MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

This morning, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I awoke to the distant rumble of thunder in Savannah, we heard the sound of a baby’s wail coming from somewhere on the floor below.

That sound triggered a flood of memories for us no less effectively than did the aroma of Marcel Proust’s madeleine for him. Remembrance of Things Past, indeed.

For it was 29 years ago today that we became parents. Yes, indeedy: it’s Elder Daughter’s birthday!

We remember it so well. SWMBO’s water breaking sometime around midnight - fortunately, we had fortified her side of the bed with a deck of towels for just such a possibility - and the quick dash to the local hospital. My ditty-bag, packed with a half-dozen Forever Yours (now known as Milky Way Midnight) bars, in case I needed fortification. My Intravenous-Bottle Mishap. Nurse Jo “Jo Jitsu” Mutter, squeezing SWMBO like a tube of toothpaste in the final moments of labor. The squalling, red-faced, vernix-encrusted Thing of Beauty that emerged at 8:33 am after a long, sweaty night. Elder Daughter (then Only Daughter) had arrived. It was love at first sight.


Elder Daughter’s first day on Planet Earth: May 11, 1979.

And two days later, She Who Must Be Obeyed celebrated her first Mother’s Day as an honoree.

There have been many Mother’s Days since then, and with both girls out of the house and on their own for several years now, it is an increasingly rare treat for SWMBO to enjoy their physical presence on this day. It was therefore especially sweet to be able to spend the weekend with the Mistress of Sarcasm...and to look forward to SWMBO’s next birthday, when Elder Daughter will be with us to celebrate.

As for said Elder Daughter, I miss her dreadfully after having spent close to a fortnight as her Constant Companion enroute to, in and around, and enroute from Japan. She’s an accomplished young woman, this daughter of ours. The course she just taught at Washington D.C.’s “Learn-a-Palooza” on How To Dance at a Party was the most heavily-attended of all 74 events on the schedule...she produced an amazing show two months ago at the D.C. Arts Center in her spare time... she has met with the Ministers of Education of both Egypt and Morocco within the last three months...and she conquered her fear of heights long enough to ride a mountain ropeway gondola with Mt. Fuji looming over the horizon. Can you tell I’m a Proud Daddy?



Elder Daughter riding the Hakone Ropeway, April 22, 2008. “I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer...”

And so: To Elder Daughter, on the conclusion of her 29th trip around the Sun, the happiest of Happy Birthdays to you, and may you enjoy many, many more (bis hundert-tzvantzik yoor), all in good health.

To She Who Must Be Obeyed, the apple of my eye, the light of my life, a happy 30th Mother’s Day. May our children continue to give you every joy, a joy that is evident whenever you hear their voices on the phone, whenever you hold them in your arms. And may you continue to have sweet memories of those early days of motherhood.

[They may come in handy in a few years, when I’m back to wearing diapers.]

ANOTHER EVENING WITH ELDER DAUGHTER

After sitting through the first day of a two-day course on Late Career Financial Planning (with topics such as “Cat Food: Occasional Treat or Dietary Mainstay?”), I drove into Silver Spring to pick up Elder Daughter at her workplace.

She’s an associate producer with the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, a not-for-profit corporate arm that donates technology and teacher training to under-resourced communities throughout the world. They also produce educational documentaries for the learning centers they set up, focusing on a range of subjects from math, science and health, to history, culture and media literacy. Here’s a video that illustrates the kind of stuff she does:



Did I tell you I’m a proud daddy, having a daughter who takes the imperative of tikkun olam - repairing the world - so seriously?

We headed down into the District and ate at a hole-in-the-wall Jamaican place, snarfing down plates of jerk chicken and curry chicken roti and washing it all down with pineapple-ginger juice. It was delicious. I can only hope that I will not suffer the painful aftermath that occasionally attaches to the consumption of jerk chicken.

Afterward, we returned to Elder Daughter’s place, where I stayed long enough for her to thrash me in three games of backgammon. (How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child child who can beat you like the gong in a J. Arthur Rank production.)

Driving back to my hotel, I listened (appropriately enough, considering our Evening Meal) to the Easy Star All-Stars Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae homage to Pink Floyd. Hillsides sparkled with a thin layer of freshly-fallen snow. The Washington Monument was a searchlight-washed alabaster spike, the coppery full moon in total eclipse riding in the sky above it. I regretted not having my camera with me.

