Shanamadele’s Coffee Break
Pet Peeve #162Archive for Oh FOO!
How does one obtain a duck’s back?
Brother J. was/is? in town. He sent an e-mail about a week ago saying that he was in San Diego, having come out West to “visit family” and he wanted to see us.
He did not ask. I did not respond right away. I wanted to think about it.
I decided no. Before I could respond, I got a call from my mother, telling me that J. was in town and wanted to see me. (Actually, she said, “Have you heard from anybody?” and acknowledged that that was code from whether I’d heard from J. when I asked.) I told her that I was angry that J. had called her for this, and that she had called me with it.
The next day, my father called. Same spiel.
After several e-mail exchanges and phone calls with my parents and brother this week, I have little acknowledgment from any of them that this is manipulative. My mother says, “I see your point, but J. wants to reconnect with family.” J. says, “I heard what you said in your e-mail; where shall we meet for dinner so I can see my nephew?”
I want to stop feeling guilty about not seeing my brother. I want to stop feeling anxious that my parents think less of me for not seeing my brother. I know intellectually I am making the right decision not to be manipulated. But I still feel like sh*t in a way that I allow to inpare my ability to pay attention to my needs and the needs of those around me.
Oh, brother.
My brother, J, is in jail, arraigned on a felony charge for stealing a trailer — the kind you pull vehicles with — from a rental place and for driving with a suspended license. His public defendant in Georgia says the jail he’s in is severely overcrowded and he’s likely to become victimized by other inmates because of his mental illness.
My parents are going to Georgia tomorrow, possibly to bail him out and see if they can make a deal with the rental place to have the charge reduced. They are trying to get J to put up some collateral for the money they would use to bail him out to help ensure that he would actually show up for the trial, but the diamond rings he owns (why does J own diamond rings? I don’t know) are in the truck, which is impounded.
The lawyer thinks that when he comes to trial, he will probably be sentenced to probation, but his main concern is that J will be harmed in jail before then. Can we say how many ways this is bad?
Never finishing the Florida story
See, the thing about Sunday is that I would just write about how angry I got because my brother could not make any time to talk to me or interact with me on Sunday, even though we were hanging around each other all day.
I would talk about the brunch in the country club of the inlaws gated community. No changing table in the men’s bathroom. A wooden changing table in its own alcove, complete with disinfecting wipes and disposable changing pad, in the women’s bathroom (which was also stocked with mouthwash and cloth handtowels, natch).
There would be a description of the all too familiar decripitude, decay and chaos at my brother’s house. You may not be able to go home again, but you can re-create it whereever you are.
Plus, I would rant about how much time my brother spent in front of his computer, looking at photos from the night before and — bizarrely — checking out a guest’s computer at his hotel room while the rest of us were hanging out at the beach and awaiting his return so we could start grilling dinner.
The beach itself was really nice. I had a great time being buffeted by the gentle, warm waves with my neices and nephew. Watching Butternut react to it all was a blast. At one point, my mother, Pumpkin, Butternut and I went to watch the weekly (?) gathering of beach hippies, who come to drum and dance and, well, make us Portlanders feel more at home. Butternut excitedly went from thing to thing saying, in turn, “ball, ball,” “daw, daw,” and, the most exciting of all, “bi!, bi!.”
And Now He is a Man
Okay, so now I remember what we did on Friday.
I stubbornly insisted on making mac and cheese for dinner because 1) we had the ingredients for it at my parents’ house and wouldn’t need to go to a grocery store again and 2) we thought there was a pretty good chance my nieces would eat it. I was kicking myself later when R. practically begged my mother to make lukshen kugel. Someone please remind me to have my mother make lukshen kugel the next time we’re together.
So, back to the main event. M did fabulously, of course. His drash was a little short, but I appreciated that he disagreed with the rabbis about the ethics involved. Not that I can remember what the issue was right at the moment.
The gabbai at the synogogue gave me a silver card — about the size of a credit card — imprinted with the Hebrew for “third” to indicate my aliyah. He instructed me to give the card to the attendants when I went up, smilingly saying, “no ticket, no aliyah.” I’ve never seen this before — anybody else?
Like everyone else, I flubbed the blessings. But at least I had my own tallis. Still, I felt irrationally responsible for representing my family and my gender.
Services were followed by kiddush — a catered luncheon, of course. Pumpkin and I took turns chasing the boy and eating.
We spent the afternoon doing something — actually, as I recall, my mother and I ran errands. I was trying to keep busy to stay awake — we’d had a rough night the night before, learning a hard lesson about how efen different styles of the same brand of diaper are, well, different. Pumpkin and Butternut napped.
Later that night, the Bar Mitzvah party! As my friend A says, the nice thing about going to other people’s simchas is that you can decide which things you want for your own parties, and which things you would leave out. Winners: party hats and party games that involve the whole group. Losers: DJ-led candle-lighting ceremonies that accentuate how close the guests are to the honoree.
The highlight for me: One of the games involved Pumpkin dancing to “YMCA.” Am still trying to track down the video of that one.
After the bar mitzvah party, we returned to my parents’ house before everyone else. A little background — and more non-linear story telling. We do not expose Butternut to TV, and my parents agreed not to turn on the television while Butternut was awake in the house. They, like many people, have their TV in the living room. So, the nieces were not entirely pleased to be cut off from TV. In the same cabitnet with the TV is my parents’ liquor collection — a bottle of gin, vermouth and some whiskey. The first night we were there, my father conspicuously showed it to us and declared that he was counting on us to put a dent in it since no one else in the house could drink it.
So, there we were, alone with the TV and the liquor. We pulled out two martini glasses — and how can I explain to you how strange it is to me that my parents have martini glasses — and made a martini and a gibson. We settled down in front of the TV and pushed buttons on the remote until we found a lesbian couple staining wood shelves for the re-do of their basement game room in the Home and Garden Channel. Perfect!
Then my parents and niece L arrived. “Why do you have martini glasses?!?” she asked. (Because we’re drinking martinis, I explained.) “Why are you watching TV!?!” (Uh, we can watch TV, we just don’t want Butternut to watch TV.)
Erev Bar Mitzvah
Day three of our trip, Friday, erev Bar Mitzvah.�
The nieces and their mother arrive. I feel like we did something else, but maybe it was all about getting ready for the nieces and their mother to arrive. There was a trip to a shoe store and some other various shopping in here, including picking up cards for the bar mitzvah.
The nieces are 10-year-old, not identical twins. They are delightfully still children even as they become growingly aware of fashion and music. R. wants to run out to the playground in her heels and dress. L. is quite the drama queen.
There is a small bag of yarmulkes that my sister-in-law gave to my parents and declared are for “their” family. I see several female family members passing them to male family members, who wear them. Shortly before services start, my father hands one to me, saying, “Your mother thought you would want this.” Of course she’s right.
My mother reads a “meditation” over the shabbat candles, and my father leads a responsive reading in that voice he so wanted to use as a sports announcer. No aliyah for my parents the next day — my mother, I think, would be too nervous to do it alone and my father doesn’t rate because of his goyishe status.
M, the bar mitzvah boy, does a beautiful job of leading Friday night services. The synagogue is east-coast Conservative — Pumpkin says it’s like a Methodist church. Of course, all he really knows is our little Havurah, housed in a recycled warehouse. The place is huge, but there aren’t very many congregants there — maybe the snowbirds haven’t yet returned?
Later, in the car, Ruth tells me her father, my brother, is koo-koo. We talk about how sad we are that his is sick and cannot be with us.
