24-25-26 December, 2009
Our family tends to over-celebrate most holidays, at least as far as putting events on the schedule. For example, I had two birthday parties, one for my friends on Friday and another for the family-- Gran, and my uncles and aunts and cousins-- who have much farther to travel to be with us. I recall times when I was much younger when I would have three parties, including one at school. And this is typical of us, you know-- why have one party when you can have more. And, of course, this calls for three cakes, which in turn calls for the rowing machine... but I digress.
Once all the shopping and baking is done and the tree is brought inside and trimmed there is candlelight Mass on Christmas Eve, including the singing of 'Silent Night' (the ONLY time that song occurs in the church liturgy), and then it is home again for hot cocoa and Christmas wishes and family thanksgiving prayers, and then Daddy reads 'A Visit From St Nicholas' from the the little book we have had since we were little, turning it round to show all the pictures as though he were a kindergarten teacher, and more often than not making fun of the verses and illustrations that Jessy and I, at least, have seen and heard over a dozen times before. Then the little ones are tucked in and everyone has kisses good-night and Jessy and I promise to not wake up too soon in the morning in order to allow Daddy and Mother a bit more rest than they've got these last few days.
Then Daddy does his magic-- and it's always magic, for always there is more than any one of us has expected, and I don't mean just a quantity of gifts, for since Lisa was old enough to understand the material aspect of Christmas Mother has been adamant that we won't 'buy into it'-- we really do not receive many gifts at all and our parents believe quality is better than quantity, so what we receive, and in turn give to each other, is what we all really want, and not just some stuff to outdo the neighbours, you know. Daddy has developed a certain knack for 'doing Christmas' over the years-- well, it perhaps started with our old house in Delaware with one electrical outlet under each window all on the same circuit, so the electric candles in the windows could be activated all at the same time (and still are, there as here, for the house in Delaware has always been decorated like a showpiece for Christmas). He once made a device in the attic there to simulate a patter of reindeer hoofs on the roof, but he found out that it was a little too subtle and that Jessy and I never heard it. In the past he has created mysterious footprints in the snow or rearranged things round certain rooms and left hints that someone benevolent but not of our family has been here. We always set out cookies and milk for Santa and they are always mostly gone, usually exchanged for a handwritten thank-you note that is apparently NOT in Daddy's handwriting. The year Mommy died I sent a letter to Santa asking him to bring her something for Christmas up in heaven and I received in my stocking a very pretty letter in return, in which Santa said he was sorry for our family's loss, that no amount of extra gifts could ever make up for it, and that sometimes these sad things happen even to very good children like me and the best we can all do is continue to have faith in God and to remember that He loves us, especially when we are so afflicted, and so on. I still have the letter, of course. (It will probably go on display at the house in Delaware some day.) The important thing is that the letter from Santa was NOT done on Daddy's computer. It was done in red ink-- and we did not have a colour printer at that time. It used a font Daddy never uses. And the envelope and signature are NOT in Daddy's handwriting (not Mother's either, as she was still our nanny then). I was nine then, almost to the age when you begin to doubt Santa, and the letter only reinforced Santa's existence to me for another couple of years.
(Jessy says I will grow up and marry Santa Claus and become Mrs Claus. I would be perfectly fine with that-- I would get to help make Christmas wonderful for children round the world, I would be working in charity, I would be able to bake cookies, and it would be one of those unselfish occupations that I seem to be drawn to. There are only two things I would need to change about the way Santa traditionally works. One is that I would NOT want to live at the North Pole. The other is that Santa would have to work out on the rowing machine. How someone has been able to last all those years on a high-fat diet of cookies and milk is beyond me... but it shall stop with me. Get used to it, Santa my future husband.)
In the morning JJ and Lisa will be up at about 6.00-- they are never up so early at any other morning of the year. Jessy and I are responsible for keeping them upstairs and in our end of the house till 7.00-- that's the limit Mommy set long ago and which we still keep as tradition. Then making sure everyone is in warm pyjamas or robes and slippers and socks, for the down-stairs of this house is never toasty-warm at that hour, we march down to our parents' room and knock on the door. This year JJ flew down the stairs ahead of us all. The tradition is that we empty stockings first-- there they all are, six in a row, hanging from the fireplace mantel in the small back parlour. They are all hand-knitted in wool yarn and decorated with bells and tassels and Christmas symbols both secular and Christian. Daddy's was made by his godmother for his first Christmas (when he was four weeks old). Mine and Jessy's were made by our Gran when we were infants (I was 2 weeks old at my first Christmas and Jessy was four months). Mother's was made by Mommy for the first year our lovely young au pair (and future nanny and stepmother) was with us. Of course all these have a very special significance, especially Mother's. And then there are the ones for JJ and Lisa, which Mother made, following the patterns Mommy left to her, which were left to Mommy by our Gran. Though it's only a secular symbol for the child's aspect of Christmas the stocking is something that will never be phased out of this family-- Daddy's is as old as he is and is still lovingly preserved and used every year.
We keep Mommy's own stocking, which Gran made for her as a welcome gift for her first Christmas in this family, preserved in paper and linen at the house in Delaware, which Jessy insists she will look after for ever. Of course Mommy is with us every Christmas in spirit, and always will be.
This year we had a horrid little snowfall on Saturday which interrupted the shopping spree Jessy and I had planned but actually did last till Christmas morning, so we can at least say we have had a white Christmas. We took plenty of pictures both out the windows and of us standing in front of the French windows at the back of the parlour with the snow in background. After an hour or so spent opening gifts we had a leisurely brunch of pancakes and listened to traditional carols on CD. Mommy served an early tea and then I helped her with making a pleasant Virginia ham supper.
We are honoured and happy to have with us this year Mother's mum from Queensland, who has been installed in our guest room since she flew in on Wednesday. We have not seen her in over a year. Our uncle and aunt are down from the Poconos and visited with our other uncle and aunt, and Gran, in New Jersey before driving down here for dinner. They never stay at Terncote with us but take a place at a motel in Chincoteague (about 30 minutes away). They stayed in this part of the world through our the Boxing Day party.
For the Boxing Day party we invited just about everyone we know, especially locally, like our friends from school and their parents, to come and crash on us for part of the afternoon. This is a new tradition, suggested by Mother kind of in honour of her mum being here but also because Boxing Day is a Saturday so for once people can actually observe it and not merely return to work like the whole holiday is over, because it's not, not yet, not till Epiphany at least.
At the party Daddy forced us all to sing-- maybe I would rather have not, but this is his way of insisting that we have as much experience before an audience as possible. I mean there were people there from school and everything. Daddy played guitar for Mother to sing 'Greensleeves' and I sang 'To Sir, With Love,' because I had been working on it, and there were a few others like this though the highlight was Jessy singing 'O Holy Night' which sends shivers down your spine. It's like listening to an angel. Daddy says he gets weepy-eyed from it. I do too. This year she sang it with Lisa holding her hand and staring up at her in boundless admiration. Those two really are two of a kind.
I write this Monday morning, catching my breath-- aside from the trip yesterday I was inside this house from church Christmas Eve till leaving for Philadelphia Sunday morning, but it's all been busy so I haven't had a chance to catch up on any of it till now. I truly hope everyone has been having a blessed and happy Christmas... and that we all remember the true reason for the season.
...
Showing posts with label Delaware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delaware. Show all posts
28 December 2009
13 September 2009
Some politically-unfavourable musings
Friday 11 September 2009
There was an announcement at school today during second period in observance of the 2001 tragedy, asking us to take our one minute of silence in remembrance. we did this last year too. At HOH in England we did not, but it was often discussed. Many Americans do not know how much solidarity the British feel towards Americans in their times of struggle and conflict. They really are America's staunchest ally. I just wish people would remember that.
In European history we began talking about the Angles and Jutes and Saxons. The class will skip all over, but it begins with Britain, moves round Europe, and ends with the 1939-1945 War ('World War II' to you Americans!). Remembering the 9/11 discussions at HOH I think about how little Americans really know about history beyond their own borders. It's a shame really. I have read 'Finest Hour', written when Mr Churchill was resigning from public office and thought he had no more political career ahead of him. He was the sort of man who would not have written a book like that if he had not believed he could have been objective about it. His true story establishes very clearly that Britain fought singlehanded against the Japanese, the Vichy French, the Fascist Italians and the Nazi Germans on five fronts for two and a half years before ANY appreciable aid came from America. And all through his book Mr Churchill pleaded with Mr Roosevelt for any help at all, and when it doe snot come he cautions the American president that when England falls, the Nazis will be at Boston and New York. He makes plans to take the king and Parliament to Australia as an exile government, fully anticipating that Britain could not hold out against such an enemy indefinitely. The surprising part was that, even though Britain was depleting resources, they were still holding off the enemy threat when the Americans did arrive. It is an amazing TRUE story that, I am sad to say, most Americans either don't know, don't care about, or don't want to believe. And sadder still is that so many Americans don't appreciate the support Britain has give them over the years.
I honestly do not know where to fit myself in this debate any more. I consider myself both British and American now, for my heritage and education (and preferences) include both places equally influential on my feelings and thoughts. I feel appalled that so many in America support 'multiculturalism' and 'diversity', but let an English person step into their group, or let someone suggest that being English is also an 'ethnic group', and he is shut up straight away. If every opinion is valid, if America is truly tolerant and relativist and liberal, why then are the English the only group that it's permissible to bash? --actually, they are the only group you are supposed to bash. It's never considered bad taste to insult the British-- why is that? What if that happens to be someone's family heritage? I suppose it means I am just another conservative white Anglo-Saxon Protestant-- the least privileged subculture group in America. I don't deserve any special rights like everyone else has. Supposedly I am the enemy of equal rights.
Yes I will probably end up at Delaware... but issues like this one make me long for UEA even more.
...
There was an announcement at school today during second period in observance of the 2001 tragedy, asking us to take our one minute of silence in remembrance. we did this last year too. At HOH in England we did not, but it was often discussed. Many Americans do not know how much solidarity the British feel towards Americans in their times of struggle and conflict. They really are America's staunchest ally. I just wish people would remember that.
In European history we began talking about the Angles and Jutes and Saxons. The class will skip all over, but it begins with Britain, moves round Europe, and ends with the 1939-1945 War ('World War II' to you Americans!). Remembering the 9/11 discussions at HOH I think about how little Americans really know about history beyond their own borders. It's a shame really. I have read 'Finest Hour', written when Mr Churchill was resigning from public office and thought he had no more political career ahead of him. He was the sort of man who would not have written a book like that if he had not believed he could have been objective about it. His true story establishes very clearly that Britain fought singlehanded against the Japanese, the Vichy French, the Fascist Italians and the Nazi Germans on five fronts for two and a half years before ANY appreciable aid came from America. And all through his book Mr Churchill pleaded with Mr Roosevelt for any help at all, and when it doe snot come he cautions the American president that when England falls, the Nazis will be at Boston and New York. He makes plans to take the king and Parliament to Australia as an exile government, fully anticipating that Britain could not hold out against such an enemy indefinitely. The surprising part was that, even though Britain was depleting resources, they were still holding off the enemy threat when the Americans did arrive. It is an amazing TRUE story that, I am sad to say, most Americans either don't know, don't care about, or don't want to believe. And sadder still is that so many Americans don't appreciate the support Britain has give them over the years.
I honestly do not know where to fit myself in this debate any more. I consider myself both British and American now, for my heritage and education (and preferences) include both places equally influential on my feelings and thoughts. I feel appalled that so many in America support 'multiculturalism' and 'diversity', but let an English person step into their group, or let someone suggest that being English is also an 'ethnic group', and he is shut up straight away. If every opinion is valid, if America is truly tolerant and relativist and liberal, why then are the English the only group that it's permissible to bash? --actually, they are the only group you are supposed to bash. It's never considered bad taste to insult the British-- why is that? What if that happens to be someone's family heritage? I suppose it means I am just another conservative white Anglo-Saxon Protestant-- the least privileged subculture group in America. I don't deserve any special rights like everyone else has. Supposedly I am the enemy of equal rights.
Yes I will probably end up at Delaware... but issues like this one make me long for UEA even more.
...
30 July 2009
The bandanna bikini
Thursday 30 July 2009
Long ago when we lived in Delaware, after Daddy married our nanny, our new mother taught Jessy and I at home as though we were girls of 250 years ago. And so to make it fun we dressed in our Colonial outfits, (even Mother) and sat every morning in the little tea room, read prayers, had lessons in two or three subjects a day (always including reading) and then had tea at 11.00. After that we had homework time and after lunch we went out to play in the yard, or walk the beach, or swim in the pool, or practise our crafts with Mother. And one of the crafts we learned was hand sewing. Mommy had begun to teach us and our nanny too, so when our nanny became our new mother she continued our sewing lessons. We made bonnets and capes and pockets and aprons as well as several sizes' worth of Colonial dresses-- and we still do make them and as a result I have six full outfits, most of which I wear to work Mommy's Colonial-themed ice-cream shop, and we still attend reenactment events when we can (even England, like last year).
Jessy and I were always encouraged to experiment and try new things, in art, music, and crafts. A few summers ago Jessy had the bizarre idea of making a swimsuit. She chose an old blue bedsheet, made pretty good patterns from a bikini she already owned, cut it out, hemmed it, did beautiful work really, and then one summer's day she bravely pranced out of the sewing room in her very pretty bedsheet bikini. The halter top tied in back and behind her neck and the bottom tied in knots at her hips. It was actually bvery cute and fit her surprisngly well.
I was somewhat envious and quickly set to work on my own. Jessy's sheet was a Martha Stewart one from K-Mart that was part polyester, but I used an old and rather well-worn white percale sheet (actually from my bed). And instead of making lace and sewing it to the corners to tie it, I just twisted the corners of the leftover fabric and managed to tie them at my back and at my hips. It was very cute and we were all impressed-- all of us except Mother who raised her eyebrows and made a sly smirk that I still remember. Then Jessy, who had already gone swimming in hers, prodded me to test it. Of course we went into the pool before trying it out at the beach-- it was much safer, and you can imagine why it mattered. Jessy was only 11 then-- she turned 12 later that summer. But I was 13-1/2. And there is a BIG difference between a girl almost 12 wearing a swimsuit she made out of a piece of dark-blue cotton-blend and a girl of 13-1/2 wearing one she made out of a well-bleached, well-worn all white cotton bedsheet. Let us just say that once I stood up, and Jessy and I had a look at how I looked in it dripping wet, it was the last time I would wear it in front of my parents!
One of the several things we learned that day (besides the value of garment LINING!) was that it's fun to make our own things. We've since made plenty of our own clothes, though not much in the way of swimwear intended for a public beach. Recently Jessy has been collecting colourful cotton bandannas and this past week we each had an opportunity sit down at the sewing machine and put some of them together. First Jessy made a skirt-- it's very '60s really, all bandannas, all the same size but of different colours and patterns, turned on edge, creased once, and sewn on an angle so that it flares out off her hips. She also made a very cute bikini top out of two of them sewn together which she wears just tied (snugly!) round herself. She has the figure for that, you know.
I don't have a figure that would tolerate anything like that, but I started a bikini bottom out of two bandannas that really made Jessy envious this time. We experimented some more, tearing stitches out a few times to redo and get it right. One I went so far as to finish before finding it was much too low-cut (it would not reach enough to tie!) so I altered it for little Lisa who absolutely loves it. But we did get it right and now we each have two. I will probably make at least another one soon.
It's very simple really. You bring two 20" square cotton bandannas (use a print that's opaque!) together at one point. Lay the point of the one that will be the back over the one that will be the front, then slide it up till you have enough doubled fabric to serve as a lining. I prefer to cut off the point itself and then fold in what will be the leg openings, front and back, till the crutch is about three inches wide (as much or as little as you dare-- this works for me). I fold them each on a little angle so that near the top of the front and from about halfway up my bottom they are not folded under any more but just one layer of fabric. You don't use elastic so it's really crucial that you get the fit right. As it turns out the front is always a little lower and therefore narrower than the back. If you get this wrong it looks terrible (the one that became Lisa's was like this). Sew the straight seam across what will be the bottom and then the leg openings, which you can along the sides. We each have double-stitched these.
When this is together you just sit on it on your bed, bring up the front and back start rolling from the point inwards to your body, neatly and tightly till you can pull it closely about yourself, and then tie them at your hips. (The first few times I stuck a paperclip on the rolled-up front so I could then do the back.) You might need to try it several times till you arrive at how you like to wear it. If you can't get it to tie right or fit right after three or four tries you probably have the two bandannas lapped incorrectly-- the front too far up or the back too far down. Actually when mine fit right there is quite a lot of material rolled up and it actually makes it very comfortable.
Of course if you make it like this, it doesn't matter what size you are. A 20"-square cotton bandanna, like the ones at Dollar Tree, where we got them, when folded in half diagonally has a sine/cosine of 28 inches. That's each half, front and back. If you can't tie it round yourself having over 55 inches to reach round your hips, maybe you shouldn't be wearing a bandanna bikini!
Jessy's first one is made of two identical bandannas in that very common East Indian print on baby-blue. Her second one is made of two in the same watercolour pattern but of varying colours. Both mine are in the East Indian print, one dull brick-red in back and yellow in front and one in navy-blue in back and the same baby-blue as Jessy's in front. The one I gave to Lisa is pink and pale green (her two favourite colours anyway... see how that works?). Jessy is making one for Mother now too-- of course Mother is only 27 and has a beautiful bikini body as well. She admitted the other night she had tried making a handkerchief bikini at about the same age I was when I made my first failed attempt out of a white bedsheet-- though the handkerchiefs were a linen blend (dry-clean only! --ha!) she learned the same lesson about translucency when wet-- and that's why she looked at me sceptically before I had tried out mine in the pool!
