Desperate times call for…well, you know the line.  If you’ve ever been on a road trip with two near-adolescent siblings in a phase of constant bickering, you may know a level of desperation that staggers the imagination.

About two hours into a three-hour summer drive to visit family in central Kentucky with grandkids Buddy and Sis, desperation was the mot juste.  Voices were rising and appendages traversing the mid-line of the back seat at an alarming rate.  This fighting thing is intense at present, and it requires particular management around the house or in public places.  But inside the car, traveling at 70 miles per hour, with me behind the wheel?  Pulling over was not an option, and all threats had long since worn thin. These moments call for strategic innovation, and quickly.

I went for the first thing I could imagine that would bring balm to my own soul and, with luck, drown out the audio garbage churning behind me.  (As far as them smacking each other, I knew they were safely buckled in and could only reach so far, so I decided to let those chips fall where they might.)

Siri, I barked (grateful that she manifests as immune to tone of voice), Play Classic R&B Playlist.  I didn’t add “And Fast!”, but I imagine the urgency was clear. I was cranking up the volume before she could even finish her response.   Out from five waiting cabin speakers blasted the smashing drum/cymbal combo announcing the Temptations anthem to (stay with me on the irony here) the desperate measures required by love.  I caught up to the vocals in the second phrase, determined to out-amplify the racket in the back seat.

“….but I refuse to let you go, if I have to beg and plead for your sympathy, I don’t mind, ‘cause you mean that much to me, AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG, and you know it…”.

As I paused to inhale, I listened carefully; could this be working?  The back seat was suddenly silent.  No doubt its occupants were stunned to hear their grandmother booming out the tune.  Before they could muster up comments, I added Driver Dancing, keeping one hand firmly on the wheel and with the other, thrusting the fingers upward in time, elbows bending to the beat. (I’d describe it as ala John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever, if that weren’t mixing genres.)

Dance with me!  I shouted, keeping eyes forward on the highway and not daring yet to measure reaction in the rearview.  Soon my head bobbed along with the rhythmic elbow/finger moves; you’d have to be way in some other stratosphere if that memorable tempo doesn’t call to the marrow in your bones.

Still silence behind me, so I added another layer of strategy. This time, I fell back into a high-ranker on the list of things you should never do to change the behavior of children.

I’ll give $10 to anyone who can tell me who is singing this song, I shouted over the music. It seemed like low-risk financials, but a move that might gin up some diverting dialogue.

“Stevie Wonder!” Buddy shouted back.  At 11, Buddy is rather alert to opportunities to earn a few bucks.

This answer shocked his G-ma so profoundly she nearly veered into the emergency lane, regripping the wheel with her (second) Dancing Hand just in time.  I turned down the Temps for a moment to probe further.  How do you know about Stevie Wonder?

“Our band teacher,” he replied, indicating with a shrug I caught with a quick rearview glance that this should not surprise anyone.  Still, his grandmother felt the warm, early glow of a rekindled spark of faith in public education.  And with it came the urge to nudge along this whole band thing.  Buddy just began his second middle-school year as a band member, studying trumpet.  I punched the button to advance a couple of songs and cranked up Earth Wind & Fire’s Sing a Song.  Check out the horns in this one!  I shouted.

Next on the playlist came one of my special favorites of the era, Sam Cooke’s eloquent and heartbreaking A Change is Gonna Come.  After the first few phrases of his aching solo, I dialed down the volume again to discussion level.

Have you two ever heard this before?  “I’ve heard this song, yes,” affirmed 9-year-old Sis, and her brother added, “Me, too.”  What do you think it’s about?  “It’s about civil rights and racism,” Buddy answered.  I paused a moment, surprised again but grateful, as the knowledge of a rising sixth grader sank in.

Alas, Buddy had not lost the thread of the earlier opportunity.  “I guess I don’t get the $10, huh, Evie?”  Overwhelmed with relief for the success of my diversion tactics, I relented partly:  I’ll give you $5 for just knowing to guess Stevie Wonder, I answered.

Of course, equity is everything when siblings are involved.  Let’s find one for your sister to guess, I told him, punching the buttons to summon a different playlist.  Thinking I remembered their mother was a fan, so this might be an easyone, I cranked up the unforgettable, opening piano chords of one of the biggest hits of my generation.  We were approaching our destination, my sister and brother-in-law’s farm, and this one would calm down the vibe considerably.

“When you’re weary, feeling small,” it begins, “when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all. I’m on your side, oh, when times get rough…”.

“I don’t know this,” Sis answered flatly, as we pulled off the interstate and turned onto the lovely country road, lined with green fields and stone fences.  “Oh, you do,” her brother nudged, always eager, in spite of their bickering, to coach her to success.  “Evie, can I give her a hint?  When I nod, he adds, “It’s the same people who sing The Sounds of Silence.”  (The knowledge revealed in this hint nearly runs me off the road again; will these children never stop shocking me?) “It’s two names.  C’mon, guess!”  After several false starts, she shouted triumphantly, “Oh, I know!  It’s Sam and Garfunkel!”

Close enough!  I shout in return, giddy with the joyful sense of music spanning the generations, and everything it implied.  Five dollars for you, too!

We are pulling into the driveway of the farm now, and their great auntstands waving a welcome on the front porch.  My sister, a great musical talent, took up guitar when we were not much older than Buddy.  As two long-haired teenage girls, we sang, sometimes in harmony, while she strumming the chords carefully marked along the lyric lines on the pages of a loose-leaf notebook filled with the pop and folk songs we adored.  To this day, I could recite the poetic lyrics of The Sounds of Silence in my deepest sleep.  “Hello Darkness, my old friend…I’ve come to talk with you again..”

I turn down the volume on Bridge Over Troubled Water as I stop the car and the kids eagerly unbuckle.  Wait until she hears this story, I think, waving back.  She won’t believe it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

,

Fame was so close to my grasp.  I could smell it.  I could taste it.

Nah, not that kind of fame.  You’ll never catch me dancing on TikTok or “influencing” millions with culinary wizardry or cat videos.

My shot at glory seemed much closer to my grasp, and certainly more age-appropriate.

I longed to be on Antiques Roadshow.  The PBS TV series that for 25 years has revealed the history and occasionally breathtaking value of unexpected treasures for collectors across America was coming to Nashville, and I got tickets.  From there to stardom seemed what Bertie Wooster would have called a stone-dead cert, if ever there was one.

