Lessons in detachment... of various kinds

I’ve hesitated to post this, because… I am the other driver.  I am the vessel of the divine that offers Cas and the community opportunities to practice compassion while on the road, or more particularly, in  parking lots.  I take no pride in the role; it is my fate to be the humble instrument of instruction.

As my husband, Marc, said plaintively to his brother once while I was on the phone for yet another insurance ordeal (difficult for the rep perhaps, my repeated practice with the “recorded to serve you better” phone calls has put me quite at my ease), “She’s actually a good driver, she’s never hurt anyone.”  Trash cans, ash cans, light poles, guard posts, plants and planters, and poorly placed public artworks would all tell a different tale were they animate.

It is stationary vehicles that are the most distressed.  For years, I maintained there was a magnetic attraction between the metals used in older cars’ bumpers, perhaps caused by the energy field created by turning on the ignition, but the fact that I’ve … made contact… with as many of the newer rubber bumpers as the older steel ones suggests the ignition may be involved, but only peripherally. The newer rubber baby buggy bumpers are no help in improving my fellow drivers’ acceptance of the inevitable. Their ‘paintability’ is touted as a improvement, but the merest kiss causes deep scuffs and scars and pigment apparently costs three times as much as chrome, so fat furry false savings on that, Mr. Estimator.

The latest evidence of the insufficiency of rubber bumpers was after a recent play date with the terriers of a friend who lives in the foothills. I wasn’t there to help a puppy of my own learn doggy manners; I have no pets. I was visiting primarily to play with the dogs myself.  Drunk on puppy-loving, wishing my allergies would permit me to live with a dog rather than just occasionally dating them, I backed my Subaru out of their owner’s steep and winding driveway. I heard a scrape and felt a tug. When I got out to check the rear, I found I had backed over a low retaining wall that bordered the driveway. I saw nothing in the bright sunshine: no damage to the rubber, no black marks on my friend’s expensive brickwork, no need to go inside and say anything at all. All the way down the rolling hill to the four lane street that would take me home, I wondered what was that tugging feeling?  I pulled into a shopping center to find the wraparound bumper that had looked just fine at first had actually popped off the entire left side of the Outback, and must have been swaying back and forth as I drove. I drove home slowly, on side streets. The next day, a sympathetic male teacher at the elementary school where I worked managed to wedge the bumper back into place, with the panel hugging the body close enough so that its recent adventure wasn’t terribly obvious. He also pounded out a dent in the rubber that I still hadn’t seen. This kindness meant I was able to leave the whole incident unmentioned at home. I support honesty and truth in a relationship, but when stories like this are such oft-told tales, perhaps every telling isn’t essential.

It is my great hope that latest Subaru bumper story will be a book-end to earlier ones about my recently sold Honda Pilot, and there will be no more. I'd gotten to know the Pilot's power and size after introducing it repeatedly to our large green trash bin, and once to a friend’s front-mounted tow-hitch. Another friend Jen, had joined us for dinner and a DVD one night. While she was chatting with Marc in the living room, I was messing about in the kitchen. I realized I had forgotten the salsa for our tacos. I hollered from the kitchen door that opens into the garage, "Be back in sec!", jumped in the Pilot, backed it out of the garage and into Jen's new (of course) Toyota Corolla. I take the $600.00 for her new bumper out of savings, and am grateful that we carpool to the same school anyway. About 4 months later, Jen is again over for dinner, and this time, having forgotten butter for the brownies, I grab the keys, jump in the Pilot, back out of the garage and into Jen's car again. Another $600.00, even with DentBuster's good customer discount. This time I have to put the expense on our charge card, and there is a slight chill in the carpool over the next few days. A few months later, dinner is complete, we've had a lovely evening, and we're walking Jen out to her car.

"Jen, why is your car parked sideways in our driveway?"

