Failure!

Sundays in December



Fifty years ago we would have been eying the candles on the Advent wreath hung between us as we sat facing each other in the choir stalls up by the alter. Counting the candles down with each Sunday service, week by week, we eagerly approached the big day at what then seemed to be a snail’s pace. As Reverend Hardman pontificated to that captive audience, I was hard-pressed to think of anything more boring than having to sit quietly while that martini sodden windbag vomited on the willing sheep. My mind raced to get away from him…and to kill time. If I squinted at the back of the oak pew in front of me, I could see the face of a mountain man in the grain of the wood. He was a friend of Davy Crockett’s that I recognized from the TV show. John McGroarity sat in one of the pews opposite me, surreptitiously darting his tongue in and out around his lips and acting like he was loosing his mind. He did that pretty frequently, trying to make me laugh. A few weeks after he started his little show, he told me that he was “eating pussy”. Of course neither of us had ever even seen a pussy, much less “eaten“ one. I was unsure of what they actually looked like but apparently John had gotten a hold of a porn magazine somewhere that showed a man “eating” a woman’s pussy. He kept promising to bring the magazine to choir practice to show me, but he never did. It was just too hot, too volatile, to risk transport anywhere. And so, on those achingly boring Sunday mornings in December, that held the ultimate prize at the end, I sat, trapped. Squinting at Davy Crockett’s friend, the mountain man, my eyes reluctantly pulled up to catch a glimpse of John eating pussy, I fought sleep. The drone of Reverend Hardman’s narcotic assault urged me to close my eyes and shut him out. But then, finally, it was Christmas Eve. The Advent wreath had just one candle left burning, and there was only a short, troubled sleep between myself and Christmas morning.

Thanksgiving Day

 

 

 

 

 

It was the sound of birds vying for landing space on the feeder just outside the open French doors to our bedroom that first woke me up. They pulled me slowly from another dimension where people and places I’m familiar with had been put into a blender and served up like some odd Dali Gazpacho. Apparently my feeder is too small to warrant an air traffic control bird so the bickering and diving was chaotic. Of course the Blue Jays bomb in whenever they damn well please. But it was nice, I liked it. Looking past my feet I could see the first fiery clouds peeping up over the distant tree line as the sun prepared to take the stage. An older lady paused to let her poodle sniff the bank on the other side of the lake, then walked off upside down in her reflection that waved and stretched out over the water. Carla was sleeping soundly next to me, reassuringly. It all made me feel unusually…celebratory.

We had postponed making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, waiting until Ruth was to visit the week after. But even though we loved seeing her and did lots of fun stuff, making that dinner wasn’t one of them. So while Carla slept in after an evening of running loose with the dogs late into the night, I cooked. Why not? It’s December 18^th, sunny and in the 70’s and I felt thankful. Several hours later, after a very musical kitchen dance, I was done: a stuffed turkey, giblet gravy with what some would say is too much ground pepper, potatoes and butternut squash mashed together, Collard greens picked fresh from the garden, homemade organic applesauce cooked with blueberries, and a hot Pecan pie spiked with melted semi-sweet chocolate morsels that could seriously burn your tongue if you weren’t careful to eat each bite with a cold spoonful of vanilla ice cream.

I knew that Hannah was celebrating her life in South Africa as was Ruth in Venice Beach. They both understand, they get it. Every new day is cause for celebration and gratitude if you choose to look at life that way. Mother Maybelle and her girls used to sing: “Keep on the Sunny Side”, and I do. Every day is Thanksgiving day, even an uneventful Tuesday.

Jersey Boys

Thirteen years before the amazing David Lindley was hitting my sweet spot with his vocals on the Jackson Brown rendition of “Stay”. (Little did 15 year old Maurice Williams know what a monster he was creating in 1953) Frankie Valli was getting high with The Four Seasons. I wasn’t much of a fan but they were certainly as big a part of my life as…well, the family dog. Now I love dogs but that nasty Dashound was a bitch of a bitch. Anyway, I had little regard for Frankie and his peeps, or for the blue collar greasers in stovepipe pants in general. You know, Jersey boys. But, of course, I was a Jersey boy too. But I was from a white collar suburb not…Newark or something. We all have our prejudices. Trovolta’s “Danny” was foreign to me. I wanted to go sit in Washington Square and listen for whispers of Dylan or Sebastian sightings. You’ll find no Four Seasons vinyl or CDs in my collection, some 1,000 strong. But after watching a PBS fundraiser that featured the “Jersey Boys” material and realizing how well I knew the music, every word, every note... I caved. Amazon was nice enough to sell me a greatest hits collection. For over a week now, I’ve been listening to nothing else in my truck. These guys were huge, one monster hit after another, and this time I don’t have to listen to Cousin Brucie yelling at me in-between cuts. Every single song takes me back. I was so programmed by this stuff. Some things don't change, but how we feel about them may. Now it’s as if the family dog came back after all these years to ride shotgun with me. I didn't realize how much I loved that little bitch, and yes, this music too. I do keep my windows rolled up though, I don’t want anyone to hear us howl.