Jaki Jean & Jean & Rush & Communion & Memory

So, this afternoon, watching a James Cagney flick (Blood on the Sun, circa 1945) with Jean, as I am battling what I am sure is a case of Shingles & Jean is dealing with all my battles & complaints & groans, Jean brings up the Lord’s Supper.

You know, the other day when Doc Price & Pam came to have Communion with us, & Doc Price was talking about how Baptists have traditionally served Communion once a quarter & how Catholics & other churches serve it more often, I wanted to tell them about my Daddy.

For those of you who read me who don’t know, Jean’s Daddy Rush was a Church of Christ minister.  I imagine it was a very intense meeting between Rush Sims & my father, a divorced man, when Jack wanted to marry Jean. 

So I asked Jean, What did your father say about the Lord’s Supper?

He said, & her voice deepens to mimic Rush Sim’s amazing, engaging, authoritative,  voice, Every first day of the week.

So we talk, my mother & I, about why something so amazing, something done in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, of God’s sacrifice, is not celebrated every moment of every day.

I tell her that I have never understood, even as a child, why a sacrament so essential to Christian faith, would only be celebrated once a quarter.

And Jean says, Every first day of the week.

I ask Jean about something she told me a few weeks ago, that her mother Luna was not raised in the Church of Christ.   About how she always thought her mother smoothed the way with Rush when Jean joined the Baptist Church.

She doesn’t remember that conversation. 

This afternoon, I don’t weep.  This afternoon, she remembers that her father Rush believed in & celebrated Communion with his congregation every first day of the week.

I will weep later – for not realizing the wealth of text & stories & insight my mother houses in the filing cabinets of her brain. 

Tonight, I hear not for the first time, about when she dated J.R. Rambo, a friend of her sister Melba’s eventual husband, Robert, when she was in Dallas.

And then she tells me she had to return to Canton to finish high school.  That part was new.

That part she has left off over the years.

Now, she no longer intentionally leaves out anything.

Now, she searches & retrieves.  I see it, as her brow furrows, searching for what she wants to remember, for what she wants to express.

So, emulating  Roland Barthes’ braid of text, compiled from all text before, present & to come, I try to braid together the text of my mother’s memory & memories.  And all those pieces.

Gotta wonder what happened to J.R. Rambo.

Jaki Jean & Oscar Mayer, aka Anthony, Weiner

So, about Oscar Meyer, aka Anthony, Weiner.

I have read the incessant, omnipresent, continuous coverage of this man, his fall from grace, his bid for forgiveness, his attempt at redemption, his second (less humble) bid for forgiveness, his insistence on redemption.

It is insistence that his propensity for sexting & sharing himself with women not his wife has nothing to do with his bid to be the mayor of the country’s largest & most prominent city: that insistence irritates me

.

Really, Weiner?

During Anthony Weiner’s tenure in Congress, he missed 5.5%. of rollcall votes.  Significantly more than the median of 2.6% of the lifetime records of representatives serving at the same time (govtrak.us). 

During Anthony Weiner’s tenure in Congress, he sponsored a number of bills.  All but one was sent to committee.  Death, in the life of a bill.

The lone bill on which he was the lead sponsor, signed into law, a 2010 measure aimed at reducing cigarette sales-tax evasion, hardly gives me confidence either he or his image would be good for the city New York. 

Or any other city or the nation.

It seems to me that Anthony Weiner did not resign from a successful or productive Congressional career.  While I am sure that identifying & prosecuting cigarette sales tax evasion must be profitable, it was hardly the stuff of which dreams & political careers are made.

His predilection for sexting & texting & sharing (his vision of) seductive photos of himself clearly took up his concentration, not to mention his time.  And, apparently, continued to take up his concentration & time after he resigned from Congress.

If Anthony Weiner does not understand why his behavior, combined with his less than stellar performance in Congress, might give New York voters concern about his ability to lead the most populated city in the country, he is delusional.

As is his much admired wife.  Her protests that his behavior is a matter confined to their marriage rings disingenuous.  Clearly her husband does not respect that marriage, or his wife.

How can voters expect him to respect & remain faithful to a much more demanding partner – the city of New York?

As more & more revelations about Anthony Weiner are touted by the tabloids & the mainstream press, as Mr. Weiner continues to appear in public & attempt to talk about issues while defending his own lack of decorum, the situation is beyond embarrassing.

For the voters of New York, for the country, for this man’s wife.

And I am reminded of a tune that all of us of a certain age know my heart, a tune I have paraphrased for this particular occasion:

His Baloney has a first name,
A-N-T-H-O-N-Y
His Baloney has a second name,
W-E-I-N-E-R
Oh it is time for him to go away
And if you ask me why I say,
Cause' Anthony Weiner has a way with B-A-L-O-N-E-Y.

As someone who loves the city of New York, I do hope that Anthony Weiner does go away.

Really, Weiner.

R-E-A-L-L-Y.

Jaki Jean & July 2nd & Missing Jack

Thirty years ago, I was living in the second story of a duplex on Harold Street in Montrose, preparing a recipe from The Silver Palette, a cookbook given to me by my friend Stephen Sachnik. 

Raspberry Chicken.  With wild rice & a side of braised carrots.  I don’t remember if I planned a salad.  But dessert was boysenberry sherbet nestled in champagne.  With some shavings of dark chocolate as a garnish.

