Wedding Belles

Yesterday I went to my friends Christine and Hannah's wedding out in Kingston. It was a beautiful occasion. Lovely weather, fantastic food, the ceremony was touching, personal moving.

I first met Christine in college. We lived in the same house. I had just returned from a three year hiatus to finish my last two years, Christine (Christie, as I've always known her) was a senior. We hit it off immediately. Without getting into the particulars, (because they aren't relevant to the post, really), Christine went to bat for me and stood up for me when she saw that someone in a position of authority treated me unfairly. In short, she wrote a letter to Important-type people, and pointed out a wrong. I didn't know she had done this until a few years ago. I should have known, though. Christine is a fiercely loyal and loving friend.

Bea, Ingrid, Mr. E and I all attended the wedding. We sat at the table with a group of women that Christine befriended when she came out for the second time. We all joked that she has terrible taste in men, and as it's always best for one to be true to herself, we're happy and relieved she finally found her true love. As much as I hate the winters here, and the fact that New England isn't my first choice of a where I'd live, I love that in Massachusetts, two people who love each other can get married, even if they're the same gender. Bea and Ingrid didn't ask any confused questions about two women getting married. Ingrid loves weddings, because she gets to dress up, dance, play with flowers, and eat delicious food (I think once she drops the hula girl astronaut aspirations, she may well seek a career in professional party planning, culinary arts, fine food critique, etc.) I don't think she really noticed, at least not how I might have noticed when I was her age or Bea's age. Is it possible that marriage equality will be the norm for my kids? Insha'allah.

During the ceremony, the minister praised Christine and Hannah for their bravery and boldness that they would make their union so public. Massachusetts exists somewhat in an equality utopia that hasn't spread to the rest of the country, nor has it spread to all aspects of attributes that makes us humans unique and different. We're making progress, though. Homophobia still exists, even in the happy Valley and beyond its borders.

I wonder how many generations it will be before the minister can drop the bravery and boldness piece of the ceremony. Mr. E and I got married 31 years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in the Loving v. Virginia case. We didn't feel particularly brave or bold for marrying people not of our race. On the other hand, while interracial marriage is more common racism is alive and doing very well, thanks for asking.

Putting on my optimist's smile and a cliche on my tongue. The best way to destroy hate is with love.

What's the second best? Being comfortable with our differences, and that means to acknowledge them. We aren't ready for colorblindness. We aren't ready to say, "it's no big deal that two men or two women can marry". It's a big deal, and not because it should be a big deal when anyone decides to marry. Being married is part of one's identity. I am a wife, mother, African American, person of faith, gamer, homeowner, woman. My identity depends on my own definition as well as my relationships with people.

I look forward to many visits with Christine and Hannah. I am so happy for them. What a privilege it is to be part of their loving circle of friends and family.

Parthenia's Dad

My parents visited us from December 18 to the 28th. It was a fun visit, except I spent the better part of their stay concerned about my dad's health. The last time I saw him was in March in Atlanta (see above) and he was almost 6 months post recovery from congestive heart failure. This time he did not look well. Apparently he wasn't feeling well.

Without getting into the particulars, he was admitted to the hospital on Saturday, and has been in ICU since then. He was a blockage of the large intestine. They performed a sigmoidoscopy Monday and biopsied a section. We'll know more tomorrow.

My dad will be 66 in about two weeks. I am very concerned about him.

A Serendipitous Encounter

I love Atlanta!

In the airport, on my way back home, I bumped into my cousins Chi Chi and Antonio. They were flying back from Argentina, where they were visiting their son, who works there. A luggage mishap kept them from leaving the airport and going home to Auburn, AL. It also made it possible for us to cross paths in a city neither of us lives in, going in opposite directions, but both going home.

Adolescence in Boxes

I'm in Memphis visiting my parents, helping to take care my of dad who just returned home from a two week hospital stay following a diagnosis of congestive heart failure following a heart attack. Physically he is very weak, and it hasn't quite set in (to him) just how seriously he is. It is difficult to see him in this state. He has a three page list of meds to take, he must follow a strict low sodium diabetic diet with serious portion control. He's so weak he has trouble walking from the chair to the kitchen or to the bathroom, and he's sleeping in the mother-in-law-suite downstairs on a rented adjustable hospital bed until he is able to go upstairs. If you read back far enough on this blog, you can guess that his heart attack was inevitable. In December I figured he'd have one within 2 years given how poorly he managed his diabetes and took care of himself. It is what it is. It happened, maybe it will be a wakeup call, maybe not. And here I am with Ingrid until Wednesday.

