Father Lowe
Friday, November 20, 2006
In the seminary, what’s called, “The Baltimore Catechism,” adherence to which makes a studious Catholic think he a studious Catholic, gets thrown out the window. Serious thought enters, and the result, sometimes, is answers that don’t make sense.
I thought I would become a priest. I wouldn’t.
Too bad.
I could feel the leather in my den chair next to my bookcase welcoming me in the evenings; listen to wintry, late-fall breezes whipping up leaves that I would not have to rake on Saturday morning; taste the one beer per day (16. oz), for my nerves, that I would reward myself for yet another day of being a good and praiseworthy priest, whose sermons were entertaining, if not hysterically funny, if not a goddamned comedy act…ahem…but serenely memorable, as well, and comforting, and understanding.
That was when I thought the salient characteristic required for the priesthood was celibacy. After all, that’s why they wore those collars; to remind anybody and everybody (and themselves too) that they were celibate.
After all, sex, whatever it was, was natural. The priest had, naturally, to remind the unmarried ladies, and, I suppose himself, too, of his promise to behave…unnaturally…wait…uh…that … the natural behavior was off limits, officially out-of-bounds, no boy-girl kissey face. Whenever the party got to that point, it was time to get sick. Or play basketball.
Since I didn’t know what celibacy wasn’t, and I had lived a long and happy life—maybe 12 or 14 years so far—without even thinking about the word, it would be no problem.
But the first thing I learned in the seminary was, it isn’t celibacy. That’s a cover. Celibacy is easy, as long as you don’t know what it isn’t. Celibacy is just a detail.
It’s obedience. There’s the rub. That was a hard lesson. Obedience is much more complicated.
You have to stop your mind from being disobedient. I tried, and I learned that my mind raced through whole states of disobedience every morning. Before I got up, the mid-Atlantic states were violated, irredeemably, not a sin left in them to speak of.
True, you can commit a mortal sin against celibacy without leaving your imagination, but you can fight it. But if your mind has just a cursory doubt about a miracle you’re supposed to believe, or hot dogs on Fridays during the World Series, or why does my mother have to go-thou-and-multiply while yours goes straight up to heaven for exactly the opposite; you have to pray to keep you mind out of the…logic, and the mind can’t keep up with its own questions. The mind can deal with the body being unnatural, because the mind doesn’t take responsibility for the body. But if a mind takes responsibility for itself, it can lose itself.
A Catholic boy, 50 years ago, was not to go into an Episcopal Church. A Society of Friends Meeting House. A Jewish Temple. Why? What if I just imagine being in there. Is that a sin?
“I’m losing my patience, young man!”
So, I figured I would be a husband.
Of course, I should have taken courses in that, but who knew?
I’ve been married, more or less, three times, the only really sterling time, the current time, when we haven’t bothered, yet, with any sort of official approval, either through a representative of a state, or a representative of one or another religion.
The first time, because I thought (well, who thinks? The first time, because I thought I thought…) a certificate of marriage had anointed me a serious member of the adult community; and because—primarily, now that I think of it—outside the priesthood or the army, it was the only way that I could get out of my mother’s house without insulting her.
I knew from my father (“You volunteer for cook; they make you a photographer; you sign up as a clerk; the army makes you a medic.”) the army was untrustworthy.
So, I’m married, at 21, to a female human, with whom (I think, mind you) I am familiar, until she reveals a whole spectrum of characteristics that make me uncomfortable and that I didn’t detect—for five years of courtship.
Eleven months later, our first daughter comes home from the hospital. I drive, just as I drove her mother and her, in uteri, to the hospital (where I could not, by the way, hold the baby).
I help them into the house, where aunts, mother and mother-in-law, and maybe a female friend that I didn’t even know, hover over the exquisite child, cooing, preening, changing and trying on clothes, mainly pajamas with little feet in them.
Eventually, I mean, after an hour, one of the women says to me: “Would you like to hold her?”
Would I like to hold her? She’s my brand new daughter, my first child. And who are you?
“Yes, I think. I would like that.”
I...I mean, I guess, thanks for thinking of me…but who are you?
“Hold her like this…” She holds the baby.
“Oh, you mean the way you would hold a normal baby?” I involuntarily blurted. Well, maybe not “involuntarily.” Maybe, I sarcastically blurted.
And then, in case I had been obtuse, I said, “I mean, not like you hold a bowling ball, or a javelin.”
“Eddie!” (My mother had detected my consternation and impatience.).
