the subject was a rose (a conversation among friends of this blog’s author)

“oh, there he goes again,” declares one, “another fricking photograph of some rose he can’t even identify properly–stuck right into our noses, like he wants to rub our faces in it.”

“he’s just so confrontational.”  sighs another.

“what’s to be done?” laments a third.

“well, it’s obvious we must do something.  perhaps an intervention?” suggests his _________, without crossing the _______/patient confidentiality line.

“is there a cure?  i didn’t realize that there was any help for this, this disease,” whispers his _________ eerily from the great beyond.  (yes, they’re psychic too.)

“you know, we could blame you, after all you were the one that set him on this path of self-___________,” retorted the _________.

“you have a lot of room to talk, mister, why i’ve half a mind to give you a good spanking.  except why should i give you the pleasure?” the ghost of his _______ rejoins.

“people, people, please.  let’s not turn this into a blame game,” says his most ardent admirer, “we’re here to solve the problem of his constant posting of photos of flowers–it’s really just too too much to bear; to watch him suffer so, the constant photo-taking at the slightest sight of a bloom, the time spent adjusting and manipulating the photograph afterwards, his posting of the images hither and yon; it’s all quite out of hand.”

“short of taking his camera and his phone from him what are we to do?  aren’t you afraid that he might crack if he were to quit cold turkey?  that we might not ever have our dear, dear friend robert, as we know and love him now, back again?” cried an online acquaintance who had, up ’til now, remained quiet, standing at the back of the crowd.  [author's note: the use of the word 'crowd', of course, is wish-fulfillment at its most pathetic.  mea culpa.]

“there may be nothing we can do, really,” said a more reasoned voice, “shouldn’t we just let him do as he pleases?  what harm is there in his sharing the beauty he sees around him, after all?  i think you’re all quite silly. let’s take a watch-and-wait attitude and enjoy what he gives us without questioning his motives or his sanity.”

everyone concurred, sipped their coffees, picked up their bags, and went on about their lives.

saturday (a flower a day, parenthetically)

the week began with the yellow rose and the week ends with the yellow rose, but from a slightly different angle; parentheses to this week of flowers.

it can’t be easy accepting that death has come for you.  some may respond with a sigh, others with a shout of rage, many may just expire (that final use-by date having passed.)  when the doctors shrug and say, “there’s nothing more we can do, we’ll have to release her to home care, it’s time for her to die,” (“,but she won’t” is the unspoken part of their bedside homily), you bundle her up and bring her home — without much expectation that she will agree to do as she should and let go.  (i don’t mean to sound cruel, but i hope when it’s time for me to die, that i’ll accept it with some equanimity and not struggle against the inevitable.)

this is where we find a friend of ours, at the threshold of dying, refusing to step over and disappear behind that door.   it’s not that we wish she’d die, or even want her to, but the quality of her life in these last couple of years (she’s over 90) has deteriorated and her last hospital stay (a month!) was mostly comatose, a feeding tube, ivs, and monitors all a-beep.

complicating her passing, at least from our point of view, is her avaricious son, and whether or not the rest of this statement is fair, has expressed his disdain for her life and his desire for what she’s leaving him is more important than the time she has left.

if we were to look back at their relationship, as little as we know, it has been ever so.  he rarely acknowledged any love for her, showing up with his hand out, on which she would lay a golden check, and without a thank-you, he’d be out the door.  then she’d turn on us (we worked together) and the next few days would be filled with her anger and disappointment filtered through manipulation and despair at this failure.

we were too circumspect (and respectful of other people’s lives) to ask what had happened that she would have a son who loved her so little.   (at this time, there was another son, her obvious favorite, the youngest, the one she lavished her affection on, and in his way returned–although the transfer of money was also an integral part of their relationship.  her great loss was his death in a motorcycle accident, leaving her with the ungrateful and cruel older son as her legacy.)

