What Possessed Me

Huevos

Friends, it's been a while. Though I haven't been here much, I've carried you with me, and feel the warmth of your goodness and kindness, always. I owe you an update, but somehow I let things build up until they seem too formidable to tackle all at once, so today I'll just start with what's on my mind this morning. And that would be...eggs.

 

Huevos, Part I

A few days after my dad died, a friend brought us a dozen eggs laid by her chickens. Amid all the elaborate floral arrangements, gift baskets and gigantic deliveries of cold cuts we received through the generosity of friends and family, this offering stood apart in its purity, simplicity and symbolism. Eggs – the promise of life eternal. 

 

Huevos, Part II

Then, Victoria and Albert, the mourning doves, made their nest outside my parents' bedroom window. We were so excited that they had chosen us, so touched by how content they seemed sitting on top of their eggs through snow storms and gale force winds. It seemed like my dad had orchestrated the whole thing to console and distract us during those dark days. It seemed like the universe had sent us the avian equivalent of my parents - devoted, steadfast, loving.

But then Victoria and Albert started to look confused and nervous. I told a friend about it at a party.

She thought for a moment, and said, haltingly, "I don't think eggs are viable. In a few days, the doves will probably realize they're not going to hatch and take off."

"Oh, God - are you serious? What am I going to tell my mom? She'll be so crushed."

"Shit, I don't know. Get her a puppy?"

I didn't have to tell my mom. The next day, Victoria and Albert abandoned the nest with one unhatched egg and one, teeny-tiny furry thing that didn't make it. 

My mom peered into the empty nest. "So much for symbolism," she sighed. When you're down and out, it's hard not to look for signs everywhere.

Nature, I shake my fist at you. Why are you being such a bitch to my moms?

 

Huevos, Part III

Some days are harder than others. Today is a not-very-good day, for example. If my dad were alive, we'd celebrate him with birthday candles and chocolate cake that he'd inevitably get all over his moustache. My mom would buy him a pretty shirt and a bowtie and his grandchildren would climb all over their Poppi. We have no one to spoil today. It's hitting my mom the hardest.

"I need something to nurture." By "something" she means something small. Something helpless. Something cute. 

"What about a puppy?" I say.

"I'd rather have a baby." 

I know where this is headed. I was born a year almost to the day that my mom's beautiful sister died of cancer. Babies are consolation for the bereaved. The hints are becoming less and less hinty.

"But wouldn't a puppy be great?"

I try not to rise to the bait. I stall. Stalling is what I do best. See also: avoidance. Meanwhile, I have dreams that my eggs aren't viable. I wake up feeling bereft.

 

Huevos, Part IV

Strangely, all I want to eat for breakfast - or anytime, really - is a fried egg on a corn tortilla, smothered with hot sauce. Blowing up my sinuses with cayenne seems to be my preferred method of distraction, along with Game of Thrones. Sometimes I consume them together and speak Dothraki to my husband. In fact, these three things - egg tacos, Game of Thrones, and my husband distracted me from the dread I felt all last week.

 

Huevos, Part V

Part of the dread had to do with the prospect of asking my workaholic boss for a bizillion vacation days in a row to take a big trip this summer. I ran the idea by my friend at work. 

"It's takes a huge pair of huevos to ask for that."

"Shit. I don't have any huevos. I'm working with a serious huevos deficit."

"You better grow some if you want to take that vacation."

I still haven't asked. I don't have the huevos. I need the huevos. I must have the huevos, otherwise I'll let myself down.

 

Huevos, Part VI

The other part of the dread was getting through our first holiday without my dad. Greek Easter is a big deal in my family, and even though he was thoroughly Protestant, my dad was always a big part of the proceedings. I always looked forward to taking Good Friday off from work to prepare for the feast, meeting him at Ninth Avenue International Foods to pick up Greek goodies, and then swinging by Poseidon Greek Bakery to buy tsoureki, a special Easter bread. This weekend, my mom and I quietly went about our preparations, pausing momentarily to sob over some detail that reminded us of his absence.

 

Mom: "I CAN'T FIND DADDY'S PLACECARD! WAHHHHHHHHHH!" 

P: "I FINALLY DYED THE EGGS PERFECTLY AND DAD'S NOT HERE TO SEE IT! WAHHHHHHHHH!"

Mom: WHO'S GOING TO SIT IN DADDY'S CHAIR? WAHHHHHHHHH!

P: WHERE SHOULD WE PUT DAD'S PHOTO? WAHHHHHHHHH!

What can I say? Stoicism is not in our genetic makeup.  But the eggs were unprecedented perfection – a deep, even crimson, polished up with olive oil - and a different thing altogether from the patchy, leprotic eggs of years past.