Why so certain?   For starters, my home is stuffed to the proverbial gills with old things. Most of them flowed down from previous generations of our family like a flooded creek running downhill in early spring.  Nearly every time a cherished branch of our tree ascended unto heaven, a few meaningful treasures flowed my way.  My long-time interior designer once described my decorating style as “inherited”.  I love having and using things that belonged to people I adored.  Surely it was just a matter of looking around the house with a keen eye, selecting the right item to stun the appraisers and make me famous.

And wouldn’t Karma dictate that Super Fan status counts for something?  Across those 25 years of airtime, I doubt I’ve missed a single episode of the Roadshow, gasping in solidarity with the shocked owner of the priceless painting that had been gathering dust in his basement, and so many others.  I can re-tell in explicit detail the incident of the long-haired, headband-wearing veteran who literally dropped to the ground in shock—drawing a concerned show staffer hurriedly to his side—when told his Rolex watch, purchased on a sparse military salary four decades earlier, was worth $700,000.

Why not me?  As show taping day approached, the item selection process rose to a crazed pitch. Each ticket holder is allowed to bring only two items, and I paced the house and pondered the available choices.  My daughter kindly and patiently agreed to come along on the second ticket. We ultimately agreed that portability was key, given the location and transport options.  We settled on small, intriguing items:  a tiny rose-gold ladies watch framed by two large, brilliant amber citrines; a finely tooled, tiny leather handbag belonging to my great-grandmother, its original lining and tiny, attached mirror still intact; and two exotic, hand-painted porcelain plates of my grandmother’s.  Then there was the piece de resistance:  A stunning diamond ring belonging to yet another great-grandmother, set with two enormous, flashing center stones flanked by a dozen smaller ones.  I had recently inherited this piece and longed to know more about its age, maybe even the designer and any details on the style and era it represents.

When you can smell and taste that big moment ahead, proper preparation is key.  We chose attire carefully—colorful, but not too bright, stylish but comfortable.  As to whether I actually rehearsed my eye-popping shock at the anticipated appraiser’s news, well, I say nothing.

My great-grandmother, Lavinia Sipp Kelley.

Regular viewers know that provenance is everything. Searching stored boxes of framed family likenesses (admittedly, we are rather heavy on those, too, and a house only has so many walls), I unearthed Great Grandmother’s tiny, framed portrait.  I had relegated her to storage decades before, intimidated by the image of her rather stern countenance. Re-examining the study of her young face, now a grandmother myself, I was stunned to realize how lovely she was.  I added to my bag a printed copy of the page in the family bible bearing her name, dates of birth, marriage and death.  Now, we were ready.

The Roadshow, staged in Nashville with support of WNPT, our local PBS affiliate, is a remarkably well-oiled production.  Lines were short, but I prolonged our progress by gawking at my longtime TV heroes as we passed them.  I’ve been watching so long I’ve seen several turn from brunettes to sporting gray hair. Look!  I told my daughter.  I can’t think of his name, but there’s the poster guy with the loud plaid pants!  And I nearly bumped elbows with another favorite, the New York-talking jewelry expert Kevin Zavian, as a producer hustled him toward one of the several camera booths spread across the property.  Could the lovely old ring land me in that booth with Kevin later?  I inhaled a sharp, quick breath for a nano-second of anticipation.

Alas, it was not to be.  Kevin was nowhere around as we approached the jewelry table.  The smiling appraiser we met studied the ring through her loop, complimented it lavishly, identifying the largest stones as cut somewhere between 1890 and the 1930s, consistent with our family history.  She speculated that the mounting was newer by a couple of decades, a puzzle given the family tale.  Of the style or location of origin, she was unable to speculate.  “That’s gorgeous,” she said, handing it back while delivering an auction estimate considerably below the recent estate appraisal.  “I’d sure wear it and enjoy it.”  Oh, I will!  I answered brightly.  I may have looked out of the corner of one eye to see if any cameras were watching from a distance, or maybe I didn’t; it’s hard to say.

Could we land on TV with a low-value but interesting item?  There were three more chances.  Over at the china and porcelain table, the handsome, smiling gentleman examined my grandmother’s plate and delivered immediate specifics. “These are Italian, hand-painted,” he began.  “They are very nicely glazed.  A huge number of Italian ceramics came into this country immediately after World War II, as that industry survived the war in Italy.  I would date them between 1945 and the early 50s, and they are as common as raindrops in April.  Probably worth $25 each.”  For the plates, my interest in origin and age was greater than any expectation of value, so this information gained him a wide smile in return.  (Of course, raindrops in April also don’t earn the eye of the camera.)

Still, it was big fun to hear the appraisers react to our items.  Over at the couture table, appraiser Kathleen Guzman was intrigued by our tiny leather handbag, which my other had handed down to my daughter years ago.  “This is beautiful and in great condition,” she said.  “I had never seen one of these before, and this is the second one I’ve seen today.”  Finally, appraiser Jeff Cohen at the watch table examined the tiny rose gold specimen and delivered our surprise of the day.  “1940s,” he said.  “Swiss movement, though I’m not sure the maker.  The citrines are what make this one very desirable.  I’d put it in an auction with a pre-sale estimate of $2,000-$3,000.”  Wow!  Score one on the upside.

And that was that.  We lingered a few minutes watching the cameras record an appraiser discussing a modernist painting, then moved to the line for the bus.  Unable to avoid the potential regret of revisiting our item selections, my daughter and I felt immediate kinship with a friendly attendee in line behind us.  I asked her if she learned anything interesting about her item.  “Yep,” she grimaced. “I learned I should have brought something else.”

One final chance for TV stardom emerged as we moved forward in the bus line.  The feedback booth, open to any volunteers, languished without many participants on that hot afternoon.  Faithful viewers know it as short clips of attendees commenting about their experience at the end of the show.

Let’s do it!  I nudged my daughter.  Think how your kids would love to see us on TV! We finger-checked our hair, applied lipstick, and stepped before the spotlight. I shared my “common as raindrops in April” story, and she held up the precious little handbag for the camera.  It’s doubtful we were funny or unusual enough to make the edited show, but we’ll know when it comes out in about six months.

