Sundance Kid (Patty)

Ha ha! I like that outerwear conundrum! We have some outerwear issues as well, almost always starting with me forgetting to bring a jacket and then complaining about it being cold. (The New Orleans Arena/Legless Little Richard night does NOT count, because it was 40 degrees in there, and even though I had a leather jacket with me on a balmy night, the coat was no match for the wintry indoor conditions, but it was no fault of my own…)
That was a very sweet synopsis of your relationship, and it made me start thinking about friendships in general. I’m ridiculous with my kids these days, I have them on pedestals, I can’t help it. For example, Zeke lives in the house, but the Architecture Program is intense, he leaves at 7AM and doesn’t return until midnight. It’s weird, I can sense his presence, but actual sightings are rare. When he arrives at home, I can easily imagine saloon doors swinging, his physique backlit by the setting summer sun, casting a broad shadow down the hallway. I drop everything I’m doing, and have this “Zeke is home!” moment that gives him celebrity status that is completely unearned.
Technically, that is mothering and not friendship. Sometimes in friendships I am calm and composed and tolerant and so happy just to call the person my friend, I'm like a human Hallmark card. But then other times, I just snap and feel completely intolerant. Why do I risk ruining a hard-earned friendship with confrontation? I do not have the answer to that. Why do people with “high highs” have to have “low lows”? …you know my Indian friend with the thermal house temperatures? She is very charismatic, I don’t think we’ve ever been to a restaurant where she hasn’t met the people at the table next to us. In fact, she meets people everywhere, in airports, on the dance floor, at church… people crack one another’s skulls, clamoring to interact with her, she is great at generating fun, and that is a true and enviable gift. However, those types of personalities have a “B Side”. If you are alive, you have a group of annoying habits. It’s interesting how some relationships make the cut, and some do not. It’s nice when the things you like about someone totally cloud the things about them that bother you. I think women are lying when they say they’ve never had a fight with their husband. Someone I knew said that to me once, and then one night, she and her husband had a disagreement and didn’t say one word to each other for 3 hours which was awkward since there were only 4 people there.….that qualifies as a fight! But everyone has their own way of making a marriage or a friendship work, and that system was working well for them. It sounds like you’ve worked out some beautiful arrangements to “accentuate the positive”.
By the way, Portia dyed a portion of her hair blue. As far as rebellion goes, I’m OK with it. She has beautiful blonde hair, I really don’t know why you’d want it blue-er, but then again, I’m not 16.
It’s just about time for me to leave for Ireland, I don’t know…should I bring a raincoat??!!

Patty

Fine (Ruby)

It’s the eve of my 21st anniversary and I found myself reflecting so often today. There are so many reasons for a marriage not to last, so many reasons for everything we do in life to fall by the wayside or to fall short of our expectations. It makes me want to examine (but not too closely) why something, anything, works…when the odds are seriously against it.

Scot and I had so little in common if you looked at the surface of our lives and our personalities when we met in the ‘80’s. Nevertheless, the things that we both enjoyed – simple yet exquisite New York City Vegetarian fare, Elvis Costello (the lyrics – Scot / the bass guitar – me), smoking pot, the lower East-side pop-punk culture and oddly enough, good old-fashioned values – Midwest by definition - kept us hanging out together just long enough to fall in love and give it a go as Mr. & Mrs…

We would not have met if it hadn’t been for Stella, who was a wise and sexy Guatemalan woman in her 40’s who had taken Scot under her wing…wanted him to settle down, meet his girl-next-door…be happy. They ate a quick lunch together every day at “The Sunlight Café” at 31st and Park. The Cafe owner’s son would give me a huge bowl of half-sour pickles and a coffee every day, whether I had money or not. I was always there when Scot and Stella had lunch. One day when they left, Stella dropped a napkin in my lap with a note on it. I could not easily make out the writing but could read these words: “the guy I am with would like to meet you…”. This was not literally Scot’s intention, nor his words to her, but it was how she translated what he needed at that time in his life.

I assumed the worst (BAD GUYS / Perverts!!) and tried to avoid eye contact with them for the next week or so until I observed that they had the most pleasant expressions, always completely engaged, talking and laughing, very real. Eventually Scot and I became friends and later moved to Wisconsin to get married.

