A Year

364 days ago, Henry Holtzclaw took on a nom de plume: Fluffy's Christmas Angel. I remember so clearly, as if it were yesterday, coming upstairs to get Fluffy to take her for her 10 p.m. outside visit, only to find that she was not in her usual place, not in the chair, not snuggled down in her beach towel. She was gone. And I remember Emily's stark fear, our frantically searching the neighborhood until about 1 in the morning, believing that she was somewhere we could not see, curled up in a little ball, going to sleep, wondering where she was and wondering why we were not there to keep her safe.

Of course, all those things were happening, but not in our neighborhood. Fluffy, in her doggy-Alzheimer's state, had wandered off to the neighbor's house, thinking it was hers, puzzled, I'm sure, when no one let her in. Then she continued to wander until she stumbled down a drainage ditch, underground, safe from the snow that covered the ground, safe from the cold air that penetrated slowly to the bone, safe from predators that might have found a white fluffy dog a delicacy. She wandered for about a mile, until I'm sure she was tired from wandering, lost, confused, and then she curled up in a little ball, and went to sleep.

It was about this time that her Christmas Angel was walking his own dog and saw a little white fluffy ball, curled up on a flat rock, off the water that ran through the drainage ditch, sleeping, and waiting to cross the rainbow. He picked her up, took her home, fed her, gave her water, kept her warm overnight, and then, with special instructions that if no one claimed her, he was to bring her back home, took her to the animal shelter. They thought she might be the white dog that was missing, and on that Wednesday morning, about 36 hours after she eloped, they called us and told us they thought that Fluffy had been found.

Indeed, Fluffy had been found, and then we found her Christmas Angel, and tonight, long after she took her last breath, rightfully in the arms of the people who were obliged to keep her safe for as long as they could, I remember and thank him, who would have loved her well had we not been found.

Angels can be found in many unexpected places, and I am certainly glad we found the one sent to watch over Fluffy.

Flip Flop Tiki Bar and Grill, Savannah, Georgia

While trying desperately yesterday to find an Irish Pub that was still in business in downtown Savannah (Max has a Guinness app for the phone - it tells the Guinness lover where the closest pint can be found), we finally gave up and asked Emily for the address of the restaurant where she works. The Flip Flop Tiki Bar and Grill was open for lunch. It has no Guinness on tap, but it does have a nice selection of beers. We sat down at a table next to the open door, and looked over the menu, which is brief - meaning, I believe, that the food would be prepared fresh to order, which is a good thing. Emily suggested the tacos, which Max ordered, and I had the pulled pork sandwich, both of which came with a side order of our choice. Yum.

The pork sandwich was like a barbecued pork sandwich, except that the sauce was more a piquant sauce than a barbecue sauce. It had a kick, and it was vinegar-based, so I'm assuming it contained some jerk spices. The sandwich came with black beans and rice on the side, and I still got to choose one of four side dishes. I chose well, picking homemade sweet potato chips, which tasted even better when dipped in the aforementioned sauce. I did my best NOT to eat all the chips, with or without the sauce, and succeeded somewhat. I couldn't make a dent in the black beans and rice, so I brought those home with me, but I had a few bites and can hardly wait to heat them up and devour them.

Max's tacos were in flour tortillas. He got to choose from four fillings - pork, jerk chicken, grilled shrimp, and grilled fish - and could add one of four toppings - avocado salsa, pico de gallo, mango salsa, or roasted corn salsa. According to Emily's recommendation, he got pork tacos and chose pico de gallo to finish it off. He also got some black beans and rice, but unlike me, the man who never gains weight ate it all.

I had a glass of wine, from the California Flip Flop label, which was fine and only $4. Max had some micro-brewery beer that he pronounced good, but I don't remember its cost. I did notice that 12-oz. frozen drinks, such as margaritas, pina coladas, and other tropical foo-foo drinks are also $4. I think that's a bargain.

As I suspected, the food was made fresh to order, and was delicious. I didn't find anything fried on the menu, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a real plus. The room was decorated in island chic - beadboard, bamboo, umbrellas here and there, and beach photos and art. It was a fun place to be, and I can imagine that it would be a blast around happy hour. Then again, what place ISN'T a blast around happy hour?

We will probably go there again tonight, just so we can watch our daughter at work and maybe give her a big tip (other than buy low, sell high).

The Flip Flop Tiki Bar and Grill is located at 117 Whitaker Street (phone 912/233-5600) and on the web at http://www.savannahflipflop.com/. Enjoy.

Thanksgiving in June

We are in Savannah for Thanksgiving, except nothing screams, "Thanksgiving!" Yesterday, Max and I strolled the streets of Savannah enjoying 80-degree weather and beautiful sunshine. We basked in the sun's warmth outside the new SCAD art museum and gallery on brand new sod looking at what looked like blow-up white club chairs on the lawn. I even perspired a bit as I waited for Max to get Emily's oil changed.

The grocery stores, however, made me think that something special is up. We went to the Kroger store, about five miles from Emily's apartment, and the aisles were jam packed full of people buying what was on sale - baking ingredients, stuffing mix, and dried, candied fruits. I got the turkey breast at Sam's Club, which was also crowded. It looked, however, as if most people were buying Christmas gifts. Like Nordstrom's, I like to celebrate one holiday at a time.

I think I will watch the Thanksgiving parade on television tomorrow morning, and then I hope we can head for the beach for part of the day. Because I am cooking for only three people, it won't be that elaborate nor will it take that long. I figure that as long as I am in Savannah, the beach can become a part of our Thanksgiving celebration. Why not? But don't worry. I will watch Miracle on 34th Street. Some things simply cannot change.

My LIttle Duckling

We are preparing to go to see Emily for Thanksgiving, and I am really looking forward to the trip, although it will be a long one. This will be one of the only times since we have lived at 1020 South Barrett that we have not been in our home for Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday, and I don't know how that will feel. We plan to take to Savannah the necessities for cooking dinner, because Emily lives in a wonderful apartment with a very modern kitchen, and she has a plethora of cooking vessels and utensils. We should have no trouble brining a turkey breast and making it delectable. However, it will seem strange to cook for just three. I don't know if I can do it.

The largest holiday crowd I ever cooked for was 20, which was a Christmas Day feast combining Don's family and ours, complete with children under the age of reason. Emily, who was under 10 at the time, and I made iced sugar cookie place cards for everyone, and putting together three dining areas exercised our interior architecture creativity, but it was a really fun time, albeit stressful. I remember drinking a lot of wine while I was cooking.

I also remember another holiday dinner; Max was enamored of someone's - maybe Tyler Florence's - method of cooking a turkey with stuffing. The chef suggested shoving the stuffing between the bird and its skin and roasting as usual. Unfortunately, our turkey was one with a pop-up button, and it popped up but wasn't ready. The turkey was pretty much raw on the inside. We have rarely deviated from our tried-and-true turkey cooking since then. What made it worse was that we had guests, and we then had to wait another two hours to eat. By that time, the only thing that looked good was the white wine, and so we drank it all. Who remembers whether the turkey was done after that?

My favorite dish was the butternut squash/parsnip yin and yang side dish. Max made a barrier of cardboard covered with PAM covered foil, curved it in the proper shape, and placed it in a casserole dish. I then filled one side of a casserole with pureed butternut squash and the other side with pureed parsnips. It was beautiful and tasted really good.

Another thing I like is that at the end of Thanksgiving evening, sated and exhausted, I enjoy going into the living room and sitting in front of the fire to watch "Miracle on 34th Street." No matter how many times I see the movie, I tear up when Natalie Wood bounces up and down on her toes as she looks out the door to the back yard and exclaims, "There IS one! There IS one!" And I cry when Santa Claus sings to and talks with the little Dutch girl. What a sap!

So this Thanksgiving will break with a tradition regarding where we eat our turkey, and another tradition of what we do after we eat the turkey, but we will be together, we three, and we will give thanks that we can be together, that we have made it through yet another year of challenges, sadness, joy, and the unexpected, and that we are happy, healthy, and ready for what lies ahead.

Well, I think I will make iced sugar cookie place cards. Surely I can make three.

