Chasing Tamales in Sugar Land

Sleepless, once again, in Meadows Place.  Past midnight & I am on my second cup of Sleepytime Tea with Valerian root & listening to Bill Medley. 

Today was amazing & adventurous.  I set out in search of tamales, got lost in Sugar Land searching for the First Colony library (my local library is closed for the installation of new carpet), managed to find my way to Barnes & Noble to purchase The Giving Tree for an anticipated visit from my grandnephew John.

Because I have no sense of direction, I found a creative way to  get lost within Barnes & Noble & had to ask Customer Service where the frack the check out registers were located.

Of course, in my defense, I don’t get out much & I hate malls so a trip to Barnes & Noble is a major event.  It is the closest bookstore & located in First Colony Mall in Sugar Land, which is worse than shopping in Houston’s Galleria district during Christmas & its aftermath.

But the Children’s Section in Barnes & Noble has a lovely reading area & it was filled with children & parents in rocking chairs.  All reading.  Even the parents sitting on the edge of the area waiting for their offspring were reading.

So it was worth getting lost in Barnes & Noble (not to mention wandering the parking lot for my car) to see so many young people reading.

Upon my exit, I drove the masses looking for parking spots crazy in the search for my car.  Parking is, at best, problematic at Barnes & Noble.  I did make a note of where I parked – two trees away from the entrance to Dillard’s.  Barnes & Noble straight in front of me.

But somehow, I did not process the fact that my car was parked two spaces from the road between the parking lot & the entrance to Dillard’s.  So I wandered, people in cars following me, wanting my parking space.  Frustrated people – who was this ridiculous woman in a purple wool coat with a really fabulous pashmina?

My son Nicholas says I have become a cliché.  In my defense, I have always been a directionally challenged cliché.  In the second grade, I got lost walking from 3511 Morningstar Lane to Cabell Elementary, a distance of approximately .03 miles.

And although I have lived in Meadows Place, a literal square mile city nestled between Sugar Land & Houston for the past forty-odd years, I am quite capable of getting lost here.

A directional cliché, indeed.

Part of the awesomeness of the day was talking to both my sons.  Nick, in the midst of packing to move to the new property his wife the Lady Jane will be managing, assured me that he would make time tomorrow to come & visit.  I tell them that it is no big deal, I understand but what I really want to do is guilt him into coming.

Greedily, I call my son Sam, thinking that he won’t pick up & I will have to wait for him to call me back.  But he picks up & we talk.  We talk about the gifts he has waiting to be picked up & about the car he is buying from my sister Janet.  And he tells me that he is seeing a woman named Veronica.  

Which is huge, because Sam is very private & does not readily share intimate details of his life with his mother & has only once introduced me a young woman he was seriously seeing.  (I was very fond of that young woman & grieved when they broke up).

When I tell Jean about my day & adventures & talking to the boys who are grown men, she smiled.  As I was fluffing pillows & rearranging positioning wedges, she smiled again & said, “Veronica.”

And then I remember.

One of Jean’s favorite games to play with me is Things I Could Have Named You Besides Jaki Jean.

Veronica was one of the choices she offered me.  A beautiful name, she said.

It is now no longer the day I began writing about in my sleepless state.  In spite of all the wanderings throughout Sugar Land & Barnes & Noble, the 30^th day of December, 2014,  was a good day for Jaki Jean.

And I found tamales.  Without getting lost.