Dear Dominik

But like a refugee

Every heart - every heart to love will come
But like a refugee.
~ Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Other than a very brief intermission, Leonard Cohen and his Unified Heart Touring Company performed for more than three hours: it was 11:15 when we struggled and we staggered down the snakes and up the ladders, to the exit. And while various numbers showcased the incredible talents of all the musicians, this 75-year-old man – who skipped, waltzed, knelt and prowled about the stage with the grace and limberness of someone half his age – sang every song but one. Sharon Robinson, co-composer and singer of Ten New Songs, sang “Boogie Street” solo … except that Cohen was visibly singing along with every word, unmiked.

 

Yeah, he can still sing. I think his voice has gotten even DEEPER, which is hard to imagine and astounding to hear. I swear he made my tummy rumble with some of the low-register vibrations. I actually prefer his old-man voice to the younger version: on early recordings he sounds too glib. The gravel provides a timbre of resignation and despair that gives an extra twist of the knife to his verbal thrusts. When I first heard him sing, “I was born with the gift of a golden voice,” I thought it was a bit of self-mockery, but not anymore. Not only are his vocal chords surprisingly agile and resonant, but his poetry itself is an eloquent voice. (That line got a hoot-and-holler cheer from the audience.)

 

The audience was very engaged, and very vocal. We greeted L. Cohen with a standing ovation at the start, and repeated it several times throughout the evening. “Woo hoos,” cheers and whistles were not uncommon. This was a celebration of Cohen’s music, not the lamentation I had feared; and although I tapped into that spiritual spring periodically – rapt and worshipful and deeply moved – the mood was very upbeat. Thanking us for the warm welcome, Cohen said, “I don’t know when we’ll pass this way again, but tonight we’re going to give you all we’ve got.” They did, and their enjoyment was infectious.

 

(The old man in front of us SANG ALOUD with the refrains on “Suzanne.” We were aghast, and I wish he hadn’t done it, but it just goes to show you how much the audience was into it.)

 

Hats

I didn’t get the memo that Hats Will Be Worn, but lots of people did. Mostly fedoras, with a few variations, in the audience. The whole band wore hats (except the drummer, now that I think about it), and it was mostly hard to see Cohen’s face under the shadow of his fedora.

 

From the souvenir program:

He’s bent before us, crouching, trying to squeeze out every ounce of blood, and he’s looking into the wings to summon a fury, a devotion, a power most of us would not have words for. An innocent in the audience might wonder what this courtly coyote is trying to sell us … Then she may notice that the singer is looking at the ground, as if admitting us to his private cell. He has no designs on us at all.

I was glad I had read this beforehand, so I was better prepared to see him on his knees, singing to Javier Mas’ guitar or to the footlights, head bowed, keeping his soul private even while opening it up to the world. Hiding behind hat and microphone.

 

Set List

I worked really hard at remembering the set list through the first half, and wrote it quite legibly on a scrap of paper at intermission. Second half did not work out so well – I scribbled over top of my own scribbling, and ran out of room when the THIRD half began … Yeah, the encores were an entire third set. Anyway, I’ve been able to decipher it all, and the set list is here. (Man. Now that I look at it, I hate it: it just doesn’t convey to you the thrill as each song began, the familiar chord changes washing over us, conjuring the ghosts of the heart.)

 

They did a number of fun things that made us laugh – not exactly comical, but light-hearted acknowledgment of the performer-audience relationship.

 

The Future: Bassist/musical director Roscoe Beck was spotlighted with a little two-step when Cohen sang, “And a white man dancing.” Then, right after “You see your woman hanging upside down,” the Webb Sisters (backup vocals) abandoned their hats and jackets to do a graceful double cartwheel into the wings. (Just before intermission, when Cohen introduced the band, he identified them as “backup vocals and gymnastics.”)

Ain’t No Cure for Love: “I even heard the angels declare it from above” … pause … and the three female vocalists did a heavenly arpeggio, before resolving the chorus.