The Help

A couple of years ago, Pat Stallins suggested that I read a book entitled "The Help." Knowing that I am an avid reader, she knew that I would love the characters and the storyline, and she also knew that I would love "casting" the movie, which is one of my favorite games. As I read through a particularly appealing book, I challenge myself to select an actor to fill all the book's roles. I loved "The Help," but I couldn't decide who would play each part. I chose Cloris Leachman as the elderly Miss Walter, who was feisty and pretty much deaf as a post, but I was drawing a blank on most of the other roles.

Fortunately for me, someone else made all those decisions, and this past month, "The Help" was released as a major motion picture. Whoever did the casting did an abslutely wonderful job. Emma Stone played "Skeeter," one of the three main characters in the book. The other two main characters, Minnie and Aibileen, were played by actresses I do not know, but they captured the spirits of those women just perfectly. All the other characters came to life beautifully as well, and for only the fourth or fifth time, I can truly say that I enjoyed the movie just as much as I did the book. The plot line was tinkered with just a little, and that tinkering didn't hurt at all, as the movie followed the book just fine.

In fact, parts of the movie were actually better than the book in that visual depictions of certain events evoked much more emotional reactions that simply reading about them. For instance, one of the story lines revolved around an insistence that the black servants in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s have a bathroom separate from the homeowner's. While I thought about this particular indignity when I read it, I reacted much more viscerally when I saw the maid having to go to the bathroom in the garage where there was no air conditioning. The look of humiliation on the maid's face as she was interrupted when taking part in one of life's most private functions caused my blood to boil: First, she was told to use a bathroom out in the garage, and second, she wasn't allowed to do so with even a modicum of privacy! I thought, "Is NOTHING sacred?!"

The screenwriter also decided to make one character a little more likeable than she was in the book, and while that was not as I would have preferred, I did not protest when her relationship with her daughter was salvaged for a "feel-good" ending.

All in all, I think this movie has "legs" akin to those developed by The Blind Side: people continue to talk about it, and people will continue to go see it based on that word of mouth. Sandra Bullock benefited from that kind of buzz, and I think that The Help will as well. I think people will report about how they were affected and touched by the tale of the strength of some women in the South in the age of Civil Rights.

"Crazy, Stupid, Love"

"Crazy, Stupid, Love" is a wonderful movie starring Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, and sending any woman with eyes in her head over the moon over Ryan Gosling. This was a movie with a story that sounds and feels real, and it is written very well - looking back, not in vignettes, but with carefully constructed dialogue between and among the characters. Many in the audience have probably stood in the shoes of at least one, if not more, of the characters; perhaps that is why the story rings so true.

The movie is billed through its trailers as a comedy, but it is not. We can laugh at some scenes, but essentially, the story is of human drama, how we live, how we love, how our early relationships can affect what happens later in our lives. Some of that is painful to watch, and painful to re-live, but the message of hope, love, and living life is uplifting regardless of the pain we have lived through.

I loved the movie so much, I went twice. Max was away for a few days, and I wanted to see it and thought he would not be eager to sit through something that could be construed as a chick flick, although he doesn't usually mind. I convinced him to go the day he got back, which was the day after I saw it the first time. I was not disappointed. It was as good the second time as it had been the first.

And truly, it is not a chick flick; it is a movie about guys - their friendships, their learning to support each other, their trying to meet women's expectations, and their learning to live in a world where their roles as husbands and fathers usually trump their roles as themselves. As hard as it is to be a woman, I think that men have it more difficult: women have the ability to make choices such as working or staying home with the children without too much censure from society, but men's roles are much more rigid. What does society say about a man who chooses to eschew a job in order to be a stay-at-home dad? Not too much that is good.

On another note, Steve Carrell is a mystery to me. I have never really become involved with "The Office," because I find it much too painful to watch, having spent too many years in offices similar to the one that is portrayed on the television show. In fact, Carrell's character is the one who bothers me the most. However, I have seen him in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Dan in Real Life," and now "Crazy, Stupid, Love," and I believe he is a really good dramatic actor. Maybe he is funny, but he made me believe, in all three of these movies, that he was the non-funny person he was playing. I think I wish he would spend more time doing these kinds of films instead of trying to be funny in things that simply aren't.

So. "Crazy, Stupid, Love." Go see it.

Precious

Max and I watched Oprah and Tyler Perry's production of "Precious," which, as I understand it, was based on a novel entitled Push by Sapphire. What a story! This film tells what is right and wrong with our current sociological system. Unfortunately, much of what is wrong seems to be unfixable.

The story is that of a young, fat, unattractive girl, Precious, who is 16, still in middle school, molested by her mother's boyfriend, becomes pregnant twice, and is stuck in a loveless, harsh, life. Her mother, played by comedienne Mo'nique, is cruel and abusive, and spends most of hertime in front of the television, cheating welfare by shuffling Precious's daughter to and from her home and her mother's home. The child is Down's Syndrome, which we discover in a shocking way about half through the film.

How Precious extricates herself from her abusive home is an uplifting story and gives us all hope; the tragedy is that she will be extricating herself from an abusive home to a home where she will live in poverty with two children who will most likely also live in poverty throughout their lives. Precious cannot be blamed for her plight, because she did not choose to become pregnant, and had few, if any choices about what to do with the babies she would deliver. In fact, she was expelled from school because she was pregnant, effectively cutting off her only hope for a better life. Because of a caring educator, however, Precious finds and succeeds in an alternative school for girls who have been expelled from or have dropped out of school. The story of her journey, including stints with her social worker (played convincingly by Mariah Carey) are worth the watch and worth the tears that you will shed as you empathize with this young woman.

I continue to wonder what our society can do with all these babies that are being born to young, unmarried, uneducated girls. The idea of abortion is anathema to many for many reasons, although young, white, wealthy women are generally able to access abortion services quickly and quietly. Additionally, it seems as if adoption is not an acceptable alternative for many young, pregnant girls, although I don't know why. But it seems to me that the place to stop these pregnancies, although not available to Precious, whose pregnancy was a result of of rape rather than consensual sexual action, is before they happen.

What can we do to convince girls that getting pregnant and having a baby is tantamount to life-long poverty, children who tend to use drugs and alcohol at earlier ages, children who are more likely to underachieve or drop out of school, children who are more likely to have sex at earlier ages, and children who themselves will live in poverty? I don't have any answers other than education and birth control. But until we figure this out, our society will have to support more and more children whose family structure sets them up for failure, and that starts when teen-aged, single girls have babies. It simply has to stop.

So while I cheered for Precious as she started her new life journey, I was realistic enough to know that she, like many other young girls, was moving from the rock to the hard place.

The Little Foxes

This morning, Max came into our bedroom where I was slowly waking to yet another really hot day, and he asked me if I wanted to see something cute. I thought HE was being cute, but he told me to hurry and ran out of the room down the stairs. Bleary-eyed, I followed him into the sunroom, where he was standing looking out the back door, which is glass and is surrounded by more glass. He was watching two little foxes playing with each other! They were frolicking around, gamboling through our monkey grass, doing four-footed jumps onto each other, and rolling around in the back yard. We stood transfixed while they played hide-and-seek around the huge oak tree, peeped at each other through the now very-thick hosta plants and mock orange hedge, and ran back and forth from the monkey grass to the hedge. Max took some pictures with his phone, but we were too far away to capture a really good image.

Finally, one of them took off into the hedge and the other waited for him to come back. He stood very still, intently staring into the hedge, and while he was doing that, the vanished one sneaked up behind him. Before they met in the middle, I noticed some more movement in the hedge. The third little fox appeared! They chased each other around for a while and then rested in the now almost flattened monkey grass. And then, like all young children, they became bored and wandered away.

I think we will be getting up early tomorrow.

Horrible Bosses

I loved this movie. Period. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day were absolutely hilarious in a raunchy comedy about how the working man can be subject to the most horrible bosses and humiliation imaginable. I can't really tell you what the movie was about other than how it is to work for someone who has power and is particularly cruel with that power. I have been fortunate in my working life to avoid, for the most part, those kinds of supervisors, but the one person I worked for who was just not very bright made my life miserable. In that way, I could empathize with the three main characters and how their lives were made miserable for at least 40 hours a week.

When I become stressed in a movie, anticipating the next surprise or the next move by a character, I have a tendency to get up, go to the back of the theatre and pace. I did that for most of "A Simple Plan." Today, I really wanted to pace, but the theatre design had no place for my pacing. Instead, I had to sit suffering through the suspense, wondering whether the characters' stupidity would turn out right or wrong. True to my usual feel for plot, I had that part figured out pretty early, but how to get to the end caused me heart palpitations!

