Dear friends, I understand that it's almost Thanksgiving, and all that ...

Dear friends,

 

I understand that it’s almost Thanksgiving, and all that, I should probably just shut up and think about mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, but seriously, folks, If I don’t somehow get this off my chest I might blow a gasket. Perhaps I might at least loosen a belt or something as a precautionary measure. This whole thing is likely just a colossal waste of time. 

I mean, a man could spend his whole life looking for minute tapioca. And just so someone who shall remain unnamed can thicken her pie filling. I mean, I walked up and down the aisle where all of the baking stuff was – I’m sure that I’d found it there before - I looked high and low and then back and forth again. And then I went all the way around to the next aisle, just in case, and then I began repeating process where I started. It must have been literally five or six minutes. Maybe four. And then there it was, right next to the Jello where I had started looking for the minute tapioca in the first place. Someone had put that thin little red box all of the way down on the bottom shelf. 

And then – and I I know you won’t believe this – the buttermilk wasn’t right next to the milk. It all was starting to remind me of a broken record. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I have bought buttermilk. I have just walked into the store and have plucked a plastic bottle off of the shelf in the cooler - right next to the milk - and that was that. But today, after searching high and low and back and forth all over again, I even began to think of asking someone.

 

And then I started reading the tiny little price labels on the shelf where I though the buttermilk should be, and then, right where in small print, it said buttermilk. Sure enough - two bottles had gotten stuck clear in the back and I stretched my arm all the way in up to my elbow and plucked and stuck one bottle in my basket.

I tried not to be unpleasant at the checkout – it being the day before Thanksgiving and all, but there I was, wasting my life away, merely stalking the elusive minute tapioca and buttermilk. I might have been doing almost anything else infinitely more meaningful – or at least considerably less tedious.

Well, I finally did get home. The weather was certainly balmy enough for late November, but I won’t get started on that. And then, instead of doing all of the things I had hoped I might do with my precious time while I had been wandering around instead in the grocery looking for – well you already know what - I’m certainly not going to waste even more time by saying it again.

 
But as I was telling you, instead, I sat down in this comfortable chair and I began to write out this whole nonsense. I mean, really! And if you’ve gotten this far, I completely realize that I am now compounding the wanton waste of my irreplaceable time with this descent into more mere trifles and tedium.

 But think about it: I could have been taking yet another breathtaking photo of the sun and the river – rising like clockwork, day after day - flowing to the ocean, day after day. I might even have clambered down to the water’s edge and written my name in the sand with a stick where the river, rising after rain, would wash it all away. I know that all of that might not have mattered very much to anyone else, but at least I wouldn’t have been wasting my life searching all day for a little box of minute tapioca.

But no! No! I had to go the store and get buttermilk – and other assorted items. Well, at least I actually wanted the buttermilk so that I could make waffles for Dawn and myself. For waffles, I toast the pecans and chop them coarsely on a cutting board that I made way back in high school shop, where Mr. Penner had told me to take my time with the sanding. And I did. And now I still have that cutting board, maple wood, joined with dowels and glue to walnut and then more dowels and glue and more maple wood. We used bar clamps. And I sanded the boards with sandpaper and my hand. That is how you spend time. And I could show you the cutting board, if you don’t believe me. But looking for minute tapioca and buttermilk? I digress.

Yet one more thing: we usually have real maple syrup. And of course, I might tell you that waffles are a time consuming process, the toasting, the chopping. And there’s the dry ingredients, the separating of the eggs, the beating of the whites, the oil - and yes – finally, the buttermilk. And there were steps down into the basement to retrieve the waffle iron and then all of those steps back up to our kitchen. There’s more, so much more, but I should, perhaps, spare you the tedium of my life.

 Of course, you should understand that waffles straight from the hot waffle iron to the plate are wonderful. But consider this point: In the time it took to buy that pint bottle of buttermilk, the sweetness of the syrup and the chew of a crisp and fluffy waffle topped with toasted pecans is over.

This is pretty much the story of my life!