our working relationship deteriorated over time until she moved away and we stopped talking, for a decade or more, until in some odd twist of fate (aren’t they all odd?) we came back together through a mutual friend.  and since then (with an exception, which i’ll get to) we have had a most wonderful relationship with her.  she, as she’s always been, is sharp-witted, sharp-tongued (in a funny, pointed way), highly intelligent, well-read, au courant, artistic and a delight to be around.  she turned out to be more generous than she had been and her circle of friends adored her.

however she has been particularly cruel to her closest friend, the one who has helped her the most in her declining years, the one who loves her the most of all her friends, the one the rest of us defer to in the matters of her health and well-being.  if this object of her derision and abuse were any less loving a friend, there would be no doubt that she would have died much sooner, for her son (who lives in another city) does not care at all what happens to her.

it comes as no surprise that she is angry.  it hurts us that she is being so cruel to her one dear friend.  what, though, can be done?  all that we can do is shower her with love and stand by her, and hope that she’ll accept our love with grace and at last find the strength and the peace to let go of this life.

terror

"reflection of sugatami" after utamaro (detail) by michael knigin, 1979

part one

on a fine spring day in may of 1973, i, along with 2 other classmates, kidnapped the dean of students of moorhead state university in moorhead, minnesota.  along with his duties as the dean, he also taught in the humanities department and this spring quarter he was our professor, leading a class titled, “revolution in latin america.”  the dean, known around the campus for his eccentricities of dress, habit and manner (a bit of the rapier wit of charles nelson reilly and paul lynde, there may have been a comb-over and a bit of dishevelment in his dress, but the details, including his name, are lost to time.)

he was a tough teacher, constantly pushing us to think for ourselves, cajoling and yelling, prodding and pulling, engaging even the most cynical of radicals taking this particular class of the importance of learning.  the class was an odd lot of vietnam veterans, student provocateurs and innocent farm children from the northern plains states; it was pass/fail and for the final, as he laid it out for us, we were to plot a revolution for a small latin american country.

i’m not sure when we decided to kidnap him, but once we thought of it, the more it seemed the most striking (and reasonable) way of showing him how much he had taught us.  we plotted and planned, we made maps and studied the presiding government’s troop strength and loyalty.  we developed contingencies based on guerilla warfare tactics — and we wrote a manifesto.  we decided to hold the final class off campus in one of the vietnam vet’s rented home–and told the dean of our plan, explaining that we could all have a beer with him as we revealed our revolution.  his response, “excellent!”  we set a date and a time; it was agreed among us that i would go into administration building and bring the dean down to our waiting car (he also knew me from an interview i did with him for campus television the  previous quarter).

the day arrived; he made me wait while he finished some paperwork and when he was done, we walked down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine, all the while chatting comfortably with each other.  we got to the car, and one of the other men involved with this abduction got out of the front seat and motioned for the dean to climb in.  i quickly got into the back seat, the classmate pushed the dean into the center of the seat, threw himself hard against him, grabbing his hands as i threw a pillowcase over his head and tied it off with a rope which we then bound his hands with, forcing him to bend down so that he could not be seen from the street.

a string of profanity flowed from his mouth non-stop, warning us that we would pay for this, expulsion, and worse.  once the authorities knew what had happened we would be arrested, convicted and sent to jail.  he shook and fought back, but we held him down and drove in circles around and around, so that he had no sense of which way we were headed.   i do not know if he was afraid for his life or not, but we eventually had to gag him so he’d shut up.

we pulled into the driveway of our destination, the dean still bound, blind-folded and gagged.  he was led into the living room and we carefully released him from his confinement, revealing the rest of the gathered ‘guerillas’ and welcomed him to our revolution.  much beer was consumed (once he’d stopped shaking); he was thoroughly impressed with our plan to overthrow the government and relented that the kidnapping was a stroke of genius.  we passed.  terror paid off handsomely.