My parents don't throw away anything, and their house is so big, it hasn't yet hit critical mass with all the stuff. They've never had a tag sale in the 38 years they've been together. The last time I was here the (walk in) closets practically burst with clothes and junk. So my mom recently boxed up some of the junk and sent it to the attic. This means she boxed up 24 years of my crap. So much crap. I went through some of it looking for scary dolls. I found a couple, but not the one I had in mind. I did come across oodles of books and other strange things from my adolescence and early college. Some of the highlights: my skate board, clothes from my thrift store phase, an awesomely hot black lace corset, notebooks, sketchbooks, and one handmade book of poems and photographs that is so raw and painful to read it makes my stomach ache just thinking about the night I created it. And the poetry is bloody awful! I've only been able to read a few lines here and there. Talk about dark night of the soul. I must have been drunk or high or something that night, even though I remember it like it was last week. It was 15 years ago. I want to bring it home so I can burn it and give it a proper burial.

My mom and I are bookworms. You find books in every single room of this house, including the bathrooms and kitchen. There are even books in the garage. My mom actually has a library. This is one of the things I love about snooping though my parents' house. If I'm not careful I could replace the clothes in my suitcase with books. I have several titles that I'm bringing home to use to finish the revisions of the next edition of Steal Away Jordan (which I'm working on while I'm here when I'm not helping out with my dad's care). I also have a bunch of beloved books from decades gone by. Here are some of the gems I'm packing up in a box to send back with me. Some of these I'm bringing back for their 1950-60's pulp covers:
Black Women for Beginners, Saundra Sharp (for more books on antebellum life check the Stone Baby Games website in the next few days.
A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Iris Murdoch.
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges.
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, retold by Joseph Bedier. (with cool cover, not like the one in the link)
The Dream Merchants, Harold Roberts.
The Mesh, Lucie Marchal.
Missing Time, Budd Hopkins.
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (wicked cool tawdry cover! Not the one in the link.)
The Problem of the Wire Cage, John Dickson Carr. (another tawdry pulp cover)
Missing Time, Budd Hopkins.
Skin and Bones, Thorne Smith (yet another awesome cover, same as the one in the link!)
Sin Doll, Orrie Hitt ("The only way Cherry could get places was by going bad...and cherry wanted to get places! A novel which focuses in on the hot picture racket--boldly revealing how girls are recruited--and why!" And then there's the cover!)
Primitive Orgy, Bob Tralins ("'There is only one way to get the evil spirit out of my body!' she moaned...." see the awesome pulp cover in the link.)
The Big Sky, A.B. Guthrie, jr.
A Story of Deep Delight, Thomas McNamee (autographed even!)
A Victorian era three volume collection of the works of William Shakespeare.
The 1887 edition of Cyclopaedia of Obstetrics and Gynecology, volume III (Obstetrics : The Pathology of Labor)
The complete score of A. Maillart's, Les Dragons de Villars (from around the mid-late 1800's as far as I can tell)

I'm Morgan LeFay, I beguiled Merlin, and all I got was this blond child

Chris brought Ingrid up to the farmer's market. My boothmate Crystal had her 3 year old daughter there, too. Fun was had by all. Asha and Ingrid are both cherubic blond little imps, and they get along very well. Crystal and I watched Asha and Ingrid do cute things, ate free food, and didn't sell much of anything. I sold one bottle of edible massage oil. Slow day, end of season. Anyway, so this woman came up to our booth to ask if we were interested in having a booth at a local charity event in December. After she gave us the details (I thought about it), she asked if Asha and Ingrid were sisters. "Nope," we said. We pointed out who was whose baby. Then the woman looked at me with total disbelief and said, "How on earth did you get a blond daughter?"

Let me just stop here and describe what's going through my head at this moment. I want to be rude. I want to point out to her how obnoxious her question is. I want to say equally obnoxious and flip things, like "I had sex with a blond elf or fairy or some freakishly blond unhuman creature. Doesn't matter what he was, he was so blond I was blinded by the light in his hair. Nine months later I felt ill, I leaned up against a tree and pushed and pushed and out came this little blond thing. I think she might be a changeling, or a halfling. It's amazing when you think about it. They've written songs about this sort of thing, and I never believed them until I gave birth to a blonde baby." Unfortunately I didn't say any of this, because I might want in on her little charity event. So I say, "Her father's blond."

And she just doesn't stop. "Well he must be really blond." Now what am I to say to this? "Why yes, you nosy and annoying wench, he's freakishly blond. The doctors thought he was an albino until they ran tests on him. He's so blond he was given automatic citizenship by Denmark and Norway, on top of his Swedish citizenship." I don't say any of this. I'm trying to be polite and I'm horribly insulted. Instead, I say, "yeah. He's pretty blond. But my older daughter looks just like me."

At this point I have no interest in participating in the charity event. I don't really like having to justify the genetic makeup of my children. I thought the "are you babysitting" comment I've received was insulting, but this one takes the cake. It wasn't so much what she said, as much as it was her attitude. How could I possibly create such a thing? I must be part of some kind of freak family to have such a freakishly blond child.

