pomegranatesandpaper

Friday

 

Isn't that a creative title? I had a lovely little lyrical piece written for you about pathways to summer and although I saved it twice, some glitch happened and all I have is my rough draft, my shitty rough draft as Anne Lamott calls them, so, yeah. I figured I'd better jump in here and say howdy y'all, though, cause according to my stats I had "zero" page views today.

Zero? Seriously? Is that even possible. Where the heck are all the Europeans looking for "imgres" of who knows what??

 The week has not lent itself to writing. I have what is being diagnosed as "chronic sinusitis" (as opposible to acute or recurring, which at least gets antibiotics). So this week I had a dr's visit, a CT scan, and a scope up my nose only to be told, "yeah, use nasal sprays". (But first, I popped the NEW crown off while flossing that morning and had to wedge in an emergency dentist visit in between the scope and ct scan.)

I spent about ten minutes talking to my doc around lunchtime today when she felt so bad telling me I DIDN't have a sinus infection and she doesn't know what's wrong with me 'cept my sinuses are crowded that she practically offered up any antibiotic I wanted to have on hand. At that point,  I was feeling kinda okay and told he I'd wait to see how I feel.

So, yes, of course, by the time I got home on tonight, my throat hurts so much I can barely swallow and I was seriously afraid I was going to crash the car as I could not keep my eyes open. So going on Day 7 of the mysterious sore throat and dry cough, I am getting up at 5 tomorrow to return to the Cape and start a week's vacation with sister #2 and The Bride. I am purloining some leftover amoxicillin of Mr. Pom (I know that is not the drug of choice for strep, which I'm convince I have now) but it'll keep me from getting worse (?maybe?) until I get there and call the ENT to phone in a prescription to good ol' we-are-everywhere CVS.

The menfolk can't make this trip as it is too soon after the time they took off for the wedding. They work for Draconian companies or, I suspect, maybe just want to stay home? I heard some guy talk about The Groom coming by here after work each night, then heard some more talk of grilling steaks and Yankee games. This, of course, cracks me up because Mr. Pom, you know he makes out like he's the life of the party, but the man was an only child and he really has no problem being alone. His preferred state of existence is dog on floor, beer in hand, game on TV. You can stay in the room if you don't talk. So good to know that the newest member of the family is compatible.

The week was not all 7:30 nights in the office and doctor visits. I did have a lovely fancy pizza with the Art Peeps where I think we all talked simultaneously for 3 hours, yet everyone understood everyone else. And the owner of the restaurant topped off the meal with free tiramisu shooters and we had to talk for another hour so our BAC would be at legal levels. We make great art, but we make even better conversation!

100 degrees outside, about 85 in the bedroom with the air supposedly on. Dogs panting, laptop generating too much heat. Talk to you from the Cape where I can show you pictures of my garden with my camera's heretofore unknown super macro lens. (Oh, the camera knew it had it; I didn't) I can also offer up some more great books I've been reading. I will take you to the beach, to the bay where Bella Sera where be fixated on The Light! The Light! and go all crazy on me. I may even share some illustrated pages from a new project if I get up the nerve.

Hopefully, I will not spend the week next to a vaporizer with Vicks on my chest (which I never did a day in my life as my mother did not believe in that crap though Mr Pom did but I won't let him use that smelly stuff in the house.)

Keep cool!!

 

 

Father's Day

 

Twelve o'clock and the church bells are pealing in the tower, their deep notes rolling up the hill to our house, a harbinger of the morning's passing.

Father's Day 2012 has turned sunny but cool after an overcast morning so chilly that I wore a mohair cardigan and a scarf around my neck on the way to Starbucks.

Every Sunday morning, Mr. Pom deposits me at Starbucks while he takes the dogs to the park and picks up bagels. The ritual started when I had the knee replacement and could not manage the hills and bumps of the woodland path. I started using the hour to do research for my book and while he and the dogs had a good run, I filled a black spiral bound sketchbook with notes and quotes, sketches and drawings.