Hallelujah: “I didn’t come all the way to St. Louis to fool ya.”

I’m Your Man: “And if you want another kind of love, I’ll wear an old man’s mask for you” (removing his hat and letting us see his face).

We had wondered beforehand whether he would have to recite, rather than sing (and that would have been fine). He didn’t HAVE to, but he did include some recitations that were chilling.

• There was a lead-in verse to “Anthem” that was unfamiliar to me, and made my eyes sting as it segued into “There is a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in,” and thence to the musical arrangement.
• “A Thousand Kisses Deep” was a recitation of verses that do not appear on the musical recording, but are printed in Book of Longing. A sample:

But you don’t need to hear me now

And every word I speak

It counts against me anyhow

A thousand kisses deep.

And then there was “If It Be Your Will” – the fourth encore. Ay, ay, ay, ay … I have to set this up for you. We didn’t KNOW there were going to be six freakin’ encores, right? And we’d just heard “Famous Blue Raincoat,” the third encore, which seemed final – as final as the grave – when he signed off with “Sincerely, L. Cohen.” *choking up at the memory* But he took up the microphone again and recited the opening of “If It Be Your Will,” up to the point where he said, “If it be your will to let me sing …” (cascading cheers from audience)

 

That's when the Webb Sisters (backup vocals and gymnastics) took over, in vocal harmony, accompanied by harp. Please, watch this clip. If it be your will.

 

 

 

Defenseless

I wanted to live in the realm of the senses -
You've got to know how;
But for some kinds of pleasure there are no defenses,
I know it now.
    ~ Jackson Browne, "My Problem Is You," I'm Alive

We walked out of the movie theater in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, not trusting ourselves to speak. One of us may have croaked "Wanna get a beer?" - as innocuous a phrase as possible - but in my memory we agreed silently, with a glance, to stagger into the bar two doors down, where we clung to our mugs as if to lifelines.

Nineteen seventy-five: I had just seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with my friend Jimmy Hoy. Luckily, Jimmy and I were just the right kind of friends: not close enough to have expectations, and not so distant that we had to work through the "Is this a romance?" question. No overtones, undertones or tritones whatsoever. We were friends, we were bored, and we thought we'd check out the movie currently playing. [In 1975 it was rare to have TWO screens in a theater, let alone a dozen or more.] We had no idea how powerful an experience it would be. We were both grateful that we didn't have to talk afterward.

Overwhelmed, stunned, disoriented, inarticulate ...

This is how I feel when I hear Leonard Cohen's songs and poetry. My senses are bombarded, my innermost thoughts and feelings and SELF exposed - pounded, punched, stabbed, torn and wrecked.

I made it to the forward deck - I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep.

***

I'm going to see/hear Leonard Cohen tomorrow night, if all goes well. I haven't talked about it and I haven't written about it because ... it's like talking about Cuckoo's Nest. I can't. I can't bear to have it trivialized, or to hear anyone scoff or sneer. "I hate James Taylor," said Thelma, and it hurt me. A colleague laughed when I said I wanted to go see Mark Knopfler, and I was bewildered. But those are bearable; remarks like that about Cohen wouldn't be. My skin just isn't thick enough. (Speaking of which, I've been diagnosed with psoriasis! Yippee! - which I understand is a thickening of the skin. So give me a couple of years.)

There are Cohen songs I can sing along with. There are hopeful songs, like "Anthem":

There is a crack, a crack in everything: that's how the light gets in.

There are songs that make me smile, darkly, because of the wry twist of irony he can't hide; and there are breathtaking lines that stun with their beauty:

But who is it climbs to your picture with a garland of freshly cut tears?

And then he comes along and clobbers you right in the heart. But there is no superficiality, no "I give it a three, it's got a good beat, I can dance to it" type music. If you can't risk your soul, don't listen.

And I'm going to go see him in person tomorrow night. I'm terrified. I mean, I managed to drive all the way to work this morning listening to Cohen, without tearing up ... it was the return trip that got me. *exhaling cautioiusly, checking for damage*

I wonder what the set list will be like. Will he wallow in the despair of "Closing Time"?