So much time spent doing something again and again, like walking to the river, maybe  picking up a rock on a sandbar near the edge of the river that looks more or less like all of the other rocks – but some color or texture or shape catches my eye - and I bend down and I pick it up and carry it with me for a few steps and then I chuck it into the river. Sometimes there’s more than just one splash. And then, as it sinks, my life passes before my eyes.

And yet so much more time will be wasted. Simply wasted. Yes, there will be waffles. And so here is the question I’m now left with: How can I have one thing without the other? And why do I waste so much time complaining about the process, but even more, about all of my time wasted when the time that I have in the first place is an unexpected gift to me? Neither the beginning nor the end of it has been or will be up to me.

It’s there in the middle of aisle number 7 that I do care – and not only always about myself.  And so many times I care about who I am with and where I am and the meaningless thing that I am doing. I care! I might have a screw loose. Here on the one hand, I do want every moment in the middle to matter. But every moment is connected to all of the other moments with the arrow of time moving inexorably forward as if life was like a needle thrust through happenstance beads strung and simply along a string. And if you don’t buy buttermilk, you don’t have buttermilk waffles.

It’s no revelation to say that I can’t get waffles with my wife -one bite at a time, pausing to talk about the syrup or the toasted pecans yet again – or something else that we probably will have forgotten about before I’ve sopped up the last of the maple syrup on my plate – all of that without someone else also taking time to stock a shelf or tap a tree.

And the difference between wasting and spending and taking time isn’t as clear to me anymore. And, if you’re looking, there’s color and texture and shape that might catch your eye while you think that you’re just trying to find a thin red box. I’ll tell you, just in case, that the minute tapioca is right by the Jello – on the bottom shelf. But it probably won’t there be if you look for it there. Mr. Penner’s advice is still sound. Take your time. Some beads just have to get strung before you get to the one that you want.

 And so I suppose that walking to the river is not unlike going to the grocery store. But neither are they entirely the same. And life is not all toasted pecans and real maple syrup on a waffle. And finally, one metaphor is surprisingly like the next one. And sometimes everything just gets all mixed up.

It’s all just life, after all – more or less. And I have indeed wasted so much of my time. And maybe you, too, even now, are wishing like me, that I hadn’t just said something once again that has already been said so many times before. If only I had at least gotten a few more splashes out of this stone.

Oh well. Now that I’ve scribbled this all out, it’s actually time to make the waffles. It will go down pretty much as I’ve described. I already have everything thing that I need. I didn’t even look at the price of the buttermilk. And the time wasn’t really that much when you step back and look at nearly sixty years  And the weather was balmy for this time of year.

I stopped on the way home to talk to three brothers across the street - three sons, three young boys - raking leaves and writing Happy Thanksgiving on their sidewalk with chalk. Along with the sentiment there was something that they said was a camel and below, also a small, chalk turkey, drawn by tracing around one of their hands. I put my hand on the sidewalk and Zach took his time tracking around each finger. It was only a few minutes that I paused. I had waffles to make. And I’ll be thankful for pie tomorrow.

This handful of beads has been strung.

 

Yours truly,

 

bert

Tea or happiness

The dark red bricks of Central Middle School, were stacked like blocks next to a trampled back yard - lined for football, the grass fading. I stood there, looking.

I had caught the answer before I had even gotten to South Park, where two apparent lovers sat at far ends of a black iron bench. They scootched over as a photographer waved them towards each other from where she was standing near the flower beds - some flowers still blooming in mid fall - her long lens catching multiple images of the lovers as they kissed and kissed again. I had caught some splashing from at least twice as far away.

I had earlier asked for a refill at Aimee’s and as Abbi had scooped ice from a bin, she had asked: tea or happiness?’

Good question, I thought.

And for a split second, I was caught betwixt - then I noted the question onto a scrap of paper. Nimble matters. But no time now.

My quick answer, on walking along the sidewalk with my refill, had been this: Tea and happiness are nearly the same. I had found the truth, really, in a heartbeat. They both pour easily, if you please. And I’ll play with the words, if I please. I think that the secret is to have your glass receptive.

