The Company of Strangers

Summer is still such a recent memory, I’d forgotten what it feels like to be cold.  But we’ve had no heat for over a week and I suddenly remember.  I wear double pairs of socks and shirts.  I wear a scarf and a hat and gloves in the house.  I’ve become like our fat orange cat who moves from window to window searching for a patch of sunlight slanting in through the window.  The tea grows cold in my mug before I’ve finished it and at night, the dogs pull the blankets from our beds and lie beneath, curled up into tight little balls of fur. 

* * *

Squints was in a cooking contest the other day.  Four groups of people received an identical basket of food and cooked it according to their time period:  The 1940s group used camp stoves.  The Revolutionary group cooked over an open fire. 

Visitors had to pay an entrance fee and, for an additional sum of money, could purchase one of a very limited supply of orange wrist bands that entitled the wearer to taste small samples of the food.  There were tiny Dixie cups, dessert-sized paper plates and a handful of plastic forks and spoons set out for that purpose.

The weather was cold and raw.  Besides my family—we were more or less obliged to be there—only one man showed up.  He wore a green down vest and a checked shirt and baggy blue jeans and boots.  His orange wristband was displayed prominently.  But nobody checked for it anyway.

Our money refused, we were invited to eat.  The small, limited samples of food became enormous.  Instead of a teaspoonful of chicken soup and half of a Brussels sprout, we ate the equivalent of two meals there, moving from century to century with abandon, tasting a bit of chicken cooked in a reflecting oven and moving on to chicken and dumplings.  We tasted squash and scalloped potatoes and Johnny cakes and biscuits.  We ate cabbage with sausage and apples; we ate eggs and sausage; we ate an apple and onion tart.

Besides their obvious love of cooking, historical cooks love to talk: They want to educate the public; they want to talk about the methods historical cooks used.  Food historians like to connect the past to the present.  Most of all they like to connect to people.  Having no one else with whom to talk, they talked to us: Staffers talked to us about the weather and the history of the place; a husband of a staffer, dragged along to help, talked to us about sports; a tag-along husband of a woman from the 1600s plopped down in the folding chair next to my husband and talked about trying to sell his house and moving to Kentucky, absently scratching his knee beneath his woolen pants.

In that room heated only by cooking fires, we ate the food of strangers and listened to the cooks exchanging ideas.  We learned how a turkey feather makes a superior baster; We learned how to make a whisk from twigs; We learned how to tell the temperature of roasted chicken by touch; We learned how to cook rice inside a pumpkin. 

The caretaker came from his apartment with his own plate—a large wooden plate—upon which he heaped chicken and sausage and potatoes.  A cat jumped into my lap and started knitting.  “That there’s Albert,” the caretaker said.  “Just showed up one day.  He’s real friendly.  Not like Yellow Cat.”  He put a piece of chicken in his mouth.  “Yellow Cat’s been here two years and still won’t let me get near him.”

Someone set a plate of chicken on the floor.  Albert jumped from my lap and began eating. 

“We got a cat needs adopted out—a drop off,” the caretaker said.

 “We have a cat,” I said.

“Tried to take him to the shelter, but he’s just a little bit of a thing.  They told me that at his size, they take ‘em in the front door and haul ‘em out the back.”  He shook his head.  “I’d hate to see that happen.  He walked to the door and paused there.  “Wanna’ see him?” 

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to see him.”

“Cat likes to sleep on yer head,” the caretaker said.  “Keeps me warm all night.”

Perhaps it was the thought of warmth that made us do it: We took him home. 

* * *

We’re having tile installed in the basement this week.  We had to remove everything and bring it upstairs.  It’s disheartening to see how much stuff we’ve accumulated.  It’s embarrassing, seeing it stacked up around the perimeter of each room.  We’ve reacquainted ourselves with things we’d forgotten.  We’ve made plans to get rid of things we don’t need. 

The tile guys showed up and I led them the basement.  I split up the animals: One dog is relegated to the garage; another to a cage.  There’s a cat locked in one bedroom; the second in another.  The hamster, displaced from the basement, is now in the dining room, running a hundred miles to nowhere on his wheel. 