A disappointing day?  Most certainly not.  We saw famous people, learned interesting things, and I got a rare chance for a day with my daughter, just the two of us.  We went out afterward for Japanese food and plum wine and a great chat about the day.

After all, isn’t it the rich anticipation of the ultimate outcome that makes the experience so alluring?  That’s what draws the player back to the poker table and the punter back to the betting window.  From the dusty shelves of thrift stores or the dark recesses of grandparents’ closets to the bright light of the camera and unimagined riches is but a step.  Others grabbed the spotlight this time, but in the future, it could always be us.  I can feel it.

 

 

 

Today’s installment of the Chronicles is offered as a special tribute to G-ma’s longtime friend, Amy-Lyles Wilson, in honor of a recent landmark birthday.  G-ma has been fortunate enough for many years to participate in Pilgrim Writers, a collaborative writing group guided by Amy-Lyles under the principles of the Amherst Writers & Artists.  In this and other, related work, Amy-Lyles has coached, encouraged, advised, inspired and empowered scores of writers over the years.  Amy-Lyles has contributed to several books and published nationally, but her personal world view is delightfully shared in the persona of a character named Maybelle.  This little tale shares a friend’s perspective about Maybelle, a woman of many talents.  Read more about Maybelle and Amy-Lyles’ work here.

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Maybelle might not admit it about herself, being a modest person in all the best ways that we use that adjective, but she is a woman of distinctive style and flair, with wonderfully eclectic taste and a keen eye for the beautiful and memorable.

And Maybelle’s friends who have not yet joined the ranks of Bargain Hunters Eternal, an open society that welcomes all comers, might be surprised to learn that a primary source of Maybelle’s fascinating, ever-evolving personal collections is that most holy of all bargain opportunities. Friends, we speak here of the mecca of eclectic purchasing, as we bow to the Estate Sale.

For Maybelle, and indeed for her friends who are fortunate enough to occasionally trod behind her on the Path of Eternal Learning, the Estate Sale calls forth a finely-tuned blend of timing, observation, quality assessment, and financial analysis.  While some shoppers might turn away sorrowfully, reflecting sadly on the excesses of American culture, when they see a dusty driveway table jammed with travel knickknacks, or kitchen counters lined with chipped casserole dishes in the popular hues of the style-free 1970s—not our Maybelle.  Our girl, swift in her sweeping assessment and undeterred by appalling junk, unleashes her matchless powers of observation.  Her keen eye lasers in on the overlooked treasures, perhaps a small, elegant vintage handbag, or the beautiful hardcover book, apparently unopened, by an author she too, always meant to read and still intends to do so.  To say that one’s trash is another’s treasure is to mumble a concept that flourishes in the marrow of Maybelle’s bones.

Maybelle is a discerning and enthusiastic collector, but these acquisitions are not just for her.  A thoughtful and generous giver, Maybelle often bestows these finds on others, in the most joyful form of recycling imaginable.  One friend was stunned to receive, on her own birthday, a vintage tray emblazoned with the crest of a society in her home state that numbered both her father and grandfather as past members.  This ignited immediate memories of bygone times and people, and a few tears came in honor of both.

Illustrating her adaptability and soul for teaching, Maybelle hunts both solo and in pairs, sometimes even on a team.  If one is fortunate enough to tag along and pay attention, one may observe the Master at Work.  You may learn, for example, that it disturbs the equanimity of the universe to pay full price, and nearly all prices are slashed toward the end of the session.  If you spy a favorite and it is gone by the time price-slashing occurs, you probably didn’t need it, anyway.  Also, it is wise to clear the trunk of the car in advance of the expedition, in case a piece of furniture you had been searching for manifests itself and beckons you in an irresistible siren song.

One recent Sunday afternoon, Maybelle and a friend were en route to lunch after church when she let it slip that a promising sale was occurring on a street near the restaurant.  Should we stop? she asked.  I think everything is half off on the last day. Does the sun rise in the East?  Responded her companion.  As they strolled up the street toward the outdoordisplay, Maybelle inquired if her friend was looking for anything in particular for her new home.  The companion–who has adopted Maybelle’s discipline of keeping an acquisition target list in the head, kind of a running grocery list for estate sales—admitted that she would love to find a small, round coffee table.

Hardly were the words out of her mouth when they saw exactly that.  Perched in the middle of the driveway, as though plunked there by the Tooth Fairy of Estate Sales, was a small, round coffee table.  They could hardly believe it.  Still, Maybelle remained her authentic calm, cool and collected self.  What do you think?  Breathed the friend, excited.  I like it, Maybelle responded.  Maybe measure it to make sure it is the size you want and then you can think about it.  Steeled by the strength of Maybelle’s demeanor, the friend agreed they could go on to lunch and continue considering it.  Discussing it further over salads, the friend marveled at the keen balance of Maybelle’s advice.  It was supportive but not pushy, enthusiastic but not overwhelming, inspiring but not insistent.  It reminded her a great deal, when she thought about it later, of Maybelle’s beloved leadership in another environment, for a different purpose, where they first met and became friends.

This tale ended happily when the table was acquired at half-price with a small additional discount proudly negotiated by Maybelle’s disciple and eagerly mentioned for the Teacher’s approval.  Good girl, said Maybelle fondly. With some maneuvering, it went into the trunk of the car and was unloaded at home with the help of a patient and well-muscled neighbor.  When she saw the perfect fit in the intended spot, the disciple could hardly wait to send Maybelle a picture.

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away…

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.  from John Prine (self-titled), 1971

The first time I saw John Prine in concert, it was hard to know what to make of him.  As a college student at the University of Kentucky in the late 1970s, a music fan since childhood, I was already a veteran of many concerts, spanning rock to folk to R&B to jazz to church music. But who had ever seen anything like this guy?  In the student center auditorium on UK’s campus, I sat cross-legged on the floor with the rest of the crowd (for a $6 student ticket, they didn’t budget for chairs), watching and listening this odd fellow playing solo with a raspy, nasal vocal, a lone guitar and irresistible energy.   He boomeranged around the stage area like a kid on a pogo stick.  Can this guy even sing, I remember wondering, before realizing fairly quickly that with John, that question was wide of the point.