The three guys were really well cast and played their parts well. I would love to have known how much of their "schtick" was ad lib, and how much was brilliantly written.

This is one movie I would like to see again to see what I missed while I was pacing in my mind. Maybe tomorrow! Anyway, for those of you who love buddy movies, and movies with interesting plots, and movies with so much stupid that you can't stand it, "Horrible Bosses" is for you.

Tribute to a friend

My friend Shelley Wuellner died this past week. She was diagnosed last December with a malignant brain tumor, and the past seven months have flown but seem to have lasted forever.

There is no good cancer diagnosis, but the heart-wrenching situation of this one was particularly cruel: Shelley's brother was killed years ago in a hunting accident. Her father had died earlier, and for many of the years I knew Shelley, her mother Buffy lived in Montana, where Shelley grew up. Eventually, Buffy came to live in our town, spending her time with her daughter and her four grandchildren. Shelley was a loving and dutiful daughter, making sure that her mother found friends and a church, integrated well into our little town, and lived in a lovely home. When circumstances eventually dictated that Buffy live with assistance, Shelley took meals to her every day, because, among other things, Shelley was a wonderful cook, and her mother was happier eating the meals Shelley prepared for her.

Buffy experienced bad health over the past few years, and Dave and Shelley rarely left town for more than a few days at a time because of Buffy's decline. Around Thanksgiving last year, Buffy became ill, and then seemed to recover. However, something went wrong, and she was hospitalized, dying the day after Thanksgiving. We attended Buffy's funeral the next week, and then Shelley and her family left for a "whole family" vacation the next week. They went to Florida, and the report was that everyone had a wonderful time.

Only 12 days prior to Christmas, I was preparing for a difficult cantata and vespers service at my church. The music, though I loved playing it, was hard, and I had to practice. The vespers service went well, and I invited my mother and Don and our friends Kevin and Kim over after the service to have some chili. I received the phone call as I was drinking a glass of wine.

I saw that the caller was Dave, and thought that they might like to come for chili, too, if they were back home. They were not home, and he had something else to tell me. He had noticed, on the vacation, that something was not quite right with Shelley. Usually someone who remembers every number she ever saw or heard, she was becoming confused about airplane departure times for each of the children. She couldn't remember what day which child was leaving for home, and she had felt bad enough on the vacation to spend a whole day in bed. Later, Dave told us that he noticed that the left side of her face didn't look quite right, and while she was walking, he believed he saw her left foot kind of dragging. Obviously, he is quite a diagnostician, but I believe even he was unprepared for the eventual diagnosis: a malignant brain tumor deep in the right side of her frontal lobe, where no surgeon could touch it.

On the telephone, before he told me, he said that he was calling with bad news and asked if I were sitting down. I immediately thought that something was wrong with one of their children - children I had watched grow up. So I sat down, and he told me the news that to this day is stunning in its tragic finality. Two weeks after burying her mother, Shelley was told that her life was coming to an end.

Max and I decided to go to St. Louis to see them the next day, and so we went, hoping that something would be different by the time we got there. But such was not to be. She didn't really want us there, I believe, she herself not having fully come to terms with what she had been told. But that was all right with us, because we were there anyway. I saw her only briefly on that day, and that was the last time I got to see and hear her looking and sounding like Shelley.

I can't even remember how we originally met, but our first real contact was when she and Dave had a party to christen the kitchen that they had redesigned and rebuilt in their house down the street from where we now live. And food was a real connection with us. Our friendship was more a couples' friendship than a "girly-girl" friendship. She and I not only had the connection of food and cooking, we both understood and enjoyed numbers, as well as the fact that our husbands liked each other. We didn't have tea or go get our nails done or other things like that. We met over dinner or brownies and cocktails or wine and talked about what our families were doing and where we would like to go for our next vacation.

In fact, because we so loved food, we all decided to go to New Orleans for an eating vacation. We picked out restaurants and hotels and made reservations six months prior to the trip, but had really no other ideas in mind about what to do for entertainment. The food was enough.

Before that, though, Shelley and Dave had been great support for our infertility. Max and I wanted a baby, but a baby wasn't happening. Parents four times themselves, they gave us encouragement and a place to rant and rave when we were disappointed that I was not pregnant.

And so it is no surprise, that about ten days after we returned from New Orleans, a gorge-fest that took us to Commander's Palace, Pascal's Manale Restaurant, and Brightsen's, Max and I told them first that we would be decorating the small room in our apartment as a nursery. As Max always says, Emily was born nine months and five minutes after we checked into the Fairmont right on the edge of the French Quarter. And when my pregnancy became difficult and high-risk, I called Shelley before I called the doctor when I felt that something wasn't going quite right. Furthermore, Dave and Shelley were there when Emily was born, which was the same day their daughter turned six.

A year or so later, we moved to a house right down the street from Dave and Shelley, and I think we have worn out the sidewalk between the two houses. We have watched their son be the first to be married and now the first to announce that a grandchild is on the way, we will be there when their son Adam will marry Carrie this fall in Chicago, they were here when Emily graduated from high school, and next week, I will cook for Dave the birthday dinner I have made almost every year since the New Orleans trip: Pascal's Manale barbecued shrimp and chocolate pound cake. I add a salad every couple of years or so to make us feel as if we are eating healthy, because the shrimp dish is made with about two pounds of butter.

We have participated in a girls' birthday group and a couples' dinner club. When I hosted the dinner club and wanted a particular dish to be just perfect, I always asked Shelley to make it because she had incredible cooking skills, and I knew I could count on her.

I also enjoyed her tales of her very successful day trading. What a woman! Not only did she take a risk, she capitalized on it! I often felt like Fairchild, the driver in "Sabrina," finding out what good investments would be using her skills and information instead of being industrious on my own.

So this terrible thing has come to pass. The past seven months have been difficult, but the coming months will be difficult as well. I think of the beautiful wedding that will occur in October, and of the new baby who will be born in November, and my heart aches for Shelley, who will not be here to celebrate each event. I know these will be bittersweet times for her family, too, and I pray for their peace during these exciting times, times that will not be quite what they had hoped for or expected.

I also think of the simple fragility and irony of life, and am fearful and awed. I remember the opening line of a poem, although I cannot remember the name or author of the poem: "Oh, world! I cannot hold you close enough!" We talk about someone's being in a better place after that person has died and left this earth, but I find it so difficult to imagine something better than walking down the street for brownies, or waiting for two guests to arrive so that we can dig into butter-laden shrimp, or breaking open a bottle of cabernet and talking about what the kids are doing. My faith says that there is a better place, and I know cancer does not exist there, but I'm sure hoping that enjoying brownies, shrimp, and cabernet with friends does.

Thanks, Shelley, for being my friend, and for giving my life a little bit of you.

Excitement in the house

Today, our daughter found out that after frst being denied admittance to her dream graduate school, her appeal was accepted. She will be attending the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in the fall. This is great news for her - and for me. She is such a talented artist and writer! I want her to use her talent for her life's work, and having a master's degree in Arts Administration will help her stay in the arts.

Another benefit of her schooling is that Savannah is a great place to visit. I will be so excited to go visit her, especially in winter! We went to Savannah a couple of times before she graduated from high school, because she was accepted at SCAD for undergraduate work. Although we loved the town and its proximity to the beach and the food, she decided to get a liberal arts education at Hendrix instead, and then get a graduate degree in the field she wanted to pursue.

And so there she will be - farther away from home than she has ever been for an extended period of time, except for an 8-week period she spent in Italy in the summer of 2009. I don't know if I will be able to take it. I will miss her like crazy. This parenting thing is very difficult. I wouldn't change it, but being a mother really is like letting my heart walk around outside my body.

I am so proud of her, and admire her sense of self and her talent. Were I to have had those abilities when I was but 22! Go, Emily!

Life

Trite phrases all: "Live each day to the fullest;" "Don't take anything for granted;" "None of knows when it will be our turn;" and my personal favorite, "Life is too short to (fill in the blank)."

And yet every one of these stupid statements is great advice. We don't know how long we have. We should live each day to the fullest. But our own personal protection devices prevent us from doing just those things. We don't think that we are going to die tomorrow. We don't think that today may be the last. We think that our lives stretch out in front of us ad infinitum and that we have all the time in the world to do what we want, to reach our goals, to enjoy life, to make things right, to stop and smell the roses.