I apologize to the tile guys for the lack of heat.  I show them the bathroom and offer coffee, which they refuse.   

They prop open the screen door and leave the front door open, which I keep shutting when I know they’re done cutting tile for a while, not to be rude but because there’s a chill in the air and a wild cat with her four kittens roaming the neighborhood.

I do not speak the language of these men.  I wonder, listening to their easy laughter, their chatter, their occasional singing along to the radio they blast in the basement, what they’re talking about.  Yet, I cannot bridge the gap that divides us.

I feel I’m in their way.  I hide off in a corner, try to be unobtrusive.  For the moment, this house is theirs.    I take my lunch in the dining room so they do not see me eat.  They eat their lunch in the van, the ignition turned on for the radio and the heat.

I look forward to having my house quiet and in order again.  But even more so, I look forward to the heat.  Because a little patch of sunlight in the window is only so warm, and eventually, it disappears. 

Besides, the cats have already taken the best spots.

Two Miles and Twenty Cents a Gallon

I saw him behind plate glass as I exited the bank: one-third of the way up the window, a four-inch long praying mantis.  Perhaps he was checking on interest rates.  Or maybe he was just grasping on for dear life, still in shock from the earthquake or in preparation for the upcoming hurricane. 

He must’ve been reading the papers or listening to the radio: Everywhere, people are being cautioned to ready themselves; to have food and water and travel plans worked out.  I have made no such preparations, although I did fill up the gas tank at the local—expensive—BP yesterday.   My usual trick is to just put a couple of dollars into the tank at the pricier place then limp as quickly as I can into the station two miles and twenty cents a gallon away.  I told myself, watching the dials spin wildly behind the glass, that I ought to fill the tank now, just in case.  But the truth of the matter is I’m too lazy to stop for gas again so soon.

* * *

Thanks to the library book sale, Squints is the proud owner of thirteen cookbooks.  He’s got one on desserts featuring Cool Whip in every recipe; a casserole book that employs Campbell’s Soup on each page.  And, although we have no pot, he picked up a book on fondue.  But there are a couple of promising books: Street Foods shows how to make food popularized on the city’s streets: Philadelphia cheese steaks, corn dogs, pad Thai.  And the sandwich book looks interesting: For lunch yesterday, Squints made me a double-layer banana peanut butter sandwich with cream cheese and an interesting concoction of brown sugar and cinnamon topping.   While I proclaimed it delicious, I decided to split it with V.  Filibuster eschewed it entirely, claiming to be full, despite the fact that she hadn’t yet eaten.

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The Beginning...

At eleven o’clock at night, Filibuster discovered we were out of cat litter.  My husband sighed and changed out of his pajamas and he and Filibuster headed to the grocery store, which was open until midnight.  At four-thirty in the morning, my husband discovered the dog cage was too large to fit in the trunk and that the garbage can had leaked all over the garage floor.  Worse, his car emitted a strong odor that filled up the garage with the smell of gasoline.   

Vacations always seem to start this way.

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Things You Need

To get to the creek at my parents’ farm, leave the house by the back door.  Stop to admire my mother’s giant pots of herbs and other plants on the wooden deck before heading down the stairs and onto the brick walk.  To your left, you’ll see a perennial bed of, if I remember correctly, white and purple flowers.  And to your right, another smaller bed with shrubs and hosta and a gas lamp permanently lit to welcome visitors.

The gravel driveway will crunch beneath your shoes—and cut bare feet if you’re not careful.  Walk past the garage towards the barn.  To the right, another long and narrow perennial bed.  To the left, the remains of the pasture fence: a small length of wooden sections of posts and rails representing years of farm labor and lessons.  Tall pines on either side of the drive will escort you past the barn to your left.  And to your right, you’ll see the syrup shed, where my father spends late winters turning gallons of sap into the maple syrup that I use to sweeten peaches and strawberries and be reminded of home.  Know that into the concrete floor of that very shed, my children carved their initials with a thick nail. 

But we must go on.