part two: the year before

june 9, 1972.  it had been raining heavily all day long and into the evening, the rapid city children’s theater had met at _____’s home on 11th st. and afterwards, five of us climbed into ________’s jeep, she’d agreed to take me home and the others came along for the ride.  we headed over to omaha street to cross rapid creek, but were turned back by a policeman at the corner of ____ and omaha and directed back upstream.  water, by now, was running up mid-tire, maybe a foot and a half deep, but we were in a big old jeep and really didn’t think anything of it.   a couple of blocks later, a wall of water washed over the jeep (we eventually found out that it was the wave of water that had been released when the dam broke up town from where we were at); the three of us in the back seat got out and waded over to a large elm that stood in front of the grain elevator’s offices at 6th and omaha.  we grabbed onto the tree, and watched slack-jawed as the jeep floated around the grain silo with our friends in it and then we saw another car floating down the street, with its occupants screaming out the windows to help them, which we were powerless to do, their car was submerged by another wave and we never saw it come back up again.   it wasn’t until the next day that we found out that the jeep had hit a freight train car on the other side of the silo, our friends climbed out of the jeep to safety then, spending the rest of the night on top of the freight car.  they watched as the jeep floated away, it was found three days later about two miles from there, filled with mud, a would-be coffin with wheels.

each of these massive waves (they shouldn’t be called waves, they were walls of water) were followed by a lowering of the depth of the water and we decided to make our way over to the office building and break in, where we hoped we’d be safe.   we held tightly onto each other as we waded through the waist deep water (that’s waist deep on me, the tallest of the three of us, the water was chest deep for the others) over to the brick building, its windows about five feet above my outstretched hand.  the first friend climbed up on my shoulders and with his arm wrapped in his shirt he broke the window, the broken shards raining down on me, opened it and climbed through.  the second friend climbed up on my shoulders and in.  i hesitated for just the briefest moment, considering how i might actually climb a brick wall when another car floated past, the faces of its occupants in a silent rictus of abject terror.   it was motivation enough and i climbed the wall and my friends pulled me through the window.  we spent the night shivering and fearful that our friends may have died.   it has taken many years for me to work past my fear of deep water.

coda

like many of us on that day 10 years ago today, a phone call in the early morning from a friend shouting, “turn on the tv now!” was how we first learned of the attacks in new york, washington and pennsylanvia.   and so, for the first half-hour we stayed on the line with each other, consoling, angry, tearful, frightened.   i believe everyone who was not there, could not believe that it was happening, it was just too cinematic, too novel, too much of a fiction to be true.   we hung up reluctantly as i dialed my new york friends, “are you okay?”, or leaving messages, “please call me and tell me you’re okay,” and it was not until later in the day when i knew that everyone i loved was okay, did we begin to realize how terror works.

it’s the orchid, you *^&%@#!

it seemed so simple.  a perfect idea with the perfect image to illustrate the point. what could go wrong, you might ask yourself.   and i’m not talking about myself in the third person, i’m actually talking about you.   yes, you.  sitting there in the comfort of your ________ or at the local __________ where the wireless is free and the ________ are beautiful/handsome or both.  you may even be at your local public ______, but that seems a stretch, perhaps too last century and possibly a little creepy anymore, besides who do you know that actually takes advantage of the knowledge available at the ________.  It’s been at least 20 years for me since i was inside one and then i rarely had any conversation with the _________ because i knew what i was after and how to use the dewey decimal system (god, do you remember?)  although i can conjure up the smell of old _____ and waxed linoleum and the quiet scratch of the ladder as it moved along its support system–the children’s area carpeted and all of the furniture scaled down to pint-size–which you wanted to go sit in as an adult, because, well just because, but the actual reason is that for one minute it would be comforting to be a child again and not have anxieties beating on the door of your adulthood (or do they pound?  mine come in a variety pack–like those individual servings of cereal that your mother used to buy–the cornflakes always the last to go because they didn’t have the sugar punch the others did. mea culpa the mixed metaphor btw.)

