VINE CHAT

‘RV’ is on digital cable this month. And I like the movie so much, this evening I did the unthinkable…I let the kids snub their reading time and our family of five watched a movie that plays up people behaving badly, irrationally, and the resolution at the end was intermixed with disaster. And you know what? It was one of the best family evenings we have had in a long time.

            In this movie, ‘RV’, a family of four travels in a recreational vehicle while suffering mishap after mishap-making efforts to communicate despite the variable moods of teenagers, alienation due to over-scheduled, media-absorbed lives, with attempts at secrecy between spouses about professional setbacks. I’m not reviewing this movie, I’m just thrilled that the modern, less than perfect (read: realistic) family is having its day in the mainstream.

            When I was a teenager in the 80s, my friends and I measured our family character against television shows like the Brady Bunch and Family Ties, until John Hughes wrote his first brilliant screenplay. After movies like 'Sixteen Candles' family movies were infused with clever humor and the restrictions on what we let other people see behind our picket fences began to ease.

            At age fourteen, I knew my family was screwy. I had an idea that other people’s families were also screwy, but these things were unspoken and private. In fact, there were things I made a conscious effort to hide, and it wasn’t just my father singing and dancing (by himself, in the living room, rather badly) to “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” when I had friends over. I thought it was a dirty little secret that my parents fought, yelled, and didn’t speak at pleasant decibels twenty-four hours a day. I thought it was yucky when my parents kissed and made up after fighting over unfolded piles of laundry, but I figured that was the way it was supposed to be. No one carried on for days, there was resolution, even though it got a bit dicey when my father put the vacuum in bed with my mom and he slept on the couch. Twenty-two years later, with my own share of marital spats over laundry and clean carpets, I think that gesture by my father was creative, hilarious, neither normal or abnormal. There are so many dynamics within a family, “dysfunctional” is, in my opinion, a relative term.  

            I know that there has to be a label for certain types of behavior, but "dysfunctional" isn't it, the term has worn out it's welcome and become multi-faceted. Here's what I believe, and it's not even a radical theory: kids actually understand the concept of humor tempering difficult situations, and “dysfunctional” families are comfort zones for children - a soft landing where everyone makes mistakes and laughs at each other with lighthearted absurdity. Scoffing at perfection and conformity can carry us through our very worst days as people, families and professionals. My kids get it, even when I forget. 

            Hollywood has cashed in on that concept, which is why movies like ‘RV’ are discussed at soccer games and recommended on Netflix. It’s no accident. These are difficult times. We want to laugh at ourselves. We subconsciously believe that the humility will be rewarded, and who doesn’t need that extra security, who can deny they’d like to know that other people are as screwy as them?  

            Every family has its share. We put on smiles and talk cutesy about each other’s eccentricities, but we are really looking for fellowship based on similar neuroses. Since we all have them, the term “dysfunctional family” should be obliterated from all psychological terminology. You can hardly walk out your door without coming face to face with an existential crisis, and they don’t all bounce off, some things get to your collective family soul. If we can find humor (read: silver lining with wit) in the turning points in life, the little people we’re raising will have advantageous coping skills come their turn as leaders. Laugh or cry? Hit or shrug it off? Celebrate imperfection or drive ourselves insane trying to be better adjusted than other families? I can tell you which one makes for happier people. But the kids are putting 'RV' in the DVD, (watching it once on digital cable wasn’t enough), and it’s going to take my most focused effort, as my five-year-old daughter Zoë has insisted we watch in it French.

            Folie á famille.

If Tony Soprano owned a dog, what kind of dog would it be?  My guess is a Pit Bull or a Rottweiler, or a cross breed of both.  Tony Soprano’s dog would be a big, hefty dog with a menacing exterior who was overwhelmingly loving under the growl and thick hide.  A dog capable of ripping another creature limb from limb, but also capable of restraint, as if there were a conscience behind the killer image.  Does such a dog exist?  Indeed she does, and I own her.  She is named Terra, Latin for earth. 

