Post-Thanksgiving Post
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Dateline: The Ozarks
I took the photo atop this post early this morning from the back deck of my mother’s home, perched on a bluff overlooking Table Rock Lake.
Mom’s home is also at least a 45 minute drive from the nearest significant retail district.1 With that geographical circumstance and the tenuous, extraordinarily slow dial-up internet connection here abetting my characterologic reluctance to purchase goods or services within 30 yards of anyone else exhibiting similar behavior, we were well protected from the temptation to indulge in Black Friday’s traditional shopping ruckus.
Instead we spent today lolling about, reading, and, in place of tuning in to any of the three TV channels with signals capable of penetrating the airspace surrounding my mother’s abode,2 watching the DVD versions of the first seasons of MASH and Scrubs, which were the video selections da boyz shrewdly chose to bring along.
We also, however, donned our parkas to walk in the blustery cold to a boat launching area on the lake, pausing along the way to admire the cabin’s green metal roof installed this past year, which not only affords a less permeable barrier between the weather and the home’s interior than did its predecessor but also felicitously denies a perch to the local turkey vultures who had grown fond of using the ridge of the preceding roof as a roost. While turkey vultures appear less aggressively loathsome than some of their close avian brethren and are, as naturalists seem obligated to note, “one of God’s creatures,” a flock of vultures perching on the roof of the home of ones mother is not a vision that evokes comfort and serenity.
We also passed by and beheld the splendor of what is easily the local home most densely decorated with Christmas themed wire-frame, wooden, and blow-up figures, signposts for the North Pole, Candy Cane Lane, and other holiday destinations, huge Christmas cards, lights of all sorts and colors, wooden soldiers guarding the driveway, and, of course, signs supporting the Kansas City Chiefs. There is also a Duck Crossing warning sign that is, naturally, a permanent rather than seasonal installation.
Other Noteworthy Pastimes
While my mother explained to da boyz that her living room TV was inoperative since being struck by lightning and we discussed whether there was any sense in trying to repair it rather than purchasing a replacement, Mesomorph3 wandered behind the fried and frizzled television, pushed the reset button, and then hit the power button to simultaneously bring to an end the electromechanical problem and our now moot conversation about it.
Prodigal4 put a portion of today’s free time to set up the miniature DVD player that was one of our Christmas gifts to Mom last year and that had remained safe and sound in its unopened box since she removed it from its gift wrap 11 months ago. More significantly, he coerced his grandmother into learning how to use the thing, providing not only a tutorial but also a follow-up examination. We’re leaving Surf’s Up, a spectacularly well done animated flick, featuring penguins, the decade’s official #1 cartoon species.
A drive to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a town once known and visited for the medicinal powers of its waters and which has since become a magnet for ex-hippies, antique-buyers and –purveyors, motorcyclists, coffee shop sorts, admirers of Victorian and pseudo-Victorian homes, genuinely rustic locals, tourists of every ilk, and folks who seem to devote most of their energies to developing way too cute names for their shoppes5 brought the day’s activity agenda to an end.
After tonight’s traditional reprise of our Thanksgiving dinner in leftover mode, all that remains of this visit is packing, garnering a night’s rest, and making our way home.
While I always expect catastrophe to be lurking around every proverbial corner, this Thanksgiving trip to the matriarch of our tiny clan has been has gone so well that it has generated the suspicion that some vital flaw has been overlooked or, worse, that we’ve been doing something wrong all those other times.
It’s a nice kind of problem.
Footnotes
- There are, however, two huge tire wholesalers within three miles of us; had anyone on our Christmas gift list expressed an unfulfilled longing for a set of tires with an impressive warranty, we would have been golden. ~back~
- One of those channels appears to be the broadcast pathway of the all snow all the time station while the other two preferentially display electronically generated pointillist approximations of the programs we view at home ~back~
- My 18 year old son ~back~
- My 21 year old son ~back~
- For example, an establishment of the White Hen/Quick Trip/7-Eleven genre located next to the “Something Or Other Inn” is called the “Inn-Convenience Store. ~back~
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The Picaresque Prodigal’s Pictorial
The Prodigal1 is putting together his photobiography2 to fulfill a requirement of his vocational rehab program.3
Because I was pulling photos for this presentation during a good portion of the time I had planned to spend merrily blogging away and because the project and my son were on my mind, some of the pictures have transmogrified into today’s post.