but instead, here you are as i said, in the comfort of your underwear (admit it) and if not that then, the comfort of somewhere else where all of the world’s knowledge (or so you’ve been told) is at your fingertips, which reminds me, when was the last time you actually got your hands dirty with dirt?  and had to use that odd little rasp that swings out from your nail clipper to clean underneath the nails and got a good whiff of loam up your nose or pollen from a faded rose as the petals, at your touch, dropped away from the stamen, one, two, three.  (that is still a question.)  that is just one example, there are so many others:  touch, listen, see, feel, smell (food, music, sex, art, skin, theater, words you have written, the touch of your lover’s hand in yours).

use it or lose it.   after all, it is the scariest of all admonitions, is it not? (that question is for both you and i.)  and then there is the keyboard that is the obstacle (albeit a necessary one).  do i cop out here and say, “what i’m saying is get out, experience life”, which seems too easy , too trite and not truly addressing what the problem, as i see it, is.  (was there a problem?  oh yes, it was where were the words going to come from?) and it’s not like i haven’t addressed this subject before and yet they do, don’t they?   show up eventually.  sometimes unintentionally, sometimes with purpose, the brother that never quite fit into the groove of the family, the wanderer who shows up on your doorstep, “hi, i was passing through and thought i’d drop by and say hello and see the kids,” and you open your arms and take him in.

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the alley behind 1343 wolfram street, east of southport & north of diversey, chicago, 1980, watercolor, crayon & ink on paper, 11″ x 17″ by robert patrick, s.a.i.c.,recently retrieved from the garage wall where it has been hanging in a ratty old frame for at least 15 years

this apartment’s personality was such that it often made up for what i lacked, although of all the places i lived in chicago over 16 1/2 years, i like to think we were equally matched and that it was as much a personification of me as I was of it.

this was an apartment that was passed from one friend to another as the current tenant’s life took a turn and required their leaving it behind; all that was required was a “i’m moving,” and the word was out that it was available.  it is how i came to live there after my fall (from grace, and as i was reconstructing my life…perhaps even ‘finding myself’ to use the psycho-patois of the day), and was living with t. (who had rescued me from my past).  it was passed lovingly, perhaps a little frayed around the edges (misty with the previous tenants’ memories still lingering at the edges of the rooms), from the friend of a friend into my waiting arms; a bouquet, a child, a gift.

it was an unassuming shingle-sided two-story dark chocolate brown wood frame building with a steep pitched roof on a double lot (in the summer, the yard was a grassy respite complete with roses and pansies and petunias (he said without irony).  the apartment was tucked into the attic with gables for the dining room and kitchen, narrow bedroom and tiny bathroom (painted with gray & pink stars, tiles to match), the whole space couldn’t have been more than 350 square feet.  the ceiling in the ‘living room’ was coved like an airstream trailer and from its window you could see the john hancock center.  it occupied a little less than half the attic, with a set of back stairs (not unlike “upstairs, downstairs”) that led down to the laundry room on the ground floor and the caretaker’s apartment.

the author with roses and petunias outside 1343

it fit me perfectly.  up to where the ceiling began its curve the walls were tiled in blond maple wood squares with hidden doors that slid up into the wall revealing the sofa.  there were print drawers hidden behind another set of doors.  the dining room and kitchen were tiled in hammered copper tiles — with a dining room table on a pipe that allowed you to pull it out from the wall, exposing a banquette upholstered in turquoise naugahyde (exquisite against the burnished copper) for additional guests.  at the end of the table was a large multi-paned metal mullioned crank-out window that looked out onto the yard and the alley behind the building, toward downtown.

fine dining chez moi (more likely, fine drinking)

much of my life during the 5 years i lived there (when m. entered my life, we lived in it for a bit until a larger apartment became available downstairs, but we held onto the attic apartment until we finally moved into a home we had bought elsewhere in the city) was spent sitting at the table with its large window lighting my day time reading, or the view inspiring my painting (often though i would draw and paint on the cork floor tiles–which afforded me more room) or smoking a cigarette and just dreaming (day- or night-).

