Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold

Today is B's birthday, so I asked what type of birthday cake he wanted like I always do.  Not that there's any real reason to ask, because the answer is pretty much always "chocolate."  But I asked anyway and was mildly surprised when he requested another chocolate lasagna like the one I made him for Easter.

However, B refuses to let me put candles on his "cake."  His excuse is that the candles "probably wouldn't stand up in the lasagna anyway," but the real reason is that he doesn't want to come face to face with the conflagration his birthday candles would emit, and thus be forced to face his age as well.  So because I am a helpful and thoughtful wife, I did this instead:

He frankly should know better than to forbid me to do things, especially at his age.

Happy Birthday, honey!

Remembering Mom

For most people April 14th is primarily about finishing the taxes they spent all of Spring trying to avoid.  For me, however, April 14th is slightly more significant than just attempting to fly under Uncle Sam's radar. That's because my mother passed away one year ago today.  Her death was not completely unexpected; she'd had Parkinson's with dementia for several years, the onset of which began with Alzheimer-like symptoms shortly before my father died.  Still, it's not every day one has to say that final goodbye to a parent.

Mom's high school graduation photo (Class of 1950).

To be honest, the week after Mom died was a bit of a blur involving three trips to the Indianapolis airport in 2 days and a 16-hour road trip through four states on a different day.  I flew up the day before the funeral then had to go back to the airport the next day both to pick up my daughter as well as to return her to school later that same day once the services concluded so she could finish completing assignments due before the end of the semester.  The day after the service I drove to Tennessee with my brother and niece for my mom's interment.  The hubs met me there.  Afterwards, I threw my stuff from my brother's vehicle into our van and we drove off in opposite directions.  All told, I think I personally drove around 10 hours or more that day.

What I remember most about the funeral is not that it was very small because Mom's few remaining relatives were on the West Coast, or that her mouth/face somehow didn't look quite right (in spite of how many people tried to tell me she "looks really good" in a misguided attempt to comfort me), or even how exhausted I was afterwards.  What I remember most is the flowers.  And the Statler Brothers.

Nasal is as nasal does.

When we were growing up, my mother loved to listen to the Statler Brothers.  Personally I found them far too nasal and "country" for my taste, but then I wasn't in control of the record player.  So we heard the Statler Brothers.  A lot.  I'd mostly forgotten about it till my brother mentioned that he wanted to play a couple of their songs during the service (one of which was the "Captain Kangaroo" song), the titles of which he did not remember.   We ended up pillaging Google in an effort to locate the relevant songs and then drove to Lafayette to search several stores for one of the two CDs in the Statler Brother canon on which were recorded both songs.  We were so proud of ourselves for successfully completing this quest that we failed to listen very carefully to the lyrics of said songs beyond identifying them as the correct selections.  While everyone was settling in and quieting down before the service, a loudspeaker came on and "Flowers on the Wall" began to play.  The tune was quiet and mellow included lyrics like "smoking cigarettes (well, she did) and watching Captain Kangaroo."  Next some last-minute substitute minister came up to do the "service," which consisted mostly of his speaking in religious generalities and reading my mother's obituary because of course he'd never met her and so had no clue who she was.  As a result, the service was short and largely impersonal.  Afterwards, while everyone was still sniffling, the loudspeaker started playing the second selection:  "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott."  Everyone sat there quietly grieving until a random Statler brother, who had been singing about movie ratings up to that point, suddenly blurted out that "the screen is filled with SEX."  Didn't see that coming.  It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.  Immediately I was reminded of the Mary Tyler Moore show and the funeral of Chuckles the Clown, during which Mary was trying desperately (and largely unsuccessfully) not to laugh.  On the one hand, my mother likely would have been annoyed by not receiving what she might consider a sufficient degree of gravitas and despondency on our parts; on the other hand, she told me many times that I should wear bright colors to her funeral instead of black and should be happy because she was in Heaven.  I suppose stifling snorts of wildly inappropriate laughter counts as a form of "happiness."   Meanwhile, a friend from high school who I'd not seen in 20+ years came to the funeral and sat right behind me; she was giggling gleefully because the unexpected musical selections sounded like something her own family would do at a funeral.

Chuckles is a NAME, not a COMMAND.  Sheesh.

