Monday, July 03, 2006
But what about Wal-mart?
I'm the single mother of a twelve-year-old boy, so I've seen my share of kid movies. Traditional Disney movies, of course, have been politically deconstructed by every liberal with a VCR, but even the "new" animated movies I've taken my son to over the years have caused me, as a liberal mom, to wince. Pixar, Disney's once-subsidiary, promoted misogyny (complete with body parts standing in for female characters) in Toy Story (its sequel, while better politically, failed as a movie); in A Bug's Life, the message seemed to be the intrinsic value of capitalism over less hierarchical political structures; worst of all, in The Incredibles, the traditionally-defined, white nuclear family saved the world from mercenary characters with stereotypically Jewish characteristics. Only Dreamworks's animated comedy Shrek provided welcome relief to Pixar's colorfully hidden conservatism. Now, with Over the Hedge, Dreamworks once again has managed to entertain kids without alienating lefty parents. Over the Hedge comments on sprawl, junk food, greed, and privilege. It critiques a world in which some take more than they need and are willing to sacrifice those with less power in order to keep what they have.
The story's arc is reminiscent of A Bug's Life: A stranger (in this case, RJ the raccoon) joins a band of creatures to exploit their abilities, comes to love them, reveals his duplicity, expresses his feelings, and is forgiven. But this movie also contains several nods to the Greens: For example, upon discovering an SUV, RJ explains that humans need SUVs because "[we] are slowly losing [our] ability to walk." Another creature asks, "It's so big! How many humans does it carry?" And RJ answers, "Usually, one!" When the animals eat tortilla chips modeled after Doritos, RJ lists the chemical ingredients and there's an atomic-scale explosion. The film also nods to those who take issue with Bush's unilateral foreign policy. The greediest suburban property owner, upon learning of the illegality of the vermin extermination system she desires, exclaims, "I don't care if it's against the Geneva Convention! I want it!" And, unlike The Incredibles, which touted the biologically created nuclear family above all else, Over the Hedge suggests that "family" is what you make it.
This smart film isn't politically perfect, of course. The unmarried American female is demonized as a life-hating opportunist, and the only woman of color who acts as a main character in the film (Wanda Sykes) portrays a skunk with lines such as, "I look like a nest and smell like a swamp" and, "I can clear a room... that I can do." Still, compared to the character Legs in Toy Story and the "invisible" Violet in The Incredibles, the women in Over the Hedge give liberals much less about which to complain. Most troublingly, however, this movie also shared its promotional advertising with Wal-mart, the company that contributes most to sprawl and the collapse of our labor and ecosystems. I've struggled to make sense of this seeming hypocrisy, just as I've struggled to make sense of my own: I am liberal, single mother who, nonetheless, has spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on politically objectionable kid movies and the merchandise they've inspired.
The story's arc is reminiscent of A Bug's Life: A stranger (in this case, RJ the raccoon) joins a band of creatures to exploit their abilities, comes to love them, reveals his duplicity, expresses his feelings, and is forgiven. But this movie also contains several nods to the Greens: For example, upon discovering an SUV, RJ explains that humans need SUVs because "[we] are slowly losing [our] ability to walk." Another creature asks, "It's so big! How many humans does it carry?" And RJ answers, "Usually, one!" When the animals eat tortilla chips modeled after Doritos, RJ lists the chemical ingredients and there's an atomic-scale explosion. The film also nods to those who take issue with Bush's unilateral foreign policy. The greediest suburban property owner, upon learning of the illegality of the vermin extermination system she desires, exclaims, "I don't care if it's against the Geneva Convention! I want it!" And, unlike The Incredibles, which touted the biologically created nuclear family above all else, Over the Hedge suggests that "family" is what you make it.
This smart film isn't politically perfect, of course. The unmarried American female is demonized as a life-hating opportunist, and the only woman of color who acts as a main character in the film (Wanda Sykes) portrays a skunk with lines such as, "I look like a nest and smell like a swamp" and, "I can clear a room... that I can do." Still, compared to the character Legs in Toy Story and the "invisible" Violet in The Incredibles, the women in Over the Hedge give liberals much less about which to complain. Most troublingly, however, this movie also shared its promotional advertising with Wal-mart, the company that contributes most to sprawl and the collapse of our labor and ecosystems. I've struggled to make sense of this seeming hypocrisy, just as I've struggled to make sense of my own: I am liberal, single mother who, nonetheless, has spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on politically objectionable kid movies and the merchandise they've inspired.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
You Can't Always Get What You Want
(It’s about the song).