The truth is, of course, that we don't. This week, I am surrounded by the abruptness of life, the fragility of life, the admonition, "In the midst of life we are in death."

Logically, my Sunday School teachers told me, we begin dying the moment we are born. Our progress is through life and toward death, and toward what waits for us. It sounded fine when I was untouched by sadness, when all I knew and loved were living and vital and joyous and part of my days. It sounded as if what would happen would be far away. It wasn't real. It wasn't tangible. And when death finally occurred, we would be gently taken to something better than what we were experiencing here on this earth. That was fine with me then.

It continued being fine, because all I knew and loved continued to live and be vital and joyous and part of my days. My parents, my grandparents, even my great-grandmother and great-uncle lived their days, and because I was fine with life's progression toward death, a long time away, I treated those I knew and loved the way Emily told the Stage Manager I did, and everyone else on earth treats those they know and love: I didn't look at them, I didn't treasure each day with them, I didn't hold them close enough.

And then, death began touching my life, first my grandmother, whose demise came not from her Parkinson's Disease, but from a fall she took as she was walking for exercise. A few years later, my great-grandmother decided that 102 years was all she wanted to stay here. And then within a short three years, my grandfather stopped wanting to live in three centuries, my father succumbed to his years of cigarette smoking, and my maternal grandmother, after a massive brain stem stroke, finally gave up after 26 days of trying not to.

I didn't see, anymore, that death seemed this inanimate, benign thing that we all approached as a natural part of what happened from the moment we are born. It became insidious, vile, intruding on all I knew and loved, making me hurt in a way I had not before. Even then, however, it was coming in some sort of logical order - those I lost had spent long periods of time on this earth, they were falling in the expected order: Oldest, older, old.

And then, it started invading other parts of my life: a friend from law school, the husband of another friend, and then another, and then another, a friend's daughter - how unfair is that! - siblings of friends, and friends. My life, by measurement, became shorter and shorter. My expectations became worrisome and fearful. But then, of course, my personal protection devices kicked in, and life became uneventful for a while, lulling me back into the false security that all is well, all will continue to be well, and all will always be well. My husband was well. My daughter was well. The rest of my family was well. I could look past those horrid events and focus on looking at my family and friends, holding them close, treasuring them.

Until death, that dark shadowy figure that probably smirks most of the time, started lurking around again, hiding around corners, in alleys, finding more of those who mean much to me, and those whose lives are my life's measurements. "Begone!" I say."Begone!" He doesn't go.

He approaches.

Live life anyway. Love, hold, treasure. Live.

Going to a baseball game!

I had forgotten the thrill of walking up the steps toward the plaza where Polish dogs and beer wait for me. I had forgotten the feeling of a soft summer night at the ball park, hearing the crack of a bat, watching the players trot to their places on the playing field, the taste of the aforesaid Polish, kraut, and beer, and the simple pleasure of feeling the warm air on my skin under the baseball lights. We went to a Royals game last night, and though they lost, I felt happy just to be there.

Thanks to a friend, we sat on the second row back from the visitors' dugout, close to the field, close to the little kids who swarmed down the aisle at the end of each inning, hoping against hope to snag a ball thrown by a member of the visiting team into the crowd. We cheered with the crowd when someone made a good play, became disgruntled with the umpire when he continued to allow a low strike zone, and just felt as if nothing in the world could be wrong because we were at Royals Stadium (I cannot to this day denigrate Mr. Kauffman by calling it "The K"). What a night!

I also remembered wondering, all those years ago, when I went to a game about every other day, what it would be like to be paid to play a game that I loved. At some point, I recalled the day my mother told me that my father could no longer afford to buy the season tickets that had made him feel so successful, and I recalled feeling as if somehow, life would not be quite the same. I felt sad, too, when I remembered seeing Paul Splittorff pitch in game after game, and then I recalled my anger when Whitey Herzog took him out of one of the Yankees-Royals playoff games. I knew he would have been able to get them out, but Whitey didn't trust him. We lost that game.

What a mixture of feelings at such a special event! I had forgotten. I am glad to have remembered.

Traveling

We have returned from spending 10 hours in the car in order to spend about 5 hours with our daughter! Who but a parent would do such a thing?

We decided to go to Conway to see Emily for dinner on Father's Day. All the way down, we listened to the Open, hoping that Rory McIlroy would win the thing, which he did. My iPhone applications are remarkable things - this one actually simulcast with the radio, and we heard the tournament as it happened.

On the way back, however, we passed through Harrison, Arkansas, and I remembered that I hadn't told you about 1929 Hotel Seville, where we stayed when we went to see Emily receive the Bennett Prize, a cash award for the best paper dealing with business ethics. We couldn't leave for Conway until after choir practice at 8 on that Wednesday, and could not drive the whole 5 hours fully awake, so we decided to try to find a hotel about halfway there. Because all the chains were full, we looked at the Seville and decided to give it a try. What a delight!

Our room was very small, but adequate, and most important, the bathroom had been renovated so that it was the best space in the room. We had a walk-in shower and the whole bathroom was completely tiled. Best, the price we paid for the room, which I don't remember right now, was very reasonable. We also had covered parking, and I slept through the night in the very comfortable bed. The hotel has a restaurant in the lobby, where at least breakfast is served, and presumably, so is lunch and dinner. The bar is gorgeous, but all were closed by the time we arrived that night.

So if you are on the road in northwest Arkansas and need a place to stop for the night, remember the 1929 Hotel Seville in Harrison.

Bridesmaids and Hangovers

A couple of years ago, Max and I decided to see "The Hangover." I wasn't sure whether I really liked it, but I thought the script was very well written and intriguing, and I thought, sorry guys, that it supported the idea that most men are pretty much focused on one or two things, and those are not responsiblity and steadfastness.

When we saw the trailers for "Bridesmaids," we decided to see it, thinking that it would be the female version of "The Hangover," and because my husband really likes "Molly," of "Mike and Molly" fame, who is one of the bridesmaids. Part of the movie was girls behaving badly, but that part was small. Most of the movie centered around how women navigate through their days, needing friends, fighting against failure, trying to find a place in the world, and ignoring nice guys in favor of men who are more exciting and daring. I was glad to have gone to the movie, and glad that it was its own story rather than a girls' "Hangover." Its lessons were thought-provoking and interesting instead of simply silly and funny.

And then we went to see the second "Hangover." I was not particularly disappointed because I knew that it would not be as intriguingly written as the first one; however, I did enjoy the expanded role of the Asian drug dealer. I didn't enjoy the expanded role of "Alan." What had made him so funny in the first movie was his ability to succinctly say something totally stupid at the wrong time. He talked too much in this sequel. This incarnation also had a higher "gross" factor, and certainly a higher raunchy factor. What else could you expect from a movie that has a monkey playing more than a bit part?

One thing I must add: I have foamed at the mouth for years about films' gratuitous showing of female breasts. I get irritated when women are asked to disrobe in order to add something of a sexual nature to a film, especially when men's genitals are never exposed for the same reason. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," however, did have male frontal nudity, as did "The Crying Game." My husband asked me, after we left the "Hangover" theater, whether I was happy now, because the movie did contain male frontal nudity. Nope, I'm not happy. The shots were in no way designed to make men sexual objects. They were there simply to add some fun to the works. And they did.

People who like to go to movies can take in both these films this summer. They will enjoy one two-hour break from reality, and one two-hour, somewhat whimsical but enlightening visit to women's lives.

New Moms

I went to a baby shower today for the daughter of a good friend. I was taken with the beautiful young women, all friends, who were new mothers and looking forward to a life of raising children with only the best of what life has to offer. These young women's families have been friends for years, and now they are grown, still close, and all having children around the same time, so THEIR families will continue the long-term, close relationships.

They were young and glowing, smiling, laughing at each other's jokes and stories, remembering past vacations and school stunts, generally reminding me of the women at the parties detailed in The Great Gatsby, where life seemed easy and carefree. I thought back to the days of my pregnancy and the days after a new life was placed in my arms, and I was envious of their confidence in knowing that their best days were ahead of them, that life would offer much and take little, and that they would go forward with more than a modicum of security in their lives and their families. I, too, was just like them at that time in my life, knowing that life would be good, would not disappoint me, would bring me everything I could hope or aspire to have.