I also remember the flowers, or at least the significance of the flowers.  My mother was obsessed with flowers her entire life.  She absolutely loved them.  There were always potted plants in our house and she was especially proud of the giant, 6 ft tall lilac bushes that lined one side of our front yard when I was a kid.  Naturally, we had flowers on Mom's casket, and a few people (mostly people my brother knew) sent arrangements.  I only took one arrangement home afterwards since it had to survive the trip from Indy back to Georgia.  I still have it (and it's even still alive, though it could stand repotting).  When we got to the cemetery, there was a funeral spray by the graveside.  My brother thought this was overkill since Mom had already had flowers at the service and couldn't understand why I would have bothered.  But flowers were her thing.  They just were.  When Mom moved to Tennessee one of the first things I bought her was a book about the local flowers and trees and bushes.  As far as I was concerned, she wouldn't be happy unless she were surrounded by flowers at all times.  Besides, it seemed so sad and lonely not to have something at the graveside other than the wilting casket flowers that had come down with Mom in the hearse.   Before we left TN after the interment I pulled a few flowers out of the spray and put them in the little brass vase by Mom's and Dad's headstone, after which I put the rest of the spray in the van to take home.  Once there I salvaged what I could, putting them in a container of my own.  For the next week whenever I went into the kitchen the entire room would smell of flowers...of Mom.  In the mail on the day we got back was a flyer from Teleflora to remind me to order Mother's Day flowers.  What Teleflora didn't realize is that I had already gotten some Mother's day flowers.  They were just a little early.

Because you can never have too many flowers.  Yes, even then.

My mother was, in many ways, a contradiction in terms.   She would boil canned vegetables until they were so limp and lifeless that Viagra couldn't have helped them.   She frequently murdered broccoli and cauliflower and eggplant, the pungent smell of which would hover throughout the house for hours at a time like a gaseous cloud of acid rain.  It has taken me years to learn to appreciate (or even eat) most vegetables and the smell of a couple varieties being cooked will still make me gag.  Our meat was often dry or overcooked and I have lost count of the number of meals she served which consisted only of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and hotdogs.  A chef Mom was not.  Yet every week without fail she would make 4 loaves of the most delicious homemade bread you ever tasted.  I would regularly beg her to make one of those loaves into cinnamon bread, which she occasionally did and which would have me dancing in anticipation.  When I was little she'd let me help knead the dough and would give me a small handful of my own to work, which I would then get to put into a little pot pie tin and bake.  I always loved having my own little loaf of bread!  I couldn't wait to slather it in butter when it was still too hot to eat and would scarf it down anyway, oblivious to the melting butter dripping down my chin or to the burned spots on my tongue.  Rarely a week went by without some form of pie or cake or cookie sitting on the table.   I even got my recipe for snickerdoodles from my mother.  True, I've tweaked the recipe a little over the years, but she is the person who first introduced me to the joy of cookie goodness that is the 'dood.

Mmmmmm...snickerdoodles...

Mom was not an educated woman; in fact, she frequently told me how much she sucked at schoolwork.  This is not really an exaggeration; I've seen the report cards.  She grew up on a farm in Montana and went to a tiny school in the area. Sometimes Mom seemed to move slower (she once got fired from a job for being too slow) or to be just a little slower on the uptake than others.  I've sometimes wondered if maybe this was partly the result of having been born with her umbilical cord around her neck; I'm told that if her grandmother had not been there at the birth, she likely would have died of asphyxiation.  And yet, my mother is the one who instilled my love of reading.  She read countless books to me when I was little and used to argue about my bedtime, always capitulating to allow me an extra half hour to read in bed.   Mom never went anywhere without a book by her side.  True, many of them were Harlequin Romances (about which I ragged her endlessly), but she loved learning the history and geography that was peripherally present in them and dreamed of being a world traveler one day (she longed to visit Australia), never mind dreaming of getting lots of good sex, apparently.  I can remember watching my mother sit reading for hours at a time with a cup of coffee at one hand and a glass of ice cubes (which she chewed) at the other.  She would come back from every trip to the library with a new stack of books to read.  She may not have always been the brightest crayon in the box but she had a passion for at least trying to learn new things (any time she read something she didn't understand she'd run to look it up in the dictionary or would look up unfamiliar places in the atlas) and she always supported my academic pursuits, even though she rarely understood them.

True story.

My mother could also be very passive-aggressive.  She was very shy growing up and never handled conflicts well even as an adult.  So she tended to make her feelings known through sneaky, passive-aggressive ways.  When I was in high school I did a lot of theater and Mom absolutely despised driving.  Picking me up every afternoon from rehearsal when the buses were no longer running used to piss her off because it cramped her reading and soap opera time.  Often when I'd call her to pick me up (back in the days of the pay phone, long before anyone had ever heard the words "cellular phone"), she'd answer "Well, what if I don't want to??" and only halfway (or less) be kidding.  So I'd usually call her bluff by answering that I'd just walk home instead, which would invariably flip her out because she was forever convinced that someone was going to jump out of the cornfield and molest me.  She was incredibly paranoid that one or both of us would be raped at any given moment.  She even dreamed about it sometimes (she had very vivid dreams her entire life).  Years later, before she moved back to Indy, I used to take her out to lunch every week and to do her grocery shopping or run errands.  One day I told her that I was going to have to stop doing the weekly lunch and maybe do monthly instead because neither my health nor my wallet could afford it any longer.  I thought she had taken the news well till we got back in the car, at which point she informed me that she'd "noticed I was getting fat but had decided not to say anything because she 'knew' I'd figure it out eventually."  This was Mom-Code for "I'm pissed that you've decided to stop spoiling me and treating me like the princess I want to be," something she'd never dare say to my face (or anyone else's).