I wore the brick-red-and-yellow one to the beach today, along with a plain swimsuit top in the same medium grey as the print on the bandannas. It was very comfortable to lie out in and I went down to stand with Lisa (in hers too) by the water as well. Two ladies asked where I'd got it. Most everyone else seemed to like it too.
(But no, I did NOT go into the water in it!)
...
Long ago when we lived in Delaware, after Daddy married our nanny, our new mother taught Jessy and I at home as though we were girls of 250 years ago. And so to make it fun we dressed in our Colonial outfits, (even Mother) and sat every morning in the little tea room, read prayers, had lessons in two or three subjects a day (always including reading) and then had tea at 11.00. After that we had homework time and after lunch we went out to play in the yard, or walk the beach, or swim in the pool, or practise our crafts with Mother. And one of the crafts we learned was hand sewing. Mommy had begun to teach us and our nanny too, so when our nanny became our new mother she continued our sewing lessons. We made bonnets and capes and pockets and aprons as well as several sizes' worth of Colonial dresses-- and we still do make them and as a result I have six full outfits, most of which I wear to work Mommy's Colonial-themed ice-cream shop, and we still attend reenactment events when we can (even England, like last year).
Jessy and I were always encouraged to experiment and try new things, in art, music, and crafts. A few summers ago Jessy had the bizarre idea of making a swimsuit. She chose an old blue bedsheet, made pretty good patterns from a bikini she already owned, cut it out, hemmed it, did beautiful work really, and then one summer's day she bravely pranced out of the sewing room in her very pretty bedsheet bikini. The halter top tied in back and behind her neck and the bottom tied in knots at her hips. It was actually bvery cute and fit her surprisngly well.
I was somewhat envious and quickly set to work on my own. Jessy's sheet was a Martha Stewart one from K-Mart that was part polyester, but I used an old and rather well-worn white percale sheet (actually from my bed). And instead of making lace and sewing it to the corners to tie it, I just twisted the corners of the leftover fabric and managed to tie them at my back and at my hips. It was very cute and we were all impressed-- all of us except Mother who raised her eyebrows and made a sly smirk that I still remember. Then Jessy, who had already gone swimming in hers, prodded me to test it. Of course we went into the pool before trying it out at the beach-- it was much safer, and you can imagine why it mattered. Jessy was only 11 then-- she turned 12 later that summer. But I was 13-1/2. And there is a BIG difference between a girl almost 12 wearing a swimsuit she made out of a piece of dark-blue cotton-blend and a girl of 13-1/2 wearing one she made out of a well-bleached, well-worn all white cotton bedsheet. Let us just say that once I stood up, and Jessy and I had a look at how I looked in it dripping wet, it was the last time I would wear it in front of my parents!
One of the several things we learned that day (besides the value of garment LINING!) was that it's fun to make our own things. We've since made plenty of our own clothes, though not much in the way of swimwear intended for a public beach. Recently Jessy has been collecting colourful cotton bandannas and this past week we each had an opportunity sit down at the sewing machine and put some of them together. First Jessy made a skirt-- it's very '60s really, all bandannas, all the same size but of different colours and patterns, turned on edge, creased once, and sewn on an angle so that it flares out off her hips. She also made a very cute bikini top out of two of them sewn together which she wears just tied (snugly!) round herself. She has the figure for that, you know.
I don't have a figure that would tolerate anything like that, but I started a bikini bottom out of two bandannas that really made Jessy envious this time. We experimented some more, tearing stitches out a few times to redo and get it right. One I went so far as to finish before finding it was much too low-cut (it would not reach enough to tie!) so I altered it for little Lisa who absolutely loves it. But we did get it right and now we each have two. I will probably make at least another one soon.
It's very simple really. You bring two 20" square cotton bandannas (use a print that's opaque!) together at one point. Lay the point of the one that will be the back over the one that will be the front, then slide it up till you have enough doubled fabric to serve as a lining. I prefer to cut off the point itself and then fold in what will be the leg openings, front and back, till the crutch is about three inches wide (as much or as little as you dare-- this works for me). I fold them each on a little angle so that near the top of the front and from about halfway up my bottom they are not folded under any more but just one layer of fabric. You don't use elastic so it's really crucial that you get the fit right. As it turns out the front is always a little lower and therefore narrower than the back. If you get this wrong it looks terrible (the one that became Lisa's was like this). Sew the straight seam across what will be the bottom and then the leg openings, which you can along the sides. We each have double-stitched these.
When this is together you just sit on it on your bed, bring up the front and back start rolling from the point inwards to your body, neatly and tightly till you can pull it closely about yourself, and then tie them at your hips. (The first few times I stuck a paperclip on the rolled-up front so I could then do the back.) You might need to try it several times till you arrive at how you like to wear it. If you can't get it to tie right or fit right after three or four tries you probably have the two bandannas lapped incorrectly-- the front too far up or the back too far down. Actually when mine fit right there is quite a lot of material rolled up and it actually makes it very comfortable.
Of course if you make it like this, it doesn't matter what size you are. A 20"-square cotton bandanna, like the ones at Dollar Tree, where we got them, when folded in half diagonally has a sine/cosine of 28 inches. That's each half, front and back. If you can't tie it round yourself having over 55 inches to reach round your hips, maybe you shouldn't be wearing a bandanna bikini!
Jessy's first one is made of two identical bandannas in that very common East Indian print on baby-blue. Her second one is made of two in the same watercolour pattern but of varying colours. Both mine are in the East Indian print, one dull brick-red in back and yellow in front and one in navy-blue in back and the same baby-blue as Jessy's in front. The one I gave to Lisa is pink and pale green (her two favourite colours anyway... see how that works?). Jessy is making one for Mother now too-- of course Mother is only 27 and has a beautiful bikini body as well. She admitted the other night she had tried making a handkerchief bikini at about the same age I was when I made my first failed attempt out of a white bedsheet-- though the handkerchiefs were a linen blend (dry-clean only! --ha!) she learned the same lesson about translucency when wet-- and that's why she looked at me sceptically before I had tried out mine in the pool!
I wore the brick-red-and-yellow one to the beach today, along with a plain swimsuit top in the same medium grey as the print on the bandannas. It was very comfortable to lie out in and I went down to stand with Lisa (in hers too) by the water as well. Two ladies asked where I'd got it. Most everyone else seemed to like it too.
(But no, I did NOT go into the water in it!)
...
15 July 2009
Full house
Tuesday & Wednesday, 14-15 July
Jessy, Josie and I left the castle early in the morning, went over and collected Becky, and got up to the Landing (house at Lewes) in time for lunch. Mother had a nice sandwich platter waiting, of which we girls ate pigs' shares. Well-- I am never much for breakfast and we had got nothing more than a bagel or so before we'd left. We had a nice visit and got to show Becky and Josie round our childhood home, including Mommy's cherished formal flower garden out back, newly rejuvenated by Mother (and a bit of paid help). They were especially touched to see Mommy's memorial stone, just a little statuette of an angel on top of the small square marble tablet lying over where her ashes rest. I was glad to be there at Lewes again-- I have not been there in some months. But I do not need Mommy's beloved house ot her gardens or the actual sight of her memorial tablet to remember her, you know.
We caught a ferry at 3.40 for Cape May. Neither Josie nor Becky had ever been on it. This is how provincial some of the people we have met in the Eastern Shore are. The ferry is a fun ride and Cape May is always a nice stop just for a day-- yet none of them have ever ventured two hours north to even see it. For them it is only a dotted line on a map. Jessy and I indulged them and we all went to the forwardmost gate and pretended to lean out like that scene in 'Titanic'. At least we did till we were scolded for it. Then we went up to the deck and leaned out over the railing there, which is more permissible. Needless to say those two dozen photos will make it on to three or four FaceBook sites shortly!
We did not stay for supper in Cape May but drove up directly to the Island and got settled in at the beach house. Jessy and Josie got the idea to stay in the little attic room, the one on the ocean side, where Lisa and J.J. usually sleep, and that might have been sensible. But in the end we all ended up sleeping all over our own room, the one on the western end of the house-- and when I say 'all over' I mean ALL OVER, for after a long game of 'Apples to Apples' we fell asleep where we were, mostly on the floor, though Becky was half up on top of my bed and when I woke up I found Josie curled up on her side with my foot under her pillow. The place was atrociously sweaty. Jessy and I got out of the house, in costume, for our shift at the shop, leaving Josie and Becky a note. They came down for breakfast at about 9.00, in swimsuits under their shorts and t-shirts, and the went to the beach. Jessy and I met them there-- still in costume of course. Of course people stare when we walk down the beach in-season, dressed like 1750s working girls. We put on smiles and carry hand baskets from which we give out discount coupons. The cards are for a free breakfast or sundae if you buy three, because Mommy always said she'd rather have families than dates. It's a different kind of clientele, one that tends to come back a few times during a vacation and then again and again, year after year. Besides giving away one out of for makes more business sense than giving away half, you know.
We sat with Becky and Josie in their swimsuits only for a few moments and then went up to change. We had successfully got out of working this evening (whilst I am typing this) and so spent the afternoon off on the mainland seeing 'Harry Potter 6' (sad movie, and very dark). We went shopping and got back here.
Tomorrow we will be working the evening shift. We hope to be on the beach most of the day. I always wonder if I will run into any of my online friends there... they ought to know by now how to find me. Till then I wish them luck! (ha)
...
Jessy, Josie and I left the castle early in the morning, went over and collected Becky, and got up to the Landing (house at Lewes) in time for lunch. Mother had a nice sandwich platter waiting, of which we girls ate pigs' shares. Well-- I am never much for breakfast and we had got nothing more than a bagel or so before we'd left. We had a nice visit and got to show Becky and Josie round our childhood home, including Mommy's cherished formal flower garden out back, newly rejuvenated by Mother (and a bit of paid help). They were especially touched to see Mommy's memorial stone, just a little statuette of an angel on top of the small square marble tablet lying over where her ashes rest. I was glad to be there at Lewes again-- I have not been there in some months. But I do not need Mommy's beloved house ot her gardens or the actual sight of her memorial tablet to remember her, you know.
We caught a ferry at 3.40 for Cape May. Neither Josie nor Becky had ever been on it. This is how provincial some of the people we have met in the Eastern Shore are. The ferry is a fun ride and Cape May is always a nice stop just for a day-- yet none of them have ever ventured two hours north to even see it. For them it is only a dotted line on a map. Jessy and I indulged them and we all went to the forwardmost gate and pretended to lean out like that scene in 'Titanic'. At least we did till we were scolded for it. Then we went up to the deck and leaned out over the railing there, which is more permissible. Needless to say those two dozen photos will make it on to three or four FaceBook sites shortly!
We did not stay for supper in Cape May but drove up directly to the Island and got settled in at the beach house. Jessy and Josie got the idea to stay in the little attic room, the one on the ocean side, where Lisa and J.J. usually sleep, and that might have been sensible. But in the end we all ended up sleeping all over our own room, the one on the western end of the house-- and when I say 'all over' I mean ALL OVER, for after a long game of 'Apples to Apples' we fell asleep where we were, mostly on the floor, though Becky was half up on top of my bed and when I woke up I found Josie curled up on her side with my foot under her pillow. The place was atrociously sweaty. Jessy and I got out of the house, in costume, for our shift at the shop, leaving Josie and Becky a note. They came down for breakfast at about 9.00, in swimsuits under their shorts and t-shirts, and the went to the beach. Jessy and I met them there-- still in costume of course. Of course people stare when we walk down the beach in-season, dressed like 1750s working girls. We put on smiles and carry hand baskets from which we give out discount coupons. The cards are for a free breakfast or sundae if you buy three, because Mommy always said she'd rather have families than dates. It's a different kind of clientele, one that tends to come back a few times during a vacation and then again and again, year after year. Besides giving away one out of for makes more business sense than giving away half, you know.
We sat with Becky and Josie in their swimsuits only for a few moments and then went up to change. We had successfully got out of working this evening (whilst I am typing this) and so spent the afternoon off on the mainland seeing 'Harry Potter 6' (sad movie, and very dark). We went shopping and got back here.
Tomorrow we will be working the evening shift. We hope to be on the beach most of the day. I always wonder if I will run into any of my online friends there... they ought to know by now how to find me. Till then I wish them luck! (ha)
...
13 July 2009
An update
Monday 13 July 2009
I have not been on much lately as I have been busy with this and that. Jessy and I have been working pretty regularly at the breakfast & dessert place, in costume of course! Our shifts are pretty much the same, usually Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and then one or both of the days on the weekend. Most often it's been Sunday. This weekend Jessy and I arranged to be off and drove home Friday night, to hang out with the girls at home (meaning Terncote). On Saturday five of them came over and we had a sort of meeting of the girls' club. That evening I had dinner with Stephen and his family whilst Jessy went over to Josie's. Jessy and I went to church on Sunday and had brunch with Rita and Josie after lunch Becky joined us at home. We just hung round the pool and so on. On Sunday evening Josie stayed over as Jessy's guest. As I write this they are both out back, still, even though it's past 7.00 pm.
Josie is the one who has embraced the freedom of being naked round the house as much as Jessy and I have. She even does it at home. Her mother is single and not dating and her younger sister is only about 9 and thinks it's silly, so at least till her mother gets home she will be naked in the house (Jessy and I have been there; we know it's true). The two of them are cute-- I served tea this afternoon and they both sat at the outside table with their ankles crossed and napkins in their laps and used all the most perfect table manners. I understand why Mother does not want us undressed at the dinner table but for me it is no bother especially when we are being proper in every other respect. I promised them some frozen pizza later wen we decide to watch something down in the TV room.
This weekend Daddy and Mother and our little ones are at the house in Lewes-- they sailed down at the end of last week and now the boat rides her mooring off the beach on the Bay (you can see it from the Ferry). Little J.J. always hates the lifejacket and I heard he had to receive some stern words from Daddy about it-- the rule is he is either down below (and that means NOT on the ladder!) or wearing the lifejacket on deck. He has grown grudgingly used to it and plays at typing knots, doing puzzles and 'making wine' (playing in a bucket of seawater in the cockpit). Meanwhile Lisa in her own lifejacket scampers all over the deck and is nearly impossible to restrain. I think being on only 34 feet of boat bores her and makes her feel confined. Mother did say on the phone that she allowed Lisa to take off her swimsuit-- provided she got enough sunblock all over, you know-- and then teased Jessy and me, saying that it reminded her of us and that Lisa's tendency is our fault. I laughed at that. But like Josie she just enjoys the freedom, and it's only harmless.
Tomorrow Jessy and I, with Josie and Becky, drive back up to NJ. We will stop at the house in Lewes for lunch and take a late-afternoon ferry to Cape May. Then of course we will have to work Wednesday, usually our one guaranteed off day, whilst Becky and Rita either sleep in or bask on the beach. There is one good thing about our schedule though and that is that the place is only open 7-11 am and 7-11 pm, which leaves the entire middle of the day open for fun in the sun. Of course it's a public beach and there's no chance for sunning all bare as we do here at Terncote. --though I am sure that after this weekend none of us desperately need more of that (especially in some places!).
I shall make every effort to keep up with my blog a little more frequently than I have been doing over the last month; but honestly it's been very busy this end!
...
I have not been on much lately as I have been busy with this and that. Jessy and I have been working pretty regularly at the breakfast & dessert place, in costume of course! Our shifts are pretty much the same, usually Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and then one or both of the days on the weekend. Most often it's been Sunday. This weekend Jessy and I arranged to be off and drove home Friday night, to hang out with the girls at home (meaning Terncote). On Saturday five of them came over and we had a sort of meeting of the girls' club. That evening I had dinner with Stephen and his family whilst Jessy went over to Josie's. Jessy and I went to church on Sunday and had brunch with Rita and Josie after lunch Becky joined us at home. We just hung round the pool and so on. On Sunday evening Josie stayed over as Jessy's guest. As I write this they are both out back, still, even though it's past 7.00 pm.
Josie is the one who has embraced the freedom of being naked round the house as much as Jessy and I have. She even does it at home. Her mother is single and not dating and her younger sister is only about 9 and thinks it's silly, so at least till her mother gets home she will be naked in the house (Jessy and I have been there; we know it's true). The two of them are cute-- I served tea this afternoon and they both sat at the outside table with their ankles crossed and napkins in their laps and used all the most perfect table manners. I understand why Mother does not want us undressed at the dinner table but for me it is no bother especially when we are being proper in every other respect. I promised them some frozen pizza later wen we decide to watch something down in the TV room.
This weekend Daddy and Mother and our little ones are at the house in Lewes-- they sailed down at the end of last week and now the boat rides her mooring off the beach on the Bay (you can see it from the Ferry). Little J.J. always hates the lifejacket and I heard he had to receive some stern words from Daddy about it-- the rule is he is either down below (and that means NOT on the ladder!) or wearing the lifejacket on deck. He has grown grudgingly used to it and plays at typing knots, doing puzzles and 'making wine' (playing in a bucket of seawater in the cockpit). Meanwhile Lisa in her own lifejacket scampers all over the deck and is nearly impossible to restrain. I think being on only 34 feet of boat bores her and makes her feel confined. Mother did say on the phone that she allowed Lisa to take off her swimsuit-- provided she got enough sunblock all over, you know-- and then teased Jessy and me, saying that it reminded her of us and that Lisa's tendency is our fault. I laughed at that. But like Josie she just enjoys the freedom, and it's only harmless.