I miss you since our place got wrecked, and I just don't care what happens next:
Looks like freedom but it feels like death - it's something in between I guess.

Or will he concentrate more on the resigned acceptance that probably comes from his Buddhist studies?

All busy in the sunlight, the flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them in formless circumstance.

What will I take away from this concert? Ultimately, I know, it depends on what I bring in: my mood, my attachments, my connections and assumptions. But, like Cuckoo's Nest, Leonard Cohen has the ability to blow ME right into a new dimension, leaving in this world only a stammering, awestruck, wrung-out rag.

We'll be goin' down so deep the river's gonna weep,
And the mountain's gonna shout "Amen!"

I'm scared.

I got lost today

Generally I love getting lost. I mean, eventually this road will come out onto something I recognize, right? And if it doesn't, I can just go back! *breezy wave of the hand*

Yeah. It's a little bit different when you're on a bicycle. My legs are going to be RUBBER tomorrow.

I mean, the concept is good: let's see where this comes out! That was EXACTLY my thinking when I whizzed* right past the known cutoff of the Watershed Bike Trail. It was 3 p.m., plenty of sunshine, and it's a bike trail! How lost can you get? You just follow the old railroad right-of-way until it meets up with something familiar!

*Here "whiz" means "to move rapidly," not "to urinate." Although that's a complication I hadn't thought about.

Drawback here is, you have to know the area for anything to be "familiar." And there's a further problem in that the old railroad right-of-way is bordered by deep ravines: no way to cut across to something more populous.

I crossed an overpass over a familiar highway, but there was no way down to it. Then the path took me across a godawful bridge over Cahokia Creek (I have this thing about bridges) - a REAL body of water, not the happy, burbling rivulets in the ravines.  Current objective: not to have to cross that bridge again.

ME: This has to come out onto a road sometime, right? I mean, people have to park their cars somewhere when they get ON this trail, right?

Right. There was a road. I didn't know what road it was, but I took it. It wound around but refused to give me any crossroads back over to the campus. Eventually it delivered me to a local landfill, where I asked a skinny old road worker how to get back over to New Poag Road. I heard a banjo picking out a ditty as he replied, "I have no idea," grinned and spit.

I gave up and turned tail. Cahokia Creek, here I come. Again. Between exhaustion, road construction, campus traffic and heavily graveled shoulders, it was a long ride back. But hey, the sun was still up and I didn't have to whiz.

Boys and girls, if you go exploring on your bike, just remember: do it at the BEGINNING of your ride, not when you're already tired.

another water issue

Really, life is all about water, isn't it?

The alarm on my septic system went off last night. Repair guy was just here: a new motor is needed. I could get the same (outdated) model for $545, or upgrade to the new model for $675. I'm going for the upgrade. If there's one system to keep running at all costs ...

To recap:

• For approx. $5,000 I had city water installed. I am delighted with the water pressure and have learned not to take showers - or dishwashing - for granted.
• After removing a mud-soaked carpet remnant and moving the stereo to higher ground, I paid $3,000 to have Woods Basement Systems install a system to keep the basement dry. The system has withstood the autumn floods - there is no water in the basement - and I am actually rearranging it into a livable area. The dehumidifier never runs.
• The condensate pump on the air conditioner never runs, either, but that's because I unplugged it. We had an extraordinarily mild summer, so not much air conditioner action, and I'm dumping water by hand.
• Roofers left a lot of sediment in the gutters, which wasn't getting flushed out. I removed the gutter guards and let the rain do its stuff. Just this weekend I re-installed the gutter guards to keep the water running smoothly.

So now, the septic motor, to process and purify the waste water. I need a quote from Lord Peter about the importance of the parish pump: pumping water seems to be the main issue of this house.

Stripes

It was a dark and stormy night, and I was driving home late, through a downpour, on country roads with no street lights. Straining to see the lane markers, I pondered ...