Sometimes, if your face is turned towards the source of the pouring, you get splashed. Sometimes, tea and happiness spill over.

A woman working with wood in her garage off the alleyway between 13^th and 14^th streets had tipped some my way as I passed - some of her happiness into mine as we chatted.

My iced tea refill was half sipped by the time I had reached the field at Central.

If you spin out in the open, your arms outstretched, your eyes wide open, everything blurs in a mostly pleasing sort of way and then, when you stop, the world wobbles a little. You might as well have just drunk a very fine wine.

And then the last half block through the leaves on the sidewalk carried my foot falls home.

I opened the front door and then still more happiness poured from my wife’s eyes, changing and unchanged for the last thirty years. We caught each other for a few moments. Sometimes happiness is the easiest thing in the world.

Then refried beans, reheated, from a container in the freezer, then wrapped in a tortilla, reheated a little more. Some yogurt and salsa on top. Kale on the side. It’s as good as it gets – and it’s just refried beans.

It is who you see and how you ask, of course.

And then before going off to book group after the dishes were washed, I cut an oversized Serpente squash from the vines in the garden for Susan, who later served us fake cheesecake on paper plates for dessert. ‘It’s so easy to make,’ she had said. And her laughing at the silly squash had splashed so easily. The thirty or forty years between Abbi’s and Susan’s ages seemed to make no significant difference at all. Tea and smiling women go together like ice in a receptive glass. But don’t just stand there.

Happiness and tea can be poured. If there is a secret - and it is not that well-hidden - it is simply how you hold your glass. Refills – now I am being specific about tea at Aimee’s – are included in the price that your pay at the register. Consider who and how you ask, but refills shall be given.

Whether you call it tea or squash or happiness, the words are not so much the difference. The point is to ask for what you want and to give freely. The result is a refill of what you naturally desire.

The harder question is this: why would we withhold our glass when, for example, iced tea is so simple – it’s just ice and tea – and water – poured?

And like tea, happiness can be similarly refilled with a smile. You truly just have to know who and how to ask. If you ask me, I think that you could walk out the answer for yourself in a few fortuitous blocks.

I recommend a receptive glass.

Waffle with a side of gravy

The sun was coming up in the morning;

I walked along the sandbar with my wife;

You could see the waffle tracks

of two sets of tennis shoes at water’s edge.

But what we do together -

you would hardly call it tennis -

but the ball goes back and forth across the net

and bounces.

Later she would be grading the presentations

of someone else’s kids from China

and you would be handing me a plate

of waffles, they call them Belgian, at Aimee’s.

I had a side of biscuit gravy.

It’s better that way

if you like Mrs. Butterworth’s and gravy on a waffle.

Maybe it’s only the salty and the sweet.

You took a break for your own breakfast;

you rode on a barstool made for one

with a guy who still writes with a pencil on lined paper.

Could you tipple and fall?

I was telling a story to the guy

sitting in between us.

The story was about making a young mother scream.

I had said that scaring kids at Halloween is child’s play.

And I looked over and saw your face flash into mine.

Is it because you think I’m funny

or do you get me now and then

because you are?

Love is a lot like riding a bike.

Your feet are off the ground

and the world seems to be

flying by so much faster.

But the mist rises imperceptibly off the

late summer river up into the cooler

autumn air.

It hovers between heaven and earth.

And Dawn happens to be the name of

my wife of almost thirty years

and the sun rises between us.

It didn’t have to work out that way.

But on All Saints Day,

the sky was clear and the day was coming bright.

And for a moment your father and I

have something in common.

And it wasn’t just that we sometimes

have worn pumpkin heads on Halloween.

Some things your never forget how to

once you’ve learned how to,

but do you always remember to do it?

Every now and then I think that you should ride a bike

with someone you love,

it doesn’t need to be at sunrise

and you don’t need the bicycle.