Tomorrow Jessy and I, with Josie and Becky, drive back up to NJ. We will stop at the house in Lewes for lunch and take a late-afternoon ferry to Cape May. Then of course we will have to work Wednesday, usually our one guaranteed off day, whilst Becky and Rita either sleep in or bask on the beach. There is one good thing about our schedule though and that is that the place is only open 7-11 am and 7-11 pm, which leaves the entire middle of the day open for fun in the sun. Of course it's a public beach and there's no chance for sunning all bare as we do here at Terncote. --though I am sure that after this weekend none of us desperately need more of that (especially in some places!).
I shall make every effort to keep up with my blog a little more frequently than I have been doing over the last month; but honestly it's been very busy this end!
...
17 June 2009
An invited guest
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
It is morning-I am up. I must be going for a record-- I have not had on a stitch (not counting shoes) since Sunday afternoon... that's what? --two and a half days, and will be three and a half by tomorrow. It's just been too pleasant. And Daddy is still away-- Mother got a call from him last night that he had driven down to the house in Lewes last night to pick up things for the boat and drove right back up to his brother's house in NJ. He asked if Jessy or I wanted to come along and I think at least I was in bed by then and Mother said we were just having too nice a time here to be disturbed. I am sure he knew what that meant.
Mother is full of happy thoughts and happy comments and cute little smiles, as though she likes being queen of a house full of naked girls. Yesterday she was in a bikini all day-- her blue-and-white striped one. She honestly looks about 20 in a bikini. (She's 27 and has had two babies.) Together we have all been gardening, raking, sweeping, even doing a bit of painting like round beyond the garage. Little J.J. (age 3-1/2) is the only male-- and may I say the only one of us who doesn't work. He's built a sand village in the side yard, bordered by the tall grass along the water, the tall grass and shrubs along the preserve, the garage and the garden wall. It's probably fifty feet on a side and is pretty well planned-- there are a few houses (stacks of bricks) and roads between them all and the place is cluttered with trucks and cars. Lisa and Jessy sometimes go over there and help him. He is grateful for the help, rather like a young king (or prince in this case) newly proud of his own domains. No one challenges his authority over Sandtown and so he remains placated.
The surprise this week is that Jessy's friend Josie came over. Mother of course for the door, having put on her cover-up shirt, and gave Josie fair warning. 'Oh,' Josie said, 'well if she doesn't mind--!'
Jessy appeared on the mezzanine above her-- naked of course. 'Come on up!' she said-- and thus the situation was resolved. Next I saw of them they were both skipping-- I mean really SKIPPING-- out the back door, and I went out with Lisa later and joined them. So Josie has become the very first one of our friends to take up with us as we are. I expected her to be concerned about sunburn but she was actually not very white at all. --hmm! Wonder why? We were all very clinical with each other as far as sharing the sun lotion and had a very pleasant afternoon together. Mother rang her little bell for tea on the terraces and we all attended-- four of us this time-- none of us dressed at all. Mother had this sly little smile on the whole time. She secretly envies us, but she won't indulge it herself. I'm sure she thinks it is not her place. So she only encourages us in our indulgence instead.
Many people have asked me about that and have said it is odd that our parents do not do as we do. I am sure they have their own reasons for asking. I am sure too that many of them do not believe it is how it is for us. But our parents are very proper and responsible. I'm not saying other people's aren't-- though that may be true-- but our parents do not have a need to indulge every little whim that pops into their heads without caring about the consequences. In fact you could say that caring about the consequences is exactly what both my parents do best. Daddy teaches us that we are girls and ladies first, and one should never burden or obligate a lady. If he does not know how we would take to his being naked with us, he will not insist that we do, and of course he would be concerned about how we would come to accept all men based on his example (and I mean in terms of behaviour). And anyway he has no need or desire to be naked like we are.
Mother is something else entirely, a perfectly beautiful young woman with needs and desires not much different than those Jessy and I have. The difference is of course that she is married. She feels awkward revealing too much of herself after she has been 'known' (for lack of a better word) by our father. She considers that inappropriate. And of course, as in the Bible, a parent should not be naked in front of her own child, in this case Lisa and J.J. It's just a little awkward thinking that the children can see where they came from! Of course in the case of Jessy and me, those two conditions do not exist-- we are still 'children' in every good sense of the word and at least in one way our bodies can have no effect on the rest of our family. (I do have a suspicion-- perhaps more than a mere suspicion-- that Mother is much less prudish in private with our father, but I really think that shouldn't be something I think about or discuss too often. They are happy as they are and that's all that should matter to a child or stepchild.)
As for Josie... well I shall say that she has taken to it very easily. She and Jessy disappeared into her room, the door was not even fully closed, as we all knew who was in the house at the time, and not five minutes later the two of them emerged, giggling quietly, and trotted down the stairs to the big parlour. In another moment I had looked out my window and seen them going through the garden for the side yard. Jessy even remembered to bring the other chaise for Josie. That meant they expected me to join them... so I did. We sunned and swam and sunned and swam some more all afternoon. By tea-time Josie was as at-ease as we ever are, not even flinching when she saw Mother bringing the tea things to the terrace. 'How are you girls enjoying the day?' Mother asked us all.
'It's lovely,' Jessy said. 'Are there biscuits?'
Mother set down the tray as we all drew out chairs. 'There are, but I was going to heat them up first.'
'Heat them up?' wondered Jessy.
'Well, it's not too hot,' Mother said. 'But you girls have had nothing but sun over there.'
We all agreed the biscuits did not have to be heated up and took our places. Mother returned with the biscuits on a tray and leaned in to set them down. Josie looked up then. 'Thank you, Mrs C--,' she said sweetly.
Mother smiled right back at her. 'You are very welcome, Josie. Do you girls mind if J.J. and I join you?'
I saw Josie glance at me then. Jessy did not hesitate. 'Mother! Do you have to ask?'
Mother giggled and turned to get the other chair. Then we all six of us were seated under the umbrella having (hot) tea and biscuits, chatting about our impressions of the day.
Josie would have to go home for dinner. Very reluctantly she moped up stairs after Jessy. They were up there till Josie's mother pulled in to the front yard. Mother called up to remind them. In her cute shorts and tank-top Josie hurried out along the front gallery and down the stairs, Jessy following her naked, and in the foyer they said good-byes. I said mine from the mezzanine. Mother, in her blue-and-white bikini and cover-up shirt, stepped in at the last moment. 'I'll get that,' she said, and interposed herself between Jessy and the front door. That was a good thing-- Jessy might have got it herself, and what would Josie's mother have thought then?
Mother waved cheerfully out the front door as Josie got in to the car with her mother and they drove away. The electric gate closed. Then she shut the door. 'Well, you two had quite a day,' she said wryly at us.
Jessy only shrugged and turned to come up stairs. 'It was nice that she came over. I did invite her, you know.'
Mother smiled. 'I'm sure.'
Jessy stopped halfway up the stairs. 'Is it all right if she comes over tomorrow?'
Mother made that face again. 'Have you already invited her?'
I did not see but Jessy must have nodded then.
'Very well. Your father comes home tomorrow night or Friday. Just so you know, now.'
'Yes, Mother, of course.' And she started up the stairs again. Later in the evening I happened to pop in her room and she was sitting in her bed with her knees up and the laptop propped on her legs, typing furiously. Seeing me she looked up, and then I could guess the content of her typing. 'Do you think the rest of the club would ever.--? You know.'
I laughed. 'Do you really think they should?'
She shrugged. 'We have to have a pool party before we go,' she said. 'It has to be Friday, when he gets here with the boat.'
I nodded. 'I think we had better not. Not this soon.'
She nodded at once as though that was a perfectly reasonable response, and then she typed more, as furiously as ever. She attacks the keyboard, not hard, but so quickly you swear the picture's running in fast-motion. 'Josie agrees,' she said after a moment. 'But she's looking forward to coming over again.'
I smiled. 'She's always welcome,' I said. 'Just be careful whom you extend invitations to.'
She nodded, typing again. 'I'll always ask Mother first, you know.' Then she looked up. 'And you.'
'Me?'
She typed and then looked up again. 'You know best,' she said. 'And you know me-- I would be like this all the time.'
I giggled. I am sure she would-- and thank God there were no boys there, for her pose was certainly too immodest to have kept them them at bay! But Jessy is like that-- she always feels she has nothing to hide. And so I am glad she consults me. In a way I am her protector, and that makes me happy to be so trusted. There is nothing in the world that could make me betray her trust in me.
...
It is morning-I am up. I must be going for a record-- I have not had on a stitch (not counting shoes) since Sunday afternoon... that's what? --two and a half days, and will be three and a half by tomorrow. It's just been too pleasant. And Daddy is still away-- Mother got a call from him last night that he had driven down to the house in Lewes last night to pick up things for the boat and drove right back up to his brother's house in NJ. He asked if Jessy or I wanted to come along and I think at least I was in bed by then and Mother said we were just having too nice a time here to be disturbed. I am sure he knew what that meant.
Mother is full of happy thoughts and happy comments and cute little smiles, as though she likes being queen of a house full of naked girls. Yesterday she was in a bikini all day-- her blue-and-white striped one. She honestly looks about 20 in a bikini. (She's 27 and has had two babies.) Together we have all been gardening, raking, sweeping, even doing a bit of painting like round beyond the garage. Little J.J. (age 3-1/2) is the only male-- and may I say the only one of us who doesn't work. He's built a sand village in the side yard, bordered by the tall grass along the water, the tall grass and shrubs along the preserve, the garage and the garden wall. It's probably fifty feet on a side and is pretty well planned-- there are a few houses (stacks of bricks) and roads between them all and the place is cluttered with trucks and cars. Lisa and Jessy sometimes go over there and help him. He is grateful for the help, rather like a young king (or prince in this case) newly proud of his own domains. No one challenges his authority over Sandtown and so he remains placated.
The surprise this week is that Jessy's friend Josie came over. Mother of course for the door, having put on her cover-up shirt, and gave Josie fair warning. 'Oh,' Josie said, 'well if she doesn't mind--!'
Jessy appeared on the mezzanine above her-- naked of course. 'Come on up!' she said-- and thus the situation was resolved. Next I saw of them they were both skipping-- I mean really SKIPPING-- out the back door, and I went out with Lisa later and joined them. So Josie has become the very first one of our friends to take up with us as we are. I expected her to be concerned about sunburn but she was actually not very white at all. --hmm! Wonder why? We were all very clinical with each other as far as sharing the sun lotion and had a very pleasant afternoon together. Mother rang her little bell for tea on the terraces and we all attended-- four of us this time-- none of us dressed at all. Mother had this sly little smile on the whole time. She secretly envies us, but she won't indulge it herself. I'm sure she thinks it is not her place. So she only encourages us in our indulgence instead.
Many people have asked me about that and have said it is odd that our parents do not do as we do. I am sure they have their own reasons for asking. I am sure too that many of them do not believe it is how it is for us. But our parents are very proper and responsible. I'm not saying other people's aren't-- though that may be true-- but our parents do not have a need to indulge every little whim that pops into their heads without caring about the consequences. In fact you could say that caring about the consequences is exactly what both my parents do best. Daddy teaches us that we are girls and ladies first, and one should never burden or obligate a lady. If he does not know how we would take to his being naked with us, he will not insist that we do, and of course he would be concerned about how we would come to accept all men based on his example (and I mean in terms of behaviour). And anyway he has no need or desire to be naked like we are.
Mother is something else entirely, a perfectly beautiful young woman with needs and desires not much different than those Jessy and I have. The difference is of course that she is married. She feels awkward revealing too much of herself after she has been 'known' (for lack of a better word) by our father. She considers that inappropriate. And of course, as in the Bible, a parent should not be naked in front of her own child, in this case Lisa and J.J. It's just a little awkward thinking that the children can see where they came from! Of course in the case of Jessy and me, those two conditions do not exist-- we are still 'children' in every good sense of the word and at least in one way our bodies can have no effect on the rest of our family. (I do have a suspicion-- perhaps more than a mere suspicion-- that Mother is much less prudish in private with our father, but I really think that shouldn't be something I think about or discuss too often. They are happy as they are and that's all that should matter to a child or stepchild.)
As for Josie... well I shall say that she has taken to it very easily. She and Jessy disappeared into her room, the door was not even fully closed, as we all knew who was in the house at the time, and not five minutes later the two of them emerged, giggling quietly, and trotted down the stairs to the big parlour. In another moment I had looked out my window and seen them going through the garden for the side yard. Jessy even remembered to bring the other chaise for Josie. That meant they expected me to join them... so I did. We sunned and swam and sunned and swam some more all afternoon. By tea-time Josie was as at-ease as we ever are, not even flinching when she saw Mother bringing the tea things to the terrace. 'How are you girls enjoying the day?' Mother asked us all.
'It's lovely,' Jessy said. 'Are there biscuits?'
Mother set down the tray as we all drew out chairs. 'There are, but I was going to heat them up first.'
'Heat them up?' wondered Jessy.
'Well, it's not too hot,' Mother said. 'But you girls have had nothing but sun over there.'
We all agreed the biscuits did not have to be heated up and took our places. Mother returned with the biscuits on a tray and leaned in to set them down. Josie looked up then. 'Thank you, Mrs C--,' she said sweetly.
Mother smiled right back at her. 'You are very welcome, Josie. Do you girls mind if J.J. and I join you?'
I saw Josie glance at me then. Jessy did not hesitate. 'Mother! Do you have to ask?'
Mother giggled and turned to get the other chair. Then we all six of us were seated under the umbrella having (hot) tea and biscuits, chatting about our impressions of the day.
Josie would have to go home for dinner. Very reluctantly she moped up stairs after Jessy. They were up there till Josie's mother pulled in to the front yard. Mother called up to remind them. In her cute shorts and tank-top Josie hurried out along the front gallery and down the stairs, Jessy following her naked, and in the foyer they said good-byes. I said mine from the mezzanine. Mother, in her blue-and-white bikini and cover-up shirt, stepped in at the last moment. 'I'll get that,' she said, and interposed herself between Jessy and the front door. That was a good thing-- Jessy might have got it herself, and what would Josie's mother have thought then?
Mother waved cheerfully out the front door as Josie got in to the car with her mother and they drove away. The electric gate closed. Then she shut the door. 'Well, you two had quite a day,' she said wryly at us.
Jessy only shrugged and turned to come up stairs. 'It was nice that she came over. I did invite her, you know.'
Mother smiled. 'I'm sure.'
Jessy stopped halfway up the stairs. 'Is it all right if she comes over tomorrow?'
Mother made that face again. 'Have you already invited her?'
I did not see but Jessy must have nodded then.
'Very well. Your father comes home tomorrow night or Friday. Just so you know, now.'
'Yes, Mother, of course.' And she started up the stairs again. Later in the evening I happened to pop in her room and she was sitting in her bed with her knees up and the laptop propped on her legs, typing furiously. Seeing me she looked up, and then I could guess the content of her typing. 'Do you think the rest of the club would ever.--? You know.'
I laughed. 'Do you really think they should?'
She shrugged. 'We have to have a pool party before we go,' she said. 'It has to be Friday, when he gets here with the boat.'
I nodded. 'I think we had better not. Not this soon.'
She nodded at once as though that was a perfectly reasonable response, and then she typed more, as furiously as ever. She attacks the keyboard, not hard, but so quickly you swear the picture's running in fast-motion. 'Josie agrees,' she said after a moment. 'But she's looking forward to coming over again.'
I smiled. 'She's always welcome,' I said. 'Just be careful whom you extend invitations to.'
She nodded, typing again. 'I'll always ask Mother first, you know.' Then she looked up. 'And you.'
'Me?'
She typed and then looked up again. 'You know best,' she said. 'And you know me-- I would be like this all the time.'
I giggled. I am sure she would-- and thank God there were no boys there, for her pose was certainly too immodest to have kept them them at bay! But Jessy is like that-- she always feels she has nothing to hide. And so I am glad she consults me. In a way I am her protector, and that makes me happy to be so trusted. There is nothing in the world that could make me betray her trust in me.
...
23 March 2009
Sweating like a pig, thank you; and yourself?
Sunday 22 February 2009
For a while after he was married Daddy used to ride a bicycle, a really nice Italian racing bike, pretty much everywhere. Using all sorts of 'excuses' to ride, like marathons and fundraisers, he crossed the state a few times on it, going both ways, and rode up into New York State and as far south as Chincoteague, just above where we live now. Then we moved to southern Delaware, and he continued to ride till Jessy was walking, or learning how to ride a bicycle herself, and by the time Mommy got sick he had stopped for some reason. Recently he has been interested in riding again, and down in the basement here at Terncote he has been using the rowing machine.
I sort of accepted a dare from Jessy to wear my new bikini for certain softball practices. The team jerseys are red with white polkadots and so is the swimsuit. And I'm totally willing to do it, because I think the little girls will think it's very cool of their coach and just because it would seem cute anyway. The one thing that would NOT be cute about it is if I did it looking as I do now... so... it is down stairs to the rowing machine with Daddy for me.
The machine has a computer on it that tells you what your time and speed would be in a standard 2-km race. A good speed for someone who does not compete too seriously would be under 9 minutes. Right now I am rowing about 9:50, which is deplorable. Daddy rows about 9:20 and he's fifty years old. Jessy came down, observed our times, and then said, 'Well, there's more to being a pretty girl than rowing fast.'
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and looked up at her as the rotor spun down. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
Girlishly she shrugged. 'I guess I'm saying you can get away with not being too athletic if you're pretty.'
I stared at her. She was totally serious. You would never expect it but Jessy is much more conservative than I am when it comes to gender relations. I actually believe she would be content to marry someone a little older and a lot richer who would happily support her while she bakes brownies and does aerobics to stay slim and then greets her husband at the door with no clothes on when he comes home. When you're as pretty as she is, why break a sweat?