Oh yes, I am lazy and if given an out will choose coffee, reading, and writing over any physical exertion. Mr. Pom would gladly join me at Starbucks (and does after he comes back), but Mr. Pom could no more sit at Starbucks while the dogs wait for a walk than he could quit his job and move to Tahiti under an alias.

I married a good man. A solid man; a stolid man; a responsible man. He is bound by the laws of duty in all he does. He gets up each morning and does whatever has to be done. If it is a weekday, he is up in time to give the dogs a good walk. If it is a weekend, he is up in time to give the dogs a good walk. If I want to go to the beach at 7:00 a.m., we get up in time to give the dogs a good walk.

I can swear on the Bible that my husband  has never called in sick when he was not sick, not even to attend a World Series game. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the times when he called in sick that wasn't related to his often agonizing back problems. He just isn't a call-in-sick guy.

Today is Father's Day. It is quiet here. Micalangela is in Baltimore; Mystery Man is in and out, visiting but with plans. The Newly Weds will be over later.

So, I said to Mr. Pom, what do you want to do on Sunday? Drive upstate? Take the dogs to the reservoir? Go into the city for brunch and walk around the park? Take one of your marathon wild rides around the 5 boroughs where we never get out of the car until we cry for a restroom?

He raised his eyebrows at me.

I'm making ribs.

Ribs? You're making ribs?

Yep.

But that's an all day affair! You have to dry rub them, bundle the slabs individually, start a charcoal fire, keep watch over them, turn them, baste them, cut them.....I was exhausted just describing it.

I want to make ribs.

So yesterday, we went to a giant box store and bought slabs of ribs, spices, and the fixings for barbecue sauce. Early this morning, he washed the slabs, dried them, and patted them with rub before wrapping them up in foil. He took apart his smoker (an oil drum retrofitted by my sister's husband), and washed the trays, scrubbed the grills, and messed about with a piece of metal he got to place over the rusting bottom. After we walked the dogs, we went to the regular supermarket for corn, the makings of sesame noodles, asparagus, and fruit salad.

When we got back home, laden down with sacks of vegetables, paper plates, the Sunday papers, and the dogs straining to get off the leashes, I thought of how we could be having brunch at a nice sidewalk resturant in the East Village.   I was silently wondering why the hell we were entertaining once again, spending money once again, running around once again, when Mr. Pom, the  one who can read my mind after 31 years, looked at me before he put the key in the door and said,

We're making memories, hon. That's what we do: we make memories.

And so we do.

And so he does.

I just feel sorry for the rest of the neighborhood: try spending an afternoon smelling woodsmoke and roasting pork and see if it doesn't bring you to your culinary knees.

 

 

Shining

 

On the morning of the wedding, I was wandering around the house with a cup of coffee, trying to focus on what I needed to do in order to get myself and everyone else ready.

The night before had been the rehearsal dinner and the wild Karaoke party at our house. You know, the one where the cops showed up at 11:00 cause we were singing "Last Dance" too loudly. (Things shut down early on the Cape. But come on, Donna Summer had just passed away and to the cops credit, they waited until we were done and told us we were very good. But very loud.)

I was collecting a few stray beer bottles, s'mores sticks,  paper plates sticky with cake icing, and wondering how so many big beetles committed suicide in the pillar candles. I opened the fridge and mareled at whomever had managed to fit  6 leftover cake boxes on the shelves by transferring all the beer bottles into the produce drawers.  Very creative food storage, I must say, especially for men late at night. Just wondered what had happened to the lettuce and carrots.

With an eye on the clock, I followed The Bride around while she straightened up this room and that, muttering about the photographer coming and hair and make up. I tried to stay our of her way. I mosied through the bedrooms, rousing daughters and son and significant others because it was time to get up and use their alloted shower slots. The penalty for screwing up the shower rota was banishment to the outdoor shower, which Mr Pom told me was spraying cold water out from the bottom because a pipe seemed to have split over the winter. 

Everyone rolled over and ignored me. I decided to jump ahead of everyone and use the shower myself. By then my coffee had kicked in and I was full of adrenalin from pre-wedding MOB nerves. When I got out of the shower, I was ready to round up any person who still dared be in bed and was making my way down the hall when voices outside caught my attention.