Cold. Cold as the proverbial witch’s tit. But I didn’t care. I was warm inside, and it wasn’t just the jerk chicken working its magic on my viscera. I had spent a few hours with a beautiful and talented young lady, and on her account I was suffused with Fatherly Pride. A good, good feeling.

[The eclipse photo above is a pastiche combining my November 2006 shot of the Washington Monument with Sissy Willis’s striking image of the blood-red moon at totality.]

PUTTING ON TH’ TRAINING PANTS

Les flageolets, les flageolets,
Pour vôtre coeur, la bonne santé.

- Old French Proverb

At 3:15 yesterday afternoon, I was perched in my dentist’s chair, making the acquaintance of Mr. Permanent Crown Restoration. Less than five hours later, I was having dinner with Elder Daughter, almost within shouting distance of the White House. Modern Aerial Bus Technology never ceases to amaze me.

I’m here in the general vicinity of the Nation’s Capital to take a training course at the local Big Outpost of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. It’s my first visit to this particular facility, a place once as inaccessible to me as the surface of the Moon. That’s because this used to be the headquarters of one of the Great Corporate Salt Mine’s competitors, and contact with competitors in our industry is permissible only under tightly controlled and unusual circumstances. But then came the Merger, and the formerly untouchable became, well, touchable.

It’s a little like having a family living down the street from you and being told you can’t play with their kids or go into their house. And then, one day, your Dad announces that he is marrying the Widow Woman who lives in that house, and that the kids you weren’t allowed to play with are now your step-siblings. Now you get to check out all the stuff in their basement.

This place, unlike our Sweat City headquarters, is packed with fine art and museum-quality Industry Artifacts. And it’s huge. I’d call it “Battlestar Galactica,” except that name has already been snarfed up to describe another competitor’s headquarters.

But a conference room is a conference room, no matter where you are...and a two-day training session will test your sitzfleisch. The good thing is, I’ve checked my eyelids for pinholes several times, and I haven’t found a single one yet.

Last night, I met Elder Daughter at her D.C. digs, just a few blocks from DuPont Circle. We walked up into Adams Morgan to snag dinner at one of the local French eateries, the cold wind sharpening our appetites all the way.

Elder Daughter recommended the salade Niçoise, so we split one. You can’t go wrong with a salad that includes lettuce, tomatoes, sliced boiled potato, hard-cooked eggs, tuna, tiny Niçoise olives, and the odd anchovy fillet.

I challenged E.D.’s adventurous spirit by recommending that she order the ris de veau - calf sweetbreads. Sweetbreads were a favorite of the Momma d’Elisson, but I resisted ever trying them until they landed on my plate at Chez Panisse, the Berserkely-based temple of American food-worship, twenty-four years ago. They were delicious...and last night, Elder Daughter tasted them for the first time and enjoyed the hell out of them, despite their being Mysterious Organ Meats. (Thymus and/or pancreas, in case you were wondering.)

Meanwhile, I had the cassoulet, the quintessential French comfort food. Simply put, cassoulet is the Gallic equivalent of cholent, the fragrant (and fragrance-inducing) Jewish sabbath bean dish. To describe a cassoulet as a Bean and Meat Stew - which it is - is to do the dish an injustice. This version was rich with sausage, lamb, duck confit, and flavorful, long-simmered flageolet beans. I will leave the question of whether it was wise to eat a plateload of cassoulet before spending a long day in a confined space as an exercise for the reader. Discuss amongst yourselves.

On the way back from the restaurant, E.D. cracked me up with her spot-on Eartha Kitt impression. I’d better start developing some resistance to her sense of humor (which strangely resembles mine), or I’ll be pissing my pants all through Japan in a couple of months.

COVER GIRL

The South Magazine, February-March 2008 issue.
­©2008 The South Magazine. [Click to embiggen.]

Above is one of two covers for the February-March 2008 issue of The South Magazine, Savannah’s bimonthly Arts ’n’ Cultcha Periodical. Does that young lady look familiar, or what?