“And make sure you support the head…”
I’m staying calm. Staying calm. Aw, I can’t…
“Oh. I see. That’s important, is it…”
Oh, I see. And don’t spike her, like, “Touchdown!” Splat..gush.
“That’s right. There. Look, everybody!”
Look everybody? LOOK, everybody. What? He’s holding his own baby?
I recall some of the times wherein I gave up something, let’s say a chore that involved the baby, because, beside the suggestion that I was inherently lazy, but cute lazy, it fit the wife’s view of her dominance regarding parenthood. Plus, it was easy.Men did not change diapers in 1968, because they still got away with the idea that they would be unable to handle the smell, the mess and possibly the delicacy or the fragility of a human baby.
We co-conspired with this. We who filleted fish, gutted deer and played with dead cats, co-conspired with the idea that we couldn’t change a diaper.
Times would change.
...Probably, to be continued...
Friday, November 20, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Witches of Greeponit
by Ed Lowe
The combined power of my mother and her sisters on the lapses in my sexual education and therefore my development astounds me to this day.
I am blessed with the conviction I am officially old, now; and if not that, that I even have died. Either way, I no longer am bound by rules of other dead members of my family, particularly females, which I have long been suspicious of, anyway.
(Some things just have to be told, and heeded by at least a couple of similarly misinformed wretches about to make fools of themselves for the next year or lifetime.
And no, I don’t think these are irrationality attributed to the Irish exclusively, and I suppose there are far worse attributed to all kinds of people, but I saw a conspiracy of shame and ignorance foisted on some of my fellows, let alone on me, and even if one in a hundred thousand males leaped through the twisted nonsense I suffered to please women, then show him these paragraphs and free him, forthwith.).
By the time I arrived on the scene, there were six surviving siblings in my mother’s family (one had survived almost ten years, a few died in childbirth or shortly thereafter), all girls except the oldest, Eddie (for a total of 13). All 5 of the girls to reach adulthood participated in the mythmaking, some with more enthusiasm than others, but I, more or less, was their experiment.
Their brother, my Uncle Eddie Dimond, who was 18 when his youngest sister was born, escaped as soon as a he could to be a band leader, for a while, with drummer Ozzie Nelson and his vocalist girlfriend, Harriet Hilliard, of later, “Ozzie and Harriet,” fame.
Uncle Eddie then became a Broadway stage manager for the next fifty years. There, I assume he shed some of more socially crippling myths, but I doubt he escaped altogether. I knew his three sons, and they have been similarly lost, though not nearly as lost as I, an only child.
I do know that all five of the sisters passed along the story that immediately following the birth of their last sister, Geraldine, Grandma—Maimie— their mother, made my grandfather, Thomas Patrick Dimond (really, “Grampa,” or, “Tom Pop,”) sleep in the hall, for the rest of his life. Even when Mamie’s hip broke and they lived with, “Aunt Gerry,” in Lindenhurst, they had separate rooms.
I can vouch for that, also, that his last words were to a hospital nurse: “Nice legs.”
Obviously, his sexual appetite was the cause of these maniacal chorus line members and child singers on New York’s radio stations. And, after 13 pregnancies, it had to be stopped.
That was the first clue I should have noted and filed in the cabinet of my brain marked “(?):”
“Sleeping in the bed with a man makes the woman who does it pregnant.” She would have no idea what, if anything, happened, but if she removed the man, the problem would be solved.
I would have added: “Remember this; ‘You are always to blame.’”
When I was small, and playing with my (female) cousins, I would stop and listen to my aunts crack each other up with stories of living over a speakeasy, and hosting out-of-town chorus girls—and, sometimes, out-of-town chorus boys (little did I know that certain boys could be trusted as much as girls) —in their crowded bedroom, while a fight broke out downstairs.
Everything was joyous and giddy and wonderful until somebody threw in a villain, a man, climbing on the fire escape, who wanted one thing, which everyone evidently knew, and everyone nodded about, but nobody revealed what it was. Be-not-mistaken, though, the drunker he was, the more he wanted it.
Listening intently to this, I wondered, “What is this, ‘one thing?’”
And then, the ominous warning to the future: “You know, Jeannie, you’ll be first. (What? Why Aunt Jeannie? First to what?) Your oldest daughter. (Yeah, my cousin, Georjean.). You watch. The boys’ll be sniffin’ around.” (I’m a boy. You talk like I’m not here. I’m here. What am I, “Sniffin’ around,” about. What are you saying?).”