And generally, I have been right. Now, 22 years later, I love my husband, my child, my home, the opportunities to beneficially use my gifts and talents in my work, my friends, and my family. My disappointment is that life has not been a party from The Great Gatsby, where everything is easy and carefree. I have been hurt, betrayed, friends have left, some have died, my family is much smaller, I have lost an election, I have gained weight. All in all, however, I am one of the lucky ones and am grateful for those days years ago when I, too, saw life as all possibility, and I am grateful that much of that possibility has come to fruition.

Captain Queeg and Bonnie

When I was in high school, my English teacher, who happened to be my mother, was acutely aware that boys didn't particularly want to read about Jane Eyre or other heroines with unusual romantic entanglements. She allowed that we could read, for our required readings for the year, WAR books, such as The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk, Battle Cry by Leon Uris, and All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Little did she know that her own daughter would take her up on reading those books.

I had long suspected that my father had suffered ill effects from his part in the war, and I wondered what he had experienced that had such an effect on him that he would rarely, if ever, speak of his service. One day, when my mother, my sister, and I were somewhat paying attention to a war movie that was playing on some television channel, my father walked through the room and made an offhand comment that he had seen too often was was being depicted on the screen: A pilot, during dive bombing training, would become so fixed on the target that he forgot to pull out of his dive, smashing the plane and all occupants into the ocean. Daddy said that he one time saw, because he was so close to the plane, the co-pilot coming out of his seat, pounding on the pilot trying to make him pull out of the dive to no avail. Daddy said that the last thing that co-pilot did was hit the pilot, and then they crashed into the water, and all aboard were dead.

So tonight, while I was cooking dinner, beginning with appetizers of a pureed pea and mint crostini, I turned on the Turner Classic Movie channel. The Caine Mutiny was showing. Humphrey Bogart was at his finest as the demented Captain Queeg. I have to say that I see the trial differently because I now am a lawyer, but I still don't fault Marek for what he did. Of course, I think we should keep in mind that I would probably be a coward in war, and I might have been called "Old Yellowstain." I certainly hope not. As I watched the movie, I remembered Queeg's eccentricities, and found myself wanting to read the book once more. Fortunately, I have the book, and will pull it out so that I can remember all the character nuances and the events that led up to the "mutiny."

One wonders how Queeg ever advanced to Captain. I think I believe in the Peter Principle, but I think that I will once again read the book, this time with a jaded eye toward any war and this time with a 58-year-old perspective. I wonder what will change.

Homage to Fluffy

I knew yesterday was coming for about a month. At Easter, Fluffy, our almost-16-year-old Bichon Frise, became ill and I was alone with her and her discomfort. She was in so much pain for about a day after a trip to the vet that I promised myself I wouldn't make her go through it again. The vet couldn't really tell me what was going on at that time, but I hoped that she would make it through Emily's graduation because Fluffy had been a part of Emily's life all through her school years. She seemed to recover just fine, and was a happy little dog as her life returned to normal - getting up, going outside, coming in and receiving a treat, exploring the kitchen floor for dropped pieces of food, and then heading back upstairs to sleep in her chair all day, before repeating the same routine in the afternoon and then again when Max came home from work.

I had noticed, though, that last week, some of her symptoms had returned, and when Martin came to paint the sunroom ceiling, he noted that she had lost weight. So I knew we were not far off.

Yesterday when I picked her up from boarding her because I was at the judicial conference, she was in pain again. Max and I took her back to the vet, and we tried a sedative and painkiller, but by the time we got home, it was clear that those medicines were not going to work. I had promised that I would not put her through that again, and so we made our final trip to the vet. He was compassionate and gave her a sedative to calm her down prior to giving her the last shot, so that she could have some peace so we could say our good-byes. And then Fluffy was no more.

It was hard to come home, and it was hard to talk to Emily later in the night to tell her what we had to do, but I know it was the right thing.

Fluffy came to us after Thanksgiving right before Emily had her 7th birthday. The summer before, we had visited Mike and Caroline, friends from Kansas City, who had two Bichons (Muffy and Mickey), both of whom had come, miraculously, from Susie in Sedalia. Emily had fallen in love with the two balls of white fur, who were perky and loving and lively. She was taken with the idea of having a dog - one just like Muffy and Mickey. One day in the late summer, she was visiting my mother, when Mother's neighbor came out to talk to her and asked her what she wanted for her birthday. Emly said that she wanted a dog - a Bichon Frise. And he, childless and therefore clueless, said that he would get her one because every little girl needs a dog.

I didn't really think much about it until about a month later, when Emily and I were taking a walk in the neighborhood. We stopped at our across-the-street neighbor's garage sale, and someone asked Emily what she was going to get for her birthday later on that year. She said, "Ted Simmons is going to get me a Bichon Frise." At that point, I knew we were in trouble.

That night, I told Max that we probably should start looking for a Bichon, because I didn't really want to disappoint my daughter on her 7th birthday. We had been a dog family once before, way before Emily was born, when Max's Pepsi had brought joy to our days, with her loving and outgoing nature, her climbing on the bed and licking Max's face to wake him every morning, and her wagging tail. She developed cancer, however, and the pain of losing her was almost unbearable - so much that we vowed we would never have another dog.

So here we were, deciding that our daughter should experience the joy and pain of dog ownership - but I knew that I would be the one taking the dog to the vet, taking her out, making sure she was fed and had water. That is what mothers do, even when their children say, "I'll take care of it and feed it and take it out and water it and pick up its poop." Max checked and found out that Susie was still in the business of breeding Bichons, and so secretly, we went out to look at the new puppies who had just been born to Lucy, Susie's show Bichon, and who would be ready for new homes about six weeks later - right around Thanksgiving.

We looked at the puppies and we fell in love with all of them, but could not take our eyes off the little girl who was beautiful and who ran around and around and around in her cage, and who, when taken out and was held, was, in Susie's words, "Stiff as a carp!" I picked her, and Susie said that she might not be available because our choice was her choice as well. I figured that meant that I had picked well. It turned out that my choice had some defects, and showing her would not be possible. She was going to be ours, but we thought that Emily should name her. So for the time being, she was "the puppy."

So on the day after Thanksgiving, we told Emily we were going to take a ride, and we went out into the country and down a little road, to a house in the woods. We told Emily we thought she might like to see the puppies in the house. I don't know if she was figuring out what was happening, but when we picked up the one who was ours, and put her into Emily's hands, Emily said, "Ooh! She's fluffy!!!" And the name stuck.

Over the years, Fluffy has been a blessing and a burden, a stress factor and a source of joy as she bounded around and around the house just as she had done in her cage. But even though I was usually the one who took her to the vet (and giving credit to Max, who gave her baths), and fed her and watered her and picked up her poop, Emily loved her dog. And so the task of telling her last night was not one I relished, but she, like we, knew it was coming. I think we all just hoped that something else would occur. But it was not to be.

And so once again, Max and I have vowed that we will never have another dog. It hurts too much to love so, and to receive such unconditional love from a little thing who can't say what hurts.

I'll let you know if we change our minds.

For Heaven's Sake!

I clicked the wrong click, and clicked out of my last post before it was finished. I MUST evaluate the fried catfish. I grew up eating fried catfish, fresh catfish that my grandfather caught and froze in paper Foremost milk cartons full of the water in which the fish lived. My grandmother had some sort of secret recipe for frying the fish - my mother says that she soaked the fish in milk before coating it in corn meal and frying it in either lard or Crisco. However she cooked it, I will never forget the taste of that fish, and was thoroughly spoiled by it, so that when people say, "So-and-So has the BEST catfish!," I smile smugly to myself. Grandma's catfish was the best. As I have grown older, however, I have recognized that no one can fix Grandma's catfish, and so if I want to eat catfish, I will have to try other, inferior cooks' versions. So far, by far, Fred's Fish House in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, has held the crown. I tried the fried catfish at The Fish House in Conway, Arkansas, and found it pleasing, the hush puppies addictive, and the brown, soupy pinto beans delicious, but Fred's coating was still the lightest and most crisp. So when we went to Oxford, where Taylor Grocery was heralded as the best by locals and tourists alike, I had to go and pronounce it good, great, or passable. It was very good. The cornmeal coating was light and crispy, but I needed to add a little salt. The hush puppies were probably, in all fairness, better than Fred's or The Fish House's, because they had just a little bite, probably from a smidgin of cayenne pepper. Taylor Grocery's atmosphere was far superior to either Fred's or The Fish House, because I confess that I believe most meals are made better with the addition of a glass of wine, or the the menu demands, a bottle of beer. Also, I enjoyed the crowd at Taylor, all of whom were raucous, lively, and happy. Fred's customer base is quieter, and Fred's is most crowded on Sunday around noon when all the churches let out. No one is raucous after church! My visit to The Fish House came on a Saturday afternoon, when most of the lunch crowd was gone and our waitress had definitely earned time to sit rather than wait on yet another table. So I cannot determine the best. I prefer the crust on Fred's fish, the pinto beans at The Fish House, and the hush puppies, ambience, and ability to imbibe at Taylor Grocery. Perhaps, just perhaps, the answer lies in yet another trip to each!