This morning I got into the van to go to a youth meeting—actually, a meeting about youth—down at St. Anthony of Padua. We’re in discussion as a parish about whether to do more things as an east-of-Grand bloc of parishes. Specifically about youth and young adult issues. It’s odd. The same people were at this meeting as were at the one I attended in May, but back then, they were curious, interested, optimistic—and this time, they were big ole naysayers. Who knows. Maybe it will work out. Or maybe this will show me what we don’t exactly want to do and then learn how to approach YPIUS, which is the youth group at my parish.
But before the meeting, in the car, I turned off the Smithsonian Folkways for Children CD (or whatever it was called). I had heard enough of Woody Guthrie feeling proud of himself about being so authentic and Pete Seeger saying “cock-a-doodle-do”, which he does in at least two songs. One is appropriate: I had a rooster/the rooster pleased me/I fed my rooster neath the greenberry tree/the little rooster went cock-a-doodle-do-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-do. But the other one is essentially gratuitous roosters: All around the kitchen, cock-a-doodle-doodle-do! Repeat 97 times. Loosely integrate a hokey-pokey style dance. Enough!
So off went the cock-a-doodle music and on went one of our oldies stations, which is where I am in life right now. I am too old for edgy rock music, too white for any station billing itself as “Smooth Jazz” or “Hip Hop”, too young for “Adult Contemporary”, and too ADD right this minute to listen to NPR, which is the usual car selection. But sometimes I can agree enough with the non-Clear Channel oldies station (technically, 70s and 80s, not 50s and 60s) that I listen. The Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on and I blared it, kids in the car staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And they’re 4 ½ and almost 2.
It brought me back to 1999 or so. I can’t remember the exact year. It was before my parents moved here (pre-2000) but after we moved to Halliday (post-1998) so I would guess I’m right. My cousin Adrienne got pregnant accidentally, I suppose she was about 20, unmarried, still living at home. The father wasn’t anybody’s favorite anything. My brother later referred to him as Jabba The Hut, and for Ian to say that, you must understand that this guy was both gigantic and slovenly. And probably liked chaining up skinny young things in bikinis and speaking in pidgin English: me Jabba no barter.
Instead of what might have been a wise decision and breaking off the relationship and keeping the baby a secret, she decides to get married to him. Now, Catholics who know they are pregnant are not supposed to get married during the pregnancy—a priest is happy to marry them (at least he should be) after the baby is born and there’s been time for reflection, but you don’t take marriage lightly (which is also why our divorce laws are so irritatingly complex and tend to be unfair in their application—but I tend to agree with the pregnancy rule). So my aunt found a UCC minister who was willing to come to their home and marry these two in the living room. My aunt has a big rambling house in north county, there was plenty of room for all of us and for him and his fat mother and sister. And his first child. By another woman. That he had custody of, essentially, I suppose, because his mother was permanent childcare? Don’t know. I only knew him for that one day—they were divorced within a year, after she’d had the baby (Amethyst Dawn), had a stroke, and was left pretty much completely debilitated for some time. And lost custody of Amethyst to that gross, gross man, as well as forced to pay child support when she couldn’t even stay awake for longer than 3 hours at a time. It quickly became a dire situation, very sad, like something out of a Dorothy Allison novel. I’ve never met Amethyst; I have no idea even how Adrienne is—she doesn’t come to my parents’ Christmas party, even when her mom and dad come, and her smart funny sister Amanda and her smart funny brother Adam come over.
At the wedding, because I was young, relatively, and because I had no children of my own yet, I could not bridge the gap emotionally between myself (smart, funny, married homeowner with a job that I was) and the real adults in the room, my aunt, my grandmother, a few of my uncles. They all knew how grim this was. This was not a couple who would have settled down and had a couple more kids and lived in suburbia and laughed later on, in their 40s, when they told friends how stupid they were not to know how to use a condom way back when. This was not my brother, who got a girl pregnant and didn’t marry her right away, for all the Catholic reasons, frankly—and then stayed by Ashley and married her when Kennedy was 2. These were not people who could take the long view. There was rumor that there was a considerable amount of drugs going into both parties’ systems, the specific rumor was the hoosier crack: crystal meth. At the wedding, all I could think of was, wow, am I glad I did things in the right order. Not, wow, they don’t even know there is an order. They don’t know what tomorrow is.