Terra was a puppy when I found her at a county animal shelter, in a part of town known for riff-raff.   I suspect that someone bred a litter of Pit Bulls/Rottweilers to fight somewhere.  It was just that suspicion that led my husband to deny me the dog at first.  In the last pen of the last stall in the shelter, this dog with black and white cow markings waited for me - specifically me - to adopt her.  When I saw her, it was kismet.  “I am not leaving without this dog,” I told my husband.  She, our future child, looked at my husband, shifted her weight from left front paw to right front paw (her nails making a ladylike tap, tap sound on the pavement), and started to cry, very softly.  That was it, he was done.  Like Mr. Darcy, but for a dog.

We brought her back to our newly-purchased home.  She proved to be the gentle soul I suspected her to be from the first moment.  She had an outgoing personality, and made enemies only with the ugly bushes I would uproot anyway. She was gentle with my step-son, sniffing him to make sure he was healthy (and to make sure that he had no other dog at his mom's house), nudging him softly with her snout when she wanted attention. And she ate a lot, so she fit perfectly into our family unit. 

Nine years and three kids later, Terra has endured my children, ages twenty months to eight years, sticking keys in her nose, pounding her on the head with spatulas, and being chased around the house with talking Big Bird toys and balloons (she hates this).  She has never once snapped, growled, or bit.  She has, I am convinced, the soul of a Tibetan monk.  Go ahead, call me crazy.  Then tell me how you would endure eight years of piggy back rides – for four kids.

My Terra, aptly named, gets dirty.  She lies in my vegetable gardens and her white coat turns all shades of gray and brown.  The kids keeping me busy, I don’t have much time to take her to Petco for grooming, so I decided to just pay for a mobile groomer.  On the freeway the other day I noticed a mobile groomer with a sticker on the bumper that endorsed adopting from local animal shelters.  There is a groomer I can feel good about using, I thought.  I memorized the number and called, getting voice mail and so I left a message.  A week passed before I realize I haven’t had a call back.  Hmm.  Well, benefit of the doubt.  So I call back, and I get a live person.  “Hi, I’m inquiring about your rates?”  I ask.  “Sure, what kind of dog do you have?” she asks, out of breath.  “I have a seventy pound dog…”, “Uh-huh,” she says.  “She's a Pit Bull/Rottweiler mix”.  I say. Silence.  “I probably wouldn’t do that dog.  Thanks for calling.”  And she hung up. I’m bewildered in a seething, slap-in-the-face kind of way. I feel very…Tony Soprano. Because if Tony Soprano had a dog, Tony would be fuming at this groomer’s flat-out, unjustified rejection.   I am left holding the telephone with a dial tone, channeling the spirit of a fictitious mobster.

Now, I believe that other people’s opinion of me is none of my business, so therefore other people’s opinion of my dog (or children) is none of my business.   That philosophy tries to set into my rational mind, but my alter ego barks at it and scares it away.  “What am I, an ***hole?” Tony /I say.  “What’s so ******* wrong with owning a pit bull?  You gotta train dogs to be killers, that ain’t true for some people, you know.  My dog has never attacked anybody.  My dog…better than most people.” [ahem, recent media figures and their animal-related felonies] I imagine Tony/me, facing the groomer with a smug, intimidating look.  “You should reconsider.  You’d be happy you did.”  Then Tony/me would get the groomer to think twice, perhaps even feel guilty for fluffing up only toy dogs and giving preferential treatement to retrievers.  [Note: I have nothing against toy dogs or retrievers, I have owned both].

I put the phone down, calmly. But inside, I am a dog owner obsessed.  In my defense, there is a Sopranos episode in which Dr. Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist, realizes she has likened Tony to a Rottweiler in one of her dreams, stating that Rottweilers were used in Roman times by the soldiers to guard their camps.  So there. We choose animals we feel kindred to.  So an insult my dog is an insult to me. This is way beyond projection, I’m engulfed in a cinematic mentality, with an imaginary peppers & egg sandwich in my hand. 

This all began with a bumper sticker I saw endoring adopting from animal shelters. I have a similar sticker on my kids Radio Flyer, it says "Judge the Deed, Not the Breed". Starting with my Terra. She's like Nana from Peter Pan, just with a stronger jaw.