Catfish Heaven

On my little jaunt to Oxford, Mississippi, I indulged in one of my secret food faves: eating fried anything! We went to dinner at a little old storefront that once served as a grocery store, and now functions as one of Oxford's most well-known foodie haunts: Taylor Grocery.

Taylor Grocery is not a fancy place; it is a fun place where good ol' boys and girls sit around and eat fried catfish and French fries and hush puppies, and where a couple of guys play old time country music and 1970s rock on acoustic guitars and take the diners' tips as their pay. They get food, too, which is a really good reason to play music there. The high section of the walls of Taylor Grocery are covered with names of people who have been there to eat. In fact, as we read some of the names, one of my traveling companions found someone whose first name as inscribed on the wall was the same as her maiden name - Senn. Coincidentally, the restaurant's floor is vaguely reminiscent of the floor of Senn 5 & 10 in our home town - old, well-worn, distressed wood planks - and the smell, other than the wonderful aroma of cooking catfish, was also that of an old, well-used building.

Lining the shelves on the lower part of the walls are rows and rows of ingredients and condiments that will eventually be used to make cole slaw, hot sauce, wonderfully soggy green beans, and other delectable treats that, though I have not lived in the Ozark hills for 40 years, are still as much a part of me as my right arm. I knew by looking at those shelves that the cole slaw was mayonnaise-based rather than hot vinegar-based; I haven't ever seen so many plastic gallon-jars of Kraft mayo in one place!

Most important, most diners had plastic glasses, the 24-oz. opaque kind that a fan gets at a college football game, and they were full of what fans drink at college football games. Apparently, the liquor laws in the State of Mississippi are as weird as they are in Arkansas: some counties are "dry" and some are "wet." Some cities are "wet" while the county in which they are located are "dry." Such is the case in Lafayette (pronounced luh-FAY-ut) County, Mississippi. According to our waitress, as long as the liquor can't be seen, we were free to enjoy a glass of wine with our meal. I didn't know that rule when I sat down, and I was somewhat disconcerted when the owner of the joint strode over to our table and covered our lovely wine bottle with an old paper sack, the one in which we spirited the juice of the grape into the restaurant.

Atmosphere aside, however, the food was great. I rarely give myself permission to eat something that comes out of a deep fat fryer, but when my two companions and I decided what to order, they chose the grilled catfish and the blackened, which left me with (sigh) fried fillets. The fish came with hush puppies, and I ate green beans, which were cooked the only decent Southern way green beans should be cooked: with bacon, onions, and garlic. We shared the other kinds of fish, but all agreed that the fried was the way to go.

Oxford is a great place to visit!

A week or so ago, I struck out for Oxford, Mississippi, to see what the town was like. Home to Ole Miss and Rowan Oak, which is William Faulkner's home, Oxford is a delightful town around the same size as Sedalia, but with a thriving downtown square that hosts several restaurants, local shops, and a two-story bookstore that sponsors book signings and author lectures. In fact, the weekend I visited, the sole surviving Faulkner was scheduled to talk about her new book, which she had written about the family and the lovely old home that is Rowan Oak. I will detail my visit to Oxford more thoroughly in my article for 417 Magazine, which will be published later this year, but suffice to say here that I stayed in a lovely hotel, ate lots of good food, shopped 'til I dropped, saw the building where James Meredith was housed at the University of Mississippi when the Universtiy was integrated, and enjoyed the gentility of southern manners for an entire weekend. Go there. You'll have a good time.

Spring Break and Oxford

I am excited because today is my last day in class before spring break, and I leave this afternoon to start a long weekend in Oxford, Mississippi. I will be writing a travel article about what Oxford has to offer, and I have heard already from one of my travel companions that Oxford offers catfish. Wherever this place is will have to work hard to compete with or beat Fred's Fish House in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, but I am willing to give it a try AND be fair in my assessment.

I am traveling with my "oldest" friend, who has known me from the time we were in diapers, and my "oldest" friend from the newest part of my life - the part in Sedalia. I know the two will get along famously, and that we will have a good time.

At this point, I plan to write about the literary part of Oxford, which includes a very old book store, John Grisham, and most important, William Faulkner; however, I cannot leave food and drink out of the mix. I will be eating three meals a day, which will add inches to my waistline, I am sure, but what the heck? It's all for my fledgling writing career! Inches cannot be a deterrent!

Our plan is to trek down south toward my home town, Thayer, Missouri; then toward Memphis; and then into Oxford. We will be staying at an Oxford institution, and exploring the square. The funny thing about Oxford is that it is about the size of Sedalia - about 20,000 people. The University, I have read, doubles the size of the town to about 38,000. What is most interesting about that factoid is that Oxford has a town square that is vital and booming, whereas Sedalia has to fight to keep people downtown.

I have also read that Oxford has been rated a great place to retire. While I am not ready to retire (am I'm not sure I ever will be), I will be looking around to gauge the general age of the population. I wonder if I will find a pocket of young people (students) and a pocket of people older than I (retirees)? "Let it be a mystery. . ." (Up the Down Staircase).

The South has some fabulous old homes and wonderful gardens, and I hope that this week's warmer temperatures will let us have a beautiful trip as well as a tasty one! I will let you know what I find.

Is it possible? Spring is almost here!

I hate to continue talking about the weather, but this past winter has been extremely, well, extreme. I admit to having enjoyed the snow, especially on the days when Max and I couldn't get out of the house. I felt somewhat like Laura and Mary in the Little House series; when I read those books, especially the ones that dealt with winter, I wondered what it would be like to see nothing but snow for such a long time. This year, I found out!

Then after the snows, I felt as if I would be permanently depressed because of the cold, damp, gray air that pushed through even the warmth of the "growing and framing" fire in the fireplace. I have been looking fervently and with dedication for the signs that erupt to comfort me every year, telling me that the long winter will soon be over: budding grape hyacinths, brilliant yellow forsythia's wildly waving arms, pink spears that push up through the vinca and mulch to become pink and white peonies, tips of pointy green variegated leaves leading the way for the coral tulips to herald Easter's coming yet again. The signs, though, have so far remained hidden.

And then yesterday, when the sun was out and the air was warm and welcoming, I saw one of the signs - not one I was looking for, but one that nevertheless told me that spring was going to be here soon. I saw weeds - flowering weeds. Even that made me happy! And then I looked a little more closely and saw the tulip leaves, and a lump in the ground that portends sweet-smelling hyacinths. The peonies are still underground, but I know they are there. I can wait for a while.

Spring and Easter remind me of each other. They signify resurrection and rebirth after a long and dreary winter, and a resurgence of hope for the sore human heart.

So now, I wait somewhat impatiently for what I know is to come, and hope that I will enjoy every bit of it when it arrives.

The Deaf Man

I am a big fan of Evan Hunter a/k/a Ed McBain, and his 87th Precinct books. Anyone who knows the series knows that Steve Carella's nemesis of sorts is the deaf man. And it appears that I, too, have a deaf man nemesis.

The Deaf Man has a house that is literally falling down around his head. And he is literally deaf. From what I can tell, he has lived in the house all his life. His parents lived there, he grew up there, and he lives there now. I think he may have siblings, but I don't know where they are. He is older than I, I believe, so he probably had little formal education. My friend who is a deaf ed teacher tells me that he probably doesn't have a vocabulary much past third or fourth grade, because "back in the old days," schools didn't provide an education for deaf people.