The draw for me that night was John’s seminal song Paradise, released five or so years earlier on his self-titled debut album but gaining increasing recognition in tandem with a pressing issue of the times.  In those early days of the environmental movement, opposition to strip-mining was gaining momentum.  The methods had been used in the region to harvest its rich coal veins beginning in the early post-war years, with catastrophic results to the terrain left behind.  Paradise became a theme song for the opposition movement, which was very active on campus in those days, and nearly everyone in that room could sing along with that chorus.  The lyrics to Paradise totaled all I knew about John when I scraped together the price of the ticket and showed up that first time, beginning a relationship that lasted until John left us last April, an early victim of the coronavirus pandemic.

John’s family left Kentucky in search of work before he was born, but Paradise remains an indelible symbol of his ties to the state that was home to his parents and the center of so many childhood memories.  Interestingly, I heard John say more than once that he never meant it as a political statement or cause anthem.  Yet the last time I saw John perform at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, in the fall of 2018, Paradise provided the groundswell conclusion that has become a closing hallmark of so many Ryman events headlined by legends.  All the artists who had joined John on stage earlier in the evening, and maybe even a few who just showed up for the end, gathered around a handful of mikes for Paradise, taking turns stepping to the primary mike for solos of the individual verses.  Of course, the audience joined in as the anthem swelled in near operatic fashion to the evening’s end.

But back to that boomerang-action thing for a second, all those years ago: Was he drunk, or high, or some combination of the two?  It sure seemed like it at the time, but nearly half a century later, I wonder. In countless venues across those decades, I watched John onstage, his energy growing as the evening progressed. More and more as the years went on, he bestowed such love on the crowd, and the crowd gave it back, a cycle that built and built until he might end the evening by literally dancing off the stage, the picture of a natural high if ever there was one.  As we followed him on his 50-year journey as the acoustic everyman, the poetic chronicler of the commonplace and the tragic, the just and unjust, the jocular storyteller at the dinner table we all joined—in our hearts, of course—I wondered if that high, those dance steps, sprang as much from love as any stimulant. If substances contributed, they couldn’t take the place of that which poured directly from the heart.

Dear Abby, dear Abby
My fountain pen leaks
My wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks
Every side I get up on is the wrong side of bed
If it weren’t so expensive I’d wish I were dead
Signed, Unhappy

Unhappy, unhappy
You have no complaint
You are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t
So listen up buster, and listen up good, stop wishing for bad luck and knockin on wood.  from Sweet Revenge, 1973

John’s humor was the B side to the dark heartbreak in his work, never much daylight between the two. But I wonder if history will view his humor with the same respect afforded to his more serious work.  I hope so.  Funny stories were everywhere: He told them on stage, in interviews, captured them in songs—many pointed squarely at himself.  It was my favorite among the long list of things I admired about him.

And there were so many others. John’s generosity and gracious determination to share his spotlight with others was a joy to watch.  He often toured with young, up-and-coming artists, singing with those lucky individuals on stage, recommending their work, supporting their progress both personally and professionally. That spirit extended to those who contributed behind the scenes, as well, as illustrated in this story from John’s obituary in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.  Producer Matt Ross-Spang, who worked on the Nashville studio team producing Tree of Forgiveness (John’s last album), described the sessions as “a surreal couple of weeks.”

Ross-Spang recalled that Prine showed up at RCA Studio A every day in a different vintage Cadillac. “Eventually, he gave one to Ross-Spang — a dark red 1993 ragtop El Dorado.”

“So, the man gave me a car, but that was really the smallest gift he gave me,” Ross-Spang said, citing the other “gifts” of “his friendship, his love.”

Over the years we watched and waited hopefully as John overcame a remarkable series of physical challenges, including heart problems and two varieties of cancer.  Surgeries permanently changed the angle of his neck and provided more self-deprecating humor in the form of his wisecracks about the changes in his voice.  On a recent road trip as I progressed through a long Prine playlist, I was struck anew by the differences in his voice from the early days and the more recent, post-surgery work.  Perhaps because I increasingly admire artists who continue creating until the end of life, as my own birthdays whir past, my heart voted overwhelmingly for the voice quality in the more recent songs. The voice had raw nuances hinting of survival, melancholy, grief, longing, and the heartbreaking speed of the passage of time.  John, too, admitted he preferred the sound of his voice after he recovered from cancer.  Here’s what he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 2018:

“I said if you leave me with something – if I can make a noise, I said, I’ll come out with a voice on the other end, you know? And the surgeon told me my golf swing will improve after surgery. I said I hate golf. So at least they left with a voice to sing. I think it improved my voice, if anything. I always had a hard time listening to my singing before my surgery.”

Sam Stone came home
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas
And the time that he served
Had shattered all his nerves
And left a little shrapnel in his knees
But the morphine eased the pain
And the grass grew round his brain
And gave him all the confidence he lacked
With a purple heart and a monkey on his back

There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes
Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.  from John Prine, 1971

In 2017, John published Beyond Words, a volume of handwritten lyric notes, photographs, and chords to his songs.  I nabbed a ticket to a promotional event at our local bookstore, Parnassus, where John agreed to be interviewed on stage and play a few songs, with the proceeds benefitting local charity.  Knowing it would be packed, I turned up early and was happy to perch with a decent view, standing, among the bookshelves on the side wall.  I had bought my ticket too late to get an assigned seat facing the small stage area.

In all my years of fandom and concert-going, I had never scored a front-row seat. That night, my luck suddenly changed.  When some ticket-buyers failed to show on time, the diligent Parnassus staff began filling the open seats with folks like me from the wings.  My heart leaped and continued racing when the manager waved me into a single open chair in the very center of the front row.  When our hero stepped to the mic with his guitar a few minutes later, he was barely four feet away.  Never a groupie type or celebrity-worshipper for celebrity’s sake, I was astonished at my reaction, working to slow my breathing and keep my face composed.

All that effort worked just fine until he started into Sam Stone, the dark tale of the traumatized Vietnam vet who dies of a drug overdose.  In this small, intimate setting, he played and sang it slowly, almost as if he was recalling the story new again, picking out the simple chords on the old guitar in the total silence of the big room.  I refused to move or grab a Kleenex when my tears came, so they streamed down unabated, a tribute to him, to the years gone by, to the song and the countless victims who suffered the pain portrayed in it.  As he moved comfortably and gently on his feet at the microphone, turning to different parts of the audience, I looked up again, and our eyes suddenly locked. I managed, just barely, to choke back a sob when I saw his eyes fill with tears, as well.