Nobody would go any further. I was left with a man, probably evil, who wanted one thing, evidently one precious thing that girls want to keep, but nobody would reveal. And now, this evil would infect boys, causing them to go, “Sniffin’ around,” like a ferret.
What’s going to happen to my cousin Georjean? What’s going to happen to me?
For years, it seemed (probably weeks), I wondered what the, “one thing,” was. Using a clever (!) reversal, I detected (the only way I could go—detecting) that if man wanted to please a woman, to honor her, to make her laugh freely like the gathered aunts, to make her so happy she could hardly stand it, he would prove that, for her, he would deny himself this one thing, whatever it turned out to be.
He would be the hero. He would be the best. He would be…me.
My first conclusion was wrong, beer. Thank God. The final beer nearly killed me, but the other beers kept me sane for scores of years. The flaw in it was that I had no other information.
But look at it. There was beer at the ball game, at a parade, at bowling, at picnics, after mowing the lawn; there was beer across the street from every funeral parlor in history; there, on the train, in the bar car…why, there was no place where men went except church that did not include beer.
When I got older—not to mention when I noticed that my Aunts Kiki and Jeannie drank beer—I discovered that, “the thing,” was not beer, but sex.
Sex? I didn’t know exactly (…even remotely) what sex was, except that it was more complicated than beer and people were inclined to hide what they knew of it. However, that actually made achieving my goal even easier. I could give that up, because, while I was somehow attracted to it, and, frankly, always felt that I could become really good at it, I could not imagine myself being so bold as to initiate contact.
“You want to do what?”
So, I would show that I was not like other men. I had more than, “one thing,” on my mind. And, I would prove it. I would make a public vow not to have it. I would be celibate, which I understood was not doing something I didn’t know about anyway.
I would be a priest.
…to be continued (I don’t know when, though)…
The combined power of my mother and her sisters on the lapses in my sexual education and therefore my development astounds me to this day.
I am blessed with the conviction I am officially old, now; and if not that, that I even have died. Either way, I no longer am bound by rules of other dead members of my family, particularly females, which I have long been suspicious of, anyway.
(Some things just have to be told, and heeded by at least a couple of similarly misinformed wretches about to make fools of themselves for the next year or lifetime.
And no, I don’t think these are irrationality attributed to the Irish exclusively, and I suppose there are far worse attributed to all kinds of people, but I saw a conspiracy of shame and ignorance foisted on some of my fellows, let alone on me, and even if one in a hundred thousand males leaped through the twisted nonsense I suffered to please women, then show him these paragraphs and free him, forthwith.).
By the time I arrived on the scene, there were six surviving siblings in my mother’s family (one had survived almost ten years, a few died in childbirth or shortly thereafter), all girls except the oldest, Eddie (for a total of 13). All 5 of the girls to reach adulthood participated in the mythmaking, some with more enthusiasm than others, but I, more or less, was their experiment.
Their brother, my Uncle Eddie Dimond, who was 18 when his youngest sister was born, escaped as soon as a he could to be a band leader, for a while, with drummer Ozzie Nelson and his vocalist girlfriend, Harriet Hilliard, of later, “Ozzie and Harriet,” fame.
Uncle Eddie then became a Broadway stage manager for the next fifty years. There, I assume he shed some of more socially crippling myths, but I doubt he escaped altogether. I knew his three sons, and they have been similarly lost, though not nearly as lost as I, an only child.
I do know that all five of the sisters passed along the story that immediately following the birth of their last sister, Geraldine, Grandma—Maimie— their mother, made my grandfather, Thomas Patrick Dimond (really, “Grampa,” or, “Tom Pop,”) sleep in the hall, for the rest of his life. Even when Mamie’s hip broke and they lived with, “Aunt Gerry,” in Lindenhurst, they had separate rooms.
I can vouch for that, also, that his last words were to a hospital nurse: “Nice legs.”
Obviously, his sexual appetite was the cause of these maniacal chorus line members and child singers on New York’s radio stations. And, after 13 pregnancies, it had to be stopped.
That was the first clue I should have noted and filed in the cabinet of my brain marked “(?):”
“Sleeping in the bed with a man makes the woman who does it pregnant.” She would have no idea what, if anything, happened, but if she removed the man, the problem would be solved.
I would have added: “Remember this; ‘You are always to blame.’”