I slid open the sliding screen screen door and there sat Mr. Pom and Mystery Man on the little back porch, each with a chair, a pair of black shoes, some shoe polish, and a brush. While I'd been in the shower, they'd gotten up and quietly set up their first chore of the day: shining shoes.

I handed some coffee to each of them and left to their business. They continued to polish, buff, and shine for a while. I could hear them talking and laughing and a little groaning by each from the excesses of the night before. They got their shoes done and then went on to the rest of their ablutions.

I admire a shined shoe. I like the whole task of it: the strange little compact metal can with the weird little wishbone clip on the side that you turn to pop open the pan of polish; the stinging smell of wax and dye; the little square of chamois that you dip into the polish and then work the color across the tip of the shoes, using the brush to blend it in and bring up the shine. I can never accomplish a shined shoe, though, without a little rim of polish across the top of my hand when I am done. As much as I scrub at it, a tinge of cordovan and whiff of wax follows me all day.

Most of my shoes are not the type that can be polished.  I favor patent leather for work and I wear a lot of suede. A few times a month, I've seen a shoe shine  man set up his stool and wooden box in the lobby of our office building. It's a suburban office park, so it's always a amusing and a bit jarring to see this little bit of the urban past pop up in the midst of the marble floors and potted palms. 

I am always a little curious and a tad jealous of the shoe shine man and his customers, who are inevitably male. It seems one of the last bastions of 1960's Mad Men culture: the shoe shine man, the folded newspaper, the lit cigar. I can't imagine myself as a woman stepping up into one of the chairs, tilting back my imaginary hat, greeting the shoe shiner with a few words, "How's the wife, Joe?", then leaning back and reading the horse race results while someone else shines my shoes and gets me presentable for the day from the bottom up.

 I see an awful lot of scuffed toes, worn down heels, and scratched up shoes in general when waiting in line in courtrooms to check in. Women in particular have problems with the heel and back of the driving shoes getting worn down and dirty. I have to remind myself to check my own shoes before I put them on to see what shape they are in. Also, briefcases are not what they used to be. In general, briefcases have morphed into totes for men and women alike. I generally dislike the sight of a legal file being pulled from a bag where earphones are tangled in the edges of the files folder and a granola bar wrapper is stuck to it from static cling.

We need more shoe shining in our culture.I like the idea of a society that provides a chair, a brush, and a shoe shine man to anyone who  has a scuffed pair of shoes, a folded paper, and a buck and a quarter.

I like the idea of starting the day from the ground up.  We need more time spent on the little civilities of life, like ironing a fresh handkerchief or learning how to fold and refold a newspaper to a quarter sheet so you can read it standing on a bus without it intruding in anyone's space.

Only please, don't talk on the cell when you are having your shoes shined. Exchange a few pleasantries with the person working on your shoes. Share who's going to win tomorrow in the fifth, or what stock to keep an eye on. You can even close your eyes for a quick cat nap before getting back to the office for your 2:00. Or you can take your shiny pair of shoes, walk down Fifth Avenue, and buy yourself a hot dog with the works, go over to the park, sit on a bench, cross your legs,  and eat your hot dog while admiring your shoes.

If you are lucky, when you get back to the office you will discover that you've been given a secretary that has typed all your letters and left them on your desk under a glass paperweight, awaiting your signature. She'll tell you that your wife would like to know if you want to eat at the club or entertain at the house for dinner and if so, what would you like her to make.

You'll tell her to hold all calls while you practice your chip shot in your new automatic golf ball putting machine that the kids gave you for Father's Day. At 5:00, you'll  stroll into your boss's office for a quick nightcap before you both run for the 5:40 to Larchmont. You'll remember to pick up a bunch of flowers in Grand Central and you'll think about getting a shave and a haircut tomorrow at lunch as you are passing the empty shoe shine stand, which is all packed up until tomorrow morning.

And then you'll wince because you'll realize that you forgot to tip the shoe shine guy. No matter, you'll give him double tomorrow.

 

Bonbons for Your Week

 

Early on in her wedding planning, The Bride decided that she did not want to give little gimcrack favors at her wedding. Nor did she favor any traditional touches, like  Italian  candied almonds in netting, known as "confetti".