Why do people say stupid shit and get away with it? Why did I hold my tongue?

The Feast

So Christmas dinner was everything good: good food, good company, good behavior, adults included. Food wise, we had a few pleasant surprises, and only one disaster.

All my plans of cooking early never panned out. I started the yule log the evening of the 24th. I really need to work on my folding flour and melted butter into whipped eggs and sugar technique. I baked the cake part of the production and that's it. I never made the meringue or the filling. The cake is rolled up in my fridge. It might turn into a New Year's Eve log, or just a really flat sponge cake that no one eats.

I never even got to open the mead, which I was most looking forward to, since I didn't have any on my wedding anniversary last month. We have more beer, wine, and glogg than we can possibly drink. It looks like we will have to have another party soon. Primo will love that. He does not like dinner parties as much as I do, since he ends up doing most of the cleaning. Since I like to cook, I never get the feeling I'm slaving away in the kitchen.

So here's what arrived on the menu:

Appetizers
Crackers and smelly cheese (La Clochette Chevre, Epoisses, and Raw Milk cheddar. I think it was cheddar. I know it was raw milk)
pickled herring
lox
cream cheese (milk and dairy free)
--For the first time in 18 months I ate smelly cheese, and it was like manna from heaven. Ingrid is growing out of her milk allergy! I did limit myself on the dairy just to be on the safe side, but how I've missed La Clochette and Epoisses on hard bread.

Main Course
Roast Goose--she was a little on the small and lean side, but we got a good amount of meat from her. She'd been slaughtered and cleaned three days before (locally). Can't get any better than that if you're going to eat meat.
Swedish Ham with a Puerto Rican Flair--my brother-in-law Juan is a professional cook, and he fixed the ham. I didn't have any because I never got a second helping, but I heard it was great.
Cranberry Relish--I made too much. I'll be eating it with everything for the next week.
Wild Rice and Wheat berries with venison sausage and portbella mushrooms.
Stuffing straight from the bag with venison sausage and mushrooms. Not sure why I bothered with the stuffing. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough rice. Silly me.
Swedish Blood pudding. My mother-in-law thought no one would eat it. I assured her that I would, at least. It disappeared quickly, and it was a hit with our youngest guest. A few couldn't get past the name to try it, but that just left more for the rest of us.
Cranberry Sweet Potato Quiche. I make this every year, but with a nursling with a milk allergy, I haven't had any since I was pregnant in 2004. I made this one with Tofutti cream cheese and soy milk. I'll be eating it for dinner tonight.
Mashed Potatoes. I heard they were great, and I'm sure I'll eat some for lunch tomorrow.
Homemade macaroni and cheese. I passed it up so I could have a little extra clochette. It's in the freezer.
Friendship bread, with flaxseed, sunflower seeds, and oatmeal.
Collard greens. I used to hate them when I was little, but now I love them.
Mixed Salad Greens with walnuts, smoked mozzarella, and vinaigrette. Brought by Meg and Vincent, and I think Vincent made it (thanks for bringing something green!). I come from a family that does not eat enough fresh vegetables. I find I feel sick if I don't have fresh green with a heavy meal. The salad took up 1/3 of my plate so I could save room for dessert, and my digestive system thanked me for the roughage. I skipped the mozz reluctantly.

Dessert
No Yule Log...
Carrot Cake. My mom makes the best carrot cake. Enough said.
Mochi. Again, I bought too much, but that just means more for tomorrow's game night.
Apple pie. Haven't tried it yet, but the same person made it this year as last year, and it was delicious.
Assorted cookies. These were the cookies I got to see in production last week. Everyone was too full to indulge in the sweets, but I noticed the cookies seem to be disappearing into thin air today. They were wicked good.

Primo, a man of few words, gave a Quaker-style blessing.

We never played Werewolves, and the kids didn't decorate any gingerbread houses. We can save that for another time. In fact, the older kids played in Bea's room, and I saw them twice the whole evening.

And the on-going saga of my dad and his health continues. It's really worse than I thought, but nothing new. I've been checking my dad's blood sugar twice a day, and it's been in the mid to high 300's. Last night after dinner it was 457. I think it's really the first time in the 3 or 4 years he's been diabetic that he's had his blood sugar checked regularly, so he's actually seeing what he's doing to himself. Even still, it feels like he's paying lip-service to my mom's and my pleas that he cut back on the sugar and fat. It's easy to say you'll change. It's harder to do it, especially at a family feast, where everyone pigs out. A few days ago I lost it and really dug into him about not checking his blood sugar and eating things that are verboten for a diabetic. I got nowhere.