The eggs were my dad's domain. He would have been so pleased that after countless years of trial and error, we finally got them right. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can almost hear his voice – I can almost make out the words he'd say. My God, Tata Baby. Those eggs are spectacular.

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P.S. One of these days, I'll write a post that isn't about dreading death, dying, and being sad about death and dying. I may one day even get my sense of humor back. If you hang with me until then, I'll give you a baby panda wearing earmuffs, or a tiny baby kangaroo riding on the back of Simba, it's adopted lion mother. Your choice. xox

40 days

In the Greek Orthodox tradition, the soul ascends to heaven after wandering the earth for 40 days.

This week marked the 40th day since my dad's death. Even though he wasn't Greek or even a believer, I like to imagine my dad spending the 40 days rattling around his old New York haunts - drinking a beer at the White Horse Tavern, sipping a martini at the King Cole Bar, admiring a Holbein at the Met, picking up bagels at H&H, going for a run in Riverside Park. I like to think he's at the Little House doing the things he liked to do - pruning the cherry trees, erecting the flag on Memorial Day, inspecting the roof, taking a cold dip in the ocean. I've been comforted by the idea that my dad has been puttering around. I've felt his presence around me and I'm reluctant to let his spirit go, even if it means he gets to shoot the breeze with Geoffrey Chaucer, W.B. Yeats and Sam Cooke in front of the pearly gates. 

The 40 day mark is a milestone - it's the end of the official mourning period, the last day we wear black. It signals that his soul is now in repose - and that it's time for the rest of us to stumble blindly through the next phase of our fleeting lives, as impossible as that seems. I've found myself retreating from family this week - I can't breathe when other people's grief takes up all the oxygen. I need to figure out how to grieve on my own.

Saturday is my dad's memorial.  I dread it with all my heart. Despite having three decades to think about it, I haven't written my eulogy. Its weight crushes me. I can't seem to do justice to the father I loved so much. Somehow I have to get through what feels like an insurmountable task - please keep your fingers crossed that I don't disgrace myself. 

xo

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Image: Gibson Claire McGuire Regester

First to eat the marshmallow, raise your hand.

“A cowgirl gets up in the morning, decides what she wants to do and does it.”
- Marie Lords, 1861

Here's what I've learned in the last few months: If you were born in the wrong month, forget it. Don't even bother - you're doomed to underperform. God forbid you're one of the kids who ate the marshmallow too soon,* a sure sign that you'll end up a fat underachiever with no prospects. By the time you make it to eighth grade, you'll be traumatized, and then tortured and possibly permanently damaged by high school. Assuming you are able to navigate college without developing a substance abuse problem, you have about nine years to set the course your life takes, so if you screw that up, you'll pay. Forever.  Meanwhile, women can't have it all - no, wait - they can, but if they want to get to top, they need be more assertive.

Excuse me, but am I alone in feeling slightly less than assertive after hearing all of these dismal portents? (Apparently, I'm not - I just read the wonderful Belgian Waffle's reaction to this particularly gruesome New Yorker article.) 

It seems that every time I open a book, read a magazine or listen to the radio, the Thirteenth Fairy tells me it's all Horribly, Horribly Wrong.  It's a wonder we aren't all paralyzed with fear at every turn, terrified to take a misstep in pursuit of a narrowly-defined vision of happiness and success. Apparently, a great many of us are living what appear to be substandard lives. Some of us know it and self-flaggelate, while others are blythely getting on with daily, completely unaware of dismal failures. Thank God science is here to remind us.

I talked to my dad about this on Friday, after having whipped myself up into a state of agitation about past, current and future failures.He laughed. My dad is a thoughtful, keenly intelligent man, but he's not a navel-gazer prone to bouts of diffidence. The answer seemed relatively straightforward. "Success is measured by your happiness and sense of fulfillment," he said.

But what do you mean by "fulfillment?"

"It just means doing the things you love as much as you possibly can, while doing the things you have to do to survive." 

Oh.

It did my heart good to hear it. It's a sign that as my dad prepares to shuffle off this mortal coil, he feels content with the life he's created.  But beyond that, I take it to mean that there is hope for all the September-born marshmallow-eating semi-reformed slackers out there who shall remain nameless.

 

*I am 100% confident that at the age of four I would have been completely unable to withstand the lure of a plump, tantalizing marshmallow waved in front of my nose. I would have stuffed it in my mouf in about 4.5 seconds, because - hey! - free marshmallow. Which explains everything, really. 

 

P.S. I think this guy has the right idea. 

 

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Quote and image of “Kitty Canutt” riding Winnemucca in 1919 via The Ugly Earring, one of my all-time favorite blogs.