They recently painted new stripes on my road. Dale used to insist that when they striped this road, you could see where the crew knocked off for lunch: the lines would be nice and straight up to the Prairie Inn, and then start weaving gently on the other side.

As a matter of fact, Dale's favorite joke (and he HATED jokes) had to do with painting stripes on the road ...

Two guys were hired for the road crew. The foreman gave them each a paintbrush and told them, "You're going to paint the yellow lines down the middle." The first day, they did four miles, and the foreman was impressed. The second day, they did two miles. Well, thought the boss, they were probably just going flat-out on the first day.

Third day, they did one mile, and he was concerned. By the fourth day, when the guys only completed half a mile, it was time to talk to them. "I gotta say," he told them, "you guys started out great, but you've been dropping furher and further behind ever since."

"Well," said the spokesman for the two guys, "you gotta remember ... we're getting farther away from the bucket."

***

Meanwhile, back in Southern Illinois, last weekend I took a drive on state highways, and I passed a striping truck going in the opposite direction. You can't help noticing the fresh paint, thereafter. But what really made me happy was this: they painted over the snouts of two road-kill possums! Just rolled right over them and painted over them! Next time you see odd breaks in the no-passing-zone stripes, you'll know why.

***

Back to that dark and stormy night that started this post: I've heard that the Rains of October may be on hiatus this weekend. This has been the wettest October on record, or something, and MY BASEMENT IS DRY!!!

Today I'm planning to row out to the shed to check the mousetraps.

... and Tomfoolery

Pranksters abound in my workplace, so when Carey the Plant-Killer went on vacation, we filled up her office with potted plants, from a baby cactus to a six-foot silk ficus tree. It looked really cool, like a jungle, very green and inviting.

So this week, while Tom was on vacation ...

 

Costumery

In the nick of time a hero arose:
A funny-lookin' dog with a big black nose.
He flew into the sky to seek revenge,
But the Baron shot him down - Curses! Foiled again!
~ Royal Guardsmen, "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron"

Why, yes, my office did have its annual Halloween party, and I did enter the costume contest. Seems there are fans awaiting photos ...

***

It started with The Excellent Sara, who was explaining how everyone's lives would be a lot easier if they'd just do what she tells them to. Suddenly someone noticed: "Hey! You're Lucy, from Peanuts!" Thinking it over, Lucy/Sara agreed, "I would TOTALLY pull that football away. Every time."

And so another Costume Concept was born. We cast about for the most round-headed of us to wear the zigzag shirt, and a fine battle waged over who would be Pigpen. Linus was almost too easy, except for finding someone willing to suck his thumb - at least until Ken cut off the tip of his thumb in a home improvement accident. For Lucy we planned a booth with a sign, "The Doctor Is In - 5 Cents." Simple but effective.

"I want to be Snoopy," I said.

"EVERYBODY wants to be Snoopy!" chided my sister.

So I chose a very specific Snoopy - the WWI Flying Ace atop his Sopwith Camel. There was plenty of opportunity for other Snoopies to emerge - not to mention Woodstock. But, as these things will do, it all fell apart. People got sick, people got busy, people failed to plan; and it ended up that I was the sole representative of Team Peanuts. (Last year's Ferris Bueller theme met the same fate.)

And let me tell you, I spent MINUTES on this costume.

That's a $4 basketball cut out for a helmet; a pair of ski goggles; an acrylic scarf and a bomber jacket. The nose I stitched together from a few scraps of a worn-out sheet, stuffed the end with a plastic grocery bag, and filled out the shape with a Jimmy John's cup. And the black nose tip is a cat toy covered with a scrap of old black tee shirt.

When I picked up the basketball at the dreaded discount store that starts with a W <shudders>, the checkout lady asked me if I played basketball. "It's not a basketball," I explained carefully - "it's a helmet." She hung in there as I described the costume, but you could tell she didn't get it. "What if it explodes when you cut into it?" she asked fearfully. I assured her, "It will be funny!"