My guest, a man who had been in & out of my life & my bed & my heart for several years arrived.  He opened a bottle of wine, perused my then new apartment & joined me in the kitchen.

I don’t remember what we discussed.  I just remember the phone ringing.

Thirty years ago, one chose to answer the phone or ignore it.  No caller ID, no voice mail.

I answered it & heard my youngest brother’s voice, broken, scared, frantic.

“Jaki, Dad had a heart attack.  They are taking him to Southwest Memorial.”

Henri, my guest, took me to the hospital.  He offered to stay & I said no.  I don’t know how to explain my response to this man, whose paintings still hang in my bedroom.

In the waiting room of the emergency ward were our neighbors, Israel & Nora, Juta & Dietmar, my brother Jason & his friend Leslie.  More people I don’t remember

.

Leslie who was in band with Jason in high school & like Jason, a lifeguard.  Leslie who administered CPR & brought Jack back for the paramedics.

But it is a long drive from Dorrance Lane to Southwest Memorial Hospital.  

By the time I arrived at the hospital, Jack was gone.  The doctors took my mother & me into a room & told her that they lost him & then I went with her into another room.

And watched, helpless, as she threw herself across Jack’s body & begged him not to leave her so soon.

Someone took her from the room & left me there.  I touched him, I kissed his forehead & he was so cold.  I remember touching his eyes, eyes so like mine.

My sister was out of town with her boyfriend for a christening.  My brother John was at a lake with friends.

Calls were made, arrangements were made.  People travelled for the funeral.  Life went on.

But thirty years does not take way the loss of Jack’s early exit.  Sometimes I am so pissed at him for leaving early.  Sometimes, I just wonder.

I wonder what he would have been like with my sons, with Janet’s sons & daughter, with John’s daughter & son, with Jason’s daughter.

I wonder what he would have felt when Sam gave the opening address at the 35^th Anniversary of PDAP or how he would have felt when Nick & the Lady Jane got married.

I wonder what he would have said if he was still alive & I was still voting to the Left as he was voting to the Right.  If we could finally agree to disagree & discuss issues without him throwing a plate of pasta across the room.

I wonder what he would have thought about me returning to school for my forties crisis, about my concentration in Feminist studies & Feminist Theory & vagina women.  Or my intense belief that the fear of the Other binds us in repression.

I wonder what it would be like to watch him grow old with Jean.  How different her life would have been with his presence.

So, thirty years does not lessen the loss.  Nor will forty or fifty or sixty years.  I miss him.  I will miss him until I see him again.

When I next encounter Jack, I am going to ask him:  What the fuck were you thinking, leaving so soon?

Until then, Daddy, rest in peace.  I love you.  We have a lot to discuss . . .

Jaki Jean & Jean & Jenny

The other night, as I sautéed onions & green pepper in olive oil & red pepper flakes, I thought about where I first tasted the recipe on the menu for the evening.

And how it has changed over the years.

Sometimes I use ground beef, sometimes I use ground turkey.  I have been known to use a soy based ground look alike.  Sometimes it is a green bell pepper, sometimes a green & a red & sometimes I add half a jalapeno pepper.

The other night, I roasted garlic, a new permutation for this recipe.  I am amazed & blown away by the way roasted garlic enhances everything I cook.

Some nights, I use a jar of my homemade tomato sauce, but the other night I used two cans of fire roasted tomatoes once the onions & peppers were soft. 

Some nights, I add only two cans of red kidney beans – other nights I add kidney beans I have cooked from scratch or I mix white & red beans.

These days, I always harvest herbs from my garden because somehow, I feel the result is uniquely my own.

But the recipe is not my own. 

I remember it from a long day ago, a family vacation to California, a vacation that included a visit to my cousin Jenny & her first husband (please forgive me, all ones Zeis).

I remember standing in Jenny’s kitchen while my mother Jean & Jenny talked as Jenny cooked.   

Jenny made a chili of ground beef, onion, green bell pepper, tomatoes, maybe a can of tomato paste (although that may be me projecting into my own permutations of the recipe) & canned kidney beans.

I remember Jenny added spices, but it has been too many years, too many permutations, to identify them. 

In my memory, Jenny served the chili with a salad & warm sour dough bread & the adults drank red wine.

If that memory is different, Jenny, please don’t tell me.

Because all these years, I have served that dish, in all its permutations, with a salad & warm sour dough bread & red wine.

A comfort food.  A comfort memory.

Years after that California trip, during a difficult moment in my teenage life, someone asked me to identify my comfort food.  I tried to describe it & instead cooked it.  A chili of ground beef & onions & peppers & tomatoes & spices served with warm sour dough bread & red wine.

The other night, I reminded Jean about where I got the recipe we have used all these years since that trip to California.

Today, thinking about it, I realize that watching Jean & Jenny interact in Jenny’s kitchen that evening was part of the road that led me to want to cook.

Years after that trip, years after leaving home & getting married & getting unmarried, I found myself in kitchens watching other women cook & interact.

And I knew, I knew I wanted to be a part of that interaction.

Only now, do I realize that it was just not about cooking.

I don’t know what Jean & Jenny talked about that evening in Jenny’s kitchen.  But I did memorize the moment.

And I am still recreating it, every time I recreate that chili.

The recipe & the moment.

Jenny, I also remember the ride in the Corvette.