Jean, the pledge to the flag of Texas, & reading The Passage

Jean & I have been reading The Passage, an apocalyptic novel by Justin Cronin, a professor at Rice University.

It is a superbly crafted novel, engaging, lovely language, & demands a close reading.

The glutton reader that I am (I will give up sleep to read –  I read the last volume of Harry Potter in half a day), I could not greedily consume this novel.  It demanded more of me.  It demanded my attention & my diligence as a reader.  Perhaps it demanded my commitment to the text.

One of my favorite moments in the novel is when the governor of Texas has to release a death row inmate & the governor is Jenna Bush.

With all due respect to all the Bush women & to Justin Cronin, I believe that the next Bush governor will be George P. – Jeb's son (handsome, articulate, bi-lingual).  But that is another blog.

As Jean reads, she asks me, Have you ever heard of the Texas Pledge of Allegiance?

And I tell her, Of course, I remember it, we recited it.  I can't remember if we did this every day, like we did the Pledge.  But we did it.

I am not sure Jean believes me.

But she doesn't remember that in Vacation Bible School, we pledged allegiance to the Christian Flag.

That, of course, does not matter.  Jean remembers all the important moments.

We are both looking forward to Justin Cronin's next volume, because he left us without answers.  It is due out in 2012 & it will be a long, much anticipated wait.  I will read it with care & diligence.

If you are curious:  Here is that insidious, unnecessary   pledge:

 "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."

And I am wondering – how many flags to we have to pledge before our commitment to this country, to its people, to the world, is honored?

Father's Day & Why Andres needs to get started on that book about his family . . .

Dear Andres & Amy & Sophia & Cayo,

We are all authors.

Some of us are story tellers, some of us are memory keepers, some of us are listeners & readers of stories, some of us share the stories & memories we read & observe.

Some of us write.

I realized today, Fathers' Day, 2011, that most of the stories I keep about my father's childhood were given to me by my mother.  

Jean is a memory keeper & a story teller.

My father gave Jean those memories & she gave them to me.  I cherish them.   

And yet, they are just glimpses of who my father Jack was before he married Jean.

I don't know how he felt when he & his mother Helen moved in with his grandparents because Papa John went to another state to work under the New Deal.

And although I know he read (he & Jean went to Half Price Books the day he died), I don't know what he read when he was a little boy.

Sometimes I find glimpses of my father in correspondence – in letters he wrote to his parents from the Army, in legal correspondence about his divorce from his first wife, in letters his first wife wrote to my grandmother, in pictures my grandmother kept, always writing down the date & occasion.

But I don't know about Pete, his dog.

My father taught me to add, subtract, multiply & divide before I could read.  And when I could read, Jean took me to the library & made sure books were available.  They were a great team.  Not perfect, but exceptional.

My father taught me to listen to what people say, to think about it & weigh it & question it & make a decision.  Those evenings with him, watching the conventions of each party, talking over the issues, Jack shared his stories, his thoughts.  All that mentoring & conversation did not turn out as he planned.

I became a Democrat, like Jack's father.  

But still Jack's daughter.  And John Simpson Alexander Ettinger's granddaughter.   Perhaps Democrats skip generations in some families.  

So thinking about how Jack did not share his history or stories with me, I think how important it is for people like Andres & Amy to share their families' stories, not only with the exquisite Sophia or the amazing Cayo, but the rest of us.  We need to hear it.  

Just as I needed, & still need, to hear Jack's history.

And now I am going to tell you a story.

My friend Gulu is from India, from a wealthy family.  A wealthy family.  Someone did the laundry, someone coated peas in horseradish, someone brought Gulu her tea & breakfast on a tray every morning.  All of this Gulu shared with me, telling me her story.

Gulu was a bit of a rebel.  She became a flight attendant, cut her hair, lived with a man.  All of which appalled her family.

When her affair with the man ended, she went home & asked her parents to find her a husband, a Parsi.

Gulu told me that her family was descended from a long line of Parsis, who left Iran to escape a wretched leader when it was Persia & ended up in what used be known as Bombay.  The Power in charge of Bombay at the time told the refugees that they were welcome. that they could practice their religion, if they agreed to learn the local language.

So Gulu's parents found Sarosh & they married.

Parsi tradition & history has always been passed down from father to son, an oral tradition.

Apparently, a dying tradition.

Sarosh is instrumental in a movement to write down Parsi history.  The Parsi community has assimilated into life in America & elsewhere & their youth are not interested in the past.  It is a fierce job – and a father equal to the task.

It is what I wanted to tell you, Andres.

Your family's story needs to be preserved.  And chronicled. And shared.

I don't want any one's daughter or son to wonder about a dog named Pete.

Much love to you all,

Jaki

.About El Paso . . .