When I was small, and playing with my (female) cousins, I would stop and listen to my aunts crack each other up with stories of living over a speakeasy, and hosting out-of-town chorus girls—and, sometimes, out-of-town chorus boys (little did I know that certain boys could be trusted as much as girls) —in their crowded bedroom, while a fight broke out downstairs.
Everything was joyous and giddy and wonderful until somebody threw in a villain, a man, climbing on the fire escape, who wanted one thing, which everyone evidently knew, and everyone nodded about, but nobody revealed what it was. Be-not-mistaken, though, the drunker he was, the more he wanted it.
Listening intently to this, I wondered, “What is this, ‘one thing?’”
And then, the ominous warning to the future: “You know, Jeannie, you’ll be first. (What? Why Aunt Jeannie? First to what?) Your oldest daughter. (Yeah, my cousin, Georjean.). You watch. The boys’ll be sniffin’ around.” (I’m a boy. You talk like I’m not here. I’m here. What am I, “Sniffin’ around,” about. What are you saying?).”
Nobody would go any further. I was left with a man, probably evil, who wanted one thing, evidently one precious thing that girls want to keep, but nobody would reveal. And now, this evil would infect boys, causing them to go, “Sniffin’ around,” like a ferret.
What’s going to happen to my cousin Georjean? What’s going to happen to me?
For years, it seemed (probably weeks), I wondered what the, “one thing,” was. Using a clever (!) reversal, I detected (the only way I could go—detecting) that if man wanted to please a woman, to honor her, to make her laugh freely like the gathered aunts, to make her so happy she could hardly stand it, he would prove that, for her, he would deny himself this one thing, whatever it turned out to be.
He would be the hero. He would be the best. He would be…me.
My first conclusion was wrong, beer. Thank God. The final beer nearly killed me, but the other beers kept me sane for scores of years. The flaw in it was that I had no other information.
But look at it. There was beer at the ball game, at a parade, at bowling, at picnics, after mowing the lawn; there was beer across the street from every funeral parlor in history; there, on the train, in the bar car…why, there was no place where men went except church that did not include beer.
When I got older—not to mention when I noticed that my Aunts Kiki and Jeannie drank beer—I discovered that, “the thing,” was not beer, but sex.
Sex? I didn’t know exactly (…even remotely) what sex was, except that it was more complicated than beer and people were inclined to hide what they knew of it. However, that actually made achieving my goal even easier. I could give that up, because, while I was somehow attracted to it, and, frankly, always felt that I could become really good at it, I could not imagine myself being so bold as to initiate contact.
“You want to do what?”
So, I would show that I was not like other men. I had more than, “one thing,” on my mind. And, I would prove it. I would make a public vow not to have it. I would be celibate, which I understood was not doing something I didn’t know about anyway.
I would be a priest.
…to be continued (I don’t know when, though)…
Friday, November 13, 2009
Paul Holland
by Ed Lowe
I’m a terrible godfather.
That, or, I was so lucky as to be chosen for the honor by parents so terrific that they had scarce need for me, and so I evaded such responsibilities as the role calls for (in which case, then, I would have been a terrible godfather).
Though I was not when they selected me, I am and have long been a non-attending, non-officially contributing church member, and therefore a seriously flawed role-model for prospective new members, as promised, by me, at a liturgy, with witnesses, many of whom obviously would have been a better choice.
So, recently, one of my Godsons calls, Brian Holland, the one who, now that I think of it, most uncannily resembles his father. He identifies himself as my godson, which I deserve, and says he sorry he has to inform me that his father has died.
Frankly, I don’t remember what he said or what I said after that.
There was some mention of kidney failure and bringing him up from Florida and the fact that Charlotte N.C. has undergone sweeping changes in the last forty years. There would be a service in Amitvyille Saturday morning with…and... I don’t know…I guess, will I come, or, “I thought you would like to know.” Something like that, alternately awe-inspirational and awful at the same time.
I think I was the one who said the stupid things about Charlotte, North Carolina. Brian said has lived there, five years, now. It’s been exactly forty years since I’ve been there. Something in common.
“Your father calls me from Florida every month,” I’m tempted to say, but don’t, because I’m thinking something hair brained, like “What are you saying, he’s not going to call, anymore?”
Paul Holland.
Paul Holland. My friend. When I first met him, I think I was little. I mean, really little. His five cousins, the Macombers, had moved into a house next to mine. He lived somewhere else. Cottage Place.
I told Brian I would call him back. I had to think. Or, what people do when they don’t know what to say.