"Oh, I got sideswiped at the grocery store by a hit'n'run, and figured since Lynn would be hitting me again anyway.. "

Well! But, the sad truth is, about nine months after that, I did indeed back into her car in our driveway a third time. Jen burst into tears, seeing that this time I had managed to crunch her front bumper, and somehow the hood was buckled as well… and the front left side panel looked a little droopy. At 1600.00, this one had to be handled by our insurance company which also provided a rental car for a stony-faced and silent Jen. Now when she visits, Jen leaves her car across the street in St Jude's church parking lot.  Most of our repeat guests do so, each being offered multiple opportunities to practice compassion.

A Thankful Feast; an incident of culinary mishap

        I think it is important to remember when we talk about the seven deadly sins that they are in fact only vices that some church decided to upgrade to sins based on their severity. That, and there used to be more than seven, when is the last time you accused someone of acedia or vainglory, or chastised anyone in despair?  I know, I know some of the seven are truly abhorrent; greed, wrath, lust, envy…bad, all bad. Pride and sloth? Well, we all have our moments of pride and honestly sloth, or the opportunity for a single moment of peace in which to practice sloth is probably my highest ambition. Which brings us to gluttony. Let’s just be completely straightforward…could we really be American, REALLY good AMERICANS, without a little gluttony? We certainly couldn’t celebrate being American at an annual feast of Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving holiday is marginally about history and patriotism and primarily about food, family, food, friends, drink, food, thankfulness and a little bit more food.

                That said, everyone cooks too much food at Thanksgiving. Especially when you have two cooks with a lot of restaurant experience. My friend Tracy and I may have actually set some sort of record for overcooking if anyone were keeping track. It was our first really grown-up Thanksgiving, you know not traveling back to our folks or someone else’s folks, but staying at our apartment and cooking for 12 people. The guests were going to be my husband Mike, myself, Tracy, her roommate Michelle, and friends Thomas, Chris, Kim, Jan, James, Buster, MaLaura and Jen. A sizable group with some big eaters Mike, Thomas, Chris and Jan (pronounced “Yon”) could probably out eat ten people all by themselves. Tracy and I felt safe planning a big menu and cooking a lot. Plus, both of our moms had recommended cooking a few extra dishes or portions in case something flopped. We were creating an entirely vegetarian meal. We had two kitchens to use. My husband Mike and I were the caretakers for our apartment building and our neighbor Patty across the hall had gone out of town for the week. We were watching her cats and plants and she had agreed to let us co-opt her kitchen during Thanksgiving. 

                The cooking went flawlessly and we had a great time cooking together. Both of us know our way around a kitchen and we had fun developing several of the recipes. The menu was glorious and included some dishes I still make 18 years later because they are amazing. Our problem was really about portioning. We mistakenly calculated an actual portion of each item for each person and then doubled it!! Let’s be clear about this…portions assume that you will have 3 to 4 items on your main course plate. Who puts less than 12 things on their plate at Thanksgiving? You see the problem? Maybe you are reading this in time to save yourself this year. Even if you create half portions of every menu item for every guest, you will STILL have leftovers. 

             The meal began with wine, a beautiful cheese plate and crudités. For the sit down, take turns saying gratitudes, hand around serving plates portion of the meal we had…wild rice stuffed squash, vegetarian stuffing with mushroom and tarragon gravy, yams baked with blueberries and mandarin oranges, mashed potatoes with carmelized onion and port gravy, green beans baked with shallots and slivered almonds, cranberry and kumquat sauce, a four cheese noodle au gratin with peas and fresh baked rolls. We intended to serve four kinds of home made pie and espressos for dessert. The pies were a (from scratch) mince with rum sauce, pumpkin, whiskey chocolate and a raspberry, loganberry and apple. Our guests were debilitatingly stuffed mid way through the main course. 