diligent dilettante maintaining his correspondence

part of the fun of living there was seeing the expression of delight on someone’s face when they first saw the space after clamboring up the three flights of stairs a hand on the wrought iron railing, the echo of footfall your constant companion (and if we weren’t already fumbling with each other’s clothes, mouths locked together, boots being pulled off, etc., i was, after all, only in my 20s.)  what i do remember is how it embraced my friends, everyone comfortable in a chair or at the table or staring out the window, no matter where they may have lit after arriving, it appeared to me that they had always just been there, perhaps in another life, or perhaps this apartment just held people differently, lovingly.  i believe it was a healing space.

a swede bearing gifts

the apartment was furnished in what would now be considered mid-century but then was just a decade or so from new.  the bedroom had an extra long single bed that you could slide under the eve, with bolsters that made it a sofa.  there were built in bookshelves which suited me just fine (besides the ones in the living room) and with a long narrow east window high above the bed that let just the right amount of light in the morning and was perfectly dark at night.  i spent a lot of time in there (do not snigger and besides) reading — this year the russians, gogol, turgenev, dostoyevsky, tolstoy; that year devoted to graves, lawrence, woolf, and durrell (i am passionate about lawrence durrell’s alexandria quartet) and the year after that devoted to mann, james (henry), elliot and hardy, i love you tess.

it was an extraordinary feast.   one made richer by the lack of television watching, this then my lost decade of tv (except for i, claudius on pbs) for i only had a 10″ b & w set that got spotty reception and it seemed such a chore to watch tv when there was so much to do otherwise (read, draw, smoke, go out to bars, work, stare into space without guilt).  a friend took pity on me after i quit my job at the restaurant and treated me to a season of opera-going at the lyric opera of chicago and along with that there was the tending of my friendships (a garden of my own).

did i tell you that i only paid $40.00 a week in rent?  you were sitting down, weren’t you?  of course, that rent was a reflection of the times, but as i found out, it went directly into the pocket of the caretaker, violet linné, and her boy toy (not that that particular handle had been in circulation then, but it is the appropriate term to apply to him), wally, as part of their compensation for maintaining the building and yard/garden.  violet was a wraith of a woman, wispy gray hair a halo around her pale thin face (blue veins just below the surface of her temples; she often tried to pull her hair into the semblance of a bun at the back of her neck with a scarf à la little edie tied loosely around her delicate brain pan, it was the head of a porcelain doll.  she was a sparrow, a little bird) a fluttering, hopping, pecking woman who adored ‘young men’ (her euphemism for gay men) whom she preferred to rent to over young women whom she found, “disturbingly inconsistent, always getting pregnant, so unstable, running off to get married,” — who knew what her experience had been to cause such a statement, but it was delivered often enough to have become the truth to her.

wally, on the other hand, rarely spoke more than a declarative sentence, a big shambling man, whom i remember in coveralls more often than not, although that particular memory may be completely false, the result of finding him lurking in the dark shadows of the laundry area, wiping his hands on a greasy rag–it may have been that he had a workshop back there and found it a quiet space to be in, but nonetheless it always startled me to hear him behind me as i stuffed sheets into the washing machine or pulled towels out of the dryer, with a “hey wally, how’s it going?” issuing from my lips and a grunt his response (which did nothing to dispel his creep factor.)

author with muse 1

how did all of this start?  oh yes, the painting of the alley that ran behind the building:  the stairs up to my apartment (and the two below it), ran up the back of the building in what appeared to be an addition to the structure, a window on each landing and mine the final stop, it with a balcony looking down the entire flight, the place i stored my bike and after buzzing someone in i would wait for them there, listening to their breathing as it deepened the closer they came to the top of the stairs, their eyes lifted up in anticipation of my smile of welcome (usually).

but the alley.  it was my preferred entrance to the block as i walked west on diversey and would slip up lincoln avenue and left down into the alley there.  it’s not surprising to anyone who is a fan of alleys that there is much more information about the building’s inhabitants happening there than on the street where they’ve put their best face forward (or not.)  of course, my most vivid memories of walking down that alley take place in winter (when is it not winter in chicago?) there would be tire tracks to follow through the deeper snow, but for reasons beyond my comprehension at the time — or even consideration — i found it the most quiet, serene part of my day, whether coming home from work, play or going out in the morning or late at night, for i was a habitué of late nights (as were many gay men then, somehow it was safer — there were more of us around at night, trolling for, um, companionship, camaraderie, love.)