I started to write. First, a sort of curse, that summed up the surprise I felt. And then, more or less to Brian, “I’m looking at it [the curse], staring at it, and I’m saying, ‘You're quite capable of lending more dignity to this...blah, blah, blah...’ but really, I'm not. I'm not.
“What was I, five, or seven, when he first visited the Macombers. I know I was twelve when we really tightened as a unit. I had played ball with him and stuff, but it was 1957 or 1958 when I heard that he was in the brand new hospital, Good Samaritan, which seemed so far away. It was a hernia, or and appendectomy or something.
“It was raining. There was nothing to do in Amitvyille, anyway. I had fifty cents. A quarter each way. I took a Utility Line bus along Merrick Road. I can't remember doing anything like it before. Never alone, anyway.
“The nurse in the room looked at me, and for some reason said, ‘He's not allowed to laugh.’ I thought it was strange to say, but nodded, ‘Okay.’ She said, ‘I mean it. If those stitches pop, I'm going to hold you responsible.’ I said, again, ‘Okay.’
“Paul saw me, and shot up in the bed, holding his side.
‘“I know. I know. No laughing,’ I said. ‘How are you doing...?’
“I really thought I was controlling myself, though the both of us were straining. I mean, we were at an age (twelve and fourteen) where the more serious the situation got, the more tempted we were to fall down laughing about it. Breaking wind in church, I suppose, would have killed him.
“In the next bed was what we thought was an old man,” I wrote in an e-mail. “Probably half our age, now. A male nurse came in (I had never seen one, so I was already on the edge), and he said to the old man, ‘I have to prep you.’
“Paul's eyes widened, and he sat straight up in the bed.
“I shrugged. ‘Prep? What’s Prep?’
“Holding himself tight, Paul said, ‘When they prep you, they shave you from your chest down to your knees.’
“The question came out my mouth before I had chance to trip it, or lasso it, or smother it. And what was worse, it was only one word. I said, ‘Everything?’
“Owww. Even my stitches hurt, and I didn't have any. Paul was red. He was straining so hard not to laugh, I thought maybe I would leave. I wasn’t helping. Then, the male nurse, who had pulled the curtain around his patient, but unfortunately not around his own mouth, shouted at the patient, ‘Look here, you’re going to have to hold that thing steady, or I'll cut it off.’
“We both exploded. Collapsed. The nurse appeared out of nowhere, like a nun. She grabbed me by the ear, and marched me right out of the room, and she wouldn't hear any excuses. ‘I said, ‘No laughing, didn’t I? And look at you; just look at you! When your friend's stomach blows up, are you going to be laughing then? Get out!’
“End of visit. Maybe ten minutes.
“I don't know how, but Paul made it, and he and I became friends for life.
“I'm sorry.” I wrote in the e-mail to Brian. “There’s years of memories, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary; The Knick Trips, The Chatterbox. Basketball. Harmonizing. Then you four, Paul Michael, James, Lauren, you; and, later, the other kids—I didn’t know them.
“But that hospital is just where my head went.
“Hey, my mother is a freshman there. She died on Oct. 20th. Maybe she'll help him with, you know, the applications and…stuff.”
edlowe
I’m a terrible godfather.
That, or, I was so lucky as to be chosen for the honor by parents so terrific that they had scarce need for me, and so I evaded such responsibilities as the role calls for (in which case, then, I would have been a terrible godfather).
Though I was not when they selected me, I am and have long been a non-attending, non-officially contributing church member, and therefore a seriously flawed role-model for prospective new members, as promised, by me, at a liturgy, with witnesses, many of whom obviously would have been a better choice.
So, recently, one of my Godsons calls, Brian Holland, the one who, now that I think of it, most uncannily resembles his father. He identifies himself as my godson, which I deserve, and says he sorry he has to inform me that his father has died.
Frankly, I don’t remember what he said or what I said after that.
There was some mention of kidney failure and bringing him up from Florida and the fact that Charlotte N.C. has undergone sweeping changes in the last forty years. There would be a service in Amitvyille Saturday morning with…and... I don’t know…I guess, will I come, or, “I thought you would like to know.” Something like that, alternately awe-inspirational and awful at the same time.
I think I was the one who said the stupid things about Charlotte, North Carolina. Brian said has lived there, five years, now. It’s been exactly forty years since I’ve been there. Something in common.
“Your father calls me from Florida every month,” I’m tempted to say, but don’t, because I’m thinking something hair brained, like “What are you saying, he’s not going to call, anymore?”