Trick

Invisibility is not that hard to achieve. Of course, it was dusk turning to nighttime and the kids and the parents were watching where they were walking. And they could see that our porch light was on. But I was certainly watching them as they came, illuminated by that same pale light. I stood next to the limestone porch pillar, the last of the summer’s morning glories and the oak leaf hydrangea about my head and shoulders. I was clothed in the color of shadows, standing motionless except for some deep breathing. There really was no reason to expect a 210 lb. man to be standing there at all - except that it was Halloween night. I was invisible.

I could hear the kids telling each other that this was the house as they hurried past me. Last year there were these two dummies, and then one turned out to be real. It was Pumpkin Head. And there have been years before that.

From where I stood this year, I could hear a kid tell my wife who was handing out candy at the front door that ‘that guy’ had scared him so bad last year that he had nightmares. Of course, I was happy to see that he had come back for more.

The girls from across the street paid me the high compliment of saying that I looked creepy even when they knew it was me underneath my cloak of invisibility. They had skipped my house several years earlier - even with their mother with them. Back then, even candy couldn’t entice them to our porch.

A neighbor, from two houses over, walked up the walk behind his daughter as she climbed the porch steps. I moved soundlessly up behind him as he asked Dawn, who was standing with the candy on the porch, “Where’s Bert?” A pumpkin-headed dummy was sitting at a card table just to one side of the sidewalk and physicists aren’t easily fooled.

I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and exclaimed, “Claude Rains!” I had my face wrapped in an ace bandage, my eyes covered by plastic purple slatted glasses. My fedora was a little rumpled. I looked the part of The Invisible Man - if you could see me.

It had still been dusk when Keller, the seven year old girl from down the street and her dad walked past me, waiting by the pillar where I could easily overhear them talking to each other as they went by. They turned and then they stopped part way up the front walk to wait for Keller’s brother, Owen, to catch up. He was still across the street. I took one quiet giant step out from my shadows as he was crossing and Keller was looking the other way. I froze again.

I couldn’t figure out who she was dressed as, but she was aqua colored from her head to her feet. Then I called out her name in a low voice, “Keller.” Her dad saw me then but he didn’t give me away. Her older brother came up and I called out again, just loudly enough to be heard, “Owen.” He looked over at me and figured it out right away. I had talked to him earlier in the day about his own costume. I had not really changed that much since then.

He walked confidently to the porch, but Keller was uncertain. She had suddenly seen The Invisible Man standing still where there had been no one standing only moments before. She stood frozen in her own way to the sidewalk. Her dad urged her to hurry and go get the candy and then they could run away. But she wasn’t sure enough about what she was seeing to do anything at all and she kept looking at me for some sign that nothing really scary was there.

Her brother came back from getting his candy, and then finally Keller grabbed her dad’s sleeve and hurried him up to the front door with her. And then, as they reached the sidewalk and turned up the street, I could see her aqua face looking back at me from over her shoulder. I had remained almost motionless, but I do hope that she saw me eventually waving.

At some points in the night, The Invisible Man just wandered the yard. Sometimes the kids came so fast, I just couldn’t make it back to my shadows. I grabbed a bold one or two and chased a few – an advancing step and a word were all that it took. I materialized as a very large dark scarecrow in the tall zinnia stalks in the flowerbed near the street - three girls daring each other to go touch my outstretched hand.

And I was back in the middle of the front lawn when a young mother turned her head and noticed me standing there in the grass. She stopped about where Keller had paused. I was no more than three or four giant steps away from her. Her husband and her child had already gone up to the porch.

“That’s not real?” she half-queried her husband. He quickly replied, “No that’s real.” I stood, motionless as a statue, as husband and wife disagreed back and forth several more times. Eventually, as these things go, the father and their child came back from getting the candy and the young mother said emphatically one more time, “That’s not real!”

I took one step towards her and she screamed.

Music to my ears.

And the kids just keep getting younger – and older.

**

Pumpkin Head - 2014  With links to other Halloween Stories

The Invisible Man - All Hallow's Eve - 2015