He is my nemesis because I don't know what to do about him and his house. The law says that he has to bring his house up to code, but the City is now saying that the house is uninhabitable. That means that the house, the one with trees and bushes growing up through the porch roof, the one with holes in the roof, the one with plants climbing up the walls so that the house looks like an apparition in a Disney movie, will be condemned and torn down. And that will leave the deaf man homeless.

Services for senior citizens in the county will provide him with a place to live, but he is not a social being. I don't know if he has ever held a job. He does not drive. He dons heavy down-filled, shearling-lined clothing and goggles and rides a bicycle all over town. I don't know if he has meaningful exchanges with anyone. When we mention finding a new place to live, he becomes not only defensive, but belligerent.

I don't know where he eats. I don't know if his place has running water. All I know is that this is his home, and it is the only place he knows and has ever lived. Senior services cannot take the place of the comfort, safety, and familiarity of home.

And so, he stands in front of me, defiant, angry, and I know, frightened. All he has is endangered. The life he knows teeters on the edge. What next?

The deaf man.

White outside

Just when I thought winter was on its last legs toward a slow crawl toward spring - after all, February is only 28 days - we were hit with what is, for me, the storm of my life so far. I believe the ground is covered with at least 18 inches of pure white snow. Our driveway is lost, as is the sidewalk leading to the front door.

I hope that Mr. Bentley, who is a consistent defendant but not a "frequent flier," will show up today to help Max shovel. I have no idea where we will put the snow, but the most difficult and most important place to clear is where the driveway meets the street. The snowplow does its job, but leaves a HUGE pile of snow that no car in this garage can get over. As long as that ridge is there, no one in this house is going anywhere. Period.

This will be my third consecutive day of slugdom. Yesterday, I made cookies and took a short nap and watched the snow pouring down and sat in a leather chair by the fire and watched the fire burn, watched Law and Order - you get the idea. Today will have to be a little more productive so that I can come back to life as life comes back to me. I plan to clean the house a little, make sure that I have all my papers graded, and do some planning for Max's 60th birthday, which arrives one week before Emily's graduation.

I wonder if I will be tired of the solitude and of these four walls by the end of today. Probably not. They are more attractive than the alternative, which is to be out. Yesterday, as I was trying to go to the store early in the morning, I became stuck in the snow on the highway twice. I was pretty terrified, as only a couple of people stopped to help and the tail end of the car kept sweeping over into the next lane, where 18-wheelers were barreling toward me. They, of course, cannot stop quick in an emergency, and I hoped to stay out of their way. It was not such a good thing.

Off to downstairs to build yet another fire with wonderful firewood, and to begin to enjoy another day of doing nothing.

Movie review

"The Visitor" is fabulous. Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Academy Award, and that I can't remember who won that year is testament to this statement: I think he was robbed.

The plot revolves around the visitor, and it is the audience's job to figure out who the visitor is.

Jenkins plays a lifeless college economics professor, whose life stopped when his wife died - maybe before. She was a classical pianist, which we find out only by inference, and his pitiful attempt to learn to play the piano is also his pitiful attempt to continue the life he knew. His life is interrupted when he visits his flat in the Village in New York only to find squatters living there. His integration with their lives and the reawakening of his life is the meat of the story. His and theirs are great stories.

The movie does not have much dialogue, but it doesn't need much. The actors tell their stories without saying too much. They also make great music, which I love.

One sub-plot deals with how illegal immigration is handled by our country. One of the characters, the mother of one of the major characters, says, "This is just like Syria." That should give us all pause. Is there an easy answer to this issue? Probably not. But we all should realize that any story has more than one side.

See it now. Netflix has it. So do I.

Passion for Cooking

Last night was a one-of-a-kind experience. Two trusting souls bought a wine-pairing/tasting dinner at an auction last year. For around $700, they bought 24 bottles of wine, and my love for cooking. Last night, I hope I did them proud.

Mary and I picked a date, and unbeknownst to me, it was the perfect date, because I had nothing to think about for the entire week preceding the dinner other than the dinner itself. I had a list of the wines, and set about looking for perfect pairings; in order to do that, I had to buy some of the wines! Darn! I was already familiar with a couple of them, so had a "leg up" as to what dish to prepare that would be the perfect companion to that wine.

I used my friends as guinea pigs, asking them to taste different dishes and tell me which was better. I tried tuna with two different rubs, a roast boneless leg of lamb, scalloped potatoes to die for (Julia Child calls them "potatoes Dauphinois"), a molten chocolate cake, and even a risotto with butternut squash and mushrooms.

I read lots of issues of "Food and Wine" to try to pick the right flavor for the right grape. I drooled as I thumbed through recipe after recipe, trying to find just the right combination of, well, food and wine. Ultimately, it worked. It worked very well.

Before I brag, however, I need to thank my good friends Kim and Kevin and Wendy and Rob. They were my kitchen help, serving the food when ready, picking up empty plates, and washing the dishes that I had to cart home. The evening was a success because these people, along with my wonderful and accommodating husband Max, worked their tails off to make sure the evening was a success. I would never have been able to carry it off without each and every one of them. On a positive note, we were able to snack and tipple in the kitchen while we were between courses. I think we each at one full meal, even if it was as we were standing around waiting for other people to finish their meals!

I cooked for two days straight before Saturday, figuring that the easiest thing to do would be to have everything ready to assemble on S-Night (Service Night). We carted pans, knives, dishes, glasses, ingredients, Tupperware, and odds and ends to the hosts' house, and we set up shop in their kitchen. We had six courses, six wines, six dishes to serve. Timing would be an issue. How long does it take one person to eat a salad, after all?

We began with a Riesling and a salad. The salad had blue cheese, walnuts, pomegranate seeds (thank you, Costco, for selling the seeds only), and sliced pears. The salad dressing used a reduced Riesling as the base. The salad and the dressing were yummy, even today after each had sat for 12 hours!

The second course/wine was Sauvignon Blanc. I read somewhere that a natural pairing for that wine is goat cheese, one of my favorites. So I did a bruschetta with goat cheese and sauteed mushrooms. I toasted the bread with olive oil and salt the day before; we spread it with the cheese and topped it with mushrooms right before popping the bruschetta under the broiler for a few minutes.

Third was the risotto. Timing was a complexity, because I had to begin the cooking process while my friends were serving the salad. I had roasted the squash and sauteed the mushrooms the day before, and I measured out all the ingredients to take with me; all I had to do was add the ingredients at the right time and stir. This course deserves a special note. Max and I tried this recipe and decided to buy the Chardonnay with which we were pairing it to make sure that the wine was not too oaky or buttery for the risotto. This pairing was, as far as I am concerned, the highlight of the dinner. It was almost perfect. Somehow, the wine's accents and tastes meshed with the rice, squash, and mushrooms, and the diners were in, as we say in southern Missouri, Hog Heaven. William Hill Chardonnay was the champion here. I will buy that wine specifically to drink with this risotto some time in the future. Amazing!

Next was spicy-sweet tuna. I found some rub recipe and thought it sounded interesting. Brown sugar was the main ingredient, and I believe cumin was also prevalent. I patted tuna steaks with the rub, mixed up a mango and red pepper salsa, and put the tuna in the skillet for a minute or so on each side. It was done very well - seared on the outside, bright pink and warm on the inside. And it went very well with the King Estate Pinot Noir, which is one of our favorite Pinots. I didn't want to mess up that wine, and from the comments, I didn't!

We did a palate cleansing with lemon sorbet, which we served in shot glasses that Max found. The glasses were the perfect size for a little bright citrus. This serving was a surprise, as I didn't tell anyone I was preparing it, but I thought it would be better to have a clear palate for the next fat-infused dish.

We paired Kanoonga Hill Shiraz with a roast boneless leg of lamb and potatoes scalloped with cream and Swiss cheese. The lamb also came with a red wine sauce that used veal demiglace. The demiglace cost more than the leg of lamb. It is SOOOOOO good and rich, though! This was the most disappointing dish to me, because the lamb was too well-done for lamb. It was not dry, nor was it flavorless, but I should have taken it out about 10 minutes before I did. I have heard that good gravy covers a multitude of sins, and in this case, it did. I was very grateful to Williams-Sonoma for selling demiglace.

Finally, the diners drank a white Moscato, and I prepared a sweet red wine ice cream. AFTER I had mixed the ice cream, I thought that it would be even better if I had added ground peppercorns to the custard. We added the pepper as a topping for the ice cream, and we served the dessert with a square of very dark chocolate. I brought along some raspberry sauce, but forgot to put in over the ice cream. It made no difference. The ice cream with pepper and chocolate. but NO raspberry sauce, was gone.