While Mom could be a major pain in the ass sometimes, she was also very loving in her own way.  Mom and Dad felt bad that they couldn't afford to help me pay for college so when Mom used to write to me every week she'd often stash a $5 or $10 bill in each envelope.  Sometimes those few dollars were the difference between whether I ate that day or not, though I doubt she knew that.  Mom also made sure that both my brother and I knew we were adopted even before we were old enough to know what "adoption" really meant.  I grew up knowing that I was chosen.  True, I also knew that it was largely because I had red hair (she was obsessed with redheads too) and "had a cold" so she "felt sorry for me."  Still, I never doubted that she picked me because she wanted me nor that she always loved me.  Every year on our birthdays she would make us whatever we wanted for dinner and the cake of our choice.  Because I am me, my cake was often something non-traditional like a pie or strawberry shortcake.  In fact, even after I left home she always had some strawberries put up in the freezer just for me which she'd defrost whenever I came home.  She tried hard to make us feel special, particularly since there was rarely any extra money floating around.  She also liked to torture us with our presents.  Since she didn't have much to give, she tried to make it last by wrapping something like a cheap little necklace in 15 different boxes, individually wrapped one inside the other so that you had to dig through them like Matryoshka dolls to find the prize.  Or she'd fill a box with tissue paper and you'd search the whole thing only to discover she'd taped the necklace to the side of the box or wrapped a $10 bill in one of the sheets of tissue paper you'd just tried to throw away.  One year for Christmas she bought me a pack of socks (which I doubtless needed, not that anyone wants socks for Christmas).  So to make it more interesting, she wrapped each sock individually.  I can remember going into the living room Christmas morning and thinking Santa had left the mother lode, only to discover that 10 of my gifts consisted of a single sock.  You can imagine my disappointment over "Santa's" sadism.  Mom also frequently put gag gifts in our stockings, so I suppose that at least some of my quirky humor comes from her (which is also presumably why I used to tell her that her name--Lorraine LaRue--sounded like a stripper name).

I'd like to say that my mother was a perfect mom, but she wasn't.  Who is, really?  (Other than me, of course.)  But Mom did a lot more right than she did wrong (which is more than I can say for a lot of people) and she was brave enough to give someone else's child a home and all the love she had to offer.  For good or for ill, much of who I am today is because of her...and I am grateful.

I miss you, Mom.

Fun With Keyword Searches #3

Every so often I like to look at my blog stats just to see how I'm getting the minimal traffic I receive.  Two years ago, it was all about the Ukranian porn sites.  Last year, it was all about Russian home decorating and/or military-grade heavy ammunition because apparently a blog obsessed with redheads and snickerdoodles needs to acquire better interior design and/or mafia backing.  So far this year I have a much more eclectic array of referring urls.  Naturally the more mainstream Google, Facebook, BlogHer and other such sites are represented as are yet more Russian/Ukranian urls, this time for spy equipment,   industrial house siding, a mommy web-ring called "Cafe Mam," another (untranslatable) page that appears to be for phone sex considering the skimpily glad female on the home page and the plethora of phone numbers listed, and what appears to be a betting site for fantasy football.  Color me diversified.

Meanwhile, I'm always boggled by some of the bizarre things that come up in the keyword searches that refer people to my blog.  I've gotten everything from "evil porn," "whale's nipples" (seriously, people?), and "toddler sports bras" (I understand that obesity is a growing crisis in our country, but how many toddlers honestly require mammary support?) to "enlargement time delay electric shock physiotherapy" (WTH?), "ugly redhead perms," "nude dumkopf" (yes, I know it's misspelled), and "ginger boobs."  Well, alrighty then.  I guess I at least understand past hits from porn sites, but electric shock therapy?  Is that an editorial comment, or is it just something my readers think I need?  Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing, mind you.  I also never fail to be astonished by how many hits I get from variations of the word "macrame."  I realize why I get them, but could never have dreamed that people would still be obsessed with macrame even some 40 years after its heyday in the '70s.  You keep rockin' the hemp all you hoopy froods out there!