The house was big, but the rooms were chopped up, such that the wedding happened in the front room, the immediate family in attendance, and most of the concerned guests in the hall and the dining room. Since I didn’t have any money on this horse, I was in the kitchen. I could hear the ceremony, but didn’t see it. My grandmother, who by rights probably should have been in the living room, stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, crying. Mike stood next to me, probably wondering what the hell I’d dragged him to this time and when could we go get a soda and high tail it back to south city. And my uncle Patrick stood on my left.
Patrick has been around a couple of blocks. He was in the Navy, on the Kitty Hawk, and then later in the Marines, smart as a whip like most of my father’s siblings, has a degree from Purdue in mathematics, for instance. Nowadays he’s married to his high school sweetheart and is a vice-principal at a north county high school. But before this, he married a topless dancer, who later died, and Brooke, down in Houston, who later died. He has his fair share of tattoos from the Phillipines, and once he called my grandmother from the Navy and said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Just that. Two days later we invaded Grenada—but he was safe in San Diego. He’s my godfather and he’s ok. Can’t say that about all my uncles, but Pat came out smelling like a rose. So he’s standing to my left, and the UCC minister is talking extemporaneously, pretending what she’s doing is both holy and welcome. She starts the marriage ceremony, and Patrick, just loud enough for me, possibly my uncle Glennon standing on the other side, to hear, starts whistling that song:
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need
This morning I got into the van to go to a youth meeting—actually, a meeting about youth—down at St. Anthony of Padua. We’re in discussion as a parish about whether to do more things as an east-of-Grand bloc of parishes. Specifically about youth and young adult issues. It’s odd. The same people were at this meeting as were at the one I attended in May, but back then, they were curious, interested, optimistic—and this time, they were big ole naysayers. Who knows. Maybe it will work out. Or maybe this will show me what we don’t exactly want to do and then learn how to approach YPIUS, which is the youth group at my parish.
But before the meeting, in the car, I turned off the Smithsonian Folkways for Children CD (or whatever it was called). I had heard enough of Woody Guthrie feeling proud of himself about being so authentic and Pete Seeger saying “cock-a-doodle-do”, which he does in at least two songs. One is appropriate: I had a rooster/the rooster pleased me/I fed my rooster neath the greenberry tree/the little rooster went cock-a-doodle-do-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-do. But the other one is essentially gratuitous roosters: All around the kitchen, cock-a-doodle-doodle-do! Repeat 97 times. Loosely integrate a hokey-pokey style dance. Enough!
So off went the cock-a-doodle music and on went one of our oldies stations, which is where I am in life right now. I am too old for edgy rock music, too white for any station billing itself as “Smooth Jazz” or “Hip Hop”, too young for “Adult Contemporary”, and too ADD right this minute to listen to NPR, which is the usual car selection. But sometimes I can agree enough with the non-Clear Channel oldies station (technically, 70s and 80s, not 50s and 60s) that I listen. The Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on and I blared it, kids in the car staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And they’re 4 ½ and almost 2.
It brought me back to 1999 or so. I can’t remember the exact year. It was before my parents moved here (pre-2000) but after we moved to Halliday (post-1998) so I would guess I’m right. My cousin Adrienne got pregnant accidentally, I suppose she was about 20, unmarried, still living at home. The father wasn’t anybody’s favorite anything. My brother later referred to him as Jabba The Hut, and for Ian to say that, you must understand that this guy was both gigantic and slovenly. And probably liked chaining up skinny young things in bikinis and speaking in pidgin English: me Jabba no barter.
Instead of what might have been a wise decision and breaking off the relationship and keeping the baby a secret, she decides to get married to him. Now, Catholics who know they are pregnant are not supposed to get married during the pregnancy—a priest is happy to marry them (at least he should be) after the baby is born and there’s been time for reflection, but you don’t take marriage lightly (which is also why our divorce laws are so irritatingly complex and tend to be unfair in their application—but I tend to agree with the pregnancy rule). So my aunt found a UCC minister who was willing to come to their home and marry these two in the living room. My aunt has a big rambling house in north county, there was plenty of room for all of us and for him and his fat mother and sister. And his first child. By another woman. That he had custody of, essentially, I suppose, because his mother was permanent childcare? Don’t know. I only knew him for that one day—they were divorced within a year, after she’d had the baby (Amethyst Dawn), had a stroke, and was left pretty much completely debilitated for some time. And lost custody of Amethyst to that gross, gross man, as well as forced to pay child support when she couldn’t even stay awake for longer than 3 hours at a time. It quickly became a dire situation, very sad, like something out of a Dorothy Allison novel. I’ve never met Amethyst; I have no idea even how Adrienne is—she doesn’t come to my parents’ Christmas party, even when her mom and dad come, and her smart funny sister Amanda and her smart funny brother Adam come over.