Paul Holland.
Paul Holland. My friend. When I first met him, I think I was little. I mean, really little. His five cousins, the Macombers, had moved into a house next to mine. He lived somewhere else. Cottage Place.
I told Brian I would call him back. I had to think. Or, what people do when they don’t know what to say.
I started to write. First, a sort of curse, that summed up the surprise I felt. And then, more or less to Brian, “I’m looking at it [the curse], staring at it, and I’m saying, ‘You're quite capable of lending more dignity to this...blah, blah, blah...’ but really, I'm not. I'm not.
“What was I, five, or seven, when he first visited the Macombers. I know I was twelve when we really tightened as a unit. I had played ball with him and stuff, but it was 1957 or 1958 when I heard that he was in the brand new hospital, Good Samaritan, which seemed so far away. It was a hernia, or and appendectomy or something.
“It was raining. There was nothing to do in Amitvyille, anyway. I had fifty cents. A quarter each way. I took a Utility Line bus along Merrick Road. I can't remember doing anything like it before. Never alone, anyway.
“The nurse in the room looked at me, and for some reason said, ‘He's not allowed to laugh.’ I thought it was strange to say, but nodded, ‘Okay.’ She said, ‘I mean it. If those stitches pop, I'm going to hold you responsible.’ I said, again, ‘Okay.’
“Paul saw me, and shot up in the bed, holding his side.
‘“I know. I know. No laughing,’ I said. ‘How are you doing...?’
“I really thought I was controlling myself, though the both of us were straining. I mean, we were at an age (twelve and fourteen) where the more serious the situation got, the more tempted we were to fall down laughing about it. Breaking wind in church, I suppose, would have killed him.
“In the next bed was what we thought was an old man,” I wrote in an e-mail. “Probably half our age, now. A male nurse came in (I had never seen one, so I was already on the edge), and he said to the old man, ‘I have to prep you.’
“Paul's eyes widened, and he sat straight up in the bed.
“I shrugged. ‘Prep? What’s Prep?’
“Holding himself tight, Paul said, ‘When they prep you, they shave you from your chest down to your knees.’
“The question came out my mouth before I had chance to trip it, or lasso it, or smother it. And what was worse, it was only one word. I said, ‘Everything?’
“Owww. Even my stitches hurt, and I didn't have any. Paul was red. He was straining so hard not to laugh, I thought maybe I would leave. I wasn’t helping. Then, the male nurse, who had pulled the curtain around his patient, but unfortunately not around his own mouth, shouted at the patient, ‘Look here, you’re going to have to hold that thing steady, or I'll cut it off.’
“We both exploded. Collapsed. The nurse appeared out of nowhere, like a nun. She grabbed me by the ear, and marched me right out of the room, and she wouldn't hear any excuses. ‘I said, ‘No laughing, didn’t I? And look at you; just look at you! When your friend's stomach blows up, are you going to be laughing then? Get out!’
“End of visit. Maybe ten minutes.
“I don't know how, but Paul made it, and he and I became friends for life.
“I'm sorry.” I wrote in the e-mail to Brian. “There’s years of memories, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary; The Knick Trips, The Chatterbox. Basketball. Harmonizing. Then you four, Paul Michael, James, Lauren, you; and, later, the other kids—I didn’t know them.
“But that hospital is just where my head went.
“Hey, my mother is a freshman there. She died on Oct. 20th. Maybe she'll help him with, you know, the applications and…stuff.”
edlowe
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Mondays With Dolores
Mondays With Dolores
It’s almost two years since I inadvertently ended what turned to be a longtime tradition between my mother, Dolores, and me, a restaurant dinner every Monday night.
I had a stroke.
I actually thought she might have ended it years ago by a standard route, dying. After all, she was 26 years older than I, which sounded considerably older than it …sounds…now, or seems so, anyway. Besides still suffering the, I’m-going-to-live-forever fever, I suspected to near conviction that she would pre-decease me.
After all, she had undergone a triple bypass operation some 30 years ago. It was to give her as many as four years, the doctors said, maybe five, no more, so seriously had she neglected her athero-arterial something-or-other, which frightened my father to death. He, of course, died five years later, and that was twenty-five years ago.
The tradition started nearly 20 years ago, when I called her one Monday and said that I had looked at my calendar (It must have been January. I start living by a calendar every January, and by February, I’m back to the seat of my pants.) and, lo and behold, I didn’t have the kids, I didn’t have a speaking engagement, and, would she like to go to a restaurant for dinner.