You really shouldn't do that to Wal-Mart checkout ladies. <does it anyway>

Here's the thing: it's HALLOWEEN, not a royal ball at Versailles! I figure cheesy is good. And apparently the judges agreed: I won in the Classic Category!

There were three categories: Classic, Creative, and Collaborative. (We should have been in the Collaborative category, but you just can't c ount on the Peanuts Gang.) I'm glad I didn't end up in the Creative category, because Randy H. had the BEST COSTUME EVAH ...

Obvious drawback being, he couldn't actually do anything - like hold a can and drink from it. (Whereas the Snoopy nose was instantly removable.) But it's a GREAT COSTUME and I love that movie!

Collaborative prize went to "Jon & Kate Plus 8 - Plus 8" ... which I had to have explained to me. It was Jon and Kate, plus Octomom, and it was very funny, or so I'm told. My cultural illiteracy is showing. Hey, I got the Octomom part! I just thought Kate was her nanny or something.

***

Meanwhile, there was a feast to prepare. I started with the standard Deviled Egg Eyeballs:

... but then branched out into Deviled Egg Spiders, and that's where I ran into difficulty. The photo from which I took my inspiration called them spiders, but they only had six legs. Knowing my blog audience, I knew I couldn't get away with that; and placing eight legs on each of those egg halves took a deft touch and careful planning.

And then they all slid in transit, and lost their legs all over the damn place.

The funniest part is when I carefully put all the unused green olives and black olives back into their respective containers, funneling their juice back in too, for freshness ... I HATE OLIVES! I guess I want to store them properly until the next time I clean out the fridge?

The bloody Red Baron was in a fix;
He tried everything, but he'd run out of tricks.
Snoopy fired once, and he fired twice,
And the bloody Red Baron went spinning out of sight.

NOTE: All non-olive-related photos are courtesy of Nicole and are used with permission.

 

Mousetrap

Beautiful day in downstate Illinois, sunshine to dazzle, fallen leaves to shoosh through, and lots of random outdoor things to do with the smug feeling that this is the last time I'll have to do them this year ...

So I started up the tractor. It coughed, backfired, and spat out a mouse nest and a tiny, bald, pink, baby mouse, which lay on the concrete, mewing. I backed out of the shed and turned off the engine, to clean out the remnants of the nest, watching Mama Mouse give me the evil eye as she picked up the baby and hustled it off to some fastness behind the garden tools.

Still, a perfect day for spreading grass seed (showers expected later) and moldy straw to keep the seed in place; for cutting down the peony foliage and stacking the wire supports out of the wind; for putting up the patio cushions and draining hoses; and for cleaning gutters.

And then for buying mousetraps.

Dale always used D-Con (when he wasn't engaging in hand-to-mouse combat), but I have this fear that the cats will get hold of a poisoned mouse and get sick. So today I learned how to bait a mousetrap. I had some creamy swiss cheese spread; it was messy, and I sprang the trap once (without catching any phalanges) accidentally. But by the time I placed it in a temptingly dark corner, Myfanwy the Bitch Cat was there to check out the cheese. She examined the apparatus in minute detail ... and she also sprang the trap. Nothing like a contented belly laugh to make the work easier.

I chased her out of the shed and finished baiting and placing my six traps. I'm not at all squeamish about dead mice - actually looking forward to checking the traps - and I can take a cat with me in case of any live trapping.

But man, I wish I could build an apparatus like the game Mousetrap. I loved that game!

(Well, actually, as this blogger notes, I loved building the trap and then turning the crank - not so much playing the game.)

It's like all those elaborate traps that Foghorn Leghorn and the dog used to trick one another into setting off. Who cares if they worked? They were FUN!

Whereas a mousetrap is just functional, not very esthetic. Oh well. I hope it does the job. I might try one of those glue traps under the hood of the tractor, where they always build their nests.