Some of this week's search offerings prove to be no less random than those previous:

First off, it's not my birthday and I'm not that old (or rather I don't act my age, as most of my friends would attest).  Secondly, "ginger redhead" is redundant and really, don't we ALL have red hearts?  I'm pretty sure that organ color is not  exclusively reserved for those of the ginger persuasion (though how cool would it be if it were?), at least not last time I checked.  I can only assume that the Schwan's man became frozen when a person or persons unknown shoved him into a freezer compartment of his own truck, possibly somewhere along Florida's Route 27.  Personally, I have absolutely no idea why either of these terms would show up in my blog stats, considering I've never been on route 27 (at least not to my knowledge) and I'm not generally in the habit of putting people on ice, regardless of how many mafia-related hits I seem to get.  Maybe all the Florida snowbirds are just desperate for a little ice-cream to relieve the excessive Floridian heat but couldn't afford Schwan's renowned sweet treats on their Social Security and pensions and so were forced by circumstances to do over the local Schwan's guy in order to liberate his stash of frozen nutty bars.  I'm guessing that would also explain why so many people were in dire need of peanuts.  Either that or the nearest sports stadium was looking to replace their depleted stash of peanuts before many people show up in the stands.

I realize that rabbiting on about keyword searches and referring urls probably isn't tremendously interesting for most of you and I suppose many people might even accuse me of having peanuts an over-active imagination.  While no doubt that's true, I prefer to think of it as a Creative Responsibility Avoidance Program (or CRAP for short).   Whatever gets me out of housework is okay by me.

Feel free to borrow my CRAP.  You're welcome.

Remembering Brian

Years ago when I was in the English Department at Purdue, several of the new grad students each year got crammed into a "gang office" because there was not sufficient room to house us all in individual offices.  As a result, we were put into a large classroom lined wall to wall with desks and file cabinets and which included an island of four additional desks all butted up against each other in the middle of the room.  All told, there were probably at least 15 desks in the room, probably more; I can't remember exactly.  You can imagine how much privacy any of us ever had, particularly during student conferences and most especially near finals when everyone's final papers were due.  At these times the room would erupt in mass chaos as we all hosted the never-ending stream of ever-more desperate students seeking the Magic "A" Fairy forgiveness for their past sins of missing class and/or assignments.  Trying to get any grading or work of your own done in this atmosphere was frequently challenging, but the upside was that you always had backup when a student got unruly and you always had other instructors to offer advice on how to grade or handle a difficult situation or whatever.  Later, as the older grad asses assistants (GAs) finished their degrees, we were able to leave Grand Central (Teaching) Station for something marginally more private as we were rotated into their newly-vacated cubicles, sharing only with 2-3 other students rather than close to 20.

In some ways, though, I preferred the gang office to the pokey, dark closet/excuse-for-an-office I was eventually given for my home base.  While certainly it was often distracting to try to work in the larger office, you also always had peers to talk to and hang out with, people who completely understood where you were coming from because they were in the same boat.  Amid the stacks of essays, each of our desks were dutifully lined with Great Works of Literature.  Our desk drawers, on the other hand, housed each of our secret literary vices.  One girl's desk hid a succession of romance novels, another's hid Stephen King novels, and still another's held People magazines.  Mine frequently housed Sci-fi/fantasy novels among other things.  I always found it highly amusing that we all had a stash of something decidedly non-Literary (with a capital "L") on hand for the mindless study breaks we all desperately needed from our own studies and from the piles of twitch-inducing freshman compositions.  No doubt most of our professors would have tongue-lashed us for reading trashy and/or pedestrian novels when they weren't looking, calling them "drivel" or "fluff."  But we didn't care; one person's drivel is another person's sanity.

Another reason I secretly enjoyed the gang office was because I made some dear friends there that first year, a couple of whom I am still talk to regularly.  One of these friends was named Brian Mexicott (he kept old-school mystery novels like Mickey Spillane tucked in his desk drawers).  At the time, I was probably closer to Brian than to anyone else in the office; we were both very into theater and so often took classes like Contemporary Drama together.  We also ended up being neighbors in an apartment complex for a couple of years after B and I were unexpectedly forced to vacate a previous residence after only two days because none of our friends had bothered to tell us it was in the middle of a crack neighborhood.  So Brian and I hung out a lot and on nights when we both had class, he would drive me back home across town afterwards since B had left campus hours earlier in our only car.  Brian and I spent a lot of time in his little truck laughing our butts off and doing impressions of assorted professors as we traveled to and from campus.