author with his constant muse

i am not an artist.  i don’t pretend to be one.  but the painting of the alley behind 1343 wolfram (since demolished) is as i remember it.  there would be dark corners and bright windows, green lawns and the smell of dinner and the sound of a lawn sprinkler and then there would be that heavy blanket of snow and all the colors would leach out, leaving gray, brown, white, taupe (the other painting in my head.)  this one though is filled with nighttime and waning light, the angle of a porch light on the wooden stairs to the garage, and the smell of garbage cans, metallic and cold to the touch.  and there i am, neither coming or going, but here.

to your health!

the movement of air experienced by trees

 

 

time stands still (storm clouds & other weather patterns)

the contents of a purple spiral notebook started this:

not all revolutions are organized, some are more organic, & as they develop momentum they attract more & more participants (often without even knowing they are part of this revolution.)  such is my case.  oh, i knew something had changed (& changed dramatically,) but if you had asked me at the time, say shortly after september 1973, how i felt about being a part of this major shift in the social fabric of our country, i would have had to say, “what shift?”

i only knew what had happened to me.  none of my friends were political, although we knew we wielded a certain power (& still do) & maybe we were cognizant of a force, an energy that propelled our lives as a group; we were more vocal, less afraid, ready to stand & fight if needed (we did, respect followed.)  we were suddenly everywhere.

one of the reasons, i believe, that the movie “the wizard of oz” is a favorite of so many of my fellows (& fellowettes, if i may) is that dramatic shift in tone from the black & white kansas scenes & *bam!* like that, the technicolor of oz.  that well describes what was happening in cities around the country after the new york summer of 1969 & the stonewall uprising.    lives lived in black & white were suddenly awash in color.  you may not be able to grasp the difference or even care, but i’ll tell you this, it was grand.  it was liberating, it was freedom,  it was ownership, it was time.

this change may not have seeped into the hinterland & consequently there was a great migration (a watershed, a deforestation, a culling); new arrivals everyday, trains, buses, beat-up old cars (& new ones too);  the ellis island were bars & restaurants & maybe a friend who had made the move the year before.

it seemed at once completely open & yet still hidden (the sex part.)  it was the attraction of one to another that dragged behind the social movement; there was still so much condemnation of the physical act hanging around inside our minds that moving our love to the front still seemed too difficult a task.

we could not reconcile our desire with our upbringing.  (substitute the plural for the singular.) at first i fell in love (a lot,) but not everyone fell in love with me, which i could not understand in light of the revolutionary zeal swirling around us.  wasn’t it supposed to be different?  why would we want what they had?  but there were these barriers, social, political, cultural that many of us still carted around & threw down around us when the need arose (and oftentimes when it did not.)

although i had a rich circle of friends (not money-rich, well some, but mostly we were all working, scraping by, there were still road blocks to hiring in fields outside of what was expected: waiter, hairdresser, florist, designer, clothing salesman,) i often found myself alone.  i walked along the lake shore, i rode my bike along the lake shore, i took the bus along the lake shore, i sat in my studio apartment on the 11th floor & watched the sun set in the west.

& i wrote about it.   i wrote so i wouldn’t forget, regardless of its literary merit (i’m only publishing it now for illustration,) & granted i did not write about it enough.  the lingering fear of loss (my first journal stolen in an armed robbery months before) a brick wall.

friends & lovers (but never classified as lovers, but what else to call them?  we made love once, twice, weekly, on occasion, whenever we were lonely or would find ourselves at last call & why not?  it beat being alone,) came & went.

i’ve been thinking about the loving part a lot this week, due in part to the discovery of this old purple spiral notebook (originally marked for french 361, explication de texte, my sophomore year at moorhead, oof, stendahl’s “le rouge et le noir” & camus & balzac & “fleurs du mal” a spectrum of french literature, en francais,) but instead of finding graded papers inside, i discovered bits & pieces of time.   standing still.  the weather captured in a single line, my feelings, & my life in my early twenties, a window display for passersby to peer at & wonder if that outfit would look good on them.

