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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I just scared the bejeesus out of my mother-in-law.
It wasn’t the worst fright I’ve given her, of course. It was no, “I’d like to marry your daughter” horror show. I think we nearly lost her after that fiasco.
But she was pretty wigged out tonight, too. And it was purely accidental. I swear.
No, really. For true. Cross my heart.
Here’s what happened:
My wife’s mom is staying with us this weekend. She usually comes to visit for a few days in the summer; I think it’s to verify that there really are hot, sticky days in Boston.
“Some of our visitors from down there expect us to all be wearing tri-cornered hats and soaking in baked beans.”
(She’s from the South. They have a few odd notions about what goes on here. Some of our visitors from down there expect us to all be wearing tri-cornered hats and soaking in baked beans. It’s a thing, apparently.)
Her flight arrived in the early afternoon, and my wife picked her up and brought her to our condo. I was at the office, and returned near dinnertime to find the two chatting away in the kitchen. Only they didn’t find me. And that was a problem.
I walked in the front door, closed it, dropped off my keys no more silently than usual, and approached the kitchen, from whence their voices wafted.
(Or whooshed. They can get a little chatty, now and then.)
I approached the kitchen and stood in the doorway. My mother-in-law was sitting on a stool just inside the door, facing into the kitchen. She was talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Because that would be rude.
I’m told.
Repeatedly.
She didn’t see me, and kept on conversing. In front of her was the stove, where tasty morsels were being prepared, and past the stove a counter will more morsels in various states of choppedness, measured-outness and strewn-about-messiness.
(As an aside, my wife and I have somewhat different philosophies when it comes to preparing a meal. She’s happy to leave the messes and scraps of each individual step lying around until the end, when she cleans them up all at once.
My strategy is completely the opposite. What I do is keep my damned fool mouth shut and stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, because nobody in there wants my advice on when to clean shit up, thank you very much.
Different approaches. But as it turns out, completely complementary. Who’d have known?)
As I stood in the doorway, I realized that neither my wife nor mother-in-law had seen me yet. This posed a dilemma, as I pondered the correct way to proceed. I was no more than two feet from my mother-in-law — too close to gently make my presence known with, say, a touch on the shoulder or a “hello“. Or, say, a scream of “you in the jungle, baby!”
That’s the wrong approach. I’ve learned that. She might go crashing through the cabinetry or smack me with a hot pan full of dinner. So much for Plan A.
I considered leaving the room and making an, I don’t know, more conspicuous entrance. But that seemed pretty forced, and what was I supposed to do? Retreat to the hallway, and then stomp in, banging the walls and singing “I Love a Parade“? They’d probably think I was drunk.
Which I wasn’t. Yet. But they’d think so.
Also, this is one of those awkward situations where, if one were to leave, one would probably retrieve one’s keys and hop back in the car and just drive away, the better to prevent a repeat of the awkward situation later on. One’s just saying.
So I tied my fate to my wife, and her peripheral vision. She was listening to her mother, who was right beside me. She was transferring food from the counter to the stove, which faced her in the same direction. And if she was timing anything in progress, the kitchen clock is above the doorway, two feet over my head. At some point, surely, she’d glance over for some reason and see me out of the corner of her eye, and then we’d all have a nice dinner. No problem.
Except for two things. My wife has this odd sort of beeline focus. Some people go off into their own little world. She apparently has an entire universe reserved for her personal use, and she’s tinted the inside universe glass so she can’t see outside. She wasn’t daydreaming, there in the kitchen. She was cooking and listening and having a conversation — but that was all she was doing, hell, high water or pondering husbands be damned. She wasn’t looking up. She was locked in.
Also, she has the peripheral vision of a crosseyed flounder. Clearly, I’d hooked my wagon to the wrong set of peepers. I considered that, and pondered on whether-
“WHAAAOOOOGGHHHHAAAAAYYYYAAAAA!!!”
That was my mother-in-law, finally turning her head slightly and finding six feet of unexpected person looming overhead.
Though to be fair, I wasn’t “looming”. I was pondering. I think I’ve made that abundantly clear.
The distinction was lost on her, of course. Luckily, she didn’t crash through the cabinet, and the pan full of dinner was too far away to use as a weapon. I was roundly accused of “sneaking up” on the girls — largely because I’d taken off my shoes, which was purely circumstantial. And anyway, they were barefoot. It’s ninety degrees, for crissakes. No jury would convict me.
Well, none with decent peripheral vision, anyway. But if the court is loaded with flatfish, I’m probably SOL.
Permalink | No CommentsEinstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results. Likely, he was talking about experimental physics and solving equations and possibly hair conditioning products.
As it turns out, the saying also applies to lettuce. And spinach. And very likely, swiss chard. I’ll explain.
A few years ago, my wife and I signed up for one of those local farming collective deals that were just getting popular around here. We didn’t sign up right away, of course. First, I had to be assured that there would be no actual farming on our part involved. No weeding, no hoeing, no reaping, no sowing, and no — I can’t be clearer about this — no wearing of overalls.
