The Reader Travels

He held out through Thanksgiving and Christmas and breathed his last on New Year’s Eve, never to see 2008. And all I could do through all of it was to sing. I’m like that little kid on About a Boy, who starts singing for no apparent reason. It’s a bizarre tic that often gets on people’s nerves, but I couldn’t stop.

At some point, though, it turned into something that soothed people’s nerves, that brought joy into gloomy hospital rooms. So I kept on singing. I started taking requests for things like, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and other happy holiday songs. I sang a duet of “The Christmas Song” with a hospital tech who’d come to check Gene’s blood pressure.

And when he had to go back to ICU and his lungs collapsed and we knew it was the end, I sang at my mother-in-law’s request. Despite the sedation, we knew he could hear us. Christmas was over, and it was New Year’s Eve, and I remembered how Gene liked bawdy songs, so I sang the ones my folks had taught me, “Roll me over, in the clover, roll me over, lay me down and do it again,” and “The Princess Pupule has plenty papaya, she loves to give it away.”

He took his last breath while everyone around his bed sang, “You Are My Sunshine,” the same song his granddaughter Caroline had sung to him the day after Christmas, bringing a smile to his lips.

The songs go through my head as I lay down to sleep and they’re still there when I wake in the morning, the Irish songs he loved so much, “Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling… and I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.”

Farewell, Gene. I sing for you still, though my voice is cracked with sickness and sorrow.

My senior year in high school, we had a guest lecturer from the local community college, a poet who challenged us to write a poem about a journey we take every day. The idea was to find beauty in something that we take for granted, to notice things we hardly notice.

Well, lately, I’ve been driving to downtown Dallas almost every day, back and forth to Baylor Medical Center. It’s an emotional drive, putting on big smiles and Santa hats, bringing food and song and sunshine, then driving home tired and pensive.

If I were to write poetry about this repeated journey, I might write about:

1. The glowing ball of light that is Reunion Tower.

2. The Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church on Washington Street.

3. The look on my mother-in-law’s face when she welcomes us back again.

4. Football games and sports radio.

5. Hugs and back rubs.

6. That furry little snaggle-tooth dog that’s always so happy we made it home.

Oh my gosh. There’s babies poppin’ out everywhere!

I slip back to northern Mexico with The Hummingbird’s Daughter where Teresita Urrea was a mid-wife and a healer. The book starts with Teresita’s own birth, and we see so many babies born through her eyes and her gentle, but strong hands. She brought life wherever she went, and even defeated death in her own miracle resurrection.

For each of the past two Sundays there is a new baby boy. Alex came on Father’s Day, an American boy born to Chinese parents. His grandparents are here from China to care for him and connect him back to his roots, but his is a whole new world.

Isaac came this morning, three weeks early. His father is part Mexican, part viking, a powerful combination, and his mother is warm and thoughtful, energetic and funny. He was turned upside down, so they had to cut him from his mother’s belly, but he is healthy and strong as a viking should be.

May they both be blessed by the grace and wonder of Santa Teresita.

My father is an honest man among pirates. It’s a hard role to fill, a difficult task to achieve, keeping your integrity and principles when corruption surrounds you.

He believed in respect and chivalry, whisked my mother away from the sea dogs in her family. Because he was sensitive and respectful, the pirates judged him as weak, but he prevailed.

We moved to a town where the pirates wore white sheets, and there he stood for equality and respect for all the people, regardless of race or religion. In our next home, he worked on an island, a city founded by Jean Lafitte. Corruption was all around, and there he stood for the law and fought to uphold it.

My father is a mighty, good man, and I see his example reflected in his son, who also stands for respect and equality and the deepest love for his family.

Happy Fathers Day!

The last time I was in New Orleans was three years ago, which was a year before Katrina blew through town. It’s still the city I remember, filled with family I’ve missed. But it’s also gravely wounded.

I’m here in mourning, and my new journal is filled with eulogies. I visited a cousin who’s been rebuilding her house, and living in it at the same time. My uncle is in a trailer until his house is livable again.

We drove out to my Aunt’s beach house and stood on the empty lot overlooking the broken piers that were once the Bay St. Louis Yacht Club. My niece sifted through the ground, picking out buried Mardi Gras beads and pieces of plates and glasses from the house, like it was an archaeology dig.

I’m here for a funeral, and the optimist in me can’t help but think about new beginnings. The day we arrived, they opened the new bridge across the bay between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, Mississippi. For two years they’ve been ferrying passengers across the bridge, but today everything is connected again. Sparkly and new.

Because of Mother’s Day and the recent death of my grandmother, I’ve been thinking a lot about the women in my family. Somehow, each of them is linked in my mind to a kind of food, and the thoughts have been pouring in since I cooked dinner on Friday evening.

I grew up with three grandmothers. One was famous for her Jell-O concoctions, all nuts and fruits and marshmallows. Another cooked gumbo and crawfish, served French bread at every meal and drank martinis; the taste of gin always reminds me of her. The third always tried “gourmet” recipes that were somehow off, but made the best cheesecake I’ve ever tasted, a flavor I still search for, but can never find.

My sisters are linked to food too. My middle sister is all health - green spinach and fresh picked blueberries. She’s tricks for opening garlic and a million ways to cook tofu. My brother’s wife is meatballs, rice pudding and Spanish pastries flavored with anise. My husband’s sister is hot tea, fresh pressed coffee and spaghetti sauce with cayenne pepper. My youngest sister is love, and acceptance, barbecue, devilled eggs and chicken salad.