At the wedding, because I was young, relatively, and because I had no children of my own yet, I could not bridge the gap emotionally between myself (smart, funny, married homeowner with a job that I was) and the real adults in the room, my aunt, my grandmother, a few of my uncles. They all knew how grim this was. This was not a couple who would have settled down and had a couple more kids and lived in suburbia and laughed later on, in their 40s, when they told friends how stupid they were not to know how to use a condom way back when. This was not my brother, who got a girl pregnant and didn’t marry her right away, for all the Catholic reasons, frankly—and then stayed by Ashley and married her when Kennedy was 2. These were not people who could take the long view. There was rumor that there was a considerable amount of drugs going into both parties’ systems, the specific rumor was the hoosier crack: crystal meth. At the wedding, all I could think of was, wow, am I glad I did things in the right order. Not, wow, they don’t even know there is an order. They don’t know what tomorrow is.
The house was big, but the rooms were chopped up, such that the wedding happened in the front room, the immediate family in attendance, and most of the concerned guests in the hall and the dining room. Since I didn’t have any money on this horse, I was in the kitchen. I could hear the ceremony, but didn’t see it. My grandmother, who by rights probably should have been in the living room, stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, crying. Mike stood next to me, probably wondering what the hell I’d dragged him to this time and when could we go get a soda and high tail it back to south city. And my uncle Patrick stood on my left.
Patrick has been around a couple of blocks. He was in the Navy, on the Kitty Hawk, and then later in the Marines, smart as a whip like most of my father’s siblings, has a degree from Purdue in mathematics, for instance. Nowadays he’s married to his high school sweetheart and is a vice-principal at a north county high school. But before this, he married a topless dancer, who later died, and Brooke, down in Houston, who later died. He has his fair share of tattoos from the Phillipines, and once he called my grandmother from the Navy and said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Just that. Two days later we invaded Grenada—but he was safe in San Diego. He’s my godfather and he’s ok. Can’t say that about all my uncles, but Pat came out smelling like a rose. So he’s standing to my left, and the UCC minister is talking extemporaneously, pretending what she’s doing is both holy and welcome. She starts the marriage ceremony, and Patrick, just loud enough for me, possibly my uncle Glennon standing on the other side, to hear, starts whistling that song:
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
How Beloved is Beloved and other thoughts
The New York Times recently published the results of their survey to find out what is the best work of fiction in the last 25 years. The winner was Beloved by Toni Morrison. (here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html) I can't say that I'm surprised and in fact I am ok with the results. Beloved is an excellent novel by one of America's best living novelist. I know that other critics have shunned the very concept of such a list, arguing that you simply cannot pick ONE book as the best and most representative of American fiction. I don't want to touch this point because I think overall literary fiction needs any positive press it can get. Already, many news outlets have reviewed the list, including Slate and NPR. My initial reactions to seeing it were one: damn, Roth had a lot of novels nominated; and two: where are the post-modernists? Where's Pynchon, Barth, and David Foster Wallace? DeLillo is well represented, and that's about it.
My explanation for this is that American post-modernists simply aren't that good. Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" are the best post-modern novels that I've read. DeLillo's White Noise is exactly that in comparison. I'm curious how history will judge American post-modernism. Pynchon will certainly remain in the canon, but I wonder how many others will?
My explanation for this is that American post-modernists simply aren't that good. Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" are the best post-modern novels that I've read. DeLillo's White Noise is exactly that in comparison. I'm curious how history will judge American post-modernism. Pynchon will certainly remain in the canon, but I wonder how many others will?
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Just the Facts, Ma'am
When I was in Belize, I overheard an American tourist talking about his reading habits to his companion during lunch. This man said that he mostly read nonfiction and particularly disdained narrative nonfiction. "What I really prefer to read are textbooks," he added.