Yes.
I continued, trying to talk her into it (Yeah. What was I thinking?). “It’s cold, but not terribly cold, and well go close, like, there’s a lovely place in Farmingdale called Umberto’s…”
“I said, ‘Yes,’” she said, “I’d love it…”
“I mean, if you don’t want to go to Amato’s (I didn’t know what to think about Amato’s. That was, ‘their,’ place.), or right here, at the corner…”
“I’d love to go to Amato’s. Unless you have an objection. It’s up to you.”
“No. It’s up to you. I asked you.”
“Well, Amato’s is fine with me. Unless…”
“No. No, Amato’s it is.”
“Unless you feel funny…”
“No, I don’t feel funny. Amato’s is great.”’
“Well, it’s up to you.”
“I got an idea: let’s go to Amato’s.”
We ate at Amato’s. Dolores was in her glory, either talking to a waiter or a waitress she knew or overhearing a patron who recognized her son (Look how he takes care of me, taking me out to dinner.).
The following Monday, sacre bleu, I’m facing the identical situation.
I could have eaten at home, but I had only what the boys ate, macaroni and cheese—which I bought by the acre. I think that’s what they ate through the Nineties. I can’t have macaroni and cheese in the same building, now; can’t stand the smell of it.
“Hey, Doe. Wanna date? I got the same situation I had last Monday.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, do you want to go to a restaurant…oh, I get it, you do. Ha, ha. Fast decision. Funny.”
The next Monday night, my phone rang.
“What time,” she said, “are you picking me up?”
(?)
People think I was good to my mother because I was good to my mother. I’m good, more or less, but not that good. I didn’t know how to get out of it. What do you say, an only child, to your widowed mother: “Yeah, well Ma, I…I’m going to watch, uh, the, Emmy Awards…”
So, I took her out for dinner. I figured that eventually, something would come up, like a series of Monday night soccer games, or a seasonal blitzkrieg of Monday night speaking engagements, something to break the spell.
The first Monday night to come up where I had a conflict, I feigned disappointment. “I’m going to be busy next Monday night, Ma, I can’t take you out for dinner.”
She took it like a soldier. No, like a general.
“Oh, that’s all right, we can go out any night next week. Wednesday, maybe. Should I put down Wednesday?”
Should you put down Wednesday? What is this, a scorecard? Not knowing what else to do, I said, “Uh…Yeah…put me down for Wednesday.”
“Then we’ll go back to Monday next week.”
I think I did 15 years of Mondays.
And if a holiday fell on a Monday, she would want to go out on Tuesday, as well, because Monday, well, that didn’t count. It was a holiday.
She eventually settled on Captain Bill’s in Bay Shore, as a favorite, though when the Duck Inn became The Lakeside, she liked that. A long-gone restaurant in Brightwaters, a few more on Montauk Highway, in that general area, Il Classico in Massapequa (when my nose was stuffed, and I sounded like I needed a curative Fish Soup), Runyon’s, Vittorio’s when that opened, Hudson’s Mill, when that opened, Dick and Dora’s, Catfish Max, The Brown Osprey, to name a few. I said, “to name a few.”
My mother then developed new traditions for holidays. She made Thanksgiving dinner, so I and whatever kids I had that year were, “invited,” to her house. If I didn’t have kids that year, she asked me to make restaurant reservations, for two. I would take her up to Peppercorn’s, or even Abel Conklins, have Thanksgiving dinner, take her home, and drive to Susan’s house for late coffee, which I couldn’t drink, because it would keep me awake all night, wondering how all this happened.
Then, I made Christmas Dinner for eight or nine years, and alternate Thanksgiving dinners.
And the holidays kept increasing. All right, Mother’s Day is a given, and Christmas, Thanksgiving, maybe Easter. But, Father’s Day? Veteran’s Day? What’s next, Arbor Day?
Then, I had the stroke.
Then, a year-and-a-half went by, and she died earlier this month.
Wow. Where did it all go?
It’s almost two years since I inadvertently ended what turned to be a longtime tradition between my mother, Dolores, and me, a restaurant dinner every Monday night.
I had a stroke.
I actually thought she might have ended it years ago by a standard route, dying. After all, she was 26 years older than I, which sounded considerably older than it …sounds…now, or seems so, anyway. Besides still suffering the, I’m-going-to-live-forever fever, I suspected to near conviction that she would pre-decease me.