Not long after completing my Master's I had to leave town because B had finished all but the dissertation for his doctorate, which he intended to finish during his first year working as an assistant professor in Memphis.  So we packed up and headed south while all my friends, including Brian, stayed on on at Purdue to complete their own doctorates.  I stayed in touch with Brian, though, and followed his progress as the years went by.  While he was working on giving birth his dissertation, I was in Memphis giving birth to my daughter, neither effort any less a labor of love than the other.  A couple of years later I learned that Brian's deteriorating health had prompted him to move back home to Ohio so his mother could help look after him during his illness.  Brian continued to work on his research and dissertation, though, and we continued to write each other and even called each other on occasion.

Sadly, Brian's health continued to worsen; he developed throat cancer which made it difficult to speak.  He lost his hair.  He got terrible rashes on his face and neck. He was miserable and scared.  And I was scared for him, because I knew he wasn't going to get better.  You see, my friend Brian had AIDS.  And even though it was ultimately cancer which took his life, Brian likely would never have gotten cancer at such a young age had his whole immune system not become so horribly compromised.

Brian and I continued to write, especially after he could no longer speak; he always asked about my daughter (so I'd send him pictures) and he always told me with pride about what his nieces were up to.  He showed me things he was  working on and he told me how he was feeling even though I know he played it down.  Through it all, he remained surprisingly upbeat and tried not to dwell on the pain he was suffering.  But I still knew how difficult things were for him.  Even from a distance it's hard to watch a friend die.  I only wish he'd been able to complete his doctorate before he left us...he came close, though.

Brian passed away on January 5th, 1996 when my daughter was only 4.  I can remember her asking me why I was crying and trying to comfort me with her tiny little arms.  I was invited to the funeral, but unfortunately terrible weather conditions that week made it impractical to drive the 10 hours to Ohio for the funeral.  Had I still lived in Indy, I probably would have tried to go anyway, assuming I could even get there.  His mother understood, though, and very kindly sent me a copy of the program.  I still have it.

A couple of months after Brian passed away his mother contacted me with a surprising request.  She was trying to put together a panel for the National AIDS quilt in memory of Brian.  Her daughter and granddaughters did one of their own, but his mother wanted several of Brian's friends to contribute to a second panel which would recognize several of their mutual interests.  She asked one friend who shared an interest in flowers with Brian to create a square commemorating that interest.  Another she asked to do something with his and Brian's fondness for photography.  She herself had a couple of Brian's poems transferred onto fabric to include in the quilt, as well as making a block for each of Brian's degrees.  Brian's mother asked other friends to provide similar such memorials.  She requested that I design a square which celebrated Brian's and my shared love of theater.  I had no idea what to create at first, but I was deeply touched to have been asked and more than honored to perform this small service for my friend.  Brian's mom gave me the details and specifications and I went to work.  In the end I made a stage, complete with velvet "curtains" on the sides.  In the middle were a couple of easels with placards announcing the names and acts of some favorite plays.  I even included a spotlight and the comedy/tragedy masks over the proscenium.  When finished, I mailed his mother my offering.  She sent me a note of thanks, and I never heard anything else about it till one day a few years ago I happened to look Brian up online (there was no Google in 1996) and found a reference to his quilt block.  For the first time I was able to see his panel, complete with my tiny square included.  I kept a copy of the picture to remember him by, but I've still never seen either his panel or indeed any of the AIDS quilt in person.  Soon that will no longer be true.

As it happens, last month I saw a notice in my newsfeed from the local newspaper mentioning that the AIDS Memorial Quilt would be coming to my town.  Turns out that the AIDS organization here is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year; in an effort to raise awareness and to commemorate locals affected by the disease, they requested that sections of the quilt relevant to the city be brought over so they can be put on display downtown for three days.  Included in the article was a note that anyone could request additional panels to be included in this display and a link to the proper forms required for such a request.  I could hardly pass up such an opportunity so I again looked up Brian's panel to retrieve his official "block number."  In addition to providing some basic information, I also had to answer the question "Why you have chosen to request this panel for AIDS Athens 25^th Year Commemoration?”  To be honest, I don't really remember what I wrote, other than to say that I had contributed to the panel and that the due date for the request form was almost 17 years to the day that Brian had died.  I mailed the form and then didn't think much about it afterwards, figuring I'd hear one way or another at some point since I had to include my email address.

A month and a half went by with no word, then on Monday I received an email from the director of the local AIDS organization stating that they had indeed been able to procure Brian's panel for the display and inviting me to attend the opening ceremonies next Monday at 6 pm.  The director also asked permission to include my answer about why I was requesting the panel on Brian's quilt because it was "so lovely" that she wanted everyone else to understand the personal connection to his panel.  I was stunned.  Naturally I gave my permission right away.