             Our dear friend Thomas invited us all into the hall to roll around and move the food in our bellies. Not for gastric comfort, but to make more room for MORE food and eventually dessert.  When we began surveying the still massive amounts of food and trying to determine storage, we realized we had to consume more to even consider storing the leftovers (in two kitchens). We made up plates to take out to the streets, we fed over twenty street dwellers. We took to the apartment building and invited neighbors, most had their own dinners, but several who were not originally from America, happily helped and were fascinated by our version of the holiday. One couple from England just could not grasp the idea of how much food was a reasonable amount to adequately “feast”.  As we loaded up their plates they kept asking in shock…"This is just ONE meal?” Eventually, we packaged up the leftovers!! After a run to the park and a vigorous snowball war, we even made room for dessert. To this day, however, I clean my entire fridge every year before Thanksgiving for the express purpose of making room for containers of leftovers.

What the Muppets Knew.

    My son and I regularly go to the library together.  He is free to pick out any books he wants and other media he can get if I approve. Several weeks ago he discovered the Muppet Show. He has seen Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and so has been exposed to pieces of Jim Henson’s legacy. To say that these things don’t compare with being exposed to the Muppet Show for the first time would be a severe understatement. Like someone saying they love chocolate because they eat M&Ms.

     After watching several episodes my son, very seriously, asked his parents to sit down because he had some questions. He begins, “So there’s this show…and it’s filled with puppets, mostly monsters (a key point because his deep love of monsters is nearly unparalleled in his life) and in EVERY episode there is tons of music and singing and new instruments (another key point, music MIGHT be the only competitor for his monster love).” My husband and I both nod, agree, yes, yes, that’s right…did you have a question about that? He sums up, “Neither one of you ever thought it might be a good idea to show this to me? I had to discover it myself?” He asked this wryly in a tone and attitude well beyond his years that implies not only sarcasm, dismay and complete befuddlement, but also an unspoken belief that surely there was no entrance exam for this whole “parenting” gig. Touché.

     As a family we enjoyed watching the entire second and third season of the Muppet Show including all the special features. Thackery is a connoisseur of special features. In one of the features, Jim Henson and Frank Oz do a tutorial on how to create a puppet’s character using detachable interchangeable features and different gestures and voices. Pure genius. Thackery watched it again and again creating sock puppets, stick puppets and working with his own “attachable puppet” Gooey. He at one point said to me, “All t.v. should just be these guys helping kids learn things.”  

     Which got me to thinking, you know when I was a kid, that was pretty much true. Jim Henson, Frank Oz and Dr. Seuss comprised 75% of what my generation was exposed to in early childhood. So I blame them for our complete inability to function in modern selfish consumer driven times. We are all old hippies in our hearts. We know that acceptance and inclusion are good and we know racism is bad. We know the Once-ler got it wrong and the Lorax had it right. Love your neighbor, protect the environment!!! Charity is good, greed is bad. Oh how sorrily and ill equipped were all were for the corporate buy out of our democracy and the systematic replacement of our education system with consumers-in-training programs. It isn’t our fault!! We were led to believe as very small children that the older generations had it all figured out and that they were forewarning us against mistakes that previous generations had made. We grew up in a time where parents thought Alice Cooper was the closest thing to the Devil that was out there and we got to see him ON THE MUPPET SHOW!!! Kermit made a joke (referencing Faust) to mock Alice about his “contract with the Devil” and then they all laughed about it and Alice put on a monster suit to dance with some Muppets.  Message? You can be as different as you want as long as we can all laugh about our differences and pull off the big dance number at the end of the show!

     We literally grew up thinking all the Once-lers had learned their lessons, were filled with remorse and wanted to help us fix everything. We thought everyone was on the same team. The debates were over and our job was to clean up, decrease our carbon footprint, distribute the wealth more humanely and equitably, get healthcare for everyone and walk happily into sunnier times. We were going to establish America as the leader of great minds, great ideas, compassionate humanitarianism and creative genius. Right? Right? Yeah, so what happened with that?