I often think about the miracle of getting along with anyone. What are the odds? Scot may be the only person I know who has ZERO baggage and NO moods but that does not eliminate all problems. Communicating to ANYONE, I believe, is complex and he and I, like so many couples, are seriously OPPOSITES; while I am chatty and reiterative, overly expressive and easily offended, hurt, annoyed, as well as overjoyed…Scot is a simpler, more to-the-point communicator, not offended or hurt by almost anything, but likely to answer many, if not all, questions with the singular word: “fine”…as in “do you like the dinner I made, shirt I bought, etc….??” F-I-N-E...to which I say, “that’s not an answer…” but it’s HIS answer…this has taken me almost this long to really get… it’s authentically his “O.K.-ness” with the world as it is…it doesn’t make him leap out of his seat in a good way or in a bad way…it keeps him steady…right where he needs to be, while I scurry all over the map, half-frenzied by my reactions to all things life-like: TOO COLD, TOO HOT, TOO SALTY, SO SAD, SO DIRTY, SUCH AN ASS-HOLE, NOT NICE, DISGUSTING, ADORABLE, FABULOUS!!!, FALL-DOWN FUNNY, CRIPPLING, STARVING, FULL, EXHAUSTED, WIDE-AWAKE-HYPER, FURIOUS, AT PEACE.

Fine.

That’s us.

If we end up divorced it will be over outer-wear; Scot hates excess and carrying anything bigger than his I-Phone, while I hate no back-up plan. So on mornings when it’s a chilly 45 degrees, I implore the kids to bundle up in a subtle way – a sweater, a jean jacket, something they can take off and carry home easily…but Scot, with utter dismay at my suggestion, claims that “it’s going up to SEVENTY-ONE this afternoon!” (this is not screaming, just emphasis) and then it starts…I can’t plan for this morning in a way that acknowledges this afternoon, not when it comes to outer-wear. I can only imagine the damage done to the children from our mixed messages: Take a sweater - you don’t need a sweater - it’s cold – it’ll warm up – not soon enough – what about the walk there? – what about the walk home? – whatever…

The thing I can honestly say though as I look back at 21 years of so many details, so many outer-wear disagreements, so many hair-colors, and most importantly, those five kids, is that if I was ever looking for anything in a husband it was for him to be a good father to my kids and when I stumbled upon some of my favorite pictures from so many years ago of Scot with our severely autistic son, Louki – now 17 – I look at those 2 faces together, just as they are today and am overwhelmed by the love, head to head, cheek to cheek, hearts as one, eyes averting, then locking, then averting, then locking, so few words spoken, so many hugs, so much deep, deep understanding but with no explanation, the very definition of parenting at its best, raw, unconditional love and it gives me great peace.

Still a little cold, pissed, hot, thirsty, busy, tired, sore, stressed…but also peaceful and grateful for those 21 "FINE" years.

Ruby

Sub-zero entertainment (Patty)

That bird looks just like I did the morning after the block party, I really need to stop drinking so much wine.
On the food and beverage topic, John was driving in from Atlanta last week, and we got invited as last minute replacements to this concert event, so I called him to see how close to home he was. When I asked him where he was he said he was at the Bates House of Turkey in Alabama. Why is that so funny to me? Simultaneously, I was experimenting with a gnocchi type of pasta. Zeke looks in the pot and says, “Mom, it looks like larva ” and I had to agree it was disgusting-looking. It had to go right into the trash…if only there was a Bates House of Perfect Rice nearby.
By the way, we went to that concert in the big New Orleans Arena, it was a fundraiser and had all these old-timers on their last legs, except maybe Little Richard who had a leg amputated so he was on his last whatevers, he’s 77 years old but he was belting out “Good Golly Miss Molly!” which I personally think is the dumbest rhyme in rock history except for maybe “In the desert, you can remember your name cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain”…B.B.King performed and he was awesome, Chuck Berry was weird, very angry, didn’t get the “Jumbo-tron” concept, raging at the guy with the video camera, like “Turn it OFF! Turn it OFF!”.. it was embarrassing and the performance was bad, he’d be in the middle of one song and then sort of forget and start another one, but then again, he’s maybe 140 years old. Then, go figure, Wyclef Jean performed, but the true story of the night was the meat-locker conditions in the arena, it was sad because it was so unhumanly, further North than the Pole COLD that people were leaving in droves and by the end, there were maybe 200 people there. There were some other performers that I am forgetting because the remembering part of my brain was frozen rock solid by then.
Madison has gone to Ireland for the Summer Abroad program. The two of us went to New York this week for a couple days. I thought we could break up the trip since New Orleans-to-New York-to-Dublin-to-Shannon where the group meets and then a van to Galway would take over 24 hours…we saw Billy Elliot, it’s a good play, I think it will win a Tony tonight…the concept was for the two of us to have some one-on-one time before she left the country, but about 5 minutes after we arrived in the state she realized her Emory friends were in town as well, and I was unceremoniously dumped.
Zeke has started the Summer Architecture Program at Tulane. He is doing 18 credits over 12 weeks, basically making up the entire Freshman Year of Design classes, he goes to class 9AM-5PM Monday through Friday, then goes to the studio and returns home each night around 10PM so it’s keeping him out of trouble. Except last night, when he came home at 3AM…when I had those little bouncing babies and I thought that in a few months I would be sleeping through the night, I was so wrong. 20 years later, they are still waking me up!