I should say that Jessy is by no means UN-athletic-- she swims very well (and fast), she used to race karts in England, she is a good surfer and an excellent ballerina and can run almost endlessly without having to breathe through her mouth. She was also really good at football (soccer) and rounders.
I looked at her and realised she was serious... or at least trying to dare me. 'Grrrrrrrgh!' I growled, and reached for the bar and gave it a long hard pull. I cranked that stupid machine right back up to about 2:20 per 500 and concentrated on not breaking form. I did not watch Jessy but out the corner of my eye I saw her wander over and sit down on Mother's stationary bike. But she didn't ride it.
(Did I mention that The Princess was in panties? --cute ones, too, silver-and-white, satin-finish, low-rise bikini... the kind of thing only a true underwear princess would ever wear... and no, she wasn't wearing anything else because, after all, she doesn't need to.)
I pulled the full extra 500 metres at 2:27. Not bad. At last I sat back on the thing, letting go the bar and listening to the rotor spin down again. Daddy came back in then, seeing us like that, Jessy perched prettily on the completely stationary stationary bike and me bent over backwards boiling in sweat. 'Two-twenty-seven? That's good.'
'My two-k sucked,' I groaned over myself.
'At two-twenty-seven, you did a nine-oh-eight.'
'I did a nine-fifty-something!'
'Really? Okay... well... that sucks.'
Jessy laughed. 'Grrrrrrrgh!' I complained.
He leaned over and poked me gently in the bare belly. I sprang up as a reflex. 'All right,' he said. 'Go easier tomorrow, shoot for ten, and get yourself four times that beat it during the week.'
I looked at him. 'I'm not raising my target time because I suck,' I said.
'Yes, you are. That's exactly what you're doing. You're being realistic. Look, from how you're panting right now, you got a good workout. What do we care what your time is?'
I thought about that. 'I wanted to break nine,' I said.
'Why?' he asked me.
I thought. 'Because that's what I used to row, in--'
'In your old school? A year and a half ago?'
I had to think about that too. 'Yeah,' I finally said.
Jessy wagged a finger at me from behind Daddy. Daddy didn't see her. 'You're living in denial,' he told me. 'Deal with the reality and stop trying to kill yourself. You row twice a day, four days a week on that thing, you'll be gorgeous by Memorial Day.'
I made a sad face. 'I thought I was gorgeous now,' I said, pretending to be offended.
'I was trying to tell her she already is,' Jessy said.
Daddy looked at her for a moment and then back at me. 'She is,' he said. 'You are. I mean, you'll be running marathons. You handle four workouts a week on that thing, twenty minutes plus warm-ups and cool-downs, getting your time down each time... my God. You'll run rings around a marathon.'
I nodded. 'I know.'
He held up a finger at me. 'You're done today. Stretch it out, have a shower. Your mother is making supper.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Daddy.' He left. I looked at Jessy then. 'Why does he think I want to run marathons?'
She shrugged, looking pretty. 'I think he just wants you to feel healthy. And to like yourself more.'
'Whoever said I didn't like myself?'
She shrugged again. 'Personally I think you ask too much of yourself.'
I pinched my side. 'See this? This, right here? THIS is too much of myself.'
Jessy laughed. 'This is what you get for buying the polkadot bikini before you can fit into it yet.'
'Stop it,' I said.
She only laughed again. I reached down and pulled the bar back to start another 500... with vengeance.
...
For a while after he was married Daddy used to ride a bicycle, a really nice Italian racing bike, pretty much everywhere. Using all sorts of 'excuses' to ride, like marathons and fundraisers, he crossed the state a few times on it, going both ways, and rode up into New York State and as far south as Chincoteague, just above where we live now. Then we moved to southern Delaware, and he continued to ride till Jessy was walking, or learning how to ride a bicycle herself, and by the time Mommy got sick he had stopped for some reason. Recently he has been interested in riding again, and down in the basement here at Terncote he has been using the rowing machine.
I sort of accepted a dare from Jessy to wear my new bikini for certain softball practices. The team jerseys are red with white polkadots and so is the swimsuit. And I'm totally willing to do it, because I think the little girls will think it's very cool of their coach and just because it would seem cute anyway. The one thing that would NOT be cute about it is if I did it looking as I do now... so... it is down stairs to the rowing machine with Daddy for me.
The machine has a computer on it that tells you what your time and speed would be in a standard 2-km race. A good speed for someone who does not compete too seriously would be under 9 minutes. Right now I am rowing about 9:50, which is deplorable. Daddy rows about 9:20 and he's fifty years old. Jessy came down, observed our times, and then said, 'Well, there's more to being a pretty girl than rowing fast.'
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and looked up at her as the rotor spun down. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
Girlishly she shrugged. 'I guess I'm saying you can get away with not being too athletic if you're pretty.'
I stared at her. She was totally serious. You would never expect it but Jessy is much more conservative than I am when it comes to gender relations. I actually believe she would be content to marry someone a little older and a lot richer who would happily support her while she bakes brownies and does aerobics to stay slim and then greets her husband at the door with no clothes on when he comes home. When you're as pretty as she is, why break a sweat?
I should say that Jessy is by no means UN-athletic-- she swims very well (and fast), she used to race karts in England, she is a good surfer and an excellent ballerina and can run almost endlessly without having to breathe through her mouth. She was also really good at football (soccer) and rounders.
I looked at her and realised she was serious... or at least trying to dare me. 'Grrrrrrrgh!' I growled, and reached for the bar and gave it a long hard pull. I cranked that stupid machine right back up to about 2:20 per 500 and concentrated on not breaking form. I did not watch Jessy but out the corner of my eye I saw her wander over and sit down on Mother's stationary bike. But she didn't ride it.
(Did I mention that The Princess was in panties? --cute ones, too, silver-and-white, satin-finish, low-rise bikini... the kind of thing only a true underwear princess would ever wear... and no, she wasn't wearing anything else because, after all, she doesn't need to.)
I pulled the full extra 500 metres at 2:27. Not bad. At last I sat back on the thing, letting go the bar and listening to the rotor spin down again. Daddy came back in then, seeing us like that, Jessy perched prettily on the completely stationary stationary bike and me bent over backwards boiling in sweat. 'Two-twenty-seven? That's good.'
'My two-k sucked,' I groaned over myself.
'At two-twenty-seven, you did a nine-oh-eight.'
'I did a nine-fifty-something!'
'Really? Okay... well... that sucks.'
Jessy laughed. 'Grrrrrrrgh!' I complained.
He leaned over and poked me gently in the bare belly. I sprang up as a reflex. 'All right,' he said. 'Go easier tomorrow, shoot for ten, and get yourself four times that beat it during the week.'
I looked at him. 'I'm not raising my target time because I suck,' I said.
'Yes, you are. That's exactly what you're doing. You're being realistic. Look, from how you're panting right now, you got a good workout. What do we care what your time is?'
I thought about that. 'I wanted to break nine,' I said.
'Why?' he asked me.
I thought. 'Because that's what I used to row, in--'
'In your old school? A year and a half ago?'
I had to think about that too. 'Yeah,' I finally said.
Jessy wagged a finger at me from behind Daddy. Daddy didn't see her. 'You're living in denial,' he told me. 'Deal with the reality and stop trying to kill yourself. You row twice a day, four days a week on that thing, you'll be gorgeous by Memorial Day.'
I made a sad face. 'I thought I was gorgeous now,' I said, pretending to be offended.
'I was trying to tell her she already is,' Jessy said.
Daddy looked at her for a moment and then back at me. 'She is,' he said. 'You are. I mean, you'll be running marathons. You handle four workouts a week on that thing, twenty minutes plus warm-ups and cool-downs, getting your time down each time... my God. You'll run rings around a marathon.'
I nodded. 'I know.'
He held up a finger at me. 'You're done today. Stretch it out, have a shower. Your mother is making supper.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Daddy.' He left. I looked at Jessy then. 'Why does he think I want to run marathons?'
She shrugged, looking pretty. 'I think he just wants you to feel healthy. And to like yourself more.'
'Whoever said I didn't like myself?'
She shrugged again. 'Personally I think you ask too much of yourself.'
I pinched my side. 'See this? This, right here? THIS is too much of myself.'
Jessy laughed. 'This is what you get for buying the polkadot bikini before you can fit into it yet.'
'Stop it,' I said.
She only laughed again. I reached down and pulled the bar back to start another 500... with vengeance.
...
02 February 2009
A reprieve (sort of)
Monday 2 February 2009
I was supposed to have had play practice tonight, following the schedule made up since the New Year began, but our director, Rick, called out sick and we are off tonight. This is odd because this is the most vital time, known as 'tech week', in which we run the play each night, with no interruptions, and everyone must be completely off book. I made an error once last week but other than that have been off book for the last five or six practises. Shakespeare is more than drama-- it is poetry, and the words all make sense if you have got them right, both semantically and rhythmically. I enjoy playing a comedic character because she rarely speaks in iambic pentameter like Olivia and Orsino do, but there is still a metre to all the lines though having done 'Tempest' and 'Shrew' at HOH I may just have a knack for Shakespeare.
Tonight is also a reprieve as it is the end of a very pleasant, clear, warm day... and you probably know what that means. Jessy was naked before I was. I wandered down stairs, actually hoping to not run into Daddy as I did not want to have to explain myself being naked in the house in February, and spied her skipping across the dormant garden out back. Well I could let her explain that then! --Daddy was probably up stairs in his computer room at the moment! I cautiously opened the glass door at the back of the small parlour, but I already knew it was actually over 60 degrees outside. What could be the harm?
'Hey, you,' I called carefully, assuming Daddy would hear.
She turned, surprised to hear someone calling her, and then waved gaily at me. 'Hey! Come on out!'
'You are nuts,' I said.
'I'm freeeeee!' She threw both arms in the air and cast herself off across the paving blocks, flitting through the air like a pixie. I laughed out loud. 'Janine's scared!' she teased. 'Janine's a biiiiig baby!'
'As if,' I said, and then turning round to see that I was not seen I stepped out of my shoes and slipped outside.
The air was crisp and clean, bathed in the salt spray and the bright sunlight. I tiptoed quickly to the side steps and ducked out the garden gate the way Jessy had just gone. Out on the lawn where we like most to sun ourselves, the garden wall blocked the light yet stiff breeze and left us alone in the afternoon sunlight. Jessy skipped on ahead of me, flinging herself by one arm round a tree and then scurrying off towards the front of the house where there was more clear sun.
We have a 7-foot block wall round the property and it goes across in front of the house about 75 yards away. Between that and the house is what we call the front lawn, but it is divided in two by the entrance drive with a row of fruit trees to either side, just like the one at our old house in Delaware. Where the wall meets the drive there is a pretty panelled wooden gate. It's usually left open, like the one at Lewes, and of course we two teenaged girls with not a stitch on really shouldn't go traipsing past it in broad daylight. However Jessy, in her nearly-mindless abandon, galloped out past the fruit trees and performed a carefree pirouette right in the middle of the driveway.
At once we both heard the sound of a car entering the lane from the road. 'Eek!' squealed Jessy, and she ran off the driveway, straight for me.
'It's probably Mother,' I said sensibly. I wasn't that worried about it.
'Eek! Hide!'
I laughed and turned to follow her, but, sure enough, it was Mother coming in the open gate. We both dashed off and hid behind a tree as she passed, but from where she stopped the car and began to unload Lisa and J.J., they would have a clear view of this corner of the yard,and so we were trapped till they went in. In the shade it was none too warm and we were both shivering by the time the front doors had closed.
'You twit,' I said, slapping her bare shoulder and shoving her ahead of me into the sunlight. 'Serves you right.'
She giggled like an imbecile. 'And you? You're stuck here with me!'
'Only till I go back in,' I said wryly at her.
Suddenly she bolted off again, running full-tilt for the side yard again, her lithe, lean body extended elegantly in the long beautiful strides of a first-class sprinter. She really is a pixie after all.
Our only way back into the house was through the French windows at the back of the little parlour and fortunately Mother had not noticed them unlocked or she could have locked us out. In the house we made our way through the big parlour and ascended to the bedroom gallery. Little Lisa, hearing us, came out and caught us. 'Were you guys outside?' she asked in a mocking scolding tone, even setting her hands on her hips at us.
Jessy only giggled and went into the sanctuary of her room. I made a face and then bent down to kiss Lisa's head. 'We were,' I told her, 'but it's gone cold and we had best stay inside now.'
'Do you want to see my family board from school?' she asked, and then towed me into her room to show me her project which depicted her whole immediate family and on which she had got full marks... and of course she made no issue of the fact that I had nothing on but my high-heeled slippers.
I'm still naked-- only wrapt-up in my favourite blanket now-- and have promised myself to sleep like this. Surely it can't get THAT cold too fast.
...
I was supposed to have had play practice tonight, following the schedule made up since the New Year began, but our director, Rick, called out sick and we are off tonight. This is odd because this is the most vital time, known as 'tech week', in which we run the play each night, with no interruptions, and everyone must be completely off book. I made an error once last week but other than that have been off book for the last five or six practises. Shakespeare is more than drama-- it is poetry, and the words all make sense if you have got them right, both semantically and rhythmically. I enjoy playing a comedic character because she rarely speaks in iambic pentameter like Olivia and Orsino do, but there is still a metre to all the lines though having done 'Tempest' and 'Shrew' at HOH I may just have a knack for Shakespeare.
Tonight is also a reprieve as it is the end of a very pleasant, clear, warm day... and you probably know what that means. Jessy was naked before I was. I wandered down stairs, actually hoping to not run into Daddy as I did not want to have to explain myself being naked in the house in February, and spied her skipping across the dormant garden out back. Well I could let her explain that then! --Daddy was probably up stairs in his computer room at the moment! I cautiously opened the glass door at the back of the small parlour, but I already knew it was actually over 60 degrees outside. What could be the harm?
'Hey, you,' I called carefully, assuming Daddy would hear.
She turned, surprised to hear someone calling her, and then waved gaily at me. 'Hey! Come on out!'
'You are nuts,' I said.
'I'm freeeeee!' She threw both arms in the air and cast herself off across the paving blocks, flitting through the air like a pixie. I laughed out loud. 'Janine's scared!' she teased. 'Janine's a biiiiig baby!'
'As if,' I said, and then turning round to see that I was not seen I stepped out of my shoes and slipped outside.
The air was crisp and clean, bathed in the salt spray and the bright sunlight. I tiptoed quickly to the side steps and ducked out the garden gate the way Jessy had just gone. Out on the lawn where we like most to sun ourselves, the garden wall blocked the light yet stiff breeze and left us alone in the afternoon sunlight. Jessy skipped on ahead of me, flinging herself by one arm round a tree and then scurrying off towards the front of the house where there was more clear sun.
We have a 7-foot block wall round the property and it goes across in front of the house about 75 yards away. Between that and the house is what we call the front lawn, but it is divided in two by the entrance drive with a row of fruit trees to either side, just like the one at our old house in Delaware. Where the wall meets the drive there is a pretty panelled wooden gate. It's usually left open, like the one at Lewes, and of course we two teenaged girls with not a stitch on really shouldn't go traipsing past it in broad daylight. However Jessy, in her nearly-mindless abandon, galloped out past the fruit trees and performed a carefree pirouette right in the middle of the driveway.
At once we both heard the sound of a car entering the lane from the road. 'Eek!' squealed Jessy, and she ran off the driveway, straight for me.
'It's probably Mother,' I said sensibly. I wasn't that worried about it.
'Eek! Hide!'
I laughed and turned to follow her, but, sure enough, it was Mother coming in the open gate. We both dashed off and hid behind a tree as she passed, but from where she stopped the car and began to unload Lisa and J.J., they would have a clear view of this corner of the yard,and so we were trapped till they went in. In the shade it was none too warm and we were both shivering by the time the front doors had closed.
'You twit,' I said, slapping her bare shoulder and shoving her ahead of me into the sunlight. 'Serves you right.'
She giggled like an imbecile. 'And you? You're stuck here with me!'
'Only till I go back in,' I said wryly at her.
Suddenly she bolted off again, running full-tilt for the side yard again, her lithe, lean body extended elegantly in the long beautiful strides of a first-class sprinter. She really is a pixie after all.
Our only way back into the house was through the French windows at the back of the little parlour and fortunately Mother had not noticed them unlocked or she could have locked us out. In the house we made our way through the big parlour and ascended to the bedroom gallery. Little Lisa, hearing us, came out and caught us. 'Were you guys outside?' she asked in a mocking scolding tone, even setting her hands on her hips at us.
Jessy only giggled and went into the sanctuary of her room. I made a face and then bent down to kiss Lisa's head. 'We were,' I told her, 'but it's gone cold and we had best stay inside now.'
'Do you want to see my family board from school?' she asked, and then towed me into her room to show me her project which depicted her whole immediate family and on which she had got full marks... and of course she made no issue of the fact that I had nothing on but my high-heeled slippers.
I'm still naked-- only wrapt-up in my favourite blanket now-- and have promised myself to sleep like this. Surely it can't get THAT cold too fast.
...
12 January 2009
Five dollars
Friday afternoon, 9 January 2009
We arrived at the Rehoboth Outlets just before lunch, time enough to visit the Timberland shop and a few others along that way before making our way round to the so-called food court, 'the land of the five-dollar pizza slice' as we call it. (Really they are like 3.25, but still....) Roger met us shortly after and drove us across Route One to the other side, where we picked up stockings, socks, underwear and scarves at the Hanes outlet which is my favourite shop in the whole place (except sometimes the Bali place... depending on my mood). We got Dr Pepper at the burger place and actually sat at the tables outside sipping it. By the time we were done it was nigh onto 4.00 pm and nasty little snow flurries were flecking the sky. On our way back to the car I saw him.