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Moving On

This post was written in respone to an Indie Ink challenge from Jules: My challenge was Moving On.  I challenged Tara Roberts with The College Tour from Hell.

* * *

We gather to celebrate ninety years.  Family members from coast to coast arrive, each bearing a contribution: sandwiches and fruit trays; potato chips and pretzels and pop; even fifty pounds of tomatoes from Marietta, Ohio.

This is my husband’s family.  There are people I haven’t seen in years; people I recognize but whose names I cannot remember. 

We hug one another, how are you-ing down the line of people, reintroducing our children.  We admire the new babies; everyone trying to forge some connection; to claim those children as their own: He reminds me so much of Grandpa.  She’s got her father’s hair.

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The Permanence of Elephants

Like everything else of importance, the piano teacher’s home was on Main Street.  The house was small and painted a light gray and full of mystery and contradiction.  A huge magnolia tree shaded the path from the sidewalk to the three concrete steps leading to the porch.  Formed into the risers of the first step and the third were identical images of a fat elephant in profile.  I never knew how those elephants got there and never thought to ask.  My six year old self imagined that the elephants had been chiseled out by some former teenaged occupant of the house.  But my older self—my adult self—eventually realized that was unlikely: The images were too perfect; too uniform; too deep.  Perhaps a form was pressed into the concrete before it dried.  Perhaps the images were carved into wet cement the way my children would—years later—use a nail to carve their initials into the new concrete floor in my father’s equipment barn.  I will never know the story of how they got there, but those elephants were as much a part of the piano teacher’s house as the piano teacher’s house was a part of Main Street.

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Simple Treasures

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We lived at the top of a small hill in our second house, the first house I can remember without benefit of photographs.   Our drive was concrete—perfect for hopscotch and biking and jumping rope—and sloped down over a ditch that occasionally filled with rainwater and snowmelt.  A galvanized steel pipe ran beneath the drive and drained into that ditch.  And when it wasn’t too wet, that pipe was the perfect place to hide treasures.  My sisters and I could lie on our sides and stretch an arm about a foot in and our treasures—generally the few Matchbox cars we owned—would be safe.  Eventually we moved, leaving behind forgotten treasures.  I’ve often wondered what I would find there, were I to go back. 

Growing up, I remember a bank that belonged to my mother.  It was an iron treasure chest—brown—with an image of a pirate on one side and a skull and cross bones on the other and a slot in the lid for coins.  The chest was hinged and I loved to fold back the curved lid to run my fingers through the pennies contained within, pretending that it was real treasure; real gold.

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Curb on Trust

There’s a bookstore close by my house.  It’s a huge bookstore, with a separate section just for movies and music, and when you go in, you’re immediately accosted by the sole employee who never appears to have anything to do.

 “May I help you?”

“No thanks.  Just looking.”

But this employee won’t leave you to look.  Instead, she—most often it’s a young woman—will lean on the counter, staring at you, occasionally walking behind you, hands clasped nonchalantly behind her back, as she watches to ensure you aren’t stuffing videos down your shirt.

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Raspberry Season

We got a call from Filibuster on the answering machine this morning: She can’t retrieve voice mails from her cell phone.  Worse, the ATM refuses to dispense any money to her.  Apparently her PIN is too long.  Filibuster is a great believer in strong passwords.

I call the bank and they ask me how long PINs are supposed to be in Europe and I tell them I really don’t know: the last time I was in Europe there were no debit cards.  They place me on hold.  They transfer me twice.  They tell me to go to a branch after the weekend is over.  They tell me there’s no way they can change her PIN for me.  They give me a number for Filibuster to call, but I cannot reach her and if I leave her a voice mail with the number she won’t be able to get to it. 

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What Shall I Be?

This post was written in response to a prompt on the red dress club:

Growing up, my sisters and I loved to play What shall I be?  First appearing in 1966 and categorized as educational, it was proclaimed The Exciting Game of Career Girls.  Based upon the roll of the dice and the acquisition of cards, players would race be the first to line up a job.

The box’s cover featured a dorky-looking girl, herculean pink bow in her hair, index finger on her cheek, looking as if as if couldn’t decide between all those career exciting opportunities.  To her left were six women, one of whom would be this girl’s future self.