Where the Wild Things Are

I intended to love this movie. The trailer was so beautiful and so perfect; I have been aching to visit this world. So I read some reviews and some blogs and some comments, and there seem to be as many different opinions about this movie as there are individuals to express them.

Here's mine: I can't believe it. It's incredible that filmmakers could add that much to a story, and yet keep it true to the original. I don't mean "true" as in "word for word, action for action," but as in maintaining the feel and the intent of the book. Artistic integrity. This is an astonishing piece of filmmaking.

The wild things have charming details: a runny nose, quivering nostrils. I had read some reviews saying that they personified emotions, so I expected them to be caricatures of identifiable things like anger and joy and stuff. But no ... these emotions are both more immediate and more complex than I had pictured. These are KID emotions, and having said that, I think: there's no such thing. Emotions don't come in different size groupings, like Girls 10-14 gives way to Juniors, to Misses, and on up to Fat Ladies. The hurt, the pouts ("Why don't you just go play with your new friends?"), the lashing out ("That's just stupid") - I think these are the emotions that we've tried to civilize, as adults.

Not that I'm much of an adult, myself, but I have managed to disguise emotions to the point where I don't recognize them.

And that's the thing about "Where the Wild Things Are" - nobody hides their feelings. From fear to bravado, triumph to contentment, confusion to despair, it's all right out there in a kid's world. It's charming and funny and disappointing and heartbreaking.

Eel remarked that toward the end, he was feeling a little cheated because it didn't seem like anything got resolved - until the howl went up. (Actually, as I stifled my urge to howl along in the theater, I thought about R and Eel on their wolf sanctuary visit this summer, howling with the wild things.)

But that's how it is when you're a kid: things DON'T get resolved. The best you can hope for is a hug from Mom. And to all those commenters who think the kid got rewarded for acting out ... ohhh, where's your compassion and your inner child? He was scared and hurt and his whole world felt like it was populated with monsters.

***

Mig wrote yesterday:

When I think thoughts not my own, when experts tell me what to want and feel, and someone else’s desires steer me and my own die or hide, I am a monster.

I often wonder about people who let others dictate what they "should" want. "Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose ..." That, I think, is a metaphor for romance, although a gentleman of my acquaintance would certainly take it literally. He gets his gift ideas from women's magazines, I swear.

But this dovetails with my previuos post about who I really am. How much of a monster am I? Unlike Gordon, I do put home at the top of my priority list - but is that because I've bought unquestioningly into the American Dream? <looks out at garage and two vehicles> There was a time when all I wanted was to drift from place to place, working only long enough to make enough $$ to move on to another place. Gypsy, hobo, vagabond, tramp - that's what I wanted. A rootless existence. But I had a tightly woven safety net under me - a Mom with a hug whenever I came home.

***

There's a young lady I know who really liked the bad boys, in her turbulent adolescence. But she always expected the bad boys to have her same perspective on life, family, helping people, caring. When they didn't, she was hurt and confused. Like me, she was coming from a position of absolute security, flirting with danger because she knew she couldn't really get hurt. I think she found herself on Max's island with the Wild Things once or twice, and was shocked to find that not everyone wants the same things. I remember one bad boy who said ugly things about  her mother - turned out his own mother was troubled and angry, so he assumed HER mom was mean and spiteful. And when she wanted to champion the downtrodden, another bad boy turned his back, feeling that they didn't need or deserve his help.

My point is that security is in Mom's hugs. Recognizing your own hurt feelings and jealousies and wild, out-of-control anger doesn't necessarily make it any easier to cope. Max's loving family hurt and scared him because they didn't act like he wanted them to - but they gave him the strength and support to become king of the Wild Things.