He was shuffling along in pants that were too long and a long ugly grey overcoat, not speaking to or looking at anyone at all, as though his pride would not allow him to look needy. But he was in need. Even as people shied away from him he found a comfortable place to lean outside the rest rooms, which was enough out of the weather for the moment. And we wondered where he would go. The snow built and the sky went darker and there was an ominous sort of portent to the whole afternoon, as though someone somewhere was waiting for something to happen somehow. And then both of us looked at each other.
Jessy drew herself up to her own courage and I would support it. 'Wait,' I said, and dug in my purse. But, the embarrassing thing is... we don't carry cash. Thank God for debit accounts-- yes, maybe 95 percent of the time. Daddy never wants us going away loaded with green money-- he thinks if we're seen using cards we've got nothing worth robbing us for. So as I looked all I had was a five-dollar note and a one-dollar note. Six dollars, to offer someone who had nothing at all.
Daddy told us a funny story once-- a story which does not seem so funny now and did not as Jessy and I stood in the snowfall regarding a poorer, older man who did not want to be an example or a spectacle or a reason for anything. In the Eighties, in the days of his second band, the one which, whilst much more successful, was not the one he enjoyed more (though it did lead him to Mommy), Daddy was in Manhattan for a recording date and it was evening and people got hungry. Daddy and one of his mates braved the 52nd-Street madness at rush hour in the face of an impending snowfall and went looking for anything that would serve the whole studio full. As it turned out they ended up separating for the liquor store, and to wait for his mate Daddy took out his own box of KFC and leaned back against a store front to nibble on it whilst all the people passed. And it was all gone and he happened to drop the last piece, and being basically frugal and having come from nothing he actually leaned down to pick up the dropt piece of fried chicken, as though in New York it could ever have had any value to a human being again (really just so it wasn't litter, you know). And the woman stopped in front of him.
Now my daddy has always had longish hair. He likes to say it's 1968 original equipment (although he was not born in 1968 that's when his hair first got long). And in his performing days it was usually very well kept, long and lush and actually very pretty, although I have seen him sweaty and messy after a show as often as I'd like to and also in the studio so many gentilities go lacking, you know. He was probably looking a shambles leaning against a building on crowded 52nd Street in the face of a snowfall, in need of a shave, with sweaty hair, in a well-abused Army jacket, ripped jeans, torn sneakers, matted sweatshirt, probably no gloves-- this is my dad on a day off, you know. And he had bent over to pick up a dropt piece of KFC chicken. And the woman in a nice wool coat and stockings stopped in front of him and said, 'Here, you poor soul, take this. I'm sorry it's all I have.'
And he looked up, stunned really, and she left it in his surprised hand and went off.
When his mate stepped out with the bottles they both had a really good laugh at it. Daddy waved the five-dollar note round and round like a flag. 'I'm a bum, I'm a derelict!' he announced to the whole street, much too inappropriately, but it must have seemed a riot to him. After all, in spite of that lady's good clothes-- and good heart-- he was probably considerably richer than she had been, even then. At the studio they all had a good laugh at it, and then went on recording and that was that. The good thing about Daddy is that he never forgot that story, went on to donate some pretty good money to one of New York's homeless shelters, and raised his children to have compassionate hearts.
I have asked him whatever became of the very five-dollar note the woman gave him, because I might have liked to seen it framed somewhere, like a reminder to us to be generous. He told me nothing special became of it, that it was just money. Mommy told me once that he had told her he had given it to the very next homeless person on 52nd Street... which I believe.
The homeless man leaned back against the wall outside the rest rooms and wrapped his coat round himself more. It was freezing by now and nearly fully dark. I folded the five-dollar note from my purse round my fingers and practically lunged after him. Behind me, Roger pulled up at the kerb. Jessy waved at him to wait and came with me.
The man looked up as though I were about to rob him. (Why do they always think that?) Drawing a long breath I said gently, 'Here, you poor soul. Please take this. It's all I have.'
'What--?' he scowled at me.
'Please,' I said, extending my arm. I would not look like I would not get too close and stepped right up to him. 'Please.... get some hot tea or something.'
He looked at me, looked at Jessy, swiped the note from my hand, and disappeared into the rest room lobby. Through the window we saw him shuffling away, looking mistrustfully over his shoulder at us, till he had gone into the men's room.
We did not speak to each other as we turned and went back across the covered pavement to the idling car. Roger stood up straight, opened the back door for us, and saw us into the back seat. People stared at us as though we were Mary-Kate and Ashley. I felt like Mary Magdalene.
There is a line from a Sting song that Daddy has often played for us that goes:
'Hide my face in my hands; shame wells in my throat
'A comfortable existence reduced to a shallow shameless party'.
From now on I shall carry more cash in my purse... just because I don't really need it.
...
We arrived at the Rehoboth Outlets just before lunch, time enough to visit the Timberland shop and a few others along that way before making our way round to the so-called food court, 'the land of the five-dollar pizza slice' as we call it. (Really they are like 3.25, but still....) Roger met us shortly after and drove us across Route One to the other side, where we picked up stockings, socks, underwear and scarves at the Hanes outlet which is my favourite shop in the whole place (except sometimes the Bali place... depending on my mood). We got Dr Pepper at the burger place and actually sat at the tables outside sipping it. By the time we were done it was nigh onto 4.00 pm and nasty little snow flurries were flecking the sky. On our way back to the car I saw him.
He was shuffling along in pants that were too long and a long ugly grey overcoat, not speaking to or looking at anyone at all, as though his pride would not allow him to look needy. But he was in need. Even as people shied away from him he found a comfortable place to lean outside the rest rooms, which was enough out of the weather for the moment. And we wondered where he would go. The snow built and the sky went darker and there was an ominous sort of portent to the whole afternoon, as though someone somewhere was waiting for something to happen somehow. And then both of us looked at each other.
Jessy drew herself up to her own courage and I would support it. 'Wait,' I said, and dug in my purse. But, the embarrassing thing is... we don't carry cash. Thank God for debit accounts-- yes, maybe 95 percent of the time. Daddy never wants us going away loaded with green money-- he thinks if we're seen using cards we've got nothing worth robbing us for. So as I looked all I had was a five-dollar note and a one-dollar note. Six dollars, to offer someone who had nothing at all.
Daddy told us a funny story once-- a story which does not seem so funny now and did not as Jessy and I stood in the snowfall regarding a poorer, older man who did not want to be an example or a spectacle or a reason for anything. In the Eighties, in the days of his second band, the one which, whilst much more successful, was not the one he enjoyed more (though it did lead him to Mommy), Daddy was in Manhattan for a recording date and it was evening and people got hungry. Daddy and one of his mates braved the 52nd-Street madness at rush hour in the face of an impending snowfall and went looking for anything that would serve the whole studio full. As it turned out they ended up separating for the liquor store, and to wait for his mate Daddy took out his own box of KFC and leaned back against a store front to nibble on it whilst all the people passed. And it was all gone and he happened to drop the last piece, and being basically frugal and having come from nothing he actually leaned down to pick up the dropt piece of fried chicken, as though in New York it could ever have had any value to a human being again (really just so it wasn't litter, you know). And the woman stopped in front of him.
Now my daddy has always had longish hair. He likes to say it's 1968 original equipment (although he was not born in 1968 that's when his hair first got long). And in his performing days it was usually very well kept, long and lush and actually very pretty, although I have seen him sweaty and messy after a show as often as I'd like to and also in the studio so many gentilities go lacking, you know. He was probably looking a shambles leaning against a building on crowded 52nd Street in the face of a snowfall, in need of a shave, with sweaty hair, in a well-abused Army jacket, ripped jeans, torn sneakers, matted sweatshirt, probably no gloves-- this is my dad on a day off, you know. And he had bent over to pick up a dropt piece of KFC chicken. And the woman in a nice wool coat and stockings stopped in front of him and said, 'Here, you poor soul, take this. I'm sorry it's all I have.'
And he looked up, stunned really, and she left it in his surprised hand and went off.
When his mate stepped out with the bottles they both had a really good laugh at it. Daddy waved the five-dollar note round and round like a flag. 'I'm a bum, I'm a derelict!' he announced to the whole street, much too inappropriately, but it must have seemed a riot to him. After all, in spite of that lady's good clothes-- and good heart-- he was probably considerably richer than she had been, even then. At the studio they all had a good laugh at it, and then went on recording and that was that. The good thing about Daddy is that he never forgot that story, went on to donate some pretty good money to one of New York's homeless shelters, and raised his children to have compassionate hearts.
I have asked him whatever became of the very five-dollar note the woman gave him, because I might have liked to seen it framed somewhere, like a reminder to us to be generous. He told me nothing special became of it, that it was just money. Mommy told me once that he had told her he had given it to the very next homeless person on 52nd Street... which I believe.
The homeless man leaned back against the wall outside the rest rooms and wrapped his coat round himself more. It was freezing by now and nearly fully dark. I folded the five-dollar note from my purse round my fingers and practically lunged after him. Behind me, Roger pulled up at the kerb. Jessy waved at him to wait and came with me.
The man looked up as though I were about to rob him. (Why do they always think that?) Drawing a long breath I said gently, 'Here, you poor soul. Please take this. It's all I have.'
'What--?' he scowled at me.
'Please,' I said, extending my arm. I would not look like I would not get too close and stepped right up to him. 'Please.... get some hot tea or something.'
He looked at me, looked at Jessy, swiped the note from my hand, and disappeared into the rest room lobby. Through the window we saw him shuffling away, looking mistrustfully over his shoulder at us, till he had gone into the men's room.
We did not speak to each other as we turned and went back across the covered pavement to the idling car. Roger stood up straight, opened the back door for us, and saw us into the back seat. People stared at us as though we were Mary-Kate and Ashley. I felt like Mary Magdalene.
There is a line from a Sting song that Daddy has often played for us that goes:
'Hide my face in my hands; shame wells in my throat
'A comfortable existence reduced to a shallow shameless party'.
From now on I shall carry more cash in my purse... just because I don't really need it.
...
Visit with Mommy
Friday, 9 January 2009
I arose, happy with my resolve to go visit Mommy. I have not been up there since well before Thanksgiving and I have missed the quiet peace of that house and the view of the Bay. Daddy caught me however, at about 9.30 as I was descending in my jeans and leather patchwork jacket, and he saw I had my keys out. 'Where are you off to?' he asked, not to be nosy, you know.
'I,' I announced happily, 'am going up to see Mommy.'
He nodded, looking down then, and for a moment seemed to have no words. Well-- that was understandable. 'All right,' he said. 'But let Roger take you.'
I stamped my foot, still standing on the bottom step. 'Daddy! Jessy and I had a whole day planned!'
'All right, but just let him drive you. I have some stuff at the house he can check on for me anyway.' When I was ready to protest he said, 'Can you be sure you'll be back by dark? That's three-thirty today.'
My licence doesn't allow me to drive after dark for another few months yet. 'Sure,' I said-- and then I said a stupid thing. 'We won't have any trouble if we are, you know--'
'That is not the point,' he said. 'It's the law. You don't make excuses to avoid the law. And... it's going to snow.'
I think that must have been the settling factor.
I slumped down in the back of the Cadillac, not even glancing out at the passing landscape. It's dull here anyway. 'Well,' Jessy said, trying to cheer me up, 'it's at least safer, and we don't have to worry about running out of gas.'
I glared at her. Still I felt a little better by the time we had come into Delaware. Our old house is up on the Bay shore, at the very bottom of Delaware Bay, with an unimpeded view of all the shipping traffic and especially the Cape May Ferry route. How I loved hearing that familiar whistle again! The electric gates slid apart and Roger steered the long green Cadillac in to our old yard. The grass in the 'wilderness', the area we always left raw, is high but dormant, and the row of fruit trees to either side look dead and done, but all this will be in superior bloom by Easter again... and Mommy's birthday.
Roger reviewed the alarm codes with us and left Jessy and me to open up the house whilst he went round to the car yard. Inside, the air was stiff and cool-- the heating is set on 55 and we could just see our breath-- and dark, since all the storm shutters have been closed. As soon at the alarm was off we put on lights and ran up to look at our old bedrooms. Of course the bedclothes are off, packed away in plastic containers in the cedar cupboards up stairs, but we both bounced onto our unmade beds and giggled like little girls.
I know Jessy loves this place and sometimes she wishes, even more than I do, that we had never left. However we both understand, far more than Lisa and J.J. ever will be able to, why Daddy did not want to stay here with his new wife and his new children. This house is part of the loss of our mother, and like everything about her Daddy will keep it close to his heart forever. His new wife does not replace her-- they have a pact whereby they insist they will never try, for they both loved her in profound, life-altering ways. I have often said that their being married and beginning a new family is the best way to pay homage to what Mommy always wanted for all of us. But I know it must be different for Daddy.
We descended to the main floor again and slipped out the back doors into the brittle wind. Mommy's small but well-organised flower garden has seen better days-- everything here is dead and cold, but that is owing much more to the season than to any neglect. I know Roger visits this place regularly, just to keep in touch with it. He and Daddy rebuilt the small Buick here that eventually became the car for the girl who became our nanny and, eventually, stepmother, after she came to live with us and then went off to university. For a while she and her best friend stayed in the guest cottage, at the other end of the pool. Then she moved into what we always, so stiffly, called the maid's room, though we have never had a maid here. It was just a small room in front, behind the fireplace in the kitchen. The whole house was designed by Daddy to be an authentic 1740s country farm house, neither large nor fancy but so proper and elegant in its clean lines, slate-blue clapboards, bright white trim and accurate mullioned windows that more than one season the local Colonial society had asked us to let them include it on their old-house tour-- and it was built 250 years after even those architectural experts believed it was!
Mommy's ashes lie in a heavy stainless-steel canister inside a concrete tube in the midst of the tiger-lily beds along the northern side of the garden, under her bedroom window. From here she greets the morning sun as it comes over the beach grass. Some trash and leaves now clogged the ground cover and we both knelt there and cleared it, just the typical winter stuff that tosses up here from somewhere far up the Bay. Whilst kneeling we took each other's hand and said our prayers. Jessy wept. She always does. She was only seven when Mommy left and for a long time she believed it was because of something she'd done. Little kids often think that. But there was nothing she had ever done-- she was always a very good little girl and knew everyone thought so. It's only that when something like that happens when you are that young, you grow up away from that event with only that connection to it.
As we got up Jessy, still holding my hand, turned back to the little tablet in the garden and said, 'I promise to be good, Mommy.' It's what she has always said when she has visited this place ever since we moved away, because it's what Mommy asked her to promise when she lay in that hospital just hours from when she would leave us for good and every time we had visited up till then.
'You have to be good for your daddy and your sister,' she would say. 'They need you to be good.'
'I promise I will be,' she said then. And she always has been.
We went up stairs again and collected a few things from our childhood mementoes-- a collage I made for third grade, the big pink paper dinosaur Jessy made in second, the same year, early-reader books to lend to Lisa, and the big yellow-and-red tipper truck Daddy bought for me when I was J.J.'s age, like all our things lovingly cherished and preserved from then till now with sentimental gentleness by both our parents. This was to be our lifelong heritage home, the place we would always come back to, with our children and grandchildren, for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and Mother's Day and Father's Day and everyone's birthday. This whole estate-- if I may call it that, all eleven acres of it-- was planned by two young parents as an ideal getaway from public life and a perpetual home in which they would raise their two sweet, innocent girls. All that was lost one October evening eight years ago. Now it is, in some respects, just a house (sadly in need of new paint!) surrounded by fruit trees and tall grass. Secretly Jessy and I have discussed which one of us shall ask for it when the first of us is married. I have never thought Daddy would consider that either inappropriate or expensive. Indeed I believe that is the real reason he hangs onto both this one and the one up in Surf City.
If it comes down to that I would rather have the beach house and leave this place to Jessy. The beach house suits my attitude towards life better anyway. It is small, crowded sensibly but snugly on a small patch of land on which the dunes encroach year after year. There is one garage, no basement, a small parlour and a small square dining room that barely seats six of us to table. It is at the ocean, but this place is at the Bay and a two-mile walk through open beach park will lead to the ocean from here too. I will sit up in what used to be Daddy's library and write my novels, feed my cats, and take long walks on the beach in the off-season. And Jessy will marry someone young-at-heart like Daddy, and take good care of Mommy's gardens and Mommy's tablet in the tiger-lilies. It is what she thinks of when she promises to be a good child. And she will make sure all three or four of her cheerful children promise to be good too.
...
I arose, happy with my resolve to go visit Mommy. I have not been up there since well before Thanksgiving and I have missed the quiet peace of that house and the view of the Bay. Daddy caught me however, at about 9.30 as I was descending in my jeans and leather patchwork jacket, and he saw I had my keys out. 'Where are you off to?' he asked, not to be nosy, you know.
'I,' I announced happily, 'am going up to see Mommy.'
He nodded, looking down then, and for a moment seemed to have no words. Well-- that was understandable. 'All right,' he said. 'But let Roger take you.'
I stamped my foot, still standing on the bottom step. 'Daddy! Jessy and I had a whole day planned!'
'All right, but just let him drive you. I have some stuff at the house he can check on for me anyway.' When I was ready to protest he said, 'Can you be sure you'll be back by dark? That's three-thirty today.'
My licence doesn't allow me to drive after dark for another few months yet. 'Sure,' I said-- and then I said a stupid thing. 'We won't have any trouble if we are, you know--'
'That is not the point,' he said. 'It's the law. You don't make excuses to avoid the law. And... it's going to snow.'