When I get to heaven
I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank Him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar
And start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel
Ain’t the afterlife grand?  from Tree of Forgiveness, 2018

I remember exactly where I was when I learned that John had died.  Watching for news and praying for days while he breathed through a ventilator in a hospital bed at Vanderbilt Medical Center, part of me thought the indomitable character would surely survive this one, too.  In those blinding early days, we were only beginning to understand the horrible impact of this deadly new virus.  A dear friend and fellow fan texted a few lines from When I Get to Heaven, and I knew he was gone.

Even after forty-plus years as a fan, the depth of my grief over John’s passing has surprised me.  Only recently have I been able to put his songs back into listening rotation.  It’s difficult, somehow, to separate it from the broad-based grief over our shared global tragedy; it is nearly impossible to disentangle all the emotions that have raged over this past year.  I am among those who believe that John did his very best work at the end of his life, so there has been some small comfort in watching the honors continue to roll in, accolades recognizing brilliant particular work along with a lifetime of achievement.

Of course, I have my extensive collection of his recordings, posters from his concerts, a signed volume of his book—all enduring testimony to the singular nature of John’s body of work and the joy he created that survives him.  Still, the loss of his presence remains wide and deep and hurtful. As the world inches back toward open life, there will be no John in Nashville showing up to help out at benefits, no John greeting friends at the local meat-and-three (where, the stories go, vegetables rarely made it into his “three”), no John celebrating New Year’s with his friends on stage and with us, no John telling jokes and encouraging young artists and giving away cars.  It feels like losing a beloved uncle whose door was always open, whose porch chairs were populated by the quirky and the downtrodden and the brilliant, in equal numbers, who knew everyone in every chair for their oddities and frailties and fears and loved each of them equally without judgment.  Anyone who has a soul like that in their life is richly blessed, indeed.  Perhaps John’s greatest legacy is making all of us feel like accepted, beloved friends—even those of us who never actually met him.

In the year since he died, much has been said and written and sung about John’s thoughts on mortality, faith, and the afterlife.  Those thoughts began appearing in his work very early in his life, long before tunes appeared like When I Get to Heaven, God Only Knows, a cover of Remember Me, and his final recording, the multiple-award-winning I Remember Everything.  All are fine selections if you want to contemplate John’s viewpoint, but my own favorite on this topic is a selection from 1973’s Sweet Revenge.   Nearly fifty years before he died, John was already singing about the unpredictable arrival of death and how—with the least amount of reverence imaginable—in death he might still live on through others.  Here are the first three verses of Please Don’t Bury Me:

Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen and died
And oh what a feeling!
When my soul went through the ceiling
And on up into heaven I did ride
When I got there they did say
John, it happened this way
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head
And all the angels say
Just before you passed away
These were the very last words
That you said

Please don’t bury me
Down in the cold cold ground
No, I’d druther have ’em cut me up
And pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don’t mind the size

Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get ’em out of here
Venus de Milo can have my arms
Look out! I’ve got your nose
Sell my heart to the Junkman
And give my love to Rose.  from Sweet Revenge, 1973

 

 

 

It’s been such a long road.  Right?  For a year we’ve struggled to hold it together in a world we hardly recognize, some days.  Then, Mother Nature cackles hysterically as she adds on her own cosmic cataclysm:  The Polar Vortex.  Who ever heard of such?

Enough, already.  If you are like me, you may think there are finally some cracks in the edifice.  Maybe, after turning the collective brave face and trudging forward determinedly alongside everyone else these many months, we are losing it, at last.  There are clues.

With a fond nod to David Letterman, G-ma presents:

Top 10 signs you are finally losing it in the COVID/Insurrection/Winter-we-can’t-believe-is-happening.

10. You persist in calling the cat by the name of her predecessor, who has been gone a full decade as of next month. Worse, you are seriously annoyed when she blithely ignores you.

9. You are practicing your limbo along with the animated characters in the Kroger “low, low, low” TV commercial. You haven’t fallen over backward yet, but close calls have occurred.  It may be the most vigorous element of your daily exercise regimen.

8. You cry at the most unpredictable times. Like when the UPS driver who stops in the truck in middle of the street to allow you to cross safely in front of him.  Or at the sound of your yoga teacher’s voice on Zoom, when you can hear that Zen really exists—somewhere else.

7. You make a trip to the grocery store ostensibly to dump off recyclable plastic bags, but really to see live people walking around in the parking lot.

6. You arise from your work chair as a strange sound gains volume in the house. Your mind plunges through a list of potential crisis options:   An icicle broken through the roof, with snow tumbling down the hole?  A broken pipe, gushing water?  Alas, it is the water you just turned on for your hot tea, commencing to boil merrily on the stove.

5. You consume long, tortured minutes clicking on links of Facebook posts of friends honoring people who have died, under the false presumption that you knew and should remember them. You didn’t, and therefore you don’t.

4. You gaze out the window and reminisce about the early glory days of pro football when Joe Namath is on TV trying to get you to call the Medicare Help Line. It’s free!

3. It dawns on you there are two items on this list referring to TV commercials.

2. You don’t panic about your stock of provisions until you are out of two of the three Housebound Food Groups: chocolate, potato chips, and alcohol.  (See No. 7; why didn’t I go inside the store instead of just walking around the parking lot, people-watching?)

AND the No. 1 indicator you might finally be losing it:

  1. The most exciting three words you hear all day are:  THIS IS JEOPARDY!

 

If you ever feel compelled to examine your lifestyle in one rapid, unmerciful snapshot—a picture that unveils your purchasing habits, your eating patterns, your organizational skills, your housecleaning talents, your virtues or vices as a pet parent and neighbor—consider moving to a new home.  By the time you get out (or should we say get away?), there is nothing about your personal life that will escape full display for those involved in moving logistics.  One has to stiffen the backbone, and get ready, or face imminent collapse from embarrassment.

One small scene in the tragic comedy of my recent move was staged in the kitchen, a week or so before the trucks were coming.  I sought my wise daughter’s advice on what to pack and what to toss, and the kitchen loomed large in the pack/purge opportunity equation.  As the scene opens, she is diving into the spice cabinet.