I’m serious. I got that last part in writing.
Once I was confident that we were in effect only subsidizing our local farmers, rather than joining them in some kind of amateur 4-H nightmare gone wrong, we signed up, paid our fees, and waited anxiously for our bountiful harvest deliveries.
“But four pounds of bok choy and a giant radish does not a Friday dinner make.”
And that turned out to be the problem. They were too bountiful.
We agreed to a biweekly shipment. And every other Thursday, June through September, some farming guy — in denim overalls, no less — would bring a box of fruits and vegetables to our door. A big box. Many fruits. And lots of vegetables. Lots of vegetables.
Now, my wife and I, we’re not averse to the vegetative delights. Between us, there’s scarcely a rooted, sprouting, leafy or floretted edible plant we won’t eat. But there are only two of us. We don’t eat broccoli for breakfast, and I’m not a fan of taking lunch to work. Toss in a dinner out now and then, and we’ve got maybe eight meals each in two weeks to cover. We’re happy to include veggies in the mix. But four pounds of bok choy and a giant radish does not a Friday dinner make. Not unless your name is Harvey, maybe, and you’re invisible to most people on the planet.
So we ran out our season, ate the dirt-covered bejeesus out of vegetables that summer, and decided that this sort of thing just wasn’t a good fit for us. Maybe if we took in a pack of hungry goats, or we were infested with an outbreak of vegetarians. But for two of us, it’s just too much. We decided that. I remember it distinctly.
Fast forward to this spring, and my office announced an agreement with another farming collective in the area. Like an idiot, I mentioned it to my wife. Evidently suffering a bout of amnesia, she thought it was a good idea. And like a mental patient, I agreed. So here we are again.
Only this time, the boxes come weekly. Einstein would not be proud.
Last week, we got our first box. I’ve never seen so many kinds of leafy greens in one place. I mean, it’s one thing if they throw some cauliflower or blood oranges or, I don’t know, durian fruit in there. Granola bars. Whatever the hell else they grow on farms.
But no. We got the full-on leaf-o-rama. Lettuce. Spinach. Kale. I mean, honest-to-god kale. I thought that stuff was only used as attic insulation or envelope packing. But apparently, we’re supposed to eat it. Who knew?
We did the best we could. We ate the spinach. I made sandwiches that were more lettuce than bread or meat. We even had the kale. No. really. My wife cooked kale, and we put it in our mouths. We probably even swallowed some of it. Crazy.
That left roughly half a basket of assorted root vegetables and oddball shit like fennel, which I assumed was just grown dried and flaked in a little bottle on the spice rack. And then Tuesday rolled around, and we got another box full of green stuff. Most of it leafy. I’ve seen more roughage in the last ten days than a sandpaper-and-hairy-legs inspector.
I’m not sure where this is going to lead, frankly. We’re two weeks in, and the boxes come until fall. We couldn’t even fit everything in the new box in the fridge; our crisper runneth over. I can picture us in August, taking a Wednesday off of work for an emergency collard green chowdown. The horror.
If things get any worse, I figure we have two options. We can either find some vegan family with fourteen kids who can use the overflow, or we take the extra greenage and plant it in the courtyard out back, and start our own vegetable garden.
Godammit. I just knew I’d wind up in those freaking overalls.
Permalink | No CommentsWith Fathers’ Day rolling around yesterday, I’ve been thinking about something my own dad once said to me in my youth.
I don’t remember the exact situation; I was dealing with some challenge or disappointment or a girl who’d put gum in my hair. Or who hadn’t put gum in my hair, or who didn’t appreciate the gum I’d put into her hair. Something traumatic like that.
Anyway, I remember my dad sat me down, heard me out, and then offered a single piece of fatherly wisdom:
“Son, life isn’t about the things that happen to you. The question is, when those things happen, what sort of man will you become?”
(I think it was my dad who said that. Come to think of it, I might have been a Growing Pains rerun. Or Family Ties. I have this strong feeling of being annoyed with Tina Yothers in there somewhere.
You know what, screw it. My old man can have this one. I’m giving it to him.)
“I can finally tell my father — and anyone else who wants to know — what kind of man I’ve become.”
Of course, I didn’t have an answer to the question then. I was still a kid. I had no idea what things would happen as I grew up, or how I’d react or which people would be putting their gum into which other peoples’ hairs.
But now, I know. Decades of experience later, and I have the answers. I can finally tell my father — and anyone else who wants to know — what kind of man I’ve become. To wit:
I’m the kind of man who:
So. There you go. That’s apparently the man that I turned out to be, all these years later. Huh.
I’m not so sure Dad’s going to be so keen on this stuff. Or understand some of it. Or want to hear anything about any of it.
Maybe I’ll paste it in an email and send it to Alan Thicke, or Meredith Baxter-Birney. That seems safer. Yeah, I’ll go with that.
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