I think that must have been the settling factor.
I slumped down in the back of the Cadillac, not even glancing out at the passing landscape. It's dull here anyway. 'Well,' Jessy said, trying to cheer me up, 'it's at least safer, and we don't have to worry about running out of gas.'
I glared at her. Still I felt a little better by the time we had come into Delaware. Our old house is up on the Bay shore, at the very bottom of Delaware Bay, with an unimpeded view of all the shipping traffic and especially the Cape May Ferry route. How I loved hearing that familiar whistle again! The electric gates slid apart and Roger steered the long green Cadillac in to our old yard. The grass in the 'wilderness', the area we always left raw, is high but dormant, and the row of fruit trees to either side look dead and done, but all this will be in superior bloom by Easter again... and Mommy's birthday.
Roger reviewed the alarm codes with us and left Jessy and me to open up the house whilst he went round to the car yard. Inside, the air was stiff and cool-- the heating is set on 55 and we could just see our breath-- and dark, since all the storm shutters have been closed. As soon at the alarm was off we put on lights and ran up to look at our old bedrooms. Of course the bedclothes are off, packed away in plastic containers in the cedar cupboards up stairs, but we both bounced onto our unmade beds and giggled like little girls.
I know Jessy loves this place and sometimes she wishes, even more than I do, that we had never left. However we both understand, far more than Lisa and J.J. ever will be able to, why Daddy did not want to stay here with his new wife and his new children. This house is part of the loss of our mother, and like everything about her Daddy will keep it close to his heart forever. His new wife does not replace her-- they have a pact whereby they insist they will never try, for they both loved her in profound, life-altering ways. I have often said that their being married and beginning a new family is the best way to pay homage to what Mommy always wanted for all of us. But I know it must be different for Daddy.
We descended to the main floor again and slipped out the back doors into the brittle wind. Mommy's small but well-organised flower garden has seen better days-- everything here is dead and cold, but that is owing much more to the season than to any neglect. I know Roger visits this place regularly, just to keep in touch with it. He and Daddy rebuilt the small Buick here that eventually became the car for the girl who became our nanny and, eventually, stepmother, after she came to live with us and then went off to university. For a while she and her best friend stayed in the guest cottage, at the other end of the pool. Then she moved into what we always, so stiffly, called the maid's room, though we have never had a maid here. It was just a small room in front, behind the fireplace in the kitchen. The whole house was designed by Daddy to be an authentic 1740s country farm house, neither large nor fancy but so proper and elegant in its clean lines, slate-blue clapboards, bright white trim and accurate mullioned windows that more than one season the local Colonial society had asked us to let them include it on their old-house tour-- and it was built 250 years after even those architectural experts believed it was!
Mommy's ashes lie in a heavy stainless-steel canister inside a concrete tube in the midst of the tiger-lily beds along the northern side of the garden, under her bedroom window. From here she greets the morning sun as it comes over the beach grass. Some trash and leaves now clogged the ground cover and we both knelt there and cleared it, just the typical winter stuff that tosses up here from somewhere far up the Bay. Whilst kneeling we took each other's hand and said our prayers. Jessy wept. She always does. She was only seven when Mommy left and for a long time she believed it was because of something she'd done. Little kids often think that. But there was nothing she had ever done-- she was always a very good little girl and knew everyone thought so. It's only that when something like that happens when you are that young, you grow up away from that event with only that connection to it.
As we got up Jessy, still holding my hand, turned back to the little tablet in the garden and said, 'I promise to be good, Mommy.' It's what she has always said when she has visited this place ever since we moved away, because it's what Mommy asked her to promise when she lay in that hospital just hours from when she would leave us for good and every time we had visited up till then.
'You have to be good for your daddy and your sister,' she would say. 'They need you to be good.'
'I promise I will be,' she said then. And she always has been.
We went up stairs again and collected a few things from our childhood mementoes-- a collage I made for third grade, the big pink paper dinosaur Jessy made in second, the same year, early-reader books to lend to Lisa, and the big yellow-and-red tipper truck Daddy bought for me when I was J.J.'s age, like all our things lovingly cherished and preserved from then till now with sentimental gentleness by both our parents. This was to be our lifelong heritage home, the place we would always come back to, with our children and grandchildren, for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and Mother's Day and Father's Day and everyone's birthday. This whole estate-- if I may call it that, all eleven acres of it-- was planned by two young parents as an ideal getaway from public life and a perpetual home in which they would raise their two sweet, innocent girls. All that was lost one October evening eight years ago. Now it is, in some respects, just a house (sadly in need of new paint!) surrounded by fruit trees and tall grass. Secretly Jessy and I have discussed which one of us shall ask for it when the first of us is married. I have never thought Daddy would consider that either inappropriate or expensive. Indeed I believe that is the real reason he hangs onto both this one and the one up in Surf City.
If it comes down to that I would rather have the beach house and leave this place to Jessy. The beach house suits my attitude towards life better anyway. It is small, crowded sensibly but snugly on a small patch of land on which the dunes encroach year after year. There is one garage, no basement, a small parlour and a small square dining room that barely seats six of us to table. It is at the ocean, but this place is at the Bay and a two-mile walk through open beach park will lead to the ocean from here too. I will sit up in what used to be Daddy's library and write my novels, feed my cats, and take long walks on the beach in the off-season. And Jessy will marry someone young-at-heart like Daddy, and take good care of Mommy's gardens and Mommy's tablet in the tiger-lilies. It is what she thinks of when she promises to be a good child. And she will make sure all three or four of her cheerful children promise to be good too.
...
07 January 2009
I am sick
Wednesday 7 January 2009
This is a poem my stepmother wrote when she was 15 and staying with us as an exchange student. She had been sick for about three days-- blaming it on this weird American climate, I am sure! --and being the genius that she is she was able to depict the mad delirium of a high fever with a such wonder and compassion that anyone can feel her sense of utter helplessness... 'an intelligent being laid low in infirmity'.
I was of course by no means as sick as this yesterday (just had a tummy-ache and sleeping most of the day helped) but I think of this poem often and thought I might share it in my blog.
...
Lewes, Delaware
24-26 September 1997
I am sick.
Deprived of energy, devoid of strength, depraved of will,
enveloped in the strange world of the fever
where temperature
and density
and thirst
and aches throughout my body
are all my sensation.
Eyes water,
with a stinging sadness;
I weep for pain, or to relieve pain, I know not;
so I shut them:
I see not.
Ears rumble,
thick and loud like thunder upon my head;
and so I ignore everything:
I hear not.
Mouth burns,
with a hot anxious constriction,
every swallow a briar down my throat;
and so I dare not part my lips:
I speak not.
I know nothing, feel nothing, want nothing,
but from within.
I rest.
Stretched upon this couch with hands crossed above my chest,
like a Queen in state,
dead to the world behind the rosecoloured glasses
of my mad mind's eye.
My head spins,
slow, dull spirals downward, ever downward,
with no end in sight.
Unworldly thoughts drift by,
like vagrants from the city street
with nowhere to call home
but the vague recesses of my mind
where they beck and call to me,
nagging, nagging, nagging,
for answers I cannot provide
like strange alien torture
to an intelligent being
unused to grave weakness
laid low in involuntary infirmity.
When I am strong enough to reply
they will be gone,
unanswered, eternally a mystery
why they ever appeared and posed a question.
That they would be gone,
I try to imagine things of my own will
as if to show my waylaid mind
that I still have control.
But my will is but a page
against the army of my sickness.
Little girls run hand-in-hand to the beach:
their vivid colours searing in my sight,
their bright voices piercing in my ears,
their happiness incomprehensible.
What girls?
What beach? What colours? What words?
Boys hang a swing in a tree,
dangling daringly above the ground
like dauntless acrobats,
dizzying to me,
frightening to me.
What boys? What tree? What swing?
Is it sunny? Cloudy? Cold? Warm?
Day? Night? Dream? Reality?
Angry, I demand an image
of the swells of the sea
rising and falling with animate regularity,
that it might be a lovely vision of contentment.
But not for me.
What sea? What colour?
What weather-- sunny, hot, cold, wind, calm, rain, day, night?
Am I afraid or at ease?
Am I happy or sad?
Do I swim or sail?
Would I drown? Would I care?
Can I ever know rest with these questions in my head?
For the first time in my life
I take sleeping-tablets
and worry that I have taken too much
and that the last tenants of my mind
are these wild tortured contrivances of my madness.
I sleep.
Still they will not leave me,
haunting my repose
like pins and needles upon the receptors of my brain
nagging me, nagging me, nagging me
that they have required my soul
at a cost too dear
to make Death itself look awful to me.
Eternal sleep:
would that it might overwhelm me!
like a kind dream
in which I know no sickness, no weakness, no madness,
only sleep, beautiful sleep,
floating upon some buoyant bright cloud
while all the saints smile and whisper,
'Isn't she content?'
There I might know no weakness or infirmity,
no sensations,
not even my own mind,
only peace.
I wake.
Joyful sunlight bounces in the windows;
I hear the cheers of the sea-birds
and the gay whistle of the kettle
and I embrace the loving scent of soup on the cooker.
I am warm-- nay, hot,
and toss back the coffin of my blanket,
drained, but refreshed
despite the soilies so vile upon my body
and the knots of my hair resisting my hand's tenuous rake.
Sweat clings like some horrid vine about my skin
but I can sense it
and dislike it
and know it for what it is,
the last vestige of my illness,
that mad mindless state
in which I lay for three days' fast
like a forgotten doll upon the couch.
I wonder what I have missed of the world
and then, care not
for I have survived,
and can face anything now
that I have my mind again.
...
This is a poem my stepmother wrote when she was 15 and staying with us as an exchange student. She had been sick for about three days-- blaming it on this weird American climate, I am sure! --and being the genius that she is she was able to depict the mad delirium of a high fever with a such wonder and compassion that anyone can feel her sense of utter helplessness... 'an intelligent being laid low in infirmity'.
I was of course by no means as sick as this yesterday (just had a tummy-ache and sleeping most of the day helped) but I think of this poem often and thought I might share it in my blog.
...
Lewes, Delaware
24-26 September 1997
I am sick.
Deprived of energy, devoid of strength, depraved of will,
enveloped in the strange world of the fever
where temperature
and density
and thirst
and aches throughout my body
are all my sensation.
Eyes water,
with a stinging sadness;
I weep for pain, or to relieve pain, I know not;
so I shut them:
I see not.
Ears rumble,
thick and loud like thunder upon my head;
and so I ignore everything:
I hear not.
Mouth burns,
with a hot anxious constriction,
every swallow a briar down my throat;
and so I dare not part my lips:
I speak not.
I know nothing, feel nothing, want nothing,
but from within.
I rest.
Stretched upon this couch with hands crossed above my chest,
like a Queen in state,
dead to the world behind the rosecoloured glasses
of my mad mind's eye.
My head spins,
slow, dull spirals downward, ever downward,
with no end in sight.
Unworldly thoughts drift by,
like vagrants from the city street
with nowhere to call home
but the vague recesses of my mind
where they beck and call to me,
nagging, nagging, nagging,
for answers I cannot provide
like strange alien torture
to an intelligent being
unused to grave weakness
laid low in involuntary infirmity.
When I am strong enough to reply
they will be gone,
unanswered, eternally a mystery
why they ever appeared and posed a question.
That they would be gone,
I try to imagine things of my own will
as if to show my waylaid mind
that I still have control.
But my will is but a page
against the army of my sickness.
Little girls run hand-in-hand to the beach:
their vivid colours searing in my sight,
their bright voices piercing in my ears,
their happiness incomprehensible.
What girls?
What beach? What colours? What words?
Boys hang a swing in a tree,
dangling daringly above the ground
like dauntless acrobats,
dizzying to me,
frightening to me.
What boys? What tree? What swing?
Is it sunny? Cloudy? Cold? Warm?
Day? Night? Dream? Reality?
Angry, I demand an image
of the swells of the sea
rising and falling with animate regularity,
that it might be a lovely vision of contentment.
But not for me.
What sea? What colour?
What weather-- sunny, hot, cold, wind, calm, rain, day, night?
Am I afraid or at ease?
Am I happy or sad?
Do I swim or sail?
Would I drown? Would I care?
Can I ever know rest with these questions in my head?
For the first time in my life
I take sleeping-tablets
and worry that I have taken too much
and that the last tenants of my mind
are these wild tortured contrivances of my madness.
I sleep.
Still they will not leave me,
haunting my repose
like pins and needles upon the receptors of my brain
nagging me, nagging me, nagging me
that they have required my soul
at a cost too dear
to make Death itself look awful to me.
Eternal sleep:
would that it might overwhelm me!
like a kind dream
in which I know no sickness, no weakness, no madness,
only sleep, beautiful sleep,
floating upon some buoyant bright cloud
while all the saints smile and whisper,
'Isn't she content?'
There I might know no weakness or infirmity,
no sensations,
not even my own mind,
only peace.
I wake.
Joyful sunlight bounces in the windows;
I hear the cheers of the sea-birds
and the gay whistle of the kettle
and I embrace the loving scent of soup on the cooker.
I am warm-- nay, hot,
and toss back the coffin of my blanket,
drained, but refreshed
despite the soilies so vile upon my body
and the knots of my hair resisting my hand's tenuous rake.
Sweat clings like some horrid vine about my skin
but I can sense it
and dislike it
and know it for what it is,
the last vestige of my illness,
that mad mindless state
in which I lay for three days' fast
like a forgotten doll upon the couch.
I wonder what I have missed of the world
and then, care not
for I have survived,
and can face anything now
that I have my mind again.
...
How Daddy got his boat back
Tuesday 6 January 2009
This afternoon Roger, our driver, pulled in to the yard with his classic Chevy Suburban towing a trailer with a faded blue-and-white speedboat on it. It was one of the few times I have ever heard my father scream spontaneously. I had been feeling under the weather and had said I would lie down but I ended up reading and so I heard him cry out down stairs. And naturally I-- as well as everyone else-- ran down to see what had excited him.
The boat is a 1976 Sidewinder fibreglass speedboat, 18 feet long, metallic silver blue (same colour as my car) with a white flame design on the front, with bucket seats in the middle and a bench seat across the back in white upholstery and a big engine in the back with a water-jet drive behind it. My dad got it in about 1979 after they had made a few hit records and the previous owner had blown up the motor (it happens). At that time he had a big convertible Buick and decided to put a Buick engine into the boat. He used it often on Barnegat Bay till that fateful year... and after his fiancee died and he left the country for a while the boat sat forlorn and forgotten on a trailer at the band's beach house till the band was dissolved and so many important things were being considered that really made the boat seem unimportant. By the time he got back from London the beach house had been sold with a lot of other stuff, including the boat and its trailer. Daddy went on with his life, met Mommy, got married, had a custom 34-foot sailboat built for Delaware Bay, and the speedboat only remained in his memories, along with his fiancee with whom he had enjoyed the boat and all the hopes and dreams they had for a future that never happened. Knowing Daddy he has been hanging onto those memories, maybe only for himself, because he is the only one alive for whom they still even exist at all.
As it turns out the boat was bought by someone who actually took care of it, an older man in the military who eventually died, or went to Southeast Asia (there are two versions of the story). This next owner let the boat sit for another long period, unused, till a much younger guy bought it and used it for a short while up in New York State. I do not remember how the boat came to be up there. It sat in a shed or a garage for another half-dozen years and finally someone's mother, or wife, offered it up for sale at an antiques auction up there. And someone from northern New Jersey bought and brought it back to its home state. (I am sure none of these people were aware of who once owned it.) This last owner is a friend of one of Roger's friends and Roger happened to hear that he might want to sell it. On a chance that it might turn out to be the very boat it actually turned out to be, Roger drove all the way up to Bergen County this past weekend and brought it home for Daddy.
Now Roger has been in the classic-cars business for longer than he has worked for Daddy, going back to about the same time as when Daddy bought the speedboat to begin with. So Roger knew the boat long ago, and he recognised it at first glance this past weekend. I do not know how much he paid for it, but the boat seems to be in surprisingly good condition. It has never been repainted. The upholstery on the front seats has been mended but the back seat is original (to when Daddy got it). It is even still on the original trailer (the tyres are much newer however). Best of all the engine still runs. The big Buick v-8 is one of Daddy's favourite engines-- he has several in his collection now-- and part of the reason is its durability and longevity.
Once he got over his initial shock (though he and Roger are very close I have never seen Daddy actually HUG him before!) the two of them-- and Jessy, who was feeling better than I was-- rolled the boat on its trailer into the long garage and hooked up a hose for cooling water and a newer battery for starting and got it running straight away. In spite of the light, somewhat nasty little drizzle, they left the roll-up door open and all through the house you could hear the musical blare of those wide-open exhaust pipes like a military fanfare. I stood in the kitchen leaning over the sink to see out the window, watching water run all over the tarmac and the occasional puff of smoke float out the doorway. Daddy was like a little kid with a new set of trains (and yes, he does have trains too) and didn't seem to want to shut it down. It was fully dark and fully raining by the time they brought down the door and came up for supper.
'Well?' I asked at the table. 'What's the verdict?'
He smiled. 'Well, it's still holding pretty good compression and the top end doesn't make too much noise.'
I frowned at that and Jessy laughed. 'Is it bad enough to rebuild it first?' she asked him.
I frowned again. 'Nah,' he said. 'A can of Marvel Mystery Oil should give it a few more seasons.'
(I still don't know what's so special about Marvel Mystery Oil, but I have heard him say that so many times I probably should.)