My personal favorite of the shots occupies the top right corner. The caption (not shown on the collage) is “My father has always stood behind me and supported me”
The Prodigal and I crack ourselves - each other - up
Footnotes
- The Prodigal, for newcomers, is my 21 year old son who is recovering from head trauma caused by an auto accident earlier this year ~back~
- I suppose this compilation would be more correctly or at least more precisely termed a photoautobiography, which also has the advantage of being more fun to say, but that construction looks suspect. ~back~
- While I would not argue against the value of this task, my immediate and automatic response to similar assignments I have received to compose a narrative of my life has been and continues to be the opening line of Salinger’s Cather In The Rye, If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. ~back~
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The Contribution of Da Boyz To The Heck of a House Design
Corrections To Credits For Heck of a House Design
In Heck of a House: A Manor In The Jacobsenian Manner, I listed Builder-Buddy,1 Julie, and me as the primary designers of Heck of a House. I am remiss in not crediting the Mesomorph and the Prodigal for their efforts.
At the outset of planning the house, Julie and I explained that we would work out a design for our new home before starting construction, adding that if they had any ideas, they should let us know.
Although we thought they might express preferences about where their rooms would be located, how big they should be, etc., they chose instead to focus on the area of home security. Despite the imagination displayed in numerous detailed sketches, we were, unfortunately, unable to incorporate their contributions into the actual residence, primarily because Builder-Buddy was unable to find room in the budget to purchase the guard dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers. And then there was the problem of obtaining approval from the local authorities for the moat. Julie also had philosophical as well as aesthetic issues about placing the machine gun-equipped pillboxes and minefield in a defensive perimeter around the house - even if we posted warning signs.
Of course, if we are ever, as Da Boyz warned we might be, overrun by battalions of Nazi soldiers, we will, no doubt, regret having chosen to forgo those protections.
Footnotes
- ”Builder-Buddy,” I have belatedly discovered, is a fairly frequently used appellation; consequently, I should make clear that unless otherwise noted, the use of “Builder-Buddy” in this blog exclusively refers to my home builder and buddy, who is not, to my knowledge, associated with other “Builder-Buddy” named entities, including but not limited to corporate divisions, accounting software, construction tools, and icons ~back~
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My (Very) Long Weekend With The Prodigal and Link
A Father, A Son, and A Motherboard
The Prodigal and I are pondering the purchase of a game console. (Yes, the Wii, Xbox, Playstation 3, … kind of game console - What’s it to ya?)
It’s a nostalgia thing.
A Pox Upon Three Year Olds
When The Prodigal was three, Julie1 (then better known by her slave name, “Mom”) was in charge of the business side of my group’s practice. As part of her job, I had arranged for her and another staff member to attend a three day customer service workshop Disney offered in Orlando. Two days before she was scheduled to leave, an unmistakable, full-blown case of chicken pox erupted, covering approximately 100% of The Prodigal’s body.
In the 48 hours after a quick visit to the pediatrician confirmed our diagnosis, plans were reconsidered, rearranged, aborted, rescheduled, and shuffled numerous times, but the final decision was that we would stick with the original notion: she would go to the Disney conference, and I would stay home with the urchin.
Over the ensuing three days (Friday and the weekend), I was intrigued to discover that the varicella virus reacted synergistically with The Prodigal’s lifelong hypersensitivity to any environmental or psychological irritant to produce massive agitation, profound despair, and temper tantrums.
And it caused problems for the kid, too.
I fortuitously found, however, that the offspring could be seduced into a contented quiescence of focused attention by ensconcing him on my lap and playing The Legend of Zelda2 on my Christmas gift from friends, a machine officially designated the “Nintendo Entertainment System” but universally called “a Nintendo,” because in those days it was, pragmatically, the only gaming console known to the teeming masses.
Consequently, when not sleeping, eating, applying lotion to his lesions, or otherwise caring for the necessities of day to day life, The Prodigal and I spent the entire period of his mother’s absence piloting Link (the hero of the game) through his adventures, completing the requisite tasks late Sunday evening, after which we switched to our only other game, Mario Brothers, which was a distant second to Legend of Zelda in The Prodigal’s preferences but nonetheless acceptable.
By the time Julie returned, the chicken pox symptoms had subsided, and our child was again manageable without electronic assistance.
OK, some kids have memories of the first time Dad took them fishing or to a major league baseball game while The Prodigal and I have mutually fond memories of playing a primitive version of a video game. But, if Norman Rockwell had been hanging around our house that weekend, there is an excellent chance that the cover of Life magazine would have featured an incredibly cute three year old on his father’s lap participating in that all-American activity - video gaming.