Funny...when our friend Laura Belle saw the magazine, she did not recognize the Mistress of Sarcasm at first, thanks largely to the makeup and hairstyle. Then she allowed that the picture resembled a combination of Elder Daughter and the Mistress.

At first I didn’t agree...but now perhaps I do, because it also resembles this other Close Relative:


The Momma d’Elisson, 1943.

Spooky, ain’t it?

DANGEROUS

Inspired, no doubt, by the recently published assemblage of Kids’ Lore, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, Ted of Rocket Jones and Robert the Llama Butcher (of The Llama Butchers, natch) have started a blog entitled “The Dangerous and Daring Blog for Boys and Girls.”

To use Robert’s words, it’s a blog with “stuff kids oughta know.”

Amen. I just read Ted’s post on Model Rocketry, an endeavor that occupied many happy hours of my Snot-Nose Days. And there promises to be plenty more stuff that will provide hours of enjoyment and enlightenment without recourse to Modern Electronica. Fun without the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or “Nintendo Thumb.” Fun that might actually involve inhaling fresh Outdoor Air.

I’d love to be a Contributing Author, but I suspect some of my subject matter would need to be screened thoroughly. Probably not a good idea to tell Johnny or Sally how to make nitrogen tri-iodide contact explosive, how to build a Water-Balloon Catapult, how to cook up your own homemade applejack, or how to dissolve coins in nitric acid...all Stupid Stuff I used to do. But information on collecting coins, or making a pinhole camera from an oatmeal canister and then developing your own photographs (chemical magic that is Vanishing Lore in this Digital Age) would fit right in.

Meanwhile, I wish Ted and Robert the best of success with this new venture. Got kids? Tell ’em about it!

Of course, if you want to order a really Dangerous Book from Amazon, you could get this one...

[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to the lovely Boudicca for making me aware of this fine new site!]

FATHER’S DAY

Elisson’s Dad (L), SWMBO’s Dad (R)

As an Empty Nester Dad, I enjoy the company of my chirrens whenever I can...which, alas, is not as often as I’d like it to be, given that they reside at a distance. Fortunately, within the last three weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with both Daughters d’Elisson. Besides affording me great pleasure, a visit with my girls always reminds me that simply being their father is, without question, my greatest personal achievement.

I remember the near-panic I felt before Elder Daughter arrived, but I have to work hard now to summon up that memory, buried beneath over twenty-eight years of Subsequent Experience. Most remarkable to me is the fact that, upon becoming a Dad, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Even more, it was like opening a window into the soul of my own Dad, Eli hizzownself. Suddenly I felt closer to him than ever before, owing to the bond of shared experience.

As I’ve noted in past posts, being a Daddy is a team effort, and I owe a lot of my Mad Daddy Skillz to the fact that I am attached at hip and shoulder to the one and only SWMBO. But today is Father’s Day, and so I will bask in the limelight while I can. [Does Father’s Day observance include Catholic priests? Just curious...]

“Daddy.” It’s a title I carry with pride, an accomplishment for which I was trained by riding on the shoulders of giants. Look upon their photographs above, and be awed.

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there! You’ve earned it.

LONGEVITY

The Mistress: “How do you stay with the same person for thirty years?”

SWMBO: “Just like you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.”

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

To paraphrase the late Art Linkletter, kids’ll draw pictures of the damndest things.

They have no inhibitions whatsoever. They will try to capture on paper whatever crosses their minds. Sometimes the results will be horrifying to adults at first blush...



Any speculations as to what this is? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is perversity, eh?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELDER DAUGHTER

Twenty-eight years ago today, I learned the true meaning of Love at First Sight when I laid eyes on my newly-emerged-from-the-womb baby daughter for the first time.

Beer Goggles have legendary powers of obscuration, they say, and whatever you see through them looks especially lovely...but they got nothing on Baby-Goggles. For Elder (then, Only) Daughter was a mess, SWMBO having gone through eight hours of hard labor. At the very end, one of the delivery nurses (who had evidently earned her sobriquet “Jo Jitsu” for a reason) was leaning on the Missus with her arm, trying to squeeze Elder Daughter out like toothpaste from a tube. She finally emerged, slathered in blood and vernix, with a head whose shape bore a vague resemblance to an aubergine.