but i cannot find the words to talk about that loving or perhaps i do not want to find the words or even this could be the wrong place to discuss the loving.  so many times it was desperate, clinging, hopeful (this one!), so many times it was wrong, it was forced, it was forgotten.  all of our expectations were based on what we had seen growing up, we had no role model for love (or for sex, i make the distinction, because as men, there is a distinction, please don’t try to deny it.)

i envied those in committed relationships, but felt stifled when i thought i might be in one (this before i did finally, completely fall in love,) i desired the continuity & yet fought against it as if it were the reason we rioted for our freedom (which may yet be true.)

perhaps you can understand this apparent storm cloud of conflict that still rages within me & perhaps you can’t.   it does not matter to me, but what does matter is that time did stop this week.  i looked at these jottings & notes & lovers that came & went (some i remember, some even still alive & friends, & others i have no memory of,) & while storm clouds roiled & tumbled (ink scratches & squiggles like the lines above) in real life, i was able to look to my past & see my future.

wolcott st. (ghost of christmas past)

christmas 1988 at 6817 n. wolcott avenue, chicago, illinois.  although we had started modestly enough (just one guest on christmas eve that first christmas six years before this one), our ‘tradition’ of hosting a christmas eve party quickly went viral (used in a 21st century way & not in the musty old 1980′s way,) and among our group of friends and associates became the much anticipated event of the season (or so they told us, & one still does, when she calls around this time, she always asks what time she should arrive & could she bring something.)

sometime shortly after thanksgiving, m. would bake the fruitcake & start the process of embalming it with cognac, a cheesecloth laid over it like a shroud (if you looked closely you could see a map of turin,) & then the cleaning would begin; wood floors to be waxed & polished, dusting, windexing (so much glass!  so many tchotkes!), the crystal washed & checked for chips (those damn donghia wine goblets), touch-up paint, wash & iron the curtains, table linens & associated presentation cloths, serving pieces to be silver polished, the immense fitz & floyd vegetables-in-the-shape-of-a-turkey soup tureen to be taken down from its roost on top of the china cabinet & cleaned (ready for m.’s delicious nouvelle cuisine version of polish borscht–yes, yes, i know, so many paradoxes in ‘nouvelle cuisine’ as a qualifier for ‘borscht’ but the fact remains, that is exactly what it is, a nouvelle borscht.)

then the menu must be planned; we had a framework on which we hung new foodstuffs over the years.  the evening would start with champagne & hors d’oeuvres, just little somethings to keep everyone somewhat sober before dinner, because we served crates of wine.  in fact, the whole wine selection that came after the menu was set was a job unto itself–we would drive over to sam’s/joe’s/mordechai’s (a name i could never remember even then, like those secret handshakes between straight men that have eluded me all these years,) at southport & armitage or somewhere equally out of area, in a run-down brick building with sloping foot-worn wooden floors & a basement ‘cave’ with low ceilings & stacked cases of wine leaning in at you in any & every direction you turned (you would suffer vertigo and claustrophobia simultaneously) & somehow, m. would — occasionally with my input — pull together a wine menu that perfectly complemented this:  the nouvelle borscht with mushroom uszka, the fish course served as a terrine in white, green & red strata with bibb lettuce reduction (more wine!), a meat course (this year it was rack of lamb with herb/garlic mustard rub, but we rarely repeated ourselves), the meat served with a medley of vegetables & new potatoes, followed by a salad & a cheese plat (did i mention that appropriate wines accompanied each course?)  by this time, miraculously, everyone was still sitting upright.

because after all of that, then the desserts began rolling out, unveiled, curtains up!  christmas cookies (5 or 6 or 10 different kinds, maybe not that many kinds, but dozens nonetheless), fudge & candies, followed by a pièce de résistance, a cake, baked from scratch & decorated & perched provocatively on its cake stand, worshiped like the virgin birth (hosanna!),  us the animals in the stable,  & m., the north star showing the magi the way (true.)