In a kindly tone, she tries to divert my view from the initial evidence, as though gently turning the face of a small child from a doctor holding sterilized, steel implements used to stitch up that gashed lip.  “Don’t look, Mom, just toss it,” she instructs, passing me a bottle of slightly greenish/beige-ish oregano leaves, nudging me slightly and pointing to the trash can.

Right.  I reside among those tortured souls who are constitutionally incapable of accepting such instructions.  When told not to look, I immediately do. What do you mean, don’t look?  I ask, more curious than ever. Why wouldn’t I look?

She responds calmly, without judgment, to my query.  “That one expired a while back,” she says, keeping her eyes on task at hand, her back to me.  I laser in: How long is awhile?  “2010,” comes the steady answer, the speaker still avoiding my eyes, possibly laughing silently where I can’t see it.

Let’s pause here and nibble on this in for a moment.  That’s an entire, complete, recorded-in-the-books decade past expiration date.  Ten years since the tiny, (originally) green, fragrant leaves were deemed too old to do their job in soups, lasagna, or whatever culinary effort they might have adorned, when at their peak and ready to do their flavorful best.

Rocking at this revelation, I froze for a strange moment as those 10 years streaked precariously past the window of the mind’s eye.  For a decade, the oregano sat patiently in position on the spice rack, half-empty and technically retired, but still available to deliver its life’s mission should a middlin’ cook like me fail to notice the difference.  You’d win a bet if you wagered that I had used the contents much more recently. How long since I thought to check the spice cabinet?  Candidly, did I know spices actually expired?*  What transpired in that kitchen, in that house, in the lives that intersected there, in those vanished years?

I squinted, looking away and remembering.  A decade of blessing and tragedy, the bizarre and the humdrum.  Two deaths in my family, my beloved younger sister and my cherished father.  Joining memories of shattering heartbreak with those of indescribable joy, the two youngest lights of my life, a splendid grandson and his fabulous younger sister, arrived in that decade.  New career opportunities transpired, after other ones proved painful disappointments.  Dear friends gathered around my table, as often as I could manage it.  Surely, on balance, they were 10 years that shared the same human peaks and valleys lived by so many.

Still, it was a life that did not require enough oregano to finish one lonely little bottle.

Seeking a better understanding of this Aging Herb Question, I made my way to the website of the venerable McCormick & Company, the world’s largest purveyor of spices, the ones with the red labels we all know.  Behold, a section on How to Revive Old Spices!  Alas, never mind:  Its solutions revive those products that are “fading but not ancient.”

There was nothing for it but the trash can, and the thud of the containers hitting the side of the metal rings out with increasing speed as we pull out the remaining contents of the cabinet.  A contest develops as we check the dates on each. I am proud (or despairing, depending on your perspective) to prevail, if you can call it that, with a box of cinnamon sticks that expired in 2005.  Might have used those for holiday potpourri, I speculate as I fling the tiny red metal box toward its grave.  Must not have been worth the effort to make again the next holiday season; who knows, 15 years later?

The renowned McCormick experts are not above injecting a little relationship coaching into their spice advice.  Cleary, the challenge of “using up the spices” is global in scope, with many members in the family of us failures.

Honor the spices in your life, they advise, as if describing an unexpected inheritance or your grandmother’s precious china, by using them.  “Enjoy some spice love!  Don’t be shy when reaching for the curry powder or the allspice.”

Spice Love?  (And personally, I wouldn’t sprinkle allspice on the soup bowl of my worse enemy.) I will settle for avoiding further Spice Shame, while thanking my lucky stars that only my discreet daughter was there to witness it.  Many souls observed my other Moving Humiliations, like the charming young crew chief who encouraged me discreetly to vacuum the rug before he rolled it up, and the supportive friend who said nothing while wiping the detritus of a rotted green pepper out of the bottom of the vegetable drawer. But the Spice Shame is a secret my daughter and I can safeguard forever, a family secret to savor, you might say.

*Vanilla extract and salt, according to McCormick, are the only spices with indefinite life span.  If you knew that already, your culinary knowledge far exceeds many of us.  Would love an invitation to dinner at your convenience.

 

 

It was the kind of answer you pray for when you are on the verge.

“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll take care of it,” my competent daughter said in response to my panicky text.  “I’ll leave in about 15 minutes and will be right over.”  I couldn’t find an emoji for desperation, but no matter–she clearly heard it in my silent message.

The problem at hand was the assembly of a multi-tiered cat “tower.”  With shocking naivete, I had just slit open the box top, dumped out all the parts, and stared aghast at the pile.  I pounded on the empty box again, to make sure a lovely, beefy instruction booklet wasn’t stuck down in the bottom. Sure enough, there was only this diagram:

This is it? Letters and numbers only, no orderly Step 1 and 2, no identification on the parts that rolled away when I spilled them out, as if to escape incompetence when they sniffed it.  The pudgy dog, loitering nearby and watching closely for my next move, poked his nose in curiosity at a couple of miscellaneous tubular items as they traveled past.  My next move was motivated largely by his girth; the whole purpose of the cat tower was to elevate the cat bowl and get it out of the dog’s reach. “Cat food will put weight on him in no time,” the vet had said rather sternly at our last visit, noting my little pal’s gain.

I texted the diagram to my daughter, breathing heavily.  What am I supposed to do with just this, I snapped? (No snapping emoji, either, but the steadfast child got the gist.)

Sure enough, this problem-solving female batted not an eye when she sallied through the front door a half-hour later, toting a couple of screwdrivers and the expression of a mountain climber who can see the peak of Everest in view.  She scanned the diagram briefly, then commenced with no hesitation.  “I love doing this stuff,” she admitted, nary a pause in the flow as she attached this part to that, this bolt with that screw, and a structure began to rise from the floor.  How on earth did you learn to do this?  I asked, watching from a non-hovering distance.  “Just done a lot of these, I guess,” she said.  “I think it’s fun.”  Skeptical of that last but awash in admiration, I thought back to college apartments, her first home, her addresses since, and wondered how I hadn’t taken notice of this talent.  And like a mother so often does, I silently pondered hereditary factors; her father, my ex-husband, is a very handy soul who learned from his highly skillful father.  Must have come from that side of her genes, I concluded—she sure didn’t get it from me.