Sweetness, though, was in her heart and  on her mind. She began to think a parting favor should not be a monogrammed matchbook, but something that guests would really appreciate at the end of a long day.  Something quite simple and refreshing. The type of thing that one looks for when rummaging in the kitchen in your party clothes before going upstairs to take off your mascara.

She first thought of donuts with little cartons of milk. What is nicer when you are worn out and just want to go home and take off your party clothes than a nice warm donut with a cold, refreshing glass of milk?

We were stymied, though, by how we would arrange for warm donuts at that hour of the evening. We  could get them in New York at any hour, but there were no all-night donut shops on that part of the Cape.

Some thought was even given to one perfect hamburger slider with a tiny cone of french fries. I believe the hotel could have accomodated us, but we had several vegetarians on the guest list.

The Bride came to the conclusion that we were making it more complex than it needed to be. What a person wants at the end of a long day in pinchy shoes, after having eaten a long meal with many courses and varieties of foodstuffs, was something simple yet indulgent.

In a word, sweets.

What she envisioned, however, was not almonds encased in dusty tulle, but a table laden with bonbons.

Pink and white bonbons to be precise, to complement the cake.

 

 

 

Pink and white bonbons in large glass containers with starry little signs and silvery mercury glass candlesticks with flickering flames.

 

 

 

Candy.  Childhood candy in particular that made everyone, young or old,  male or female, let out a squeal and immediately unwrap and place around their necks while they danced.

 

Footed vases standing at attention filled with pink pastels of M&M's and silver ladles to help you fill your pockets - and your cheeks.

 

 

Cranberry and vanilla taffy in neat wax-papered twists.

 

 

 

Watermelon jellybeans in apothecary jars for just what the doctor ordered.

 

 

A glass jar filled with wiggly gummy lobsters ready for their escape, for we were, after all, on Cape Cod.

 

 

 

In the center, beautifully arranged but small enough so as not to detract from the towering cake, a simple white rectangle of macaroons,   perfect mouthfuls of raspberry,  white chocolate, or lychee.

 

 

 

 

 

Trés doux.

 

So much candy! So many bonbons! What was a girl or boy to do?

If you could not stuff one more candy necklace into your  little satin clutch, or if your suit pocket could hold not one more handful of taffy, or if you just plain wanted to dip a silver ladle into each and every jar,

 

monogrammed bags sitting in her great grandmother's bowl were  provided for your convenience.

 

 

It was, indeed, a very sweet indulgence before The Bride and The Groom were driven away into the starry night.

A  very sweet last taste to linger on our lips as we were left on the steps of the hotel waving good bye.

A very comforting, crinkly bag to hold in a lap on the car ride home, with just enough weight to help offset the absence that was already forming in my heart.

Trés doux.

Thursday and Popcorn is for Dinner

 

 

So here's what I've discovered about having an (almost) empty house: there is no need for food. Breakfast is a wrap from Starbucks; lunch is a sandwich from the corporate cafeteria; dinner, last night was stale matzoh with avocado spread on it; tonight it was 100-calorie microwave popcorn. There is, however, several bottles of wine, which makes it all the more like that first apartment.

So it seems that the empty nesting? Is a lot like being single only in some cases, with a partner.

Honestly, I cannot remember a time when our house had no peanut butter; cream cheese; crackers; cheese other than that shredded crap; or bread.  I think we are saving money on food and maybe even losing weight (probably not as there is all that candy that was not used for the "candy bar" at the wedding, and I opened the Snowcaps. Shhh! Don't tell Mr. Pom.)

The newlyweds and the rest of the Poms THANK YOU ALL for your lovely comments, hearfelt wishes, and general support and applause for the deed well done. The newlyweds are knee-deep in moving their stuff into their first apartment and although she no longer lives here, UPS rings the bell at least once a day with packages from home stores. We are now like a halfway house for brown cartons.