We stayed a little while afterward to relax and converse with the people who had enjoyed the evening, but we had the best time talking to the host, who is a wine lover, and who enjoyed the food - the risotto most of all.

After all the work, I can still say that I had a great time and will probably donate the same dinner to the auction this year. Not that I am complaining or anything, but Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, donated lunch for six to a similar auction for a different organization. HER lunch garnered $100,000. I wonder if it made any difference that she was at lunch, as was Mariska Hargitay and Alec Baldwin? Well, we will start recruiting for next year's event. Who knows? Maybe we can find someone famous to show up - someone like, oh, someone. Maybe you!

SNOW DAY!!!

Last night when I went to bed, the classes I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays were meeting. "In Session," the posting proclaimed. "In Session." Immediately, I began worrying about how I was going to get to the College by 9:30. Since Emily's car was totaled by a thankfully-insured driver, we have been getting by with one car here and one car there. I don't want to consider getting another car until she graduates and lands somewhere so we know what kind of car she will need. New York, no car. Savannah, small car. Little Rock, mid-size car. You get the picture.

Anyway, Max and I have his car, which is the cutest little sports car, but it is worthless in snow. And the reason I was worrying about how I was going to get to the College was that the snow was, by the time I went to bed, about six inches deep. And the snow was still coming.

When I woke up, however, the snow had stopped, was resting in the cold, and the web site triumphantly exclaimed, "Canceled!" Except I think that the "Canceled" was incorrected spelled "Cancelled." I can't remember because I jumped about 10 feet in the air as I read the heavenly word.

So today will be a snow day for me. Unlike when I was in elementary school, though, when snow days were few and far between, and when ice days required that I unsuccessfully wheedle my father to let me sled down Pentecost Hill with "everybody else," this day will give me one more day to get caught up: to successfully, I hope, wheedle a mortgage company to postpone a foreclosure, to tweak my syllabi, to list my new students on my Outlook Contacts page, to balance my estates' checkbooks, to write seriously overdue thank-you notes, and maybe to take a nap. Oh, and I WILL watch "The Closer," which TNT has most graciously decided to re-run at a time that is not usually available to me - thank you, thank you so much.

Then tomorrow, I will be relaxed and cheerful as I get ready for the wine pairing tasting I am preparing for Saturday night.

These will be two good days.

The Happiest Days . .

In Gone With the Wind, Mammy said, when Bonnie Blue Butler was born, "The happiest days is when babies come." How true that is. It seems that when a baby is on the way, we become excited, hopeful, anticipatory, and just happy thinking about the new life that will, in some way, give new meaning to ours.

We had a baby shower today. The youngest member of our church choir, the young woman who grew up in our church, moved away, and then came back to be married and be a part of the church, is having a baby. Max and I made a cake and spiked coffee, I got flowers and new candles, and I even bought "baby" napkins so that we could remember why we were there. Our church choir is a tight-knit group, singing together every Wednesday and Sunday, seeing each other through family crises, illnesses, death, and, most happily, new life. Stephanie brought her husband John, who sat stoically through the opening of the gifts, the "oohs," the "ahs," and the stories of Stephanie's grandmother Marilyn, who, though she died many years ago, is still larger than life through tales of her legendary antics.

Max, Wes, and Jim (Stephanie's father and our ringer tenor) also braved the femininity of a baby shower to come and "ooh" and "ah" along with us women. Even they had a good time. We laughed, shared stories, shared gossip, remembered the choir's past and its present, and celebrated what may be its future in preparing to welcome Hannah, the fourth generation of this family to come into our church and who knows? Sing in the choir?

Pink was the predominant color, laughter was the loudest noise, and familiarity and comfort the most prevelant feelings. It was a good day and a great shower.

We didn't play any games.

The Wisdom of Solomon

Court was interesting yesterday, but the day began with a story I didn't want to hear.

A young man, 20, approached. He didn't have the money to pay his ticket, which had been issued because he couldn't produce proof of insurance when asked to do so by a police officer. Typically, we ask those people to buy insurance so that they will be legal drivers, and then they pay a reduced fine. He bought insurance, but he doesn't have the money to pay a fine. The insurance he bought has now expired because he could afford to buy insurance for only one month.

He is homeless. He doesn't have a car. He doesn't have a job. He does have a GED and a sister. They are orphans. The sister has a job at a nursing home, but doesn't make enough money to find an apartment and pay the first and last month's rent and a damage deposit. Their father died last July, and their mother died last August. At the time of his mother's death, he lived in Blue Springs, still with no car. She had been admitted to the hospital and he had called to find out how she was. She was improving. The next day she was dead.

He found that she had left a van, which he planned to use, but by the time he could get to it, his mother's roommate had arranged for it to be towed. The towing company now wants over $1000 to release the van; however, if he can pay $600, they will accept that.

I like to solve problems, and that's one of the reasons I like being a municipal judge. I can use wider vision to solve problems, but I can't solve this one. I have no idea what to do to help this young man and his sister. Someone, the mother of the sister's friend, is allowing them to stay in her home, but the long term for both of them looks bleak. How do we help kids such as these? How can they get on their feet when the very things they need to survive and work - a home, a car, insurance for the car, food - costs money that they can't get because they can't find decent jobs?

The kid is a decent kid. His problems must seem overwhelming to him, and yet I don't know what to do to help him begin a life that is stuck in first gear.

He needs the money he would have to pay for a fine.

I dismissed the charge

Winter

The snow yesterday was absolutely beautiful as it fell, and, as long as I was looking out the kitchen window to the back yard, after it fell. Our pergola was the perfect winter picture: the table and chairs that welcome us in the summer sat silently as the snow became both tablecloth and seat cushions. Wisteria branches were redolent with white rather than lavender. Dusk came and the snow still sifted down, sparkling through tree branches as the lights from the motion sensors hit it. I couldn't tear myself away from the kitchen window, as I watched the soft and quiet, listening to the silence of the January evening.

Today, the magic was gone, as the sun came out and melted the white stuff and exposed the street and its gray imperfections. One of my regulars at court showed up to shovel the walk, and was surprised to see me at the door. Cars traveled fast down the street, turning the lovely powder lining the street a dingy brown speckled with black and dirt. Work and my computer beckoned, and so out my office window, minute by minute, I watched the landscape change from lovely to Missouri winter.

But the back yard still looks gorgeous. Found Fluffy tracks aren't really visible in the yard, and the table and chairs on the pergola and the wisteria branches over it are still dressed in their white finery. Safe and warm, I can look out into the yard and be mesmerized once again by winter as it should be instead of how it usually appears.

Oops!

I wrote "Sense and Sensibilities" rather than "Sense and Sensibility." Sorry for the error.

A Day of Rest

I enjoy our interim pastor so much. I often think that Alex is God's gift to our little congregation, the congregation that has been buffeted by so many hard winds over the past ten years. For today, he selected a hymn, a spiritual, that everyone knows but that no one has really sung in a church service: "Amen." The problem with the song is that it is divided into two parts: One part sings, obviously, "Amen," and the other part sings the verses. We had no idea how to break up the song so that it made sense and so that everyone would sing, but we finally got the idea to break the congregation in half, one side singing the "Amen" and the other side singing the verses. I think it went rather well, and even more important, we had a good time while singing it. Can you imagine? A group of Presbyterians having fun when singing!!!

I was lucky enough to have Sandy play the hymns with me, which takes some of the pressure off my feet (organ foot pedals, you know). She and I have a habit of dressing, without consultation, alike. Today, we wore gray trousers and pink sweaters. We accessorized with silver jewelry. Alex saw us before the service, as we were discussing how to play "Amen," and he suggested that Phil, the music leader, begin each hymn by saying, "A-one-a, a-two-a, hit it, Girls!" As I write it, I guess you had to be there, but such a jovial and joyful atmosphere is energizing and uplifting, exactly what I needed for today.

After feasting on leftover New Year's Day bounty, when the Chiefs began their hideous demise, I took a nap in our sun-filled bedroom, while the found Fluffy snored from her favorite chair. Now, I watch Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in "Sense and Sensibilities" and wait for the fire to take hold. I can't remember when I experienced such a lovely afternoon - an afternoon of rest.