Though I am still typing this I got ready for bed about an hour ago, just after I came back up stairs. At 11.00 I had been in the kitchen getting a glass of cranberry juice when I saw the light on down in the back garage. No, I did not have to ask-- I know my daddy well enough. Even as I stood there he stepped backwards out the open garage door, stood there in the rain staring back at it, and then finally said some gentle comment at his fibreglass prodigal child before bringing down the door.
...
This afternoon Roger, our driver, pulled in to the yard with his classic Chevy Suburban towing a trailer with a faded blue-and-white speedboat on it. It was one of the few times I have ever heard my father scream spontaneously. I had been feeling under the weather and had said I would lie down but I ended up reading and so I heard him cry out down stairs. And naturally I-- as well as everyone else-- ran down to see what had excited him.
The boat is a 1976 Sidewinder fibreglass speedboat, 18 feet long, metallic silver blue (same colour as my car) with a white flame design on the front, with bucket seats in the middle and a bench seat across the back in white upholstery and a big engine in the back with a water-jet drive behind it. My dad got it in about 1979 after they had made a few hit records and the previous owner had blown up the motor (it happens). At that time he had a big convertible Buick and decided to put a Buick engine into the boat. He used it often on Barnegat Bay till that fateful year... and after his fiancee died and he left the country for a while the boat sat forlorn and forgotten on a trailer at the band's beach house till the band was dissolved and so many important things were being considered that really made the boat seem unimportant. By the time he got back from London the beach house had been sold with a lot of other stuff, including the boat and its trailer. Daddy went on with his life, met Mommy, got married, had a custom 34-foot sailboat built for Delaware Bay, and the speedboat only remained in his memories, along with his fiancee with whom he had enjoyed the boat and all the hopes and dreams they had for a future that never happened. Knowing Daddy he has been hanging onto those memories, maybe only for himself, because he is the only one alive for whom they still even exist at all.
As it turns out the boat was bought by someone who actually took care of it, an older man in the military who eventually died, or went to Southeast Asia (there are two versions of the story). This next owner let the boat sit for another long period, unused, till a much younger guy bought it and used it for a short while up in New York State. I do not remember how the boat came to be up there. It sat in a shed or a garage for another half-dozen years and finally someone's mother, or wife, offered it up for sale at an antiques auction up there. And someone from northern New Jersey bought and brought it back to its home state. (I am sure none of these people were aware of who once owned it.) This last owner is a friend of one of Roger's friends and Roger happened to hear that he might want to sell it. On a chance that it might turn out to be the very boat it actually turned out to be, Roger drove all the way up to Bergen County this past weekend and brought it home for Daddy.
Now Roger has been in the classic-cars business for longer than he has worked for Daddy, going back to about the same time as when Daddy bought the speedboat to begin with. So Roger knew the boat long ago, and he recognised it at first glance this past weekend. I do not know how much he paid for it, but the boat seems to be in surprisingly good condition. It has never been repainted. The upholstery on the front seats has been mended but the back seat is original (to when Daddy got it). It is even still on the original trailer (the tyres are much newer however). Best of all the engine still runs. The big Buick v-8 is one of Daddy's favourite engines-- he has several in his collection now-- and part of the reason is its durability and longevity.
Once he got over his initial shock (though he and Roger are very close I have never seen Daddy actually HUG him before!) the two of them-- and Jessy, who was feeling better than I was-- rolled the boat on its trailer into the long garage and hooked up a hose for cooling water and a newer battery for starting and got it running straight away. In spite of the light, somewhat nasty little drizzle, they left the roll-up door open and all through the house you could hear the musical blare of those wide-open exhaust pipes like a military fanfare. I stood in the kitchen leaning over the sink to see out the window, watching water run all over the tarmac and the occasional puff of smoke float out the doorway. Daddy was like a little kid with a new set of trains (and yes, he does have trains too) and didn't seem to want to shut it down. It was fully dark and fully raining by the time they brought down the door and came up for supper.
'Well?' I asked at the table. 'What's the verdict?'
He smiled. 'Well, it's still holding pretty good compression and the top end doesn't make too much noise.'
I frowned at that and Jessy laughed. 'Is it bad enough to rebuild it first?' she asked him.
I frowned again. 'Nah,' he said. 'A can of Marvel Mystery Oil should give it a few more seasons.'
(I still don't know what's so special about Marvel Mystery Oil, but I have heard him say that so many times I probably should.)
Though I am still typing this I got ready for bed about an hour ago, just after I came back up stairs. At 11.00 I had been in the kitchen getting a glass of cranberry juice when I saw the light on down in the back garage. No, I did not have to ask-- I know my daddy well enough. Even as I stood there he stepped backwards out the open garage door, stood there in the rain staring back at it, and then finally said some gentle comment at his fibreglass prodigal child before bringing down the door.
...
15 December 2008
From Rover to Regal
Monday 15 December 2008
The day dawned cloudy and grey but I would not be dismayed. After an early and thorough shower I dressed in well-worn jeans, my navy-blue sweater, and my dark-brown maryjanes with the heels that are like 1-1/2" and the plain wide belt that matches them (sort of). And I wore my new (for my birthday) patchwork leather jacket with its hood and white (faux) fur trim. Roger arrived to drive us to school. This was arranged, for if I were to drive myself we would have the problem of Daddy getting to school to meet me. I was adamant about going directly from school.
At school I was very anxious all day. I say 'anxious'-- I do not say 'nervous'. It was the excited flutter of a child looking forward to seeing Father Christmas-- um, Santa Claus again, sorry. (I have not seen him as 'Santa Claus' in two years, but it is definitely something I will have to do later this week... of course.) After English I deposited everything in my locker (what care I for homework when there is driving to be done?) got my jacket, and skipped out to the kerb. There was the queue of buses, but no Daddy. Rita and Jessy (those two a pretty steady pair by now) came out, waved to Roger as he pulled in, and then said good-bye to me. I stamped my foot, frustrated. Jessy stopped halfway to the open door. 'What's wrong?' she asked me.
I made a pout. 'Daddy's not here yet,' I said.
'Yes he is.'
I whirled round, seeing the now-familiar blue-and-white Buick coming in from the road. 'Yay,' I said, honestly still doing the little-kid thing.
Daddy pulled up behind the dark-green Cadillac and got out. 'Sorry,' he said over the bonnet. 'I had to get gas.'
I nodded, smiling happily. Jessy and Daddy said good-bye and stepped off the kerb and went round to the offside-- um, driver's side. Then Daddy opened the other door and got in. 'All set?' he asked.
I nodded. 'Ready when you are.'
He nodded too and then laid a hand on my leg, like he often does, like to give comfort. At once he bent his fingers and pinched me-- or, actually, could not. 'What's this, paint?' he teased. 'I thought it was pants.'
I blushed. 'It's just jeans, Daddy!'
'Hmmm.'
I have mentioned before somewhere that my daddy collects cars. His collection is by no means ostentatious nor even very extensive, consisting merely of half a dozen older Buicks, the Jensen-Healey, and an unfinished restoration project of a Camaro convertible. Being sentimental he acquired copies of the first two cars he ever drove, a powder-blue 1968 Riviera and a navy-blue 1965 Wildcat convertible. Both the Wildcat and the 1961 Invicta are fitted with manual gearchange. One came from the factory specially-ordered like that and one Daddy had installed (I forget which). When Mother was our nanny he provided her with a silver-blue 1962 Skylark for commuting to and from university. That is the car I secretly suspected he would endow me with-- but that was not to be.
The car I have been learning on is a 1985 Regal T-Type coupe, all beautifully restored in a soft medium blue with a white hood (okay, roof) and white seats on a black carpet. It has alloy wheels and the 4.3-litre v-6 engine which Daddy says is one of his favourites (like the one in Mother's Skylark till he changed it back to the original v-8) and-- yes-- a 5-speed manual gearbox also was custom-fitted and the car is probably one-of-a-kind.
I have to apologise since all my terminology about the car is so British. It's only been since we've had Mother (meaning our stepmother, who's from Australia) and since we went to England that I began to get even remotely interested in cars and driving. At HOH we had a part-time class in driving and it was all 'propshaft' and 'dampers' and 'silencer' and 'bonnet' and 'windscreen' and I just learned it the way it was taught. Daddy gave me a few lessons in the car park when we were in Norwich, with the grey-green Rover we had there. Now I know some people find switching over from right to left to be a problem, especially when the shift patterns are different. The Rover in England had first gear up by your passenger's knee, Daddy's Jensen-Healey has it next to your own knee, since it's on your right hand, and the T-Type has it back by your hip. But I just look at the top of the gear lever, which usually has a diagram of the pattern, and I do not find it a problem at all to find the co-ordination, whichever hand I have to use.
I will say here that Jessy, who is over a year younger than me, has never driven on either the right or the left-- all she has ever driven has been the garden tractor, motor-scooters, and the junior Formula cars and karts she raced in England, and none of them are specific to any particular side.
Daddy has been the ideal driving teacher, more of a coach than a police officer about it. I cannot say I have not made mistakes and some of them have been almost dangerous and definitely illegal. That is in the nature of learning to drive. What I cherish so much about Daddy is that he is by nature very sweet-hearted and forgiving. He does not expect me to be perfect, at anything, really, and so treats me not with exacting standards but as a pretty decent person doing a pretty decent job. To please him I have done my level best, and I have to say I have learned it all pretty well.
We drove up to the DMV agency in Onancock and Daddy came in with me when I presented my paperwork. They assigned me an examiner and told me where to wait with the car. Daddy came with me (I would have insisted even if they had let me, as a student, drive the car round the building alone, because I was not feeling pretty nervous) till the DMV examiner came. The examiner was about 35, tall, exceedingly slender, with jet-black hair and steel-grey eyes, wearing silver metal-framed glasses and an official-looking black wool overcoat. He seemed like the coldest, severest examiner in the world and my heart rose to my throat. He got in to the car beside me and looked at the clipboard. 'You are... Janine?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Nice car,' he said, looking round inside it. 'What year?'
I looked at him, trying not to appear terrified, although I really think I could not have looked too flirtatious either. Some girls try that, you know. ' 'Eighty-five,' I said.
He nodded. 'Very good.' Then he noticed. 'It's a stick.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Sir.'
'Why the Delaware plates?' he asked.
'Oh,' I said, not having expected that. 'My daddy collects cars, and that's where they're kept. He just let me learn on this one.'
The guy nodded. 'Very good.' Then he looked at me and smiled. 'Well, shall we go, then? Buckled up?'
I was. He wasn't, and got his belt on. He directed me to pull out and I signalled for it, and we proceeded with the driving course. I was not nervous. I was very smooth with all the changes and especially with the brakes. Daddy had taught me what his father had once taught him and called 'the chauffeur stop'. No matter how hard you have to brake, just before the car comes to a full stop, you lift the pedal and then bring it to a stop from that very low speed. Your passengers will not snap backwards from the sharp stop. I have practised it and can do it almost without notice. Exactly once the examiner indicated one of the turns too late-- it's said they do this on purpose-- and I had to brake hard and come to a full stop which I did to, well, perfection-- if I have to be the one to say it.
'Very good,' the examiner said, and then he was all too willing to overlook my slight awkwardness with the clutch during my k-turn. (No, I did NOT stall it. Not once.) In parallel parking I just remembered what I had been taught, to line myself up with the driver's seat in the other car, turn when my shoulder passes the other car's corner, and then turn back when my front corner will pass clear. I got it to within a foot or so of the kerb on the first try.
'Where did you get your lessons?' the examiner said. 'Nandua--?'
I shrugged. 'No, not at school, Sir. Just... my dad.'
'This is your first try?'
I nodded, looking at him as he looked at me again.
'Very good,' he said. 'Now, out here, and up to the corner.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Sir.'
Fifteen minutes later I had a plastic card in my hand with my photo on it and the words 'Commonwealth of Virginia' across the top. The examiner saw me as we stepped out of the building. 'Good luck,' he said, smiling at me. He didn't look so severe now. 'Be careful, now.'
'Yes, Sir. Thank you.'
'Thank you,' he said, and Daddy and I got into the T-Type then.
On the ride back Daddy asked me all about how my exam had gone, what I had to do, how I did, what the guy said. Finally I got up my nerve and said, 'So, Daddy....'
'Yes?' he asked warily-- as well he might have.
'I was wondering.... Well, Jessy and I, and some of the girls, want to finish our Christmas shopping, and I was going to ask....'
'Here if comes,' he said.
'... if would be all right if we could... go down to the mall. In VB. You know....'
'Wait-- tonight?'
'No,' I said quickly. 'Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow... after school.'
He made a wry smile at me. 'I am assuming you'll want to drive this car to school tomorrow.'
I blushed. 'Well....'
'Drive to school tomorrow, but let Roger drive you down to VB. I would worry about you coming home over that bridge in the dark. And this road can be dangerous. The people here drive like they're asleep half the time.' Then he thought a moment. 'I'd feel better about it if you were able to come home in daylight, you know.'
I nodded, hiding a smile. 'Yes, Daddy. It's all right.' That's my daddy.
...
The day dawned cloudy and grey but I would not be dismayed. After an early and thorough shower I dressed in well-worn jeans, my navy-blue sweater, and my dark-brown maryjanes with the heels that are like 1-1/2" and the plain wide belt that matches them (sort of). And I wore my new (for my birthday) patchwork leather jacket with its hood and white (faux) fur trim. Roger arrived to drive us to school. This was arranged, for if I were to drive myself we would have the problem of Daddy getting to school to meet me. I was adamant about going directly from school.
At school I was very anxious all day. I say 'anxious'-- I do not say 'nervous'. It was the excited flutter of a child looking forward to seeing Father Christmas-- um, Santa Claus again, sorry. (I have not seen him as 'Santa Claus' in two years, but it is definitely something I will have to do later this week... of course.) After English I deposited everything in my locker (what care I for homework when there is driving to be done?) got my jacket, and skipped out to the kerb. There was the queue of buses, but no Daddy. Rita and Jessy (those two a pretty steady pair by now) came out, waved to Roger as he pulled in, and then said good-bye to me. I stamped my foot, frustrated. Jessy stopped halfway to the open door. 'What's wrong?' she asked me.
I made a pout. 'Daddy's not here yet,' I said.
'Yes he is.'
I whirled round, seeing the now-familiar blue-and-white Buick coming in from the road. 'Yay,' I said, honestly still doing the little-kid thing.
Daddy pulled up behind the dark-green Cadillac and got out. 'Sorry,' he said over the bonnet. 'I had to get gas.'
I nodded, smiling happily. Jessy and Daddy said good-bye and stepped off the kerb and went round to the offside-- um, driver's side. Then Daddy opened the other door and got in. 'All set?' he asked.
I nodded. 'Ready when you are.'
He nodded too and then laid a hand on my leg, like he often does, like to give comfort. At once he bent his fingers and pinched me-- or, actually, could not. 'What's this, paint?' he teased. 'I thought it was pants.'
I blushed. 'It's just jeans, Daddy!'
'Hmmm.'
I have mentioned before somewhere that my daddy collects cars. His collection is by no means ostentatious nor even very extensive, consisting merely of half a dozen older Buicks, the Jensen-Healey, and an unfinished restoration project of a Camaro convertible. Being sentimental he acquired copies of the first two cars he ever drove, a powder-blue 1968 Riviera and a navy-blue 1965 Wildcat convertible. Both the Wildcat and the 1961 Invicta are fitted with manual gearchange. One came from the factory specially-ordered like that and one Daddy had installed (I forget which). When Mother was our nanny he provided her with a silver-blue 1962 Skylark for commuting to and from university. That is the car I secretly suspected he would endow me with-- but that was not to be.
The car I have been learning on is a 1985 Regal T-Type coupe, all beautifully restored in a soft medium blue with a white hood (okay, roof) and white seats on a black carpet. It has alloy wheels and the 4.3-litre v-6 engine which Daddy says is one of his favourites (like the one in Mother's Skylark till he changed it back to the original v-8) and-- yes-- a 5-speed manual gearbox also was custom-fitted and the car is probably one-of-a-kind.
I have to apologise since all my terminology about the car is so British. It's only been since we've had Mother (meaning our stepmother, who's from Australia) and since we went to England that I began to get even remotely interested in cars and driving. At HOH we had a part-time class in driving and it was all 'propshaft' and 'dampers' and 'silencer' and 'bonnet' and 'windscreen' and I just learned it the way it was taught. Daddy gave me a few lessons in the car park when we were in Norwich, with the grey-green Rover we had there. Now I know some people find switching over from right to left to be a problem, especially when the shift patterns are different. The Rover in England had first gear up by your passenger's knee, Daddy's Jensen-Healey has it next to your own knee, since it's on your right hand, and the T-Type has it back by your hip. But I just look at the top of the gear lever, which usually has a diagram of the pattern, and I do not find it a problem at all to find the co-ordination, whichever hand I have to use.
I will say here that Jessy, who is over a year younger than me, has never driven on either the right or the left-- all she has ever driven has been the garden tractor, motor-scooters, and the junior Formula cars and karts she raced in England, and none of them are specific to any particular side.
Daddy has been the ideal driving teacher, more of a coach than a police officer about it. I cannot say I have not made mistakes and some of them have been almost dangerous and definitely illegal. That is in the nature of learning to drive. What I cherish so much about Daddy is that he is by nature very sweet-hearted and forgiving. He does not expect me to be perfect, at anything, really, and so treats me not with exacting standards but as a pretty decent person doing a pretty decent job. To please him I have done my level best, and I have to say I have learned it all pretty well.