After all, she had undergone a triple bypass operation some 30 years ago. It was to give her as many as four years, the doctors said, maybe five, no more, so seriously had she neglected her athero-arterial something-or-other, which frightened my father to death. He, of course, died five years later, and that was twenty-five years ago.
The tradition started nearly 20 years ago, when I called her one Monday and said that I had looked at my calendar (It must have been January. I start living by a calendar every January, and by February, I’m back to the seat of my pants.) and, lo and behold, I didn’t have the kids, I didn’t have a speaking engagement, and, would she like to go to a restaurant for dinner.
Yes.
I continued, trying to talk her into it (Yeah. What was I thinking?). “It’s cold, but not terribly cold, and well go close, like, there’s a lovely place in Farmingdale called Umberto’s…”
“I said, ‘Yes,’” she said, “I’d love it…”
“I mean, if you don’t want to go to Amato’s (I didn’t know what to think about Amato’s. That was, ‘their,’ place.), or right here, at the corner…”
“I’d love to go to Amato’s. Unless you have an objection. It’s up to you.”
“No. It’s up to you. I asked you.”
“Well, Amato’s is fine with me. Unless…”
“No. No, Amato’s it is.”
“Unless you feel funny…”
“No, I don’t feel funny. Amato’s is great.”’
“Well, it’s up to you.”
“I got an idea: let’s go to Amato’s.”
We ate at Amato’s. Dolores was in her glory, either talking to a waiter or a waitress she knew or overhearing a patron who recognized her son (Look how he takes care of me, taking me out to dinner.).
The following Monday, sacre bleu, I’m facing the identical situation.
I could have eaten at home, but I had only what the boys ate, macaroni and cheese—which I bought by the acre. I think that’s what they ate through the Nineties. I can’t have macaroni and cheese in the same building, now; can’t stand the smell of it.
“Hey, Doe. Wanna date? I got the same situation I had last Monday.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, do you want to go to a restaurant…oh, I get it, you do. Ha, ha. Fast decision. Funny.”
The next Monday night, my phone rang.
“What time,” she said, “are you picking me up?”
(?)
People think I was good to my mother because I was good to my mother. I’m good, more or less, but not that good. I didn’t know how to get out of it. What do you say, an only child, to your widowed mother: “Yeah, well Ma, I…I’m going to watch, uh, the, Emmy Awards…”
So, I took her out for dinner. I figured that eventually, something would come up, like a series of Monday night soccer games, or a seasonal blitzkrieg of Monday night speaking engagements, something to break the spell.
The first Monday night to come up where I had a conflict, I feigned disappointment. “I’m going to be busy next Monday night, Ma, I can’t take you out for dinner.”
She took it like a soldier. No, like a general.
“Oh, that’s all right, we can go out any night next week. Wednesday, maybe. Should I put down Wednesday?”
Should you put down Wednesday? What is this, a scorecard? Not knowing what else to do, I said, “Uh…Yeah…put me down for Wednesday.”
“Then we’ll go back to Monday next week.”
I think I did 15 years of Mondays.
And if a holiday fell on a Monday, she would want to go out on Tuesday, as well, because Monday, well, that didn’t count. It was a holiday.
She eventually settled on Captain Bill’s in Bay Shore, as a favorite, though when the Duck Inn became The Lakeside, she liked that. A long-gone restaurant in Brightwaters, a few more on Montauk Highway, in that general area, Il Classico in Massapequa (when my nose was stuffed, and I sounded like I needed a curative Fish Soup), Runyon’s, Vittorio’s when that opened, Hudson’s Mill, when that opened, Dick and Dora’s, Catfish Max, The Brown Osprey, to name a few. I said, “to name a few.”
My mother then developed new traditions for holidays. She made Thanksgiving dinner, so I and whatever kids I had that year were, “invited,” to her house. If I didn’t have kids that year, she asked me to make restaurant reservations, for two. I would take her up to Peppercorn’s, or even Abel Conklins, have Thanksgiving dinner, take her home, and drive to Susan’s house for late coffee, which I couldn’t drink, because it would keep me awake all night, wondering how all this happened.
Then, I made Christmas Dinner for eight or nine years, and alternate Thanksgiving dinners.
And the holidays kept increasing. All right, Mother’s Day is a given, and Christmas, Thanksgiving, maybe Easter. But, Father’s Day? Veteran’s Day? What’s next, Arbor Day?
Then, I had the stroke.
Then, a year-and-a-half went by, and she died earlier this month.
Wow. Where did it all go?
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