Patty

In Love with Scruffy (and no, I’m not talking about Scot) (Ruby)

I’m a city girl. I know this because I grew up right outside of Manhattan and then in North London and this lifestyle fit like a glove. I never yearned for large fields or a barn…or quiet, at least not the “countryside” version of quiet. Many of my weekends as a child were spent tooling around beneath sky scraping towers, at museums, speeding here & there in taxis, getting street food from vendors and strawberries dipped in chocolate in lovely restaurants. And then I started to watch those people and realized I was addicted to a backdrop that simply doesn’t exist along a country path, a pulse that has to do with changes in scenery, fashion, stories, menus, ideas…and lots of windows to look into….

I have never cared much for “nature”; although I loved playing outside as much as the next kid, I liked clothes and restaurants better, wallpaper patterns better than sunsets, pretty teacups more than flowers, and later, the colors of my lipsticks better than a rainbow.

So when I developed an obsessive interest in the bird’s nest that appeared in the crook of a downspout outside our bathroom window several weeks ago, it was a little unusual. Any nest is a little miracle, as far as I’m concerned, where artistry meets necessity…the perfect mix of intuition and studied orchestration with a random outcome. No cookie-cutter nests…at least this much I have appreciated about them.

But this nest was a PARTY NEST, adorned with a lavender ribbon along its topmost edge that cascaded down in a perfectly twirled corkscrew, the kind of ribbon that my mother pulled against the edge of her scissors to tie and pretty-up our presents. Then I saw the larger than life mother Robin fly into the nest and sit quietly amidst the twigs and “decor”.

My real name is Robin. People have said “where’s Batman?”; people have sung “Rockin’ Robin..tweet-tweet-tweet” (back when “Tweet” was a chirp, not a cyber-obsession); people have called out “Hey! Robin-Red-Breast!” I was partial to the Batman connection.

…until I saw that Robin sitting on her be-ribboned tuffett. Every morning I summonsed my kids, my husband…anyone I could get to come quietly and look at that SWEET ‘lil nest, hoping to see a baby bird soon. I took pictures, tried to draw it, kept waiting for those babies, wished I could see over the top and into the nest to look at the eggs but our view from the window was too low. Finally, the silhouettes of a few eensie-weenise beeks stretched up from that nest, anticipating something yummy, and you’d think I’d won the lottery: THE BABIES ARE HERE!!!!

We kept watching as longer beeks showed, always pointing straight up like little tweezers, and then those scrawny baby bird faces. I only counted three at any given time but there could have been more. I had to laugh at that lavender party ribbon, adorning the nest not unlike the balloons and festivity that welcome home human babies with “It’s a GIRL!” / It’s a BOY!”

Then, this last Tuesday morning, I called Bowie in to the bathroom to see how fat and fuzzy the babies were – all three were puffing up over the rim of the nest like a top heavy soufflé, and we agreed that the nest was way too small to hold them any longer.

That afternoon I noticed a scruffy, tousled bird sitting on the wide railing of our deck. I immediately thought it was a sickly bird but realized, looking closer, that it was one of the baby Robins…the scruffiness was just the still-fuzzy baby feathers. I shriek-whispered to Scot to QUICKLY come see him but Scot could have taken all the time in the world to get there; that bird sat in the exact spot on that railing for what seemed like hours before suddenly the Mother-Robin (or Father?) came swooping down and stood next to Scruffy and stuffed one plump worm into his throat…then quickly flew off again.