Just to keep us on our toes in case we think that weekends are for relaxing, we are also knee-deep in getting Micalangela ready to go back to college,  where she has a summer job on campus. At the same time, June was the start of the lease on the off campus apartment for the fall, so she is moving in there with her friends until she moves to the dorm for the summer job. After work, I went to Home Goods with her after work and trawled the aisles trying to find "cool stuff" for the house.

Tomorrow night, I will take out the whip and crack it to get her to actually pack a single fork or spoon, as well as chairs, tables, clothes, computers, etc, so we can leave at 6 a.m. Saturday morning for Baltimore to move her in to the house that we have heard from another roommate is kind of "dirty" and has "roaches". Oh, joy. Seems that Baltimore landlords like to charge market value rents for unfurnished student housing, but don't believe they need to 1) clean; 2) paint;or 3) exterminate student housing. They have no idea that a Noo Yawk lawyer is heading down there and intends to make a lot of NOISE.

I am now waiting for a steroid prescription, which no one seems to be able to find at CVS, as the sinus infection is not responding to the Augmentin. I dragged my sorry self all the way to CVS after Home Goods only to have the clerk tell me they never received the script. We don't use CVS- or rather we never used CVS - because we used a local, indepedent pharmacy for many years.

Unfortunately they closed up after 25 years with no notice because they could no longer make any profit now that the company that owns or is associated CVS convinced the insurance companies not to pay for any script that gets more than one refill unless it is filled by mail order. I cannot tell you how much I hate CVS, and judging by the lines and the grumbling, and the yelling, many people share my antipathy.

While I was at CVS, the woman in front of me was making a phone call while simultaneously picking up her prescriptions. As the clerk tried to ask her questions, she continued with her very loud phone call while miming her answers to him.This was 1)time-consuming, and 2) obnoxious.

Here's the kicker: this woman is a doctor and her loud cell phone call was to a patient, Mrs. X (I am not publishing the patient's name, but I know it because she greeted her by name and repeated it a few times), who I now know had surgery on 5/15; whose labs are back and show that her iron count is down; whose diet has not returned to normal since the surgery; and now needs to start taking iron pills and come in for new bloodwork.

Now, maybe I'm wrong but pretty sure I'm not: there's a small matter of doctor-patient privilege. I am fairly familiar with the concept  from my own job as an attorney, where we have that little matter known as attorney-client privilege. I would no more think of discussing a client's case on my cell phone in CVS than I would sending an email with Personally Identifiable Information (PII)(Social Security number; date of birth; medical records, etc) from work, which is an offense punishable by immediate termination.

So what was this 40-something doctor thinking of, and more importantly, what is her specialty so I make sure I never see her as a patient? Has she lost her mind?

Enough of my rant. I am looking forward to having a large cappucino at a sidewalk table in the sun on Sunday morning at Baltimore harbor. It's the simple things, right?

 

THE TALE OF THE WEDDING GOWN

 

I could show you the photographs from Kleinfeld's 18 months ago when Mrs. Newly Wed, then The Fiancee, tried on 5 gowns and kept coming back to the very first one she tried on. ( I could, that is, if Mrs. Newly Wed hadn't deleted them from my phone because she didn't trust her own mother to leak pictures of it to family; friends; Mr. Newly Wed; or the blog.)

As if!

She kept coming back to that very first one, the one with the pleated, fitted strapless sweetheart neckline, dropped waist, and a skirt that bloome into tiers of gentle, sheer ruffles edged in white grossgrain. However, there was one other dress that she liked and she went back and forth between them.

I held my breath. The first dress was made as if it had been created for her when she was 5 years old and the designer could see into the future to what a beautiful woman she would become, and made a dress that combined her grown up beauty with her 5 year old whimsy and charm.

The Bride could not decide. She was unsure if she should buy any dress that day; it was supposed to be a just-looking day. The experienced sales staff quietly produced a sheer tulle veil and pinned it to her head with a crystal comb. Another silently tucked a silk bouquet into her arms. She looked at herself, her lower lip quivered, my eyes filled with tears, and then Randy came over and took her hand.

You look lovely, he said. Where is the wedding to be held?

By the sea, she said, on Cape Cod in the spring.