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United Sloth of America

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club.

Before my husband and I came to our senses, Squints attended a fancy-pants private school.  There were several perks to this school: amazing trips that we couldn’t afford to go on even if we’d wanted to; enrichment programs; oh, and the art program in which the students’ artwork would be digitized and sent electronically to a company in California.

This company would continually jam my inbox with email about upcoming specials: I could buy all manner of crap…mugs,  tee shirts, placemats, mouse pads, hell, I could probably even get underwear, if I wanted to… imprinted with my son’s original artwork.  You know, before he becomes world-famous.  

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Fair or Foul?

The pitcher’s mound is dark with rain.  The path from home to first is sloppy.  But the puddles have been filled with sand, and the fathers have just put down a fresh white line clearly delineating fair and foul.

Little girls in raincoats attack their own field with rakes.  Watching them, I find myself thinking back to when my daughters played softball and all those years when I didn’t say a word despite the cold burn of resentment I saw smoldering in their eyes.

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This Situation is Only Temporary: And Yet...

Squints and my family are no longer able to care for Destructo on our own. 

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On Target

Well, I’ve got to head to Target today because the cat is out of food and no one bothered to mention it except the cat and I’m ignoring him right now because of the ick he left on the basement carpeting.  On my way out, I stop to pull a few weeds from my perennial bed, because if I don’t keep up with these weeds, they’ll get ahead of me and take over the entire neighborhood.  I see that the violets have moved in with my hosta, and the black-eyed Susans are positively encroaching upon the lilies.  Clearly, something must be done about the situation.

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This Situation is Only Temporary: Rules

 “You are going to pick that up, aren’t you?”  The man nodded sharply at the package that Destructo had just deposited on the lawn of the hotel. 

“Just need to get a bag.”  My husband popped the trunk on the car where we now keep huge quantities of plastic bags for cleanup duty.

“Oh! You can have one of mine!”  The man’s wife yanked at a cartridge she wore on her belt and produced a plastic bag.  With a flourish, she handed it to Squints.  “What a cute little puppy.”  She bent down and scratched Destructo’s ears.

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Friended

A woman friended me on Facebook the other day; a woman with whom I’d attended high school.  Her face looked familiar.  And I knew her name.  But I couldn’t quite place her.  I accepted her anyway: I’d remember her eventually.

She greeted me seconds after I logged onto Facebook the following morning.  “Where’ve you been? LOL”

 “Hi,” I typed tentatively.

She told me she’d been trying to find me for years.

I felt an odd combination of flattery and guilt.  Someone remembered me!  But who was she?  “I’ve moved around a lot.”

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Limited

Well, I’m sorry to say that Jacob has put me on a strict diet for the next two weeks: Only two dozen eggs.  No whole chicken.  Not even chicken feet, for pity’s sake.  But I’m promised as many necks as I want.  Sausage too.  Honey.  And as much milk as I can manage to drink.

I think I’ll get by.

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Cultural Maps

I raced as fast as I dared, keeping careful watch on the kilometers lining the inner circle of my speedometer.  I didn’t yet have my Canadian driver’s license.  My Ohio plates screamed “foreigner”.  Anything could go wrong if a police officer suddenly appeared behind me, lights flashing.  On the other hand, an officer might help—I’d be escorted quickly to the hospital.  I’d have sufficient time to get my son’s emergency chest x-ray done before I had to meet my daughters’ school bus.

I left the doctor’s Oakville office and headed west along Lakeshore, towards the hospital.  I suddenly found myself in Bronte—an area east of Oakville.   How could this have happened?  I’d used the navigational technique my mother taught me years ago when I was learning to drive.  “Use the lake as your guide,” she told me as we drove along Lakeshore Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.  “The lake lies to the north.” 

Of course: I no longer lived with Lake Erie to my north.  I lived on Lake Ontario.  And it lay to the south.  I’d been navigating according to my old map.  How could I have been so stupid?  My world, my life, had been turned upside down.  And I’d forgotten to make adjustments.

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