Brian was a good friend--a kind, sweet, witty guy who loved life and sought to make the world a better place through his art.  He didn't deserve to die so young or so horribly or with any of the stigma attached to his condition.  No one deserves that--no one.  He was just as human as any of the rest of us, and I think of him often.  Being asked to contribute to Brian's AIDS panel has been one of the signal honors of my life and I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity both to see the finished product in person and to remember the dear friend who inspired it.  I will be grateful to say a prayer over it for Brian's continued peace, as well as for that of his family and friends, and I will borrow Martin Luther King Jr.'s prayer for us all:

       “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of...prejudice will soon pass away,
        and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and
        brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating
        beauty.”

Be at peace, dear friend...and thanks for all the rides.

Genealogical Serendipity

Most people grow up having some sense of their history--who they are, where they came from, who they look like--what their overall heritage is.  When you grow up adopted things are different, or at least they were several decades ago when most adoption records remained sealed.  Of course I knew some of my adoptive parents' heritage; for example, my mother was Dutch all day long.  But I also knew that didn't mean I was.  Nor did I ever look like anyone in my family.  I was always just me, unique and wholly myself for better or worse.  Still, there is a certain advantage to that sort of anonymity and might in part explain why I always seemed to look like someone's uncle's cousin's babysitter's dog walker.  Since I never quite looked like anyone in particular, I instead looked like everyone.  Or so it seemed.

Naturally I had a history like everyone else but as far as I knew mine didn't begin till I was born.  There was never a sense of what had gone before because there simply wasn't a before.  Again, there are advantages to that, such as the ability to start out life with a clean slate.  After all, you can't be held accountable for whatever stupid things your ancestors may have done if you have no ancestors.  Life becomes what you make it, perhaps even more for adoptees than for everyone else.

More than a few times over the years I've wondered how I would fare in one of those "nature vs nurture" studies; how could I help but wonder how many traits I'd inherited from my birth parents vs how many I absorbed from being around my adoptive parents?  I've always known I picked up several habits (some good, some not-so-good) from my mother and, like my dad, I can be both a huge goofball or someone who talks big but who is really a giant softie underneath.  But which of my various traits were the result of my unknown genetic heritage?

Now that I've met NJ and we've been corresponding regularly for the last couple of months I'm starting to figure out what some of those traits are, and it's been freaky illuminating.  You know how sometimes in the news there are stories about twins separated at birth who grow up on different continents or in different cities in wildly disparate conditions and circumstances from each other?  And who, despite these divergences, still end up liking all the same foods or playing the same instruments or both running track or both flunking algebra?  Yeah, well, I'm starting to feel a bit like that too. Obviously my birth mom and I are not identical twins, but the number of similarities that we have thus far uncovered is a little scary.

What gets me, though, are not the commonalities themselves but the specificity of some of them.  For example, a lot of people could easily say they liked chocolate (who doesn't?), but how many would then qualify this declaration by stating that they prefer their chocolate to be broken up by other things, such as mint or wafers or Rice Krispies or whatever so that the chocolate will be less rich than if it were solid?  Apparently we both do that, just as we both abhor chocolate with coconut in it.  Well, I abhor coconut in anything really, but still.  Similarly, we both prefer hard candies to chocolate in general, but we also both chew the candy rather than sucking on it like normal people (a habit which drives the girlie bonkers, I might add).  Now really, how likely is it that we'd both do that?  A lot of people like Lifesavers, but how many of those people feel a need to pummel said Lifesavers to candy dust inside their mouths?  When I told B last night that NJ liked to chew her candy his eyes widened.  I'm the only other person he's ever known to do that consistently.  There are other coincidences, too.  And while there are physical similarities like our ultra-fine hair or rack or dental issues, it's the little things--the unique quirks--which make this all so very real to me.

But it goes far beyond that.  Years ago, when my family traveled to England, we started out in London.  B was a royal pain, no doubt because of the sensory overload there.  A few days later, however, we got on an express train to Inverness.  The closer we got to Scotland, the more he relaxed, which made the girlie and me relax more as well.  Much of the countryside seemed grey and overcast, yet at the same time there was a palpable feeling of going home, of finding a place you belong, just because.  We all felt it.  Not surprisingly, we had a great time in Inverness and then Edinburgh, though sadly we didn't get to spend as much time in Edinburgh as we would have liked.   This journey with NJ is becoming a little like that as well.  While certainly it doesn't change how I felt about my adoptive parents in the least, I can't deny that there is a certain element of "coming home" to all of this discovery.