& then we would push back our chairs & groan & grin foolishly at each other in abject love & friendship & there would be hugs & kisses (& cigarettes, because when you’re drinking & eating that much, you should break it up with smokes.)  & someone would remember the dog with a “where’s nicky?” but by then, he’d given up on begging & gone to sleep curled up by the christmas tree in the living room, patiently waiting for his presents (he had his own stocking.)

& through the whole evening there were the carols of conversation (this dinner in 1988, there were a dozen of us at the groaning board) & the giggles of delight at a well-placed observation or sly joke or jab of outrage at a previous comment or a whispered “i love you” as many of us by then were couples & you’d catch a wistful look & a hand clasped in conspiratorial ardor.

the coffee service  & dessert plates (bavarian bone china by haviland, my mother’s last gift to me before she died; she’d bought it in germany & for all those years had kept it hidden until, until one of the last times i went down to visit her before her death, there it was sitting out & she said, “i was going to give this to you when you got married, but i can’t wait any longer, i want you to have it now.”)  & so, for many years, just the act of using it made me cry, which is why it seldom got use, with its translucence & delicate hand-painted roses & gilt edges  (i am better about it now, or i mean that i cry less often now when it is used.)

& with our coffees & armagnacs & after dinner spirits (the remains of wine, champagne) we would adjourn to the living room where the shimmering tree would witness our groans of relief & at the sight of so much friendship & camaraderie we would share our love for each other with gifts & laughter & the splendor of giving & receiving.

willsie st. (ghost of christmas past)

christmas 1970 at 918 willsie avenue, rapid city, south dakota.  (after looking at the google street map, the neighborhood has devolved since my last visit there in 1984, sad.)

this year we ‘flocked’ the tree ourselves, copying what the martha stewart of our family (my aunt) had done the year before.  that big white box with the red cross bow is an antique lamp that i had bought for my mother (it was silver plate, a kerosene lamp repurposed for the edison century with a lovely, milky glass shade, a few years later, my mother had a local artist paint blue flowers all over the shade & somewhere in the depths of my garage, today, it rests in a box, carefully wrapped & cushioned, most likely never to be used again–although i did try to scrub the flowers off once, but they seemed to have been applied with car paint, tant pis & yes, i know that adding ‘tant pis’ was a gratuitous use of the french language, but if i don’t use it, it will languish like the lamp, wrapped in old paris match magazines, stored in a musty corner of my brain.)

secret: sometimes when i would get home from high school in the afternoon & i would have the house to myself for a couple of hours before my mother got home from the air force base where she did something relatively important (high security clearance, no less,) i would draw the drapes in the living room & the dining room (a great room before there were great rooms, but small, because you know, we lived on the other side of the tracks and the creek, the house was no bigger than a cracker box with a roof on it.)  i would fill the house with music, my music, my generation’s music (i had a fondness for female singer/songwriters/poets: joni, joan, janis, laura) & i would take off my shoes & move furniture out of the way & would dance.  dance by myself & tip & swirl & jeté & dream of being partnered by nureyev or any other magical, masculine creature (pan perhaps), stopping between tracks to catch my breath, look at myself in the mirror & dream of a life where what i hardly understood would/could be true.

as soon as i left home to go to university & then, later, i set aside christmas, but now, now in 1970 i was committed to christmas as were my friends, we went to the same evangelical church, we sang in the choir, we did deeds (good ones, i think) & after church, we would go to a & w on 8th st. (hwy. 16 to mt. rushmore) in my car & laugh & giggle & my best friend, a., would make out with s. or k. or any other young girl who would fall under his sway (he wasn’t particularly good-looking, but he was magnetic, with a gravelly singing voice & musical talent pouring off of him that the girls, our classmates, found irresistible.  he was not a crush of mine & i would look at him in the rear-view mirror with his arm around someone & he always seemed so happy then.  that particular happiness eluded me, but i never begrudged him his.)