Oh my dear, this dress is just made for an outdoor spring wedding. The wind will pick up the tiers and they will move in the wind like the froth of the breakers on the shore. (I may have made up the breakers part but I swear he said the rest).

Will you say yes to the dress?

She looked at herself one more time and her eyes lit up with a smile. Yes, she said, barely audible, yes.

When we left the store, she called The Fiance, who was working in a physics lab buried deep under a mountain in Italy. After she finished speaking with him, I took the phone from her, and barely able to get the words out, I said, "When you see your bride walking down the aisle in this dress, your heart will stop and you will know you have no doubt that you have made the right decision to marry my daughter."

And you know what? After the wedding, he told me that when he saw her for the first time in her dress at the wedding, all he could think of was our phone call and what I said, and that it was exactly how he felt. A fairy tale from New York to South Carolina to Italy and back.

On the day she was to pick up the gown, I was already on the Cape making everything spic and span and painted. She went with her Dad to get the dress and they could barely fit it in the car.

This is all I got to see when she arrived on The Cape with The Dress in tow. You wouldn't believe how it was stuffed and how many layers of plastic were over it.

 

 

What to do with it in a small cottage? Why not hang it from your a flimsy curtain rod in your parents' bedroom so it scared the bejeebers out of them every night when they got up to use the bathroom?

(BTW - Kathy Nesi was the first commentator to guess that this was the wedding gown AND the bags were welcome bags for out of town guests. Her prize is a postcard from Cape Cod. Only I forgot to send it to her; or to buy it. She'll forgive me. I'll get one the next time, I swear!)

The dress was so expertly packed that all we had to do was unzip it out of the garment bag a few days before the wedding to let it air. (I did sneak certain friends and relatives in to take a peer - do not tell her!)

On the day of, many plans were discussed as to where The Dress  would be photographed before The Bride donned it. Apparently, placement in very odd settings of the pure white, fragile, very expensive gown that your daughter is to wear in an hour for the biggest event in her life is de riguer.

First idea: in the middle of the living room! That's cool, controllable, safe. Co-Mo was elected to climb on the sofa being the tallest member of the wedding party and due to MOB being faint of heart.

 

 

Ehh, nothing over the top about this shot.

 

 

Oh, said the very lovely and very hardworking photographer, I want to take The Dress outside and photograph it against the grass, the house, and especially anywhere that has a thick layer of dirt on the ground.

 

So let's take the gown to various odd locations, all the while trying not to snag it, drag it, or get it dirty. Poor Co-Mo!

 

 

The photographer arrives at a decision: the dress is to be photographed against  the blooming rhododendrons. Hanging from the blooming rhododendrons. The blooming, colorful rhododendrons where the MOB and FOB had no time to mulch.

Over my dead body says The MOB. There's dirt on the ground! But the color of the blossoms, the green of the leaves, says the photographer! What about a sheet on the ground?, says the MOB. It'll show in the shot! exclaims the hardworking photographer.

 

 

 

So we head for the little rise over the stone wall behind the patio. To make certain that The MOB really gets the shakes,  let's hang it from a set of old outdoor lights, the ones that were left up all winter and are dirty, frayed, fragile, and barely able to hold up a few paper decorations. (The Brides-Man wants the record to reflect  that he was coerced into helping the photographer and he is just glad that The Bride was having her make up done and could not see any of what was going on.)

 

 

I am sure that the photographer (who was a darling and the hardest working photographer I have ever seen at a wedding) got amazing shots whilst  The Mother of the Bride and The Brides-Man were having a series of strokes as the dress jumps down the wire 5 times and almost landed in the dirt FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE THE BRIDE WAS TO PUT IT ON. 

 

All's well that ends well: here is the dress with The Bride in it, all pearly white and fluffy romantic, as The MOB and The FOB hand her off at the altar. (Really, I am not pushing her, I am just gently nudging her to get on with it already, this has been two years in the making!)

Right now, The Dress is back in its bag and laying on a chair in our living room where Mrs. Newly Wed flung it on her way to her Newlywed Apartment. She was heard to exclaim as she drove out of sight, "Mom, get it cleaned before I have to wear it to the church wedding on June 23....."

 

The End.