All of that mattered not one whit to me and the Missus. It was, indeed, Love at First Sight, striking with all the impact of a barreling freight train. A huge emotional impact, wrapped up in a tiny six-pound body.

We took our new baby home and learned to be parents...and Elder Daughter was a good teacher. Some moments stand out. Her first solid food at the age of three months, propped up in a baby carrier while we visited friends in Houston. The first time she laughed, lying on her back at my grandmother’s apartment in North Miami Beach, as I played with her by dropping a wadded up Kleenex on her face over and over.

She was an amazingly verbal child, speaking in complete sentences at nine months. Until she learned to talk, she had been been subject to frequent bouts of Extreme Crankiness; as soon as she mastered a more effective way of expressing herself, she became far more pleasant. The ability to communicate put paid to most of her childish frustrations, it seemed.

She did not master walking until she was fifteen months old...and she explained why, while pulling herself up on the furniture: “I no walk. I fall down!” She wanted to wait until she was sure she could do it right.


Me and my shadow: Atlanta, 1981.

As she matured, however, her cautious nature was gradually displaced by an adventuresome spirit. She learned to sing and dance, putting those talents to good use in high school and college theatrical productions. In her senior year of college she studied abroad, and, after being graduated, went off to England to live and work for a year. A shrinking violet? Not this kid.

She’s always welcomed change, even when changes have been challenges. Now living in a new place - Washington, D.C. - and toiling away at a career that melds television production and education, she is articulate, intelligent, and perceptive, all traits that date back to her earliest days.


Elder Daughter, 2007.

As a baby, she stole our hearts from her first minute on Earth. As an adult, she thrills us, captivates us, and makes us proud. (Plus, she shares my twisted sense of humor.)

She is our Elder Daughter, and we love her. Happy birthday, sweetie!

ROAD AMUSEMENTS

We have a drive of roughly 13-14 hours ahead of us as we wend our way back to Atlanta.

Anybody familiar with the mechanics of Long Drives knows that avoiding boredom is of primary importance...especially for the driver. Over the years, through numerous Family Journeys, we have evolved our own methods, the which Yours Truly is pleased to share with my Esteemed Readers as a Public Service.

First, let us dispense with the Technological Solutions. Yes, we have a portable DVD player, and yes, we have the iPod d’Elisson. The latter may be connected to the car’s audio system, availing us with the vast Music Library I have accumulated over the years. But solitary activities such as watching DVD’s or listening to an iPod through headphones do not count as Road Amusements. They are entertainments, but they do nothing to bond the vehicle’s occupants together in a shared experience. For that, you need Road Games. Something to involve everyone in the car.

There’s the Alphabet Game. The rules are simple: Spot a sign that contains a word beginning with the letter “A.” Announce the word loudly to everyone. Now start looking for a word that begins with “B,” repeating the process until all the letters are used in sequence. In rural areas, this game moves slowly...but when you hit a sizable town, look out.

The Elisson family has its own unique Local Option Rules. Only words imprinted on fixed objects are eligible. Nothing on a moving vehicle (whether that vehicle is in motion or stationary) may be used. No abbreviations. And the X? Ahhh, that’s a tricky one, for X-rated newsstands or Xerographic Services are thin on the ground.

Sick of the Alphabet Game? There’s the License Plate Game: Jot down the states or provinces of the license plates you see. Can you get all 50 states? Not likely...

How ’bout the Green Room? This game can only be played if there are one or more riders in the car who are unfamiliar with it. Only certain articles may be brought into the Green Room; only certain actions may be performed in the Green Room. You can drink beer, but not wine or whiskey, in the Green Room. If Nature calls, you can pee - yes, you can piss - but you can’t urinate. It’s also OK to make a doody...but taking a crap is verboten. And so on...until the newbie figures out the Rule of the Green Room.

Almost any time of the year, you can have fun playing Roadkill Roundup. “Look, Daddy - there’s an armadillo!” “Hey, check it out - a dead, bloated cow!” If you like, award points based on the size and rarity of the Squashèd Beasts: armadillos in Texas are fairly common, but it’s unusual to find a flattened peacock pretty much anywhere.