My mother-in-law is conversation and shared pleasures, Thanksgivings at nice restaurants, adventures in sights, smells and flavors.

I can’t cook without thinking of my mother, though. She is the very base of my existence, and everything I create is building off things she taught me. Just as she gave me life, she gave me food.

Happy Mother’s Day.

It’s a year for big family events - births, graduations, weddings, funerals. Two of my girlfriends will be having babies soon, and another just got married. My nephew is graduating from high school in two weeks, and my young cousin is getting married in August. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about hopes and wishes, prayers of good will.

Somehow it’s natural to also think of fears. I remembered something that Jane Smiley did to let us know her characters early in A Thousand Acres. One sister asked another sister, “What is your worst fear?” And their answers said a lot about them.

So I’ve been asking this question lately. One friend answered simply, “Death.” And my man, after joking about his fear of having his head crushed by something really large, said, sweetly, “A part of me is truly afraid of outliving my wife.”

We got the word that my grandmother died today, and her husband, who absolutely adored this woman, must deal with her loss. May he always feel her love around him, and never fear.

Amen.

Something of the divine has touched me this week. I started a new book, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. A dozen books were waiting on my shelves to be read, and none of them seemed right, until I spotted this one, a recent birthday gift from a dear friend. I felt something akin to relief when I opened its pages and started to read.

In the opening chapters, she spoke of her failed marriage, and how she cried on her bathroom floor every night until one day she found herself praying to God for the first time in her life. When God told her (in her own voice) to go back to bed, she did. I closed the book and slept with her.

The next morning, I woke to a letter from my husband telling me he had this strangely out-of-character thought that God might be challenging him so he could be a better person. There was something in his letter that connected with the chapters I had read the night before, so I left them for him to read. After he read them, he said, “That’s just plain spooky.” And I had to agree.

As I read further, something else she wrote connected with me. She said to a Balinese medicine man, “I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.” This is an important theme for the memoir, and an important theme for me too. To deny myself the pleasure of love and good food and wine is to deny myself a connection with the divine.

Last night I spent the evening with my three best friends in celebration of an upcoming wedding. We ate a wonderful meal at a Spanish restaurant we’d never been to before, and afterward we had wine and chocolate while listening to live jazz music and sharing gifts with the bride to be. I stared across the table at these three women I love, watching them laugh, loving their talk of language and connecting with people across the world, and I felt blessed.

Today I am resting. I wrote in my journal, read part of my book, took a long nap with the dog and watched a movie. The movie was Babette’s Feast about these two austere women in Denmark who have devoted their lives to the memory of their father, a pastor and leader in their small community. They give shelter and work to a Parisian woman exiled from her home, and she teaches them about the enjoyment of life, love and good food.

At the feast we hear the words of the long-dead father spoken by one who remembered them. “For mercy and truth are met together. And righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.”

Yeah, I know Christmas season is over. Oftentimes, when we think of the Baby Jesus, we think of peace on earth, with the hopefulness that such a thing could somehow be possible. Everyone looking up at the same star, this same beam of light in the sky, leading us to this pure gift from God.

Two things have made an impact on me this week: 1) I started taking a Raja Yoga meditation class at a meditation center down the street, wherein we ponder peace and the connectedness of all souls on earth and look toward God, the single point of light beyond the universe in our soul’s home; and 2) I watched Talladega Nights.

Now, Ricky Bobby, when he prayed, liked to pray to the Baby Jesus. His family would argue with him that Jesus wasn’t always a baby. He grew up to be a great man, a healer and bringer of peace. But, Ricky Bobby really liked the Baby Jesus. And why shouldn’t he? Babies are the purest creation, no thoughts or worries, nothing but pure baby-ness, before they grow up to learn about lust and greed and envy, or any of those horrible, deadly sins.

So, care of Ricky Bobby and our friends in Raja Yoga, I wish you the peace of a well-fed, sleeping baby. Alright?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has a lot to teach us about embracing our individuality. The Island of Misfit Toys is a place where insecure freaks go to grumble about being victims of a society that doesn’t want them. Boo hoo! Rudolph didn’t belong there, because he didn’t enjoy the pity party. Rudolph wanted to let his little light shine, literally. So he left.

I have often found myself on the fringe, never in the popular crowd, never really wanting to be. Sure I’m a bit of a misfit, but I’m also an observer. It’s interesting the people you meet on the fringe. Lots of them look at the popular ones with longing, hoping for acceptance, scraping on windows, their noses pressed to the glass. Please, please love me. Many of them spit vitriol, acting like they hate the in-crowd, while they secretly long to be on the inside, playing “reindeer games” and all that.

My brother-in-law asked me the question today, did the misfit toys choose to go to the island, or were they sentenced there like it was a prison? The answer is, both! It feels like a prison sentence when you’re pushed out. No one loves you, no one sees your worth. But the only thing that kept those toys in that prison was themselves. The misfits chose defeat. They chose to be outcast so they could stand around resenting other toys and feeling like they were somehow superior.

Rise up, ye misfits of the world. Turn on your shiny, red nose. Sing your song and dance your dance. Stop being so pathetic and self-righteous. But don’t go out and join a sorority either; that’s just gross.