Going to the Chapel

....the tin-roofed, open-air chapel at the Black Madonna Shrine not too far from here, and St. Joseph' head served as a perfect perch for a singing Barn Swallow, cheerful since I've been coming here rather often lately to discuss with God some painful things undergone by friends, family, and myself (pinched nerve, yow! making it impossible to sit and write, and grounding me for three weeks) and lighting eight-day votive candles for those, alas, whose candles are going out, like my mother and father, ages 83 and 98, both deathly ill. There is no death, though. It's an illusion. The bird said so.

Now I'm Not Complaining, You Understand. . .

. . .but on my mind right now with Missouri wind-chill in the teens and wintry mix predicted soon, is the grapefruit tree in my parents' Arizona backyard, lovingly tended by my stepfather these last 25 years, and there's no pleasure like going outside in one's pajamas and picking one's breakfast grapefruit from the tree as Adam and Eve did, except maybe the pleasure of having one's 95-year-old stepfather pick some and bring them into the kitchen to save me the trouble.

Doing Phoenix

I had no idea that the XLIX Super Bowl was scheduled while I was visiting my parents in Phoenix. Millions of eyes fixed on the city, hundreds of thousands mobbing downtown's NFL Superfan Festival and drinking and eating in a giant street party now in its fourth or fifth day, where a ticket scalps for $5000 and up; 110,000 spectators -- 30,000 more than last year -- at the Phoenix Open with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson; but I sat watching The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy with my parents, who haven't been to downtown Phoenix in a decade and learned only days ago who the Super Bowl teams are (like myself, who had no idea. I'm not proud of that. Never brag about your ignorance). They wonder where all these people are parking. In their back yard grow grapefruits and oranges, and yes, you can pick your breakfast grapefruit from the tree. About a mile away on a desert nature trail I saw long-eared bunnies, cacti in an alphabet of shapes, and headless doves--the work of feral cats. I prefer trees to desert, and no TV to 6 hours a day of TV in a 10x10 wood-paneled den, but I've got only one set of parents.

  

Rock Those Booties

My mother and stepfather, appalled to see me barefoot in their 80-degree fully-carpeted house, immediately found me a pair of these, the one constant and bane of my childhood and still haunting  me in adulthood, whenever I visit and even when I don't, because they surface too in my mother's scary Christmas packages: knitted house slippers. Sometimes they're crocheted. Doesn't matter; they're all psychotically handmade by old women using synthetic and non-absorbent yarn in hideous colors, are terribly slippery to wear on smooth surfaces, never fit, and are ugly as sin. (Why the decorative ties?) They are meant to warm the feet. They prove only that it's true that feet sweat at a rate of a quart a day. And that the wearer never expects to have sex ever again.

These slippers go back, historically, to the rural and pre-sidewalk admonition "Take off your shoes at the door," but I also associate them with central and southern European immigrants and Americans from the Depression era, who were practical, poor, had skills now obsolete, and to whom "barefoot" signified not only poverty but a lack of class. I had formal knitting lessons when I was 10, at a Sears store to which I was sent by bus. I never got the knack of knitting, although forced to knit an hour a day so as to justify my mother's investment in my skill set. Thus I do know that this pair, modeled by myself (in my giraffe-print pajamas), are knitted (in stockinette stitch) rather than crocheted. I think. See you in the nursing home.

Oh No; You Must Care For Me

Thought I'd run up some curtains on my Kenmore sewing machine, at purchase guaranteed for 25 years. "Good Lord," I thought, when I asked for and received this as my college-graduation gift, "It's guaranteed until 2003," and by then we'd all be piloting flying saucers. "I might go hungry," I told my parents then, "but with this I'll never go naked." And I never have, although I quit sewing dresses, pants and skirts around 1999, when clothes got so cheap that fabric and notions cost more, and my sewing skills honed in junior high school rusted out. Few things are as piercingly clear as when someone eyes your outfit and says, "Did you make that?" I use this wonderfully-made, solid-state, 23-pound machine rarely and take it totally for granted.

Curtains, however, I can still run up with confidence. Thirty-six years after the purchase and the five free lessons at an urban Sears store, I chose black fleece to insulate my single-pane windows when the cold is deep--as it will be someday soon.
I set to work. Straight seams are no problem. But the needle clanked and stuck, and the thread snarled, amassed on the underside and broke, and the machine whined and resisted and I finally consulted the instruction book, a fascinating object in its own right.

My mechanical masterpiece was asking me to clean and oil it and recalibrate the thread and bobbin tensions, using the tools that came with it. Instead of a blue screen and non-response it spoke and told me in its language, now almost a lost language, that it needed TLC. Just a little. Now it runs sleekly.

Why We Should Protect Missouri Streams

Taken at the "beachfront" of a LaBarque Creek tributary with no official name, sometimes called "Sandy Creek" or "Robinson Creek." Deeper and wider than the LaBarque, people at the party were floating on it, boating on it, jumping off the dock into the water (squealing with joy all the while), sunning themselves, playing with their kids and grandkids, swimming in it pretending to be water dragons, and sitting beneath umbrellas on shore drinking a beer, all without fear of polluted water or the deadly currents that sometimes take people who are swimming in the Meramec, the temperamental river that the gentle LaBarque Creek empties into. I was so happy I was at the picnic, about a mile from my house. This is the sort of land being saved for posterity by the Friends of LaBarque Creek organization.

The Labarque Creek, as it runs through the Divine property, has no stretch as deep and swimmable as this one. Because it changes its shape after big rains, once in a while there's a swimmin' hole.

Ma and Pa

Both these people started out in difficult circumstances, on farms without amenities, and because of The War, got shaken up like dice and scattered far and wide, far from home, through the Midwest, and now in retirement. But -- give them lounge chairs, and they are at home just about anywhere, and enjoy watching Jeopardy and Dancing with the Stars. Ages 75 and 91.