Naturally, my brain exploded, and not because I hate reading textbooks. To simply consume information or process data misses out on the whole point of critical reading and in fact the entire enterprise of a liberal arts education. Such passivity on the reader's part distills intellectual inquiry into rote memorization, like learning a language by reading flash cards.
I wondered how this person reacts to culture. Does he simply abide by whatever trends or ideas are the norm? Dancing With the Stars is a hit show, I must watch that! Clay Aiken won American Idol, I have to buy his CD! It saddens me that someone can be so disengaged with culture, especially when one is in such a rich and distinct one as Belize. I wonder if this person ever left the 100 yard area of downtown San Pedro to experience the rest of the country, or if he didn't just get to know it by reading a brochure.
Naturally, my brain exploded, and not because I hate reading textbooks. To simply consume information or process data misses out on the whole point of critical reading and in fact the entire enterprise of a liberal arts education. Such passivity on the reader's part distills intellectual inquiry into rote memorization, like learning a language by reading flash cards.
I wondered how this person reacts to culture. Does he simply abide by whatever trends or ideas are the norm? Dancing With the Stars is a hit show, I must watch that! Clay Aiken won American Idol, I have to buy his CD! It saddens me that someone can be so disengaged with culture, especially when one is in such a rich and distinct one as Belize. I wonder if this person ever left the 100 yard area of downtown San Pedro to experience the rest of the country, or if he didn't just get to know it by reading a brochure.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
My Tremendous Husband
My husband always misuses the word tremendous. He thinks it is a superlative, as in, "I had a tremendous time." He is always describing the very best things as if they were tremendous. I've been married to him for almost eight years, but I've never corrected him, never once told him that tremendous means large, as in tremendous debt.
As an editor by trade, I am often annoyed by abuses of the English language. I cringe at data used in the singular. Impact as a verb is abhorrent. I generally bemoan the sad state of the apostrophe. Hyphens are a daily horror. The comma, a travesty. Don't even get me started on the semicolon.
Not that I'm a purist. A wise person once said that an inflexible language is a dead language. There is a certain latitude one may employ. I have recently accepted into my personal lexicon the word email as a verb. There is a precedent for it: We say that we are going to mail a letter just as easily as we say we're going to deliver the mail.
Although such misuses and abuses usually make me apoplectic, my husband's idiosyncratic vernacular often takes on the quality of an aphrodisiac. It's his bald enthusiasm for the word tremendous that undoes me, his obliviousness to the error. This is a man who can use the word gal without a hint of offensiveness. He isn't some swaggering Neanderthal talking down to the little lady. When he calls me his gal, the word is rooted in the most earnest bluegrass song ever sung. Gal is ringed in daisies, all the petals saying he loves me. It's quite tremendous.
As an editor by trade, I am often annoyed by abuses of the English language. I cringe at data used in the singular. Impact as a verb is abhorrent. I generally bemoan the sad state of the apostrophe. Hyphens are a daily horror. The comma, a travesty. Don't even get me started on the semicolon.
Not that I'm a purist. A wise person once said that an inflexible language is a dead language. There is a certain latitude one may employ. I have recently accepted into my personal lexicon the word email as a verb. There is a precedent for it: We say that we are going to mail a letter just as easily as we say we're going to deliver the mail.
Although such misuses and abuses usually make me apoplectic, my husband's idiosyncratic vernacular often takes on the quality of an aphrodisiac. It's his bald enthusiasm for the word tremendous that undoes me, his obliviousness to the error. This is a man who can use the word gal without a hint of offensiveness. He isn't some swaggering Neanderthal talking down to the little lady. When he calls me his gal, the word is rooted in the most earnest bluegrass song ever sung. Gal is ringed in daisies, all the petals saying he loves me. It's quite tremendous.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Sibling Revivalry
There are 8 years separating me and my next younger sister. Of course, there’s a brother in between us, but I have about as much in common with him as I do with any isolationist mortgage broker who lives in Texas. Bevin is 23, and then Colleen is 2 years younger, about to turn 21 this June. They both attend Mizzou, and this year they live together on East Campus. I’m visiting this week, just a few days, with my girls, who are just 3 years apart themselves.
Being 8 years older than Bevin, and 10 ½ more than Colleen, I was old enough to change diapers when they came along, but then I went to junior high and high school and away from them. They have grown up as acquaintances, people who lived with my parents. I didn’t really come to know them until after I was a married homeowner, when my parents moved up to St. Louis, just a block away, as if we were some long-term family with roots in the area. Which we are, except for that whole 20 years on the road thing we did.