I'm learning that context is everything.  For example, I've been mildly obsessed with King Arthur and the legends surrounding him, both the old romances and more modern incarnations, for the majority of my life.  I wrote term papers on aspects of Arthurian legend in both high school and college.  I found it all terribly fascinating--not just the romantic idea of chivalry, but the concept of a unified government, where all men were essentially equal because they sat at a round table with no head and could therefore be equally heard.  I liked the philosophy of "right, not might."  Plus you've gotta love the sci-fi/fantasy aspect of some random Welsh dude getting a sword from a woman in a lake if for no other reason than because it spawned one of the most epic parody movies ever made courtesy of Monty Python.  So while I always thought King Arthur was pretty cool, I never expected to be tracking a line on my family tree one day and run smack into a whole cadre of Welsh forbears.  After all, I'd always assumed that I was part Irish or Scots rather than Welsh (though I may yet be once all the threads on my family tree have been traced).  Soon I began seeing familiar place names and familiar people--names I've read about in the Arthurian legends for years.  It was unexpected and exciting and remarkable.  Suddenly my lifelong affinity for Celtic mythology and artwork also started making more sense because, unexpectedly, there was a precedent for it--a genetic tie--just from a different Celtic nation than I'd anticipated.  To make things even more interesting, one of the Celtic names I've been randomly considering for my SCA persona is "Angharad," which turns out not only to be Welsh in origin but also turns out to be the name of about 10 of my Welsh ancestors.  Go figure.

As surprising as all this newfound Welsh heritage is, I was still stunned the other night to find the name "Anna Morgawse"--and especially the name of her father Uther Pendragon--in my family tree.  Uther Pendragon.  As in King Arthur's supposed father.  In most of the legends, Morgause is Arthur's half-sister, but according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the primary source utilized by Ancestry.com for Britons that far back, Anna Morgawse is actually Arthur's full sister.  This would make Uther Pendragon my 45th great-grandfather and King Arthur my 44th great-grand-uncle.  I was flabbergasted...fantasy meets reality.  Sort of.

Now don't get me wrong; I know that the likelihood of this connection being at all accurate is astronomically small.  I'm not an idiot.  After all, good old Geoff was about as scrupulous in his record-keeping as an amnesiac crack-head shooting up Drano would be.  And of course there are the chronological discrepancies between when the King Arthur of legend was supposed to have existed and those of the potential historical kings who could have been the basis for said legends.  Sure, I can plausibly trace my line back to Rhys ap Tewdwr and Rhodri Fawr (or Mawr, depending on which source you use).  But the Pendragons?  Yeah, that's a bit more of a stretch.  Doesn't mean I'm not gonna milk it, though, however unrealistic it might be.  More to the point, I find it remarkable that the possibility of relationship to King Arthur should arise at all after a lifetime of fascination with the king in question.  What are the odds of that, really?  I'm pretty sure Ancestry.com isn't charging for wish fulfillment.  Or maybe they are...who knows?

At the end of the day it doesn't matter that my "connection" to King Arthur is almost certainly bogus. There are enough legitimate Welsh kings back in my line that one or the other of them was bound to have been related in some way, however distantly, to whomever the real King Arthur was.  And I'm cool with that.  Either way, I've still gained more of a context for all my assorted interests and quirks.  I'm building a better understanding of how I became some of who I am, which is far more precious than any purported relationship to King Arthur. In other words, I'm finding my way home.

But you still have to start bowing.

Resolved

New Year's Day is a day for resolutions.  It gives us the opportunity to plot a better course for our lives in the coming year. At least that's the idea, anyway.  Personally, I kinda suck at resolutions.  Like most people, I have the best of intentions.  I plan to lose weight and/or get in shape.  I hope to be nicer or more positive.  I intend to be less of a smart ass, which is about as likely to happen as Barack Obama suddenly sprouting purple flippers and calling himself "Susan."  We all mean well, of course, but then sooner or later life just gets in the way.  We miss a day and think "It's only one day...I'll get back to losing weight/exercising/finishing my project/becoming Mother Theresa tomorrow."  Then we miss another day.  And another.  And before we know it, a week has gone by and all those erstwhile resolutions have already been flushed down the toilet.   So this year, I'm gonna try a different approach.

There are plenty of other things I can lie to myself about, such as
"eating cookies will make me lose weight faster."

I've decided that I might get slightly farther this year with anti-resolutions.  I did lose weight last year, but not because I'd "resolved" to do so.  I lost weight because I discovered one day that my blood sugar was hovering over the diabetic line and it scared me the crap off the couch.  Pretty sad when you start dieting and exercising not because it's the right thing or the healthy thing to do but because you have an unreasonable fear of hypodermics and don't want to be required to use them daily.  So for me, losing weight was sort of last year's big anti-resolution.