My dog isn’t vicious.  My dog has higher consciousness. Terra understands what we say to her.  Terra adapts to the changing conditions of the homefront, which I admit, sometimes I have trouble with. And she may bark at the passers-by, but just as instinctively shrug it off, getting back to the important business of looking tough and intimidating whatever uninvited creature enters her backyard.  “Consider yourself lucky to be in the presence of such a loving animal,” Tony /I say to the anonymous groomer.  “At least she, my dog, isn’t judgmental. She wants nothing more than a place to sleep, food to eat, and someone to rub her belly. Is there something wrong with that?” The last word of my sentence ends a little more loudly than the first. Yes, I have been absorbed by a fictitious mobster, all over a grooming turn-down. 

I suppose I should take a lesson from my dog and shrug this off, letting the Tony/me dialogue stay in the Sopranos script in my head. But seriously, we could all benefit from doggie wisdom. No matter what the breed.

“A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness”

~Elsa Schiaparelli

I’m of the opinion that mean people can’t cook. I take full responsibility for this opinion.

Mean people aren’t capable of food that tastes good and treats your body well.  Mean people compose a false representation of cuisine because they’re hiding the fear it will not measure up to the food of others. Mean people cook with the blindfold of their "infallibility" and thereby spoil many broths. Mean people want others to be as sickened as they are and subconsciously add avarice, neglect, and self-indulgence to their recipes.

In order to do something well, to do it right, here is my personal recipe: Start out with good will. Competition is not a good reason to start. Superiority is a poor establishment. Righteousness is an illusion.

When your heart has only the hopes that it can bring something good, when your soul wants only to warm those of others, when you are no longer afraid of that which cannot hurt you, only then do you have the perfect recipe.

Call me crazy. I am, but that is beside the point. I make good food, it is my favorite tool, and this is because all my life I have been hungry, and somehow, I learned to pay close attention.

Which is why I know some of the sweetest desserts have been seasoned with tears, but that comes from a different place.

And I have had experiences with some very angry chefs – who behaved badly in the domain of their kitchens, but somewhere in their childhood was a Grandmother who made chicken soup with home made noodles, and they are honoring some memory with their steamy demeanors and drive to do things right the first time.

I have tasted some braised, tomatoish tender meat dishes from women who had mean streaks. But that was only a small percentage of their complexity, and they managed to keep it out of their food.  After locking themselves in their bedrooms where they cried with disappointment, they emerged into the kitchen with hope, a wooden spoon with character, and a freshly pressed apron of Battenburg lace.

I myself have a tongue sharp as an unused ceramic knife, but I only use it to slice things that otherwise would not make it as part of a healthy main course. I have learned, after cutting to the bone or through bleeding that won’t stop, how to put the knife away in favor of a gentler repast.

Instead of paper-folded thank you notes, I give Oatmeal Raisin cookies as a gesture of gratefulness, or simply because I can't help but share the goodness of a timeless cookie. To make it my own, I add the fragrant, sienna colored powder I call Pixie Dust – it’s been known to induce feelings of falling-in-love like euphoria. Into the cookie batter, I  grate magic from a powerful seed that is said to enhance intuition. Nothing I cook or bake is for the sake of hunger alone.

And as I write this, I have little ones asking when I will be done so that I may cook their first meal of the day. I have also learned how to quiet my mind, and let the creative culinary side of me take over, so as not to ignore an empty belly, so as not to shun nourishing due to ambition. I have learned that all hunger leads to and from the heart.

If it is not from the heart, it is not worth eating.

Yesterday, my son said to me, "Momma, you know if you wore your Maddux jersey while he was pitching Monday night, he probably would have got that no-hitter."

Apparently, superstitiousness is hereditary;  like two or more athletes in the same family, like handing down a fondness for allegory, like a widow's peak visible on four generations. 