They are much cooler than I am—than I ever was. They know how to drink hard liquor and how to dance at bars. They are smart and interesting, and I’m a mom of two kids who drives a mini-van. I look at them and I know that they wouldn’t have much tolerance for me if there wasn’t kinship. Of course, that road runs both ways; they are lucky too for the bond.
Their apartment, a full floor of a house, is filled with a hodgepodge of cast-off furniture and knickknacks, some from my house, some from my mother’s. I’m sitting in a chair I stole from the dorm; Bevin’s dresser is mine, simply painted black. The kitchen table was from my first apartment, the pots are my parents’ first cookware. There are little reminders everywhere, but jarring juxtapositions as well. The Day of the Dead statue by the computer and the lacquered mannequin in the living room are creepy and out of place next to that end table from my grandmother’s house. It’s like walking through a dreamscape—everything seems right, except for the glowing pink dog.
They’re sort of like that, too. We have similar tendencies towards obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Bevin’s is far more pronounced. The arguments sound like ones I’ve had, but they’re a little edgier. The bumper stickers on the coffee table are places I once frequented—but I don’t put bumper stickers on my coffee table anymore. Wanting to balance my visit with a friend’s birthday night and feeling guilty is very familiar to times when they visited me in college. Colleen’s boyfriend has a similar laid-back stay-in-the-background demeanor Mike once had (but no longer).
Soon, perhaps already, we will all be adults together. They will marry, or maybe not, have kids, or maybe not, and we will take pictures of the whole family on my parents’ back porch. We will argue about politics and religion and go camping and get drunk and wonder how we could possibly come from the same family. Our parents will age and we will resent each other for being there, or not being there, or not being able to be there but desperately wanting to. We will send annoying Christmas letters to each other and know in our hearts that everyone is lying.
But I hope we don’t disappear from each other’s lives. Even my brother—in the end, we know each other better than anyone can, I was there when each of them was born. We have enjoyed and survived our childhoods together and there is this common memory, or shared base, perhaps, that no one else in our lives, no matter how close we may think we are to that person, can ever have.
Bevin stands in the doorway drinking whiskey and soda, teasing my younger daughter and making her laugh.
Being 8 years older than Bevin, and 10 ½ more than Colleen, I was old enough to change diapers when they came along, but then I went to junior high and high school and away from them. They have grown up as acquaintances, people who lived with my parents. I didn’t really come to know them until after I was a married homeowner, when my parents moved up to St. Louis, just a block away, as if we were some long-term family with roots in the area. Which we are, except for that whole 20 years on the road thing we did.
They are much cooler than I am—than I ever was. They know how to drink hard liquor and how to dance at bars. They are smart and interesting, and I’m a mom of two kids who drives a mini-van. I look at them and I know that they wouldn’t have much tolerance for me if there wasn’t kinship. Of course, that road runs both ways; they are lucky too for the bond.
Their apartment, a full floor of a house, is filled with a hodgepodge of cast-off furniture and knickknacks, some from my house, some from my mother’s. I’m sitting in a chair I stole from the dorm; Bevin’s dresser is mine, simply painted black. The kitchen table was from my first apartment, the pots are my parents’ first cookware. There are little reminders everywhere, but jarring juxtapositions as well. The Day of the Dead statue by the computer and the lacquered mannequin in the living room are creepy and out of place next to that end table from my grandmother’s house. It’s like walking through a dreamscape—everything seems right, except for the glowing pink dog.
They’re sort of like that, too. We have similar tendencies towards obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Bevin’s is far more pronounced. The arguments sound like ones I’ve had, but they’re a little edgier. The bumper stickers on the coffee table are places I once frequented—but I don’t put bumper stickers on my coffee table anymore. Wanting to balance my visit with a friend’s birthday night and feeling guilty is very familiar to times when they visited me in college. Colleen’s boyfriend has a similar laid-back stay-in-the-background demeanor Mike once had (but no longer).
Soon, perhaps already, we will all be adults together. They will marry, or maybe not, have kids, or maybe not, and we will take pictures of the whole family on my parents’ back porch. We will argue about politics and religion and go camping and get drunk and wonder how we could possibly come from the same family. Our parents will age and we will resent each other for being there, or not being there, or not being able to be there but desperately wanting to. We will send annoying Christmas letters to each other and know in our hearts that everyone is lying.