When all else fails, there’s Reading Aloud. We have spent many happy hours with me or SWMBO reading various Works o’ Literature to the girls...an activity they - and we - still enjoy. You can’t go wrong with a Dave Barry book...it makes the miles fly by.

These days, when we see one of those newer-model SUV’s blast by us on the freeway, cabin-mounted DVD player aglow, back-seat occupants enmeshed in rapt, drooling attention, we have to laugh. But it’s a rueful laugh. These people don’t know what they are missing.

They’re missing out on a chance to enjoy each other’s company, and that is a Sad Thing.

AN EPIPHANY

As I write this, I am sitting in Morris William’s house in Denton, Texas. Baby Madison is taking a mid-day nap upstairs; She Who Must Be Obeyed, Elder Daughter, the Mistress of Sarcasm and I are watching Mean Girls on the DVD player.

Actually, SWMBO, Elder Daughter, and the Mistress are watching the DVD. I am sneaking the occasional peek as I pound away at the keyboard on SWMBO’s laptop.

It’s a rare delight, having all of my girls together in one room.

The Mistress of Sarcasm flew in from Atlanta last night. She’ll ride back with us in the car in a couple of days. Based on past experience, she will sleep at least eight of the 13 hours the trip will take.

In the last few days, I’ve had a chance to see Elder Daughter in a new light.

I’ve watched her at a gathering of her grandmother’s friends, talking confidently and comfortably with elderly people, most of whom she had never met. I have observed the ease with which she would initiate conversations, draw people out.

And I have had a chance to talk with her at length about various Matters of Personal Import.

It has been a real epiphany for me, an epiphany that may have begun two months ago when the Missus and I visited E.D. at her new digs in Washington. As she dressed for dinner with her boyfriend’s parents, I began to see her in a new light - as the mature woman she is in the process of becoming. The hours we have spent together this weekend have served to confirm that impression.

There comes a time - if one is fortunate - when a father realizes that his offspring have, in some significant way, exceeded him. As I listened to Elder Daughter, I had exactly that realization: that she has powers of observation, analysis, and empathy with respect to human relationships that, in many ways, far surpass my own. She is wise, my child.

It’s the damnedest thing, this business of being a Daddy. Your children start out tiny, vulnerable, helpless. You are the pillar of strength in their lives, the fount of all blessings, the source of all wisdom. And gradually, slowly, inexorably, they grow...

...and then, one day, you realize that your children have something original to say, and that while they may still come to you for advice and counsel, they are sufficiently experienced and intelligent to offer their own. And you feel...successful.

It’s a fine, fine feeling.

THE LAUGHTER OF A CHILD

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were sitting on the Silver Aerial Bus this morning enroute to Washington, D.C., where resides Elder Daughter.

Amongst our fellow passengers were a mother and daughter, traveling with the daughter’s brood: a little girl of about two years, and a pair of twins (male and female) a scant year younger. A handful, to be sure, but all of the kids were - surprisingly - well behaved throughout the entire flight.

Mid-flight, the two-year-old (whom Elisson had been amusing by playing Peek-a-Boo in the waiting lounge) laughed at something...possibly something her mother had said. SWMBO heard the gentle laugh and observed that there is nothing quite as beautiful as the laughter of a baby. I could not but agree.

As if we were struck by the same thought at the same time, we both recalled the days, some 27 years ago, when Elder Daughter (then Only Daughter) was a babe-in-arms. It was then, at the ripe old age of three months, that she laughed aloud for the first time.

We had been in Miami, visiting my grandmother - by then a crotchety old lady, but one of whom I still had (and continue to have) fond memories. After all, it was she who had taught me to use Vile Oaths in everyday speech. Elder Only Daughter was lying on her back on the sofa, and SWMBO was playing with her by dropping a crumpled up piece of tissue paper on her face.

O.D. must have enjoyed this, because suddenly she laughed out loud. A babylike laugh, to be sure, but unmistakable. And unforgettable. The memory of a child’s first laugh is a treasure that is one of the Defining Moments of parenthood, a shining instant in time when you know with absolute certainty that being a Mommy or Daddy is the finest, noblest work a human is capable of.

Elder Daughter has had many moments of laughter since that day, and she has returned the favor many times over. And here we were, on our way to see her in her new home...the realization of which made us both smile.