Several days of almost non-stop eating (with a diabetic who doesn't take care of himself) really forces one to look at her relationship with food. For another post.

My Parents Are Here.

My parents arrived safely last night and are all checked into their hotel. They treated us to sushi and Chinese food, and left when the kids started getting slap happy and tired.

My parents are generous to a fault. Thanks to them, we have no car notes, and two reliable cars, and I have no student loans. They dote on my kids, and Primo, and me. In some way, they perhaps make up for the physical distance by buying us things (often stuff we don't really need and have no space for). But they have the means to do it, and if you ask them not to, they get a little offended.

My relationship with my parents has been through dark times, mostly when I was a bratty kid in my early 20's and living in my own personal dark ages, and I don't mean the kind with the cool clothes and castles. Thankfully we grow, we evolve, we get over ourselves, and people forgive us. I look forward to my parents' visit, and the things we don't talk about aren't really all that important in the wider scheme of things. I break out the turtlenecks to hide the tattoos, move books on witchcraft, drugs and religious experience, erotica, and erotic origami, log out of blogspot in case my dad uses the computer and comes across this little confessional, change the Ukiyo-e Shunga screen saver, remind Primo to take down that annoying screen saver of the naked woman on all fours, and smile like the Cheshire cat.

My mom's hair is totally white and she's wearing it longer than I've ever seen it. She looks very professorial, which is good, because she is a professor. More to the point, mom is a brilliant historian, and she specializes in African American and Southern women's History. When I told her that I wanted to write a RPG about slavery, she sent me textbooks, links to articles, lots of background information, lots of encouragement praise for finding an avenue for writing. We've spent hours on the phone with me running scenarios by her ("would something like this have really happened?"). Role playing games are not her thing, but apparently she liked the idea of a game based on history and might actually be educational, from not only a psycho-sociological perspective, but a historical one. One of the first things she said when she walked in the door last night was "I brought that book for you, but I left it at the hotel." She's always bringing me books, I have no idea what book she'd talking about, but I'm sure it will be interesting. She also asked to see a draft of my game. My own dear husband hasn't even read it (long story and I don't want to badmouth him here.). Someone in my family is interested in something I wrote! Anyway, my mom and I have an easier time relating to each other. We like books, we're kind of geeky, she's my mom, etc. Yet personality-wise, I'm probably more like my dad and maybe that's why. They've been married for 37 years, I think she gets us, and we her.

My dad is a big guy. He has the gift of gab, and remembers all of my friends' names and what they were last up to. He's gregarious, laughs loudly, has a big heart, and wants nothing but for those he loves to be safe, treated fairly, and happy (Jeez that word pops up a lot around here). Where my mom is the American historian, he is an astute armchair political scientist. For the past couple of elections he and I have chatted about our favorite and least favorite candidates. He keeps me updated on Memphis politics, including the polician I once went on a date with, we commiserate in our loathing for Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and certain Memphis politicians that I used to work for (that I never dated). A few years ago I had an ugly falling out with one of my first cousins. I think it hurt him as much as it did me. At nearly every conversation with him, he either consoled or counselled on what to do about this relationship. Some of his advice I followed, some of it I didn't and I told him so. He still supported me. He has also always been my biggest breastfeeding advocate, even out in public, nursing a squirming, walking, talking toddler. All the other things I do, like herb crafting, he's my most vocal fan, regardless whether my endeavor was a success.

Now for the dark part of the cloud. It is difficult for me to say--admit, rather-- how my dad looks. In one word, I suppose he looks big. He's not taking care of himself. He's retired and very sedentary, he eats crappy fast food all day while my mom is at work, he's diabetic and only pays lip service to the diabetic diet he should be following. He doesn't check his blood sugar. Ever. My mom implored me to check it for him every day while they're here, as she always does when they come to visit. This time he actually brought his glucometer. In nursing school I was the injection/finger stick queen. I liked doing it, and I made sure I did it fast and as painless as possible. Even still, I've never been able to get my dad to let me do it. I'm just going to surprise him this time. I'm not going to ask, I'm going to get his machine, and I'm going to get him. That's pretty mean, but I'm not a nurse, so I don't feel bound by law or nursing ethics to ask.

My dad's health has been a defining issue in our relationship for a good 20 years. It's frustrating and frightening to see him not take care of himself, to pretend he's not constantly winded and not feeling himself. But I'm just the daughter, and one who lives 1500 miles away. I have to resist the urge not to say anything, and resist the urge to read him the riot act and tell him how angry it makes me that he doesn't take care of himself, or even let people help him. He has an immense support system as well as the financial resources and access to health care to help. We're all just waiting for him to decide to do something and stick to it.

I'm excited and a bit anxious that they're here. I've only really noticed that my parents are getting old in the past 5 years or so. Maybe I'm having a hard time adjusting to the change in dynamics.