But I hope we don’t disappear from each other’s lives. Even my brother—in the end, we know each other better than anyone can, I was there when each of them was born. We have enjoyed and survived our childhoods together and there is this common memory, or shared base, perhaps, that no one else in our lives, no matter how close we may think we are to that person, can ever have.
Bevin stands in the doorway drinking whiskey and soda, teasing my younger daughter and making her laugh.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Sourdough Success
Ok, I will admit I have a bread machine, which may not be the most frugal thing to admit having. It's just that I'm lousy at making bread, but I like bread, good bread, and I don't like to fork over the money for good bread if I can make it myself. Which I can't. So this mental loop led me to ask for a bread machine for Christmas. My mother-in-law obliged and also gave me a giant jar of bread machine yeast. I have faithfully followed directions and have been very successful.
But I knew the yeast jar would eventually run out and the price of yeast in a jar (which of course the bread machine makers claim is the only type you should use) would make homemade bread more expensive than I wanted it to be. I had read about sourdough and thought maybe I could catch some wild yeast in a starter and plunge into months of experimentation.
Didn't have to--a friend passed on a bag of "Amish Friendship Bread" starter and I was off to the races.
I made some Amish Friendship Bread, which, with its package of vanilla pudding as an ingredient, probably isn't very Amish. Then I separated and set aside some of the starter I'm supposed to pass on to someone else (hence, “friendship”), and hoped for the best.
So yesterday I set out a bowl full of 1 cup of starter, 1 cup of flour, and some water to make it thin. I came back to it today, combined it with flour, salt, a little sugar, some oil, a little water, in the bread machine container and set it to "dough". Then I let it rise a while, and lastly, cooked it on the french bread setting.
It is “slow food” to the max. All told, from yesterday's proofing to actually eating bread today, there was a 28 hour process. Of course, only a couple of minutes at the very beginning, and then a few more to put it in the machine, and again to make sure it was a dry enough dough (it wasn't: I am still learning, obviously), and then walk away. So it wouldn't be anything I'd suggest for spontaneous use, but far less labor-intensive than “28 hour” sounds. Just like, actually, the idea that “52 hour labor with Maeve” sounds like a frighteningly long time, but it isn’t—just in fits and spurts. Not to compare yeast bread with my second daughter’s labor.
And oh it was good bread. A little dense (I think the dough was too thin this time--next time, less water), but smelled like beer and the crust was awesome. Tiny little burst bubbles on the surface, crunchy, chewy, hearty, delicious.
Now, of course, I have a bowl of fermenting flour on my countertop. But, for those of you who know me, that would just like me.
But I knew the yeast jar would eventually run out and the price of yeast in a jar (which of course the bread machine makers claim is the only type you should use) would make homemade bread more expensive than I wanted it to be. I had read about sourdough and thought maybe I could catch some wild yeast in a starter and plunge into months of experimentation.
Didn't have to--a friend passed on a bag of "Amish Friendship Bread" starter and I was off to the races.
I made some Amish Friendship Bread, which, with its package of vanilla pudding as an ingredient, probably isn't very Amish. Then I separated and set aside some of the starter I'm supposed to pass on to someone else (hence, “friendship”), and hoped for the best.
So yesterday I set out a bowl full of 1 cup of starter, 1 cup of flour, and some water to make it thin. I came back to it today, combined it with flour, salt, a little sugar, some oil, a little water, in the bread machine container and set it to "dough". Then I let it rise a while, and lastly, cooked it on the french bread setting.
It is “slow food” to the max. All told, from yesterday's proofing to actually eating bread today, there was a 28 hour process. Of course, only a couple of minutes at the very beginning, and then a few more to put it in the machine, and again to make sure it was a dry enough dough (it wasn't: I am still learning, obviously), and then walk away. So it wouldn't be anything I'd suggest for spontaneous use, but far less labor-intensive than “28 hour” sounds. Just like, actually, the idea that “52 hour labor with Maeve” sounds like a frighteningly long time, but it isn’t—just in fits and spurts. Not to compare yeast bread with my second daughter’s labor.
And oh it was good bread. A little dense (I think the dough was too thin this time--next time, less water), but smelled like beer and the crust was awesome. Tiny little burst bubbles on the surface, crunchy, chewy, hearty, delicious.
Now, of course, I have a bowl of fermenting flour on my countertop. But, for those of you who know me, that would just like me.