We drove up to the DMV agency in Onancock and Daddy came in with me when I presented my paperwork. They assigned me an examiner and told me where to wait with the car. Daddy came with me (I would have insisted even if they had let me, as a student, drive the car round the building alone, because I was not feeling pretty nervous) till the DMV examiner came. The examiner was about 35, tall, exceedingly slender, with jet-black hair and steel-grey eyes, wearing silver metal-framed glasses and an official-looking black wool overcoat. He seemed like the coldest, severest examiner in the world and my heart rose to my throat. He got in to the car beside me and looked at the clipboard. 'You are... Janine?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Nice car,' he said, looking round inside it. 'What year?'
I looked at him, trying not to appear terrified, although I really think I could not have looked too flirtatious either. Some girls try that, you know. ' 'Eighty-five,' I said.
He nodded. 'Very good.' Then he noticed. 'It's a stick.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Sir.'
'Why the Delaware plates?' he asked.
'Oh,' I said, not having expected that. 'My daddy collects cars, and that's where they're kept. He just let me learn on this one.'
The guy nodded. 'Very good.' Then he looked at me and smiled. 'Well, shall we go, then? Buckled up?'
I was. He wasn't, and got his belt on. He directed me to pull out and I signalled for it, and we proceeded with the driving course. I was not nervous. I was very smooth with all the changes and especially with the brakes. Daddy had taught me what his father had once taught him and called 'the chauffeur stop'. No matter how hard you have to brake, just before the car comes to a full stop, you lift the pedal and then bring it to a stop from that very low speed. Your passengers will not snap backwards from the sharp stop. I have practised it and can do it almost without notice. Exactly once the examiner indicated one of the turns too late-- it's said they do this on purpose-- and I had to brake hard and come to a full stop which I did to, well, perfection-- if I have to be the one to say it.
'Very good,' the examiner said, and then he was all too willing to overlook my slight awkwardness with the clutch during my k-turn. (No, I did NOT stall it. Not once.) In parallel parking I just remembered what I had been taught, to line myself up with the driver's seat in the other car, turn when my shoulder passes the other car's corner, and then turn back when my front corner will pass clear. I got it to within a foot or so of the kerb on the first try.
'Where did you get your lessons?' the examiner said. 'Nandua--?'
I shrugged. 'No, not at school, Sir. Just... my dad.'
'This is your first try?'
I nodded, looking at him as he looked at me again.
'Very good,' he said. 'Now, out here, and up to the corner.'
I nodded. 'Yes, Sir.'
Fifteen minutes later I had a plastic card in my hand with my photo on it and the words 'Commonwealth of Virginia' across the top. The examiner saw me as we stepped out of the building. 'Good luck,' he said, smiling at me. He didn't look so severe now. 'Be careful, now.'
'Yes, Sir. Thank you.'
'Thank you,' he said, and Daddy and I got into the T-Type then.
On the ride back Daddy asked me all about how my exam had gone, what I had to do, how I did, what the guy said. Finally I got up my nerve and said, 'So, Daddy....'
'Yes?' he asked warily-- as well he might have.
'I was wondering.... Well, Jessy and I, and some of the girls, want to finish our Christmas shopping, and I was going to ask....'
'Here if comes,' he said.
'... if would be all right if we could... go down to the mall. In VB. You know....'
'Wait-- tonight?'
'No,' I said quickly. 'Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow... after school.'
He made a wry smile at me. 'I am assuming you'll want to drive this car to school tomorrow.'
I blushed. 'Well....'
'Drive to school tomorrow, but let Roger drive you down to VB. I would worry about you coming home over that bridge in the dark. And this road can be dangerous. The people here drive like they're asleep half the time.' Then he thought a moment. 'I'd feel better about it if you were able to come home in daylight, you know.'
I nodded, hiding a smile. 'Yes, Daddy. It's all right.' That's my daddy.
...
13 December 2008
Terncote for Advent
Friday 11 December 2008
As of the first week of Advent (following the fourth Sunday before Christmas, for those who don't follow such things), we put up the candles in our windows. At the Landing, our old house in Lewes, there is an electric outlet under each window, the top receptacle of which is operated by a separate switch down stairs (actually two, one for in front and one for in back, since the house is visible from the Ferry). The 'candles' are actually slender white tubes fitted with small bulbs, gently clamped on the windowsill so the bulb is in the middle of the lower pane of glass. The bulbs are fluorescent and flicker slightly which adds to the effect. Down stairs in the basement the switches are on a timer to turn them on just before dusk and off sometime around 1.30 or 2.00 am.
At Poplar Landing there are 14 lights in front and 15 in back, including the third-floor dormers, the glass porch centre windows and the two casements of the window over the kitchen sink. That's a lot of twinkling candlelight! I remember when I was littler I disliked having that bulb in my room lit all night and insisted that we turn it off. Naturally Jessy, taking my example, wanted hers turned off then too. Daddy rigged up a pretty good shield out of bent metal to hold the light close to the glass and it made each room dark enough to sleep in. But I have to smile at how my parents never even considered turning off the lights or just omitting them from the bedroom windows. It was a tradition, and if I have to say so that house was (and still is) such a showplace in the neighbourhood that there is a definitely element of pride that my parents took had at decorating the house in this modest, solemn and elegant way.
At Terncote here in Virginia we have the same system. Daddy actually had other lights made exactly like the ones he made himself for the Landing and the window sills and electrical outlets are set up the same way. (In fact the period-authentic sash windows are identical-- one thing in common that this 1720s-style towered manor house and that 1740s plantation house share.) But though we have many more windows in each facade here, we do not have them in the ends (the towers), because Lisa's room is in front up stairs, and it would look odd with the first-floor windows lit and the ones above them not. So the candle lights are in only each inside wing, that's three windows each side, each floor, and in the two above the front door. We do not have them in back here (though the specially-switched outlets are there) because there isn't really anyone out there to see them in this season. All of the windows with candle lights in front are in galleries, not rooms, except the three in the big parlour (which is under my room). So those can be left on whilst people are trying to sleep.
When we were saying good-bye to the friends who came for my birthday, I got to look at the house from in front after dark. I must say it looks very well. From the road you can see straight up the lane at the two wall sconces outside the front doors and all 14 lights. This is because the masonry wall is cut down for the width of the front entrance wing and the inside wings and our sapling trees along the drive are not yet big enough to block the view. The yellowish colour of the stucco glows warm in the low light and makes the place look welcoming even on a raw, cold night. Above the end towers are dark (except for Lisa's window as she got ready for bed the night I looked) and the centre one is almost invisible if the sky is dark enough. It's definitely not the way it looked for our Hallowe'en party!
I will say here that Daddy and Mother are no believers in illuminating the facade with floodlights like so many people are. As Daddy says that's only foolish as a security measure. The correct thing is to have the view from the house unobstructed-- that means shining light AWAY from the house, not ON it. Our emergency and motion-sensing lights shine down at the ground along the foundation, not at the windows, so we are able to see what's going on out there.
The other Advent tradition that we have always observed is that we NEVER decorate for Christmas, nor even buy, nor even shop for, a tree, till after church on the fourth Sunday. In some years this has been on Christmas Eve itself-- yet Daddy will not relent. Christmas is Christmas and Advent is Advent. Then we have a pleasant, relaxing evening of setting up and trimming our tree. I asked Mother where we would put it this year. At the Landing it always went in the big parlour-- because we had only that and the keeping room (family room), and we were more likely to have a fire in the keeping room which would have only dried out a live tree. She thinks it will be easiest to set it up in our little square parlour on the first floor of the centre tower, straight back from the entrance foyer. We will rearrange the small sofa there and maybe put away one chair, and we will hang the stockings over that fireplace which doesn't get used often (only once that I know of, so far) anyway. So we will have the big parlour for entertaining.
We don't know how much entertaining we will do this season. We are four and a half hours away from our next nearest relations (my uncle and his family in southern New Jersey) but everyone has been issued a standing invitation and Gran has promised to come visit us over Christmas. Gran has her own room here, as she did at the Landing, though so far she has only stayed over here a few nights. I look forward to inviting my friends here as well-- they too, by my parents' permission, have standing invitations to visit during the school break. The season promises (or threatens) to be colder and harsher than the last few years, but we still have plenty of cut trees, driftwood, and lumber left over from the construction and so we'll be cosy and warm.
...
As of the first week of Advent (following the fourth Sunday before Christmas, for those who don't follow such things), we put up the candles in our windows. At the Landing, our old house in Lewes, there is an electric outlet under each window, the top receptacle of which is operated by a separate switch down stairs (actually two, one for in front and one for in back, since the house is visible from the Ferry). The 'candles' are actually slender white tubes fitted with small bulbs, gently clamped on the windowsill so the bulb is in the middle of the lower pane of glass. The bulbs are fluorescent and flicker slightly which adds to the effect. Down stairs in the basement the switches are on a timer to turn them on just before dusk and off sometime around 1.30 or 2.00 am.
At Poplar Landing there are 14 lights in front and 15 in back, including the third-floor dormers, the glass porch centre windows and the two casements of the window over the kitchen sink. That's a lot of twinkling candlelight! I remember when I was littler I disliked having that bulb in my room lit all night and insisted that we turn it off. Naturally Jessy, taking my example, wanted hers turned off then too. Daddy rigged up a pretty good shield out of bent metal to hold the light close to the glass and it made each room dark enough to sleep in. But I have to smile at how my parents never even considered turning off the lights or just omitting them from the bedroom windows. It was a tradition, and if I have to say so that house was (and still is) such a showplace in the neighbourhood that there is a definitely element of pride that my parents took had at decorating the house in this modest, solemn and elegant way.
At Terncote here in Virginia we have the same system. Daddy actually had other lights made exactly like the ones he made himself for the Landing and the window sills and electrical outlets are set up the same way. (In fact the period-authentic sash windows are identical-- one thing in common that this 1720s-style towered manor house and that 1740s plantation house share.) But though we have many more windows in each facade here, we do not have them in the ends (the towers), because Lisa's room is in front up stairs, and it would look odd with the first-floor windows lit and the ones above them not. So the candle lights are in only each inside wing, that's three windows each side, each floor, and in the two above the front door. We do not have them in back here (though the specially-switched outlets are there) because there isn't really anyone out there to see them in this season. All of the windows with candle lights in front are in galleries, not rooms, except the three in the big parlour (which is under my room). So those can be left on whilst people are trying to sleep.
When we were saying good-bye to the friends who came for my birthday, I got to look at the house from in front after dark. I must say it looks very well. From the road you can see straight up the lane at the two wall sconces outside the front doors and all 14 lights. This is because the masonry wall is cut down for the width of the front entrance wing and the inside wings and our sapling trees along the drive are not yet big enough to block the view. The yellowish colour of the stucco glows warm in the low light and makes the place look welcoming even on a raw, cold night. Above the end towers are dark (except for Lisa's window as she got ready for bed the night I looked) and the centre one is almost invisible if the sky is dark enough. It's definitely not the way it looked for our Hallowe'en party!
I will say here that Daddy and Mother are no believers in illuminating the facade with floodlights like so many people are. As Daddy says that's only foolish as a security measure. The correct thing is to have the view from the house unobstructed-- that means shining light AWAY from the house, not ON it. Our emergency and motion-sensing lights shine down at the ground along the foundation, not at the windows, so we are able to see what's going on out there.
The other Advent tradition that we have always observed is that we NEVER decorate for Christmas, nor even buy, nor even shop for, a tree, till after church on the fourth Sunday. In some years this has been on Christmas Eve itself-- yet Daddy will not relent. Christmas is Christmas and Advent is Advent. Then we have a pleasant, relaxing evening of setting up and trimming our tree. I asked Mother where we would put it this year. At the Landing it always went in the big parlour-- because we had only that and the keeping room (family room), and we were more likely to have a fire in the keeping room which would have only dried out a live tree. She thinks it will be easiest to set it up in our little square parlour on the first floor of the centre tower, straight back from the entrance foyer. We will rearrange the small sofa there and maybe put away one chair, and we will hang the stockings over that fireplace which doesn't get used often (only once that I know of, so far) anyway. So we will have the big parlour for entertaining.
We don't know how much entertaining we will do this season. We are four and a half hours away from our next nearest relations (my uncle and his family in southern New Jersey) but everyone has been issued a standing invitation and Gran has promised to come visit us over Christmas. Gran has her own room here, as she did at the Landing, though so far she has only stayed over here a few nights. I look forward to inviting my friends here as well-- they too, by my parents' permission, have standing invitations to visit during the school break. The season promises (or threatens) to be colder and harsher than the last few years, but we still have plenty of cut trees, driftwood, and lumber left over from the construction and so we'll be cosy and warm.
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12 November 2008
Long time gone
Wednesday 12 November 2008
I have not been away from this blog so long since I started it. The truth is that I have been very busy and that means even this won't be a long entry.
I attended a few recording sessions of one of Daddy's new bands last week, at out old house in Delaware where the studio is. This was for me to contribute to backing-vocal tracks where they needed a female voice. I have always sung, even on stage in school and community things, and this was not something I was nervous about. I did not, however, like the song. I must admit I prefer the one Daddy gave them, one of his older things which they have redone for this CD. I have a sneaky feeling he asked me to contribute to this one because he wanted it to sound more grounded, in other words more like he had done more with it than he had. We recorded me three times and listened to a few early mixes and Daddy said he could use it like it is. That was two afternoons and nights of last week.
On one of the other nights Jessy came along and Daddy recorded us singing a duet of... I won't say but it was fun and very 'like' us, if that makes any sense, and of course Daddy got to play the instrument parts like he wanted. He seems to believe we should... no, I won't say that yet.
I have also started writing a novel, a very cute (so I hope) love story about young people who need to run away from home to escape harmful family situations, but because they are Catholic they insist on having a friend who wants to enter the priesthood 'conduct' the marriage ceremony for them, so they are 'married in the sight of God'. It actually gets very syrupy and very sexy at the same time. They sail off to The Bahamas and end up converting to the Anglican Church because the Catholics judge them as sinners for not having got married in the church in the first place. (I don't know if that's really how Catholics would be towards them. It's just literary licence.) Anyway I have been coming home on every free afternoon and hammering away at this keyboard for several hours each night. Mother told me about a novel-writing contest held every year in which you have to write a complete story of 50,000 words between the 1st and 30th of November. I am at 38,000 now. But I do not think this story will qualify because I am very fastidious about writing and may never consider it edited enough or good enough.
Also Jessy and I went to see 'HSM 3' again with some more people from school and a 3rd time with Mother and Lisa. We got our first-term report cards and I have a B in German and a B in Geometry. Jessy has a B in her history class and actually a B in PE because she just does not like to sweat in school. I can picture her only halfheartedly swatting at the ball in tennis or field hockey for fear of breaking a nail or mussing her hair, you know.
And about a week and a half ago we had snow flurries, but then it went warm enough to lie round naked in my room while typing and then it got cold again, and right now the sea breeze is very raw and chilling making me not want to be outside at all. As I write this I have a nice fire including some birch logs from the new property (more of that later) and a piece of driftwood from a load of logs we collected while up in Delaware. And I am dressed (more or less). And have a stiff neck and eye strain from using the computer. And am having fudge cookies Lisa and Jessy made yesterday. And, taking a break from the writing, will go online tonight to see who's chatting.
...
I have not been away from this blog so long since I started it. The truth is that I have been very busy and that means even this won't be a long entry.
I attended a few recording sessions of one of Daddy's new bands last week, at out old house in Delaware where the studio is. This was for me to contribute to backing-vocal tracks where they needed a female voice. I have always sung, even on stage in school and community things, and this was not something I was nervous about. I did not, however, like the song. I must admit I prefer the one Daddy gave them, one of his older things which they have redone for this CD. I have a sneaky feeling he asked me to contribute to this one because he wanted it to sound more grounded, in other words more like he had done more with it than he had. We recorded me three times and listened to a few early mixes and Daddy said he could use it like it is. That was two afternoons and nights of last week.
On one of the other nights Jessy came along and Daddy recorded us singing a duet of... I won't say but it was fun and very 'like' us, if that makes any sense, and of course Daddy got to play the instrument parts like he wanted. He seems to believe we should... no, I won't say that yet.
I have also started writing a novel, a very cute (so I hope) love story about young people who need to run away from home to escape harmful family situations, but because they are Catholic they insist on having a friend who wants to enter the priesthood 'conduct' the marriage ceremony for them, so they are 'married in the sight of God'. It actually gets very syrupy and very sexy at the same time. They sail off to The Bahamas and end up converting to the Anglican Church because the Catholics judge them as sinners for not having got married in the church in the first place. (I don't know if that's really how Catholics would be towards them. It's just literary licence.) Anyway I have been coming home on every free afternoon and hammering away at this keyboard for several hours each night. Mother told me about a novel-writing contest held every year in which you have to write a complete story of 50,000 words between the 1st and 30th of November. I am at 38,000 now. But I do not think this story will qualify because I am very fastidious about writing and may never consider it edited enough or good enough.
Also Jessy and I went to see 'HSM 3' again with some more people from school and a 3rd time with Mother and Lisa. We got our first-term report cards and I have a B in German and a B in Geometry. Jessy has a B in her history class and actually a B in PE because she just does not like to sweat in school. I can picture her only halfheartedly swatting at the ball in tennis or field hockey for fear of breaking a nail or mussing her hair, you know.
And about a week and a half ago we had snow flurries, but then it went warm enough to lie round naked in my room while typing and then it got cold again, and right now the sea breeze is very raw and chilling making me not want to be outside at all. As I write this I have a nice fire including some birch logs from the new property (more of that later) and a piece of driftwood from a load of logs we collected while up in Delaware. And I am dressed (more or less). And have a stiff neck and eye strain from using the computer. And am having fudge cookies Lisa and Jessy made yesterday. And, taking a break from the writing, will go online tonight to see who's chatting.
...
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