Cooking

If you see her, say hello;
She might be in Tangier.
She left here last early spring,
Is living there, I hear.
Say for me that I'm all right,
Though things get kind of slow;
She might think that I've forgotten her:
Oh, tell her it isn't so.
~ Bob Dylan, "If You See Her, Say Hello" Blood on the Tracks

Today I'm toying with the idea that separation (death) makes us confront who we really are. In every relationship - parents, siblings, friends, and especially spouse and children - we take on roles and end up living up to the role at hand. And we compromise, for the sake of the relationship, in thousands of ways. He doesn't like camping, so we stay in hotels. Mom objects to marijuana, so we don't talk about it in front of her. My daughter has a big night at prom and I miss the season finale of the symphony to help with dress, hair, transportation and money.

Obviously I don't regret any of those choices, nor any of the roles and expectations that I found myself living. But, like Dale, I am more than the sum of people's perceptions of me. What happens to those nooks and crannies of Kaydom that have been stashed away - the white elephants in the relationship? What parts of this life are really ME, and which were coaxed to life by someone else's wishes?

For example, I am NOT a boat person - but Dale loved boats and the water, and I accompanied him. And had a blast. I had not been a fan of auto racing, but he taught me to understand and love it. And it's the same with parents, siblings and daughter - for each, I can count up things I did "because of" her or hm. How much do I retain and adapt as my own? How much will I jettison?

***

Dale loved to cook. He tried some wild things, and for a while everything he cooked tasted the same, because he would empty the same spices into a dish with tomatoes, onions and peppers every time, regardless of what he started with. I mean, beef stroganoff would have tomatoes, onions, peppers and bay leaf; so would pork chops and fried cabbage. Also, if he couldn't find a particular herb in the spice cabinet, he'd substitute one with a similar name. No chives? How about chervil? And so on.

But he enjoyed it, and if he occasionally made something too salty - I'm thinking here of the fried rice in which he quadrupled the soy sauce - well, I could always eat cereal or something. After he'd gone to bed, not to hurt his feelings. <smiles>

So when he retired, I left the cooking to him. (And sneaked fast food now and again.) After the stroke, I left the cooking to Nancy the Nanny, except of course for Thanksgiving. And now, I resent so many chores that have landed on me; when it comes to cooking my rebellious reaction is, "That's not my job!" So slowly I've drifted into a lifestyle of "I don't cook." My boss asked me, as I was leaving work one night, whether I would go home and cook dinner, or maybe eat out? <blank stare> Because I didn't want to say, "I'll probably have a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles," I muttered something about stopping somewhere for carryout.

***

But part of my support group-inspired turnaround is to start cooking again, for health and financial reasons, but mostly for the feeling of DOING something. Peeling, chopping, stirring, testing - it's like learning to be a participant in life again. I've spent years spiraling into a murky depression in which, yeah, I do stuff - I go places (run away) and ride my bike (run away) and make improvements to the house (hide) - but it's like a Kay-shaped zombie is doing it, as far as I'm concerned. I don't think Kay is really in there.

If you see her, say hello ...

So this weekend, I cooked. I made some Crock Pot stew, and banana nut bread, and homemade applesauce. Comfort food, but of a higher order than Cocoa Pebbles - even Cocoa Pebbles with banana. The applesauce made me laugh, as I thought about teaching R to cook. After Dale's stroke, at our Thanksgiving dinner with Dale in wheelchair, she asked me how to make homemade applesauce.

"Peel and core your apples," I said, "and cook them down over very low heat. Then throw in some sugar and cinnamon."

"And then put it on a rocket ship and fly it to the moon," added Dale.

We didn't know if we should laugh. He seemed so serious, and none of us wanted to argue with him. It was Eel's first meal with us, and he bravely rallied: "Does the lower gravity make it cook better?" (R and I were very close to losing our composure.)

Dale replied, "You'll have to ask the pilot," which I assume meant me, and we just awkwardly moved on.

We'll never know if he was pulling our legs, or referring to some internal joke that only he understood. He did that - made private jokes that no one understood - even without brain damage. And it doesn't matter.

What matters is that I enjoyed making the homemade applesauce, and for a moment I felt a spark: this is me!

The stew was too salty.

***

She might think that I've forgotten her - oh, tell her it isn't so.