And why didn’t she?  I berated myself later, while admiring the cat chomping her dinner quietly on her lofty perch, competition for the meal having been eliminated by its newly elevated location.  Why didn’t I ever learn to be handy?  Nearly 80 years after Rosie the Riveter and her real-life counterparts labored in Navy machine shops and triumphed as riveters on fight planes, how did I remain dependent on others, often males (before I had a talented adult daughter), for such tasks?  Women have broken through in every line of work imaginable; is this the last bastion of masculine domination among the tasks of daily living? How did women my age miss this opportunity?

The answer, which likely surprises no one but me, is many haven’t and didn’t.  There’s nothing like an informal Facebook poll to propel you quickly forward into the current moment.  I asked my female FB friends to share their experiences with handy work.  Then, I sat back and got myself wowed as the comments flowed in with tales of necessity, self-sufficiency, even relaxation. Here’s one:

“My dad had all girls and my Mom was really handy – the two of them just passed on an expectation that we could learn to do all sorts of mechanical tasks. Doing things that involve figuring out how to accomplish a more physical task after working most of my life in roles that required intense concentration has been a relief…My favorite outdoor tool is a chain saw; indoor? Magnetized screwdrivers.”

And this:

“…yeah, I’m handy. Real handy. Tile, wood floors, light fixtures, toilet replacement, LMK when to stop… My dad had me changing tires with him when I was about eight…My ex and I were flat broke trying to raise a family when we were young, so it was either do it ourselves or not get it done. Once I was single that carried on and maybe even increased. My daughter got me a power tools set for Mother’s Day last year. I find it relaxing to accomplish something with my hands since my job only uses my brain.”

A different set of needs, but same outcome.  Wow:

“Well, I figured out how to farm. Chainsaws, tractors and implements, fence-building, metal roofing, shed construction, barn repairs, etc. a bit of this and that.”

And finally, the Queen of Handy (unnamed here, but you know who you are) rules all with this testimony:

“I do all kinds of projects…The internet has been a game changer in learning how to do things…I especially like to tile – I’ve done about eight bathrooms, several kitchens, two fireplaces and numerous floors.   It’s all math and patterns, things my brain likes. I learned by necessity – limited budget…so I figured out what I could do, what I could learn to do and what I’d need help with…I plan it out in my head, then do it on paper, and then execute. I just spent the last year scraping popcorn off ceiling, texturing, then cutting holes in the ceilings of four bedrooms and the hall, and crawling up in the attic to install the ceiling braces and run the wiring…”

Eight bathrooms?  Ceiling braces and wiring?  My admiration knows no bounds.  Clearly, women have broken through on yet another frontier, and somehow, I missed it.  Could there still be time to catch up?  I’m shamed, or intrigued, or both, into inspiration.  I have no idea what magic may be performed with magnetized screwdrivers, but perhaps the right tools make all the difference.  Santa?

 

A drama in one act

The scene

 Location No. 1:  A 7-year-old girl’s bedroom at about 7:45 p.m.  The room is captured in the screen camera’s eye and beamed over the ether to another screen miles away, via the technology that is re-defining communication and relationships in the era of COVID.  Child is leaning back against a rumpled mass of pillows, facing the camera, and the lovely pink flowered coverlet is only visible in one tiny triangle in lower left. She is, at least as the scene opens, under a tangle of various layers of covers, accompanied by a large purple bunny squeezed under her left arm, only one, long narrow flop-ear exposed, dangling on top of the covers like a tie adorning a dress shirt.   Presumably there is a white dog sharing the bed; only his foot is visible, lower right.

 Location No. 2, simultaneously shown:   The home office of this child’s grandmother.  A stack of children’s books stands at the ready on the work table next to her laptop.  Lighting has been carefully arranged to illuminate the pages of the books she will hold up to the camera, but not too bright, because it is bedtime, after all.

 The characters

  • Sis, the aforementioned 7-year-old girl, who has eagerly accepted her grandmother’s offer to read her a bedtime story via FaceTime.
  • Buddy, her 9-year-old brother. Possibly thinks this activity is beneath his age, having largely outgrown his taste for little kids’ books. He is too kindly to say so in front of his grandmother or sister.
  • The mother of these children, who plays a role in tech support but does not appear.
  • The grandmother of these children, aka G-ma, or Evie, who routinely would never refer to herself as a desperate woman.  And yet, she is missing these children so fiercely that she wants to give this strange scenario a legitimate shot.
  • A patient, quiet, white and black terrier mix dog named Sam, who never gets far from the children.
  • A frenetic but supremely devoted brindle terrier mix named Grace with the delicate presence of an offensive lineman protecting the blind side in overtime of the Super Bowl.

The scene opens as FaceTime connects and G-ma’s face lights up at the sight of the child.  Her brother is not visible.

G-ma (brightly):  Hi, precious!  I’m SO glad to see you.  Let’s pick out a book to read.

(G-ma holds up a couple of options to the camera. The child is squirming, possibly in anticipation, possibly impatience, possibly both. She sits forward in affirmation and points at the screen when it shows her the cover of the classic Where the Wild Things Are.)

G-ma continues:  This one?  Great.  Let’s get started.  Where’s your brother?  Does he want to hear this?  Buddy, are you there?  (Hoping to involve both, she speaks to the child she can’t see.). Do you like this story, too?

(A second face appears on screen, extreme close-up but completely sideways, visible only from the eyeballs up.)

Buddy (non-committal but polite tone):  Yeah, but I’ve read it multitudes of times already.

G-ma (flummoxed by this mastery of vocabulary from the sideways, partial face):  Did you say multitudes?  Is that what you said?

Buddy:  Yeah!  Multitudes.  But it’s OK.  You can read it to Sis.  (He drops back onto the pillow next to his sister, close enough to be about half visible, then noticeably hoists his own book, his face disappearing behind it.)

Sis (pushing her brother farther away from her on the bed, to gain space and reject his response):  Go! Evie, read!

(G-ma begins the old favorite story, turning the pages slowly, twisting in various contortions, attempting to see, while reading, if the pages are visible to the watching child. Striving to keep her audience on the hook, she displays the page where the protagonist is sent to his room for misbehavior)

G-ma :  Can you see this?  Look at him making that face.  What do you think he’s mad at?

Buddy (without lowering his own book, apparently watching over the top of it):  He’s mad because…

Sis (shoving him again and interrupting):  Stop!  You aren’t even reading with us.  Go on, Evie. (She turns her back to her brother, propelling herself hard enough to dislodge the position of the laptop, which is now displaying the tranquil bed scene at a 45-degree angle.)