Footnotes
- Julie Showalter was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife and prize-winning writer, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. There are many other posts about her and her writing in this blog. For information, see Julie Showalter FAQ ~back~
- For gaming aficionados, the game we played was the first version of Legend of Zelda ~back~
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The Official Americanization Of The Prodigal
In 1990, the four year old Prodigal, who had lived all but the first three months of his life in this country, was officially naturalized as a citizen of The United States of America.
His favorite memories of the event were waving an American flag at the naturalization ceremony and celebrating afterwards by chowing down with his mother and me on peppered French fries, the specialty of an eatery in the Loop
The Prodigal, The Mesomorph, and DrHGuy wish you all a glorious Independence Day.
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Prodigal Reachs 21
Prodigal Celebrates; Father Survives
Our hardy group of vacationers observed the Prodigal’s 21st birthday last night. Highlighting the celebration was a confirmed sighting and photographic evidence of the incredibly rare Prodigal full-smile.
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Julie’s Journal: September 1997
Julie Showalter: Unpublished Writings1
Julie’s Journal
I spent much of this morning reading one of the documents I discovered among Julie’s computer files long after her death. I know it is a journal but only because the name of the document is “Journal.”2 There are only a handful of entries, less than twenty in all. None of the items are more than four or five paragraphs and most could be easily contained in one screen of this blog’s column.
They appear to be written with an eye toward using them in her writing, and, indeed, I recognize some of the scenes from having read their finished versions in her short stories.
Some parts of the journal describe episodes that took place contemporaneously with or within a few days of Julie’s recording them, others occurred many years previously, and some appear to be ideas for stories rather than accounts of actual events.
The September 1997 Entry
One of the entries, concerning a part of our lives relevant to the time it was written (September 1997), is particularly poignant, presaging the difficulties our older son (AKA The Prodigal, AKA Sam) has experienced during the last three years, beginning fully four years after his mother died and seven years after she wrote these words.
As one might imagine, the Journal notes, including this one, are scribbles (if one can scribble with a keyboard) that contain misspellings, punctuation errors, complete sentences, and other violations of grammatical niceties. I’ve reprinted her words exactly as I found them, preserving the errors Julie would inevitably have corrected. I have added both at the top of this post and at the top of the page containing her text, a photo of the painting, Campesinos Atitlán by Mariano Gonzalez Chavajay, that hangs on our bedroom wall and is mentioned in this Journal entry. (Click on thumbnail for view of larger image.)
In any case, the few lines are easy to follow, and, especially for those who know our family, convey an unexpectedly deep-felt emotional impact.
This entry from Julie’s Journal can be found at Julie’s Journal Entry 9/97
Footnotes
- Julie was my much-beloved, fiercely smart, extraordinarily sexy wife, who died in 1999 from cancer diagnosed the week of our wedding nearly 20 years earlier. She was also a prize-winning writer. This blog includes many other posts about her and the unlikely but true story of our romance (See Julie FAQ) as well as several of her short stories and other pieces. Most of Julie’s fully edited and buffed literary efforts are already available under the heading, Julie’s Writings, in “Categories.” Unpublished Julie is a group of pieces I’ve found on her computer or in her office that range from workshop exercises to story fragments to projects set aside to finish at a later day to work that appears, at least to me, to be fully as polished and effective as her published stories. ~back~
- Julie also had a few handwritten journals with comparable content ~back~
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Sam Homeward Bound
We must dare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always as the depositories, not as the authors of our own joy
–Henri Frederic Amiel
Three weeks ago, Sam, my son, was unconscious and on a respirator in a hospital ICU, as he had been for 24 hours following an auto accident that took place about 9:30 PM February 4.1
Two days from now (Tuesday, February 27, 2007), Sam is scheduled to be discharged home.
He has made remarkable gains since his accident and seems to gain strength literally every day. That is not to say he won’t require a prolonged post-discharge period of convalescence and outpatient therapy.
Nonetheless, there is reason for joyfulness, and I invite you all to share this celebration. (A true cynic – like me, for example – knows that there are so few genuine reasons for rejoicing that we cannot afford the luxury of wasting one.)
Sam, Max, & I appreciate the thoughts, prayers, cards, emails, stuffed animals, and other symbols of caring and offer our thanks to each of you.
Footnotes
- See post regarding the accident and hospital admission: ~Things Change~ ~back~