I have experienced some wonderful things in my life:  finding myself in Westminster Abbey the day Prince Charles was going to be anointed with the Order of the Garter, riding the last train into a station in Scotland & being greeted by bagpipes, wandering into Notre Dame for the audition of a new organist, walking down from the Eiffel Tower because the multiple elevator ride up was just too much for me, meeting an incredible couple from Boston in Madrid who took us to hidden treasures in the city, wandering into Rome during a Holy Year, hearing a group of nuns sing "Ava Maria" acapella in St. Mary's Major, the moments my sons were born, one screaming as he exited, one quiet, subdued.

 

Responding to Nick, the screaming one, as he continually reaches out to keep us connected.

 

Hearing my son Sam, the quiet one, give a speech at the 35th Anniversary of PDAP (Palmer Drug Abuse Program) & ending it with, "I love you Mom." 

 

Wonder filled & beautiful moments.   

 

But always, there are the memories of leaving the house in El Paso, long before my parents awoke, & climbing the fence & crossing the desert & climbing the hill to watch the sun rise over the mountains. 

 

Or, in rare cases, climbing that fence, crossing the desert & climbing the hill to watch the sun set.  Nothing equals the sun setting over the mountains. 

 

The memory of those moments, climbing the rock fence, crossing the desert & climbing the hill, are wonder filled & beautiful. 

Mushrooms & Memory

Tomorrow evening Jean & I will travel from the environs of Meadows Place to somewhere in Katy to attend my niece Felicia's celebration / her mother insists not a goodbye party as Felicia leaves for the Navy.

At some moment I either volunteered to make the stuffed mushrooms Felicia's mother adores or perhaps she asked me - I don't know.  But this afternoon, I went to the store for the ingredients.  

I knew exactly what to buy - Italian sausage, black olives, scallions, mushrooms.  Make a bechamel sauce, saute the sausage, add the ingredients with a bit of spice, stuff the mushrooms.

Because it had been a  bit since I last whipped this delicacy up, I pulled down the recipe book I believed held the recipe.

I found recipes for spinach stuffed mushrooms, for marinated mushrooms, for mushrooms stuffed with minced mushrooms, for mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat.

But no mushrooms my niece & her mother were expecting.

So I consulted Jean - how, I asked, could I buy what I know are the correct ingredients & still not know the recipe?

I called off all the recipes in the volume I believed held my recipe & then suddenly, I saw that the recipe for mushrooms with spinach required a bechamel sauce.

As the lightbulb went off in my head, I said to Jean, "Bechamel, bechamel."

She must have felt a bit like Watson listening to a seemingly inane declaration from Holmes.

But, like Holmes, I knew exactly where to go - I pulled out the "Silver Palate" cookbook given to me by Stephen Sachnick, & turned instantly to the recipe for sausage stuffed mushrooms.

Which begins with a bechamel sauce.

Jean laughed.

It is the evening of the day . . .

Earlier this evening, I sat on the bench on our front yard porch & pulled obnoxious tiny trees threatening my hibiscus & Mexican petunias out of the ground.  

I saw two young people walking across the street.  They paused while she went through his hair, both laughing.  Then they kissed, joined hands & kept on walking

.

Later I went out to check the sprinkler & the same couple was returning from wherever they had been headed, still holding hands & laughing.  They paused for a moment, kissed & then kept on walking, hands & laughter & the moment interlocked.

And I thought about love & what it means when one is very young.  About that first kiss, that first moment when it is enough to just hold hands & talk & laugh.

And about later, when somehow things get complicated & it is no longer just enough to talk & laugh & share a kiss while walking down the street.

I have no illusions that life or love is as ever as simple as it is in memory.

And I have no regrets – I remember every man in my life with fondness.  And with each one, I can recall a wonderful moment just talking & laughing & sharing a moment.

Love, at any age, is not a state of being.  It is a choice, an action, a process.  Love is a dynamic, living force.  It challenges us, it requires of us, it soothes & comforts us, it inspires us to be everything we should be.

It does not always end with the end of a friendship or a relationship or a marriage or a life.

In this evening of the day, I needed to remember that as I grieve for the loss of my friend Barry Morrison.  A good man.  A good friend.

As tears go by . . .

The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men Disrupted

So, this evening, I truly needed to clean up the kitchen (which involves more than filling the dishwasher).  But I took a break & checked Facebook & found a message that reduced me to inaction, despair & tears.

A man I knew & with whom I spent countless hours of laughter & discourse & ease, died yesterday.

A man I once knew very well, who was kind & generous & supportive of me & my little family, whose family spent holidays & birthday parties with my family & evenings playing Trivial Pursuit.  

A man who teased me relentlessly about our political differences (whom I still believe put a Bush sticker on my car back in the 80’s).   

Who let his wife use his frequent flyer miles & Marriot points to take me along on a girls’ trip to New York during a particularly rough time in my life.

A man who did not blink when his wife & I sat in the driveway or in the hot tub, all night, drinking champagne & talking.

He loved his family.  He spoke with pride about his daughter.  He loved & admired his wife.

Barry Morrison was a good man, a kind & loving man.  He was not perfect.  But as I always remind people, there are no saints on earth.

He was 56 & he died too damned soon.

Needless to say, the kitchen is still a mess.

Rest in peace, Barry.