G-ma (uncertain whether to just tilt her own head or request tech support):  You knocked the laptop, sweetie.  Straighten it back up so I don’t get dizzy looking at you.

Sis:  Oh, sorry!  (She leans forward to correct the issue but suddenly vanishes, while the screen is filled by the torso of the amber-and-black brindle dog, who has leapt onto the bed and into the action.).

Sis, Buddy, and their mother (simultaneously, shouting out of view):  GRACE!  GET OFF THE BED!

(Pause.  Scrambled audio.  G-ma waits, uncertain whether to proceed, thinking this has not gone well.  Perhaps it’s too much for the kids to focus in this scenario.  They are too young/not interested/just humoring me.  Maybe this was more about me, G-ma wonders regretfully.  Meanwhile, brindle torso flashes on past and ejects itself out of sight.  Grandchildren again visible on camera.  Action resumes.  Soon, G-ma announces the conclusion is nigh.)

G-ma:  Almost done here, guys.  Here’s our last page.

Sis (interrupting, directs question to her mother, off camera):  Mom, can we do this again?  Cause I really like it.

Mother (off camera):  Sure, if Evie wants to.

(G-ma reads last page, closes the book.)

G-ma (smiling fondly into camera):  Great!  That was fun.  I love…

Buddy (leaning face sideways into view again, before his grandmother can finish):  Thanks! Bye!

(Screen abruptly goes dark.  In the ensuing silence, G-ma stares for a second at the black space where the children just were, and then at the cover of the book.  She wonders if anything every goes the way it is so brilliantly shown in the grandparenting magazines, with their articles on “10 Ways to Stay Close to Grandkids During COVID.”  She doubts it. But knowing she got one vote in favor, she decides to declare victory as she switches off the light.)

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time is a blur these days, but it still seems that our relationship was in its tender, early stages when suddenly, with the onset of a national emergency, we became captives together.

Maybe not captives exactly, but we are tethered here by a togetherness that is unrelenting, with no end in sight.  In this unprecedented time, “sheltering in place” as ordered, we are compliant and thus far safe, we fervently hope, at home.  Day after day, with every strange flip of the calendar, I am here, he is here, sometimes not even six feet away.  No matter where I go in the house, here we still are.

And he worries.  He can’t help himself.  A tad anxious by nature, he is even more antsy in these unfamiliar days that struggle to find a rhythm he can recognize.  If I get up from the work table for coffee, he watches carefully, his furrowed brow telegraphing a preference that I would stay still, where I can be regularly monitored.  Sometimes he follows, wondering if he might be needed, just making sure that, with hot coffee in hand, I will return as promised.  At first, I tried reassurance:  Don’t get up, I’d say patiently, I’ll get it, there’s nothing for you to do, relax.  Then I gave up, realizing that like many stubborn males with protective instincts who I have been fortunate to adore, he wouldn’t listen.  After the first couple of weeks, occasionally he would stay put, thinking perhaps he could trust me to come back, weary of the burden of fretting every second, turning his attention to matters of his own concern.

The odd dynamic of shared confinement is not just emotional.  I am embarrassed about my hair; I need my roots done and can’t remember when I last showered.  He needs a bath and most certainly a haircut.

If he wasn’t such a thoroughly charming little dog, he’d be driving me nuts.

Gus came to join my little household early last fall, very soon after my beloved hound dog died of cancer after 13 hilarious years.  It was too soon, really, to get another dog, thinking back on it now, if such decisions of the heart were measured strictly by traditional guidelines for grief recovery. Too soon for me to accept him for who he is, such a different little brain and spirit than she was; too soon to accept the love he offered so readily, after being abandoned following the death of his previous owner.  Too soon to care much that he had different taste in treats, a different pace on a walk, and a solid instinctive obligation to stand guard and warn me against the hazards of all unknown comers.  My deep grief over her passing and the suffering she endured at the very end did not dissipate, and while I was glad to keep Gus safe and well-fed, on some days I looked at him from a distance, almost as though he was someone else’s dog.

This is probably why there are so many divorces among people who remarry too quickly, I thought idly, then immediately feared I had a different problem, thinking that way about a dog. A few months trundled past and slowly, I began to adjust.  He is the first of so many things, I reminded myself, trying to achieve the grace of patience—my first boy dog in 25 years, my first with a long coat and its riotous tufts spiking every which-a-way, my first Dachshund, with their renowned sensitivity and (only occasionally amusing) stubbornness.  I had no idea what hygiene might be required around what the vet called “his little PoPo,” no idea why saying No about 46 times didn’t appear to make a dent.  Do long-backed dogs automatically have the cleanest colons of the canine kingdom?  I can’t fathom why this dog poops at least three times a day, sometimes four.

When the pandemic slammed the nation shut in early spring, Gus had been here almost seven months.  Weeks now into our shared isolation, he’s getting pretty smelly and stoutly declines to wrestle with the restless cat upon demand. Yet with time to observe him more fully, I am amazed to watch how he does his nervous, short-legged best to adapt.  This week, I noticed I could go to the bathroom alone.  He waited quietly, without protest, for his morning potty relief when I overslept one day this week.  I denied a request to go out late one afternoon, citing an important conference call about to launch, and watched him return patiently to his bed in my home office, though not without giving me the eye.

The other day I dropped onto the couch in a low moment, staring out the window in despair.  I miss my daughter, my grandchildren, all my family, my friends, my co-workers, like we all do, of course.  And I realized how fully my heart had finally relented toward this funny little dog when he jumped up next to me, and I encircled him in a crushing hug.  I’m SO glad you are here, I told him.  I don’t know what I would do, if you weren’t. I’m glad you let people hug you.  Your predecessor, rest in peace, would never have tolerated such.

He turned when I released the hug and looked me straight in the eye, bestowing a gentle, tiny, tentative kiss on the side of my cheek.

And then he burped.

I guess little boys will be little boys, in the face of whatever the universe brings.

 

The scene:  A sunny Sunday afternoon in the neighborhood.

The subject:  G-ma’s new best pal, being lavishly admired by Buddy, camera in hand.

The result:  Documentary?  Comedy?  Biography?  A pinch of all those flavors. Click below to tune in.