I also think I should have been wearing my jersey, but I was making Chicken Piccata with Penne, and Spinach sauteed with Lemon and Garlic as Maddux pitched another brilliant game.  I didn't want to get my jersey dirty, okay? And not wearing my jersey, I affirm, had nothing to do with his no-hitter being broken up in the sixth. Yeah. Seriously. Nothing to do with it. 

When I met my husband sixteen years ago, and the guy who was so into me morphed into a so-into-Sportscenter/"don't-talk-to-me-babe-Bagwell's-up"/"this-is-our-year-even-though-we're-in-last-place" kind of male sports fanatic who wouldn't sit if his team scored while he was standing, I knew what I was getting into. I was raised in a family where manliness was judged by knowledge of sports, teams, and players - where intelligence was measured by the ability to size up games and those who played them and turn that ability into a W - where character was determined by how well you handled losing.   So it was no surprise to anyone when I married a man who timed our wedding and honeymoon with the annual MLB All-Star Game.

(We were sitting in a seaside cantina in the sleepy little town of Playa del Carmen, Mexico drinking White Russians when Ken Caminiti was brought in as an alternate and hit a home run for the National League back in 1996, the year he was unanimously voted MVP).

So does that mean I drink White Russians every year during the All Star Game, out of simple superstition?

No. The honeymoon is over, Cami is gone, and I have been known to be pragmatic.  It happens.

But, superstitious I do admit to being - by birth, by marriage, by choice, I think (it's kind of fun, actually) so I will be wearing that jersey next time Mad Dog is on the mound.

If I were really superstitious, really really superstitious, I would refrain from stating that he will get that no-hitter someday. I'd be afraid that would jinx him. But pitchers like Maddux don't get 336 victories because of jinxes or superstition or things that are perceptions. There is something real there. Watch him while you can because he's one of the best pitchers of Major League Baseball -ever- and there won't be another like him.  On Tuesday afternoon, my husband conceded this - even though he silently agreed with me prior to Maddux's latest outing - because we engage in competitive banter for fun. If we can't agree on teams, we agree on players, and these lively conversations eat up the few minutes we get to spend together in between practices, games, appointments, and popsicle or homework crises. For us, this banter is the language of love (that and food, of course). There is somethung familiar there.

Superstition is defined on dictionary.com as "a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like."

Kind of like love.

I know the question is coming, probably on Saturday, May 12th.

"What do you want for Mother's Day, honey?"

Let's see, after we've given Grandma and Yia-Yia their handmade cards and eaten qucihes, fruit salads and squeezed a sack of oranges into a pretty pitcher, I want to take a nap. And I want to sleep for preferrably three hours (from 1pm-4pm), listening to the Padres game turned down low on my TV, comfortable in a brand new Maddux jersey. Come to think of it, it's not so much a jersey as it is a t-shirt, only $30 ($30 for #30 ). I'd like a roomy one, one that can look fresh at Alex's ball game and be comfortable enough to wear to bed that night.  That's what I want. It's not as expensive as brunch or even a facial. 

Brunch is nice, but I always eat too much. Perfume is a lovely gift idea but my husband wears so much cologne that our perfume auras end up competing, this equals a migraine. Flowers? I can't say no to that. In case you forgot, honey, periwinkle hydrangea are my favorite (and tulips are out of season). Sunflowers are irresistible too, they're such a happy flower.

And when I wake up from my nap, I won't ask for any more special treatment, I promise. Am I asking too much? ("More than a lot?") I don't want to be spoiled, don't need a day at the spa, I just want to hear "I love you", followed by "Sweet Dreams", and "Padres Win!". If hubby can't pull off the latter, I totally understand. A #30 jersey will lift my spirits should we lose.

When hubby asks that question come May 12th, I'm going to direct him to my blog. I know my blog is not as compelling as a box score. I know I may only get peanuts and cracker jacks for idealizing #30 (there are all kinds of games played here), but that's alright. What I really need, what I really want, I am lucky enough to say that I have (knocking on wood)...and Mother's Day is just a day (the same theory applies come June 17th).  I pay more attention to seasons, anyway.

There should be a napping season, don't you think? Wait, yes, there already is...it starts sometime in October and lasts until Spring.