As a result, this year I vow not to punish myself when I inevitably forget to post to my blog on a regular basis and I will forgive myself to boot.  Perhaps this way I'll be more likely to continue posting consistently instead of holding myself hostage until I either write down all the posts log-jammed in my head (in order of presentation because I'm OCD like that) or because I can't think of anything witty to say about the more banal happenings of everyday life.  Maybe I'll remember to write, maybe I won't.  But I won't be a failure if I don't.

Similarly, I will not completely deprive myself of fun foods in order to lose more weight faster, which will likely only lead to uncontrollable bingeing down the road anyway.  Instead, I will sneak too much candy, dammit, and I will enjoy the odd cookie or piece of cake.  I will eat less of them, yes, but I will eat them just the same.  Maybe this will make me lose weight more slowly.  So what?  I have no one to impress here but myself, and while I'm all for being healthier and for being able to bend over to pick up a pencil off the floor without springing back like a demented Weeble, I also realize that life is meant to be lived.  As with everything, the important thing is not whether or not you eat the cookie, but whether or not you have balance in your life.  There's a big difference between eating a sliver of pie once every couple of weeks and eating an entire pie every couple of days or hours.  Perspective, people.

I will not stop being a smart ass.  I've tried (not hard, but still).  It's just never gonna happen.  I will never be as nice or as generous or as helpful as I'd like to be or even as I probably should be.  All I can do is the best I can do, and even that ain't gonna happen if my head has exploded from the strain of trying not to offend everyone with my rude or sarcastic jokes, terrible puns or dirty mind.  I am what I am...a smart ass with a heart of (tarnished) gold.  Deal with it.  (And don't judge me when I start playing hula-hoop with my halo; it keeps sliding off anyway so I might as well find some practical use for it.)

Lastly, I will not keep going out of my way to fix all the stupid things that other people do and making myself crazier in the process.  I am not responsible for what others do or don't do and I'm doing none of us any good by trying to be.  If that makes me a bad person, well, tough.  That doesn't mean I won't help others, because I will.   I just means that I will not allow myself to continue being held accountable for other peoples' bad choices.  I make more than enough bad decisions all by myself, so I don't need to deal with anyone else's too.

I realize lowering one's expectations is not traditionally how people do New Year's resolutions, and that's okay.  But perhaps doing so is more practical, at least for me.  Besides, if I start with lower expectations things can only get better throughout the year, right?  As Benjamin Franklin once said, "It's better be a pessimist and sometimes be pleasantly surprised than to be an optimist and be constantly disappointed."

Worth a shot, anyway.  Happy New Year, everyone!

Goodbye, 2012

The dawn of a new year approaches, and it's time to say goodbye to the old.  As years go, 2012 was a pretty basic year with some ups and some downs and mostly a lot of average.  Still, as the old year passes, I'd like to tip my hat to it by recognizing ten of the more significant events which transpired during its course:

  1.  I lost a mother.  (God freed my 80 year-old-mother from her Parkinson's
       and dementia in April.)

  2.  I found a mother.  (I made contact with my birth mother a mere 47¾
       years after being given up for adoption.)

  3.  I lost 40 lbs.   (And by "lost," I mean "forcibly ejected from my person.")

  4.  I made new friends.  (Who are still willing to talk to me.)

  5.  I hung out with royalty.  (Which just means I'm cooler than you.)

  6.  I didn't break anything new.  (At least not on my body.)

  7.  I traveled.  A lot.  (I became a road warrior, and not just because I had to
       use public restrooms in 12 different states during my trips.)

  8.  Someone actually paid me to sing at a wedding.  (That'll teach 'em.)

  9.  I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).  (Which contrarily
       won't let me use my very "period" real name for my persona, because it
       also happens to be the name of a historical royal person.  I can
       anachronistically sneak my iPhone to events and wear brassieres under my
       garb, but I can't anachronistically use my real, historically accurate name.
       Party poopers.  On the plus side, I've met a lot of cool people and can now
       do the Bayeux stitch, not fall over while attempting to bow [mostly], and
       can talk about watery tarts with swords and their viability in government
       all day long without people looking at me strangely or asking if I forgot to
       take my meds.  So I'm calling it a WIN.)

10.  Someone even let me write a guest post on her blog and didn't run away
       screaming in horror.  (You can read it here at the amazing Kristen's blog,
       Four Hens and a Rooster.)

So thanks, 2012, for the highs and even the lows, all of which serve to remind us that we are still alive and have the opportunity each and every day to do more, to be more and to help more.

As for the new year?  I'm ready for you, 2013--BRING IT.