See, this is where I became completely mesmerized – I totally thought that when birds left their nests, that was it…I had never expected that Mom & Dad stayed in the picture…not even for a moment. I started looking it up…googled it, called my own mother (“mother-of-Robin” vs. “Mother-Robin”), wanting to know how long the parents would care for their little ones??????? Anyway, this completely messed up my Tuesday afternoon because I had to just STAND in my kitchen, watching Scruffy. I couldn’t find the information I wanted anywhere and my Mom was thinking that the parents DON’T typically stick around but I had proof; for the next several hours, the Mother Robin (I thought it was the Dad at first because the breast was so red…then I found out that the Dads have just a darker grayish head than the Moms, not a different breast color but I wasn’t looking at head-color at the time…so now I don’t know who it was but let’s assume Mom) would show up just when I was starting to lose my patience and getting ready to go out there with my own worm to cram down his throat. That baby was so laid-back…he just stood there and stood there, then he’d stretch way out to one side or the other with his long bony leg, then throw his wings to the left, wings to the right, stretch the right leg, bend over and look at his toes (talons?) and in my mind, I went straight to Fusion Pilates/Yoga style training, but that bird was more likely just trying to figure out what to do with all that stuff, all his BIRD GEAR… and flying did not come to mind, apparently. Robin-Mom came several times with another juicy tid-bit, then a sibling showed up and stood right next to Scruffy and they both just stood there with blank expressions (which is kind of bird-ish but I say that in a nice way).

I was FALLING in LOVE….with the whole thing, the Mother Bird, the babies, their Party Nest (which I had ALWAYS loved)…even the worms were looking kind of cute…

…which is a good thing since I couldn’t accomplish a thing; I had to just stay by my window and witness all that NATURE, the superior parenting style of the Mama-Bird, promising to return with more snacks, never really losing sight of her babies. At one point the Mom started to hop away along the flat railing where she had kept coming with their food and the Brother bird immediately started speed-hopping after her; you could just hear the bird-words: “Don’t Leave Meeeeeeeee!!” and that sibling was gone…who knows where, but he followed his Mom away from the safety of the railing where they had clearly been asked to stay put and not take candy from strangers. Scruffy was left alone again, to wait for another plate of hors d’oeuvres to be passed. And the whole time, I was translating this in human terms and justifying the crazy variables that make some kids run into the adventure, some follow you, some wait patiently for whatever comes their way…

On Wednesday, Scruffy was still sitting close to the same spot on the railing…a little further down, showing his sense of adventure atop some raggedy vines that wind around the railing. After about another hour, he tried out his wings and shot straight up to the top of the vines several yards away…but couldn’t quite balance and with a clumsy fluttering of his wings he went crashing down to what seemed like the pavement of our driveway and I had an ill feeling that told me he was dead, damaged, or at least stunned.

He was fine. He had hopped into the lattice at the end of the railing, standing as still as a statue. I took a picture without making a sound (these pictures are all of him…hopefully I didn’t freak him out).


Yesterday, I looked many times for those Robins and never saw one which made me really sad. I missed them (seriously, am I talking about missing a bird in my yard?). I kept talking out loud to them: “Oh, Birdie….where the HELL are you?! Come back Birdie!” I kept going to the bathroom window and looking at the empty nest the way I look at the kids bedrooms when they have gone to sleep-away camp for a week…the worst, empty, missing feeling. I also get this feeling after my Mom has visited me and has left a ½ used Sweet ‘n Low packet on the kitchen counter…little reminders that they are GONE…I hate that!

This morning I am rejoicing again because Scruffy was back in the lattice…standing absolutely still. Not a flyer yet…how cute is that? I am compelled to call my friend who is an avid bird watcher and find out more about all of this…suddenly fascinated. I wanted to see if the Robin-Mother is still feeding him or if /when he’ll take care of himself? Where did his brother go? Were there any other babies…..? I read that about half don’t make it….which makes me love Scruffy even more.

Time out – gotta’ run to the window and check on him quick…

I’m back. He’s gone.

: (

Ruby