version and mark out several paragraphs describing Abby’s clothes. “So how do you come up with all this clever conversation?”

“I listen to people talk.  Then I write it down.”

Easy enough.  “By the way, back at the pond, what are Bob and the catfish discussing?”

“Whether he should take the job.”

“What do they decide?”

“The catfish advises against it.”

“And why is that?”

He says that Abby is a bad influence and Bob should leave the company entirely.”

“I’ve given her a beautiful home, a killer intellect, and a sparkling wit.  Why doesn’t he like her?”

He sighed and scratched his head.  “She talks too much.”

 

Read, Write, Have a Bite!

Life is sweet! It's filled with Readin', Writin', and. . .Doughnuts. While that isn't the usual sequence, you've got to agree that everything is better with raspberry filling. Or glaze. Or chocolate on top. With sprinkles.  Join me at Single People's Grocery Lists where Nancy LaFever gave up trying to have a serious conversation with me about writing and instituted the Krispy Kreme rule.  She's one smart cookie. Who likes doughnuts.  Thanks, Nancy!

Dog Daze

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Fought a losing battle with the ocean.

Got turned to toast points by the sun.

Consumed my weight in sugar. Consumed my new weight in pizza.

Discovered (again) that fish have no concept of personal boundaries. You’d have thought I remembered that one from last time.

Fell in love.

Sure, I know what they say. Summer love is fleeting. It vanishes like the last strip of sand underneath your left cheek when the tide comes in.  It disappears like the last Honey Bun in a beach house full of ocean-bound teenagers.  It loses its charge like a cheap battery.

But this is real.  The sort of love that warms you to your toes even when the air conditioner kicks on.

We stayed up late. We shared breakfast. We took naps. We ran in circles, filled with the joy of life, and the excitement of going outside. But in the end we had to say goodbye.

I’ll never forget the charming way she protected me from kayakers passing in the distance.  How she cleverly she tried to eat pizza through the bottom of the glass-topped table.  How she pretended not to notice me when they carried her away.

But I know that in her heart she will always love me.

Or anyone with a warm tummy to nap on.

Or a spare piece of pizza crust to share.

Now I know what they mean by the Dog Days of Summer.

Filk You!

He looks harmless enough, right?!

Hurray for our Parter in Sublime who is featuring the friendly music of filk on today's Pure Geek.  Filking happens to be a speciality of our beloved Captain who is dedicated to a life of irreverance. Follow us to Pure Geek and see how the whole business of substituting the ho-hum words of classics (our apologies to Bob Dylan, but Knockin' On Heaven's Door had to go) leads to good times and off-color, I mean, off-the-wall fun.