The pleasure of rituals

Set the table!

For many years in my youth, those were my mother's evening instructions. All of us kids had assigned tasks and, looking back, I think I enjoyed the setting of the table more than the clearing of it. Not that I enjoyed either one that much.

Now I am much grown up and enjoy the pleasure of my family's company a great deal more than when I was young and took it for granted. That we can still gather, cook and eat together is a gift worth celebrating.

Thus, setting the table is a pleasure, creating a welcoming place for each diner to set down to. The settings are not perfectly matched, but that's OK. The people are.

Tacos in Homestead

New Valentine's Day tradition: Lunch in an out-of-the way spot with friends.

The greeter inside Smoke.

Four of us went to Smoke, on 8th Avenue in Homestead, land of beautiful old buildings and boarded up storefronts. We had delicious pork and veggies tacos, one order of Mexican mac and cheese and luke-cold (no ice) soft drinks all around.
 I have completely lost touch with the eastern boroughs since leaving Wilkinsburg so long ago for the South Hills. And I think of Homestead only as  a place to be gotten through on the way to Kennywood and Sandcastle.
But this old U.S. Steel mill town has some really gorgeous early and mid 19th-century buildings, including this one, which is for sale and listed with Howard Hanna. Wow! Wish I had a few million and a vision.
You can also see lots of things like this in Homestead storefronts. Also, random kids will try to sell you pirated movies on DVDs. I think a longer day trip is pretty much in order.

Homestead, Pa. storefront, Feb. 14, 2013

Things left behind

   As I have grown older, I have done two things that strike me as absurd. (Not the only two things, absurdity-wise, however.)

   I shopped too much, thus acquiring too much. And I've edited too much, thus getting rid of, well, maybe not too much, but perhaps stuff that could have weathered a more critical, and less fanatical, getting-rid-of-stuff eye.

   I wish, I wish, I wish that I had so much time back. Like the hours that I spent browsing  record stores in Columbus, Ohio, flipping through the vinyl late one, or any, night after class, after dinner or studying. Trying to decide which LP was worth my five bucks.

   Oh God. All that time, and now I wish I didn't have all those LPs. They are old, ancient. Their covers are worn and scratched by cats.

   We moved on to cassette tapes, to CDs, files on the computer.

   And yet.

   Playing those old records reminds me now, so many years later, of who I was. I like that. I realize I don't want to cast away my old, or should I say, young, self. Everything that I had, that I bought, that I considered, was a function of a person learning and growing.

   So I think I will stop trying to discard the trappings of my younger days. Because they were builders of the person I am today.

Brain robbed (*)

Twice this week, pounding about the office on this errand or that, I've had a few moments to think about things I had been thinking about.

Pounding about is actually a good thing, because it frees you from your desk and the immediate task at hand. That's why I like to skip email and voicemail and get up, pound about and talk to people.

The problem is, the pounding-about part is so brief, that whatever brilliant thoughts my brain entertains disappear even before I reach my destination, i.e. the person I was pounding about to see.

But never fear, brilliant thoughts.

You are mine.

And here is where (*) comes in.

Next time I am pounding about, brain will return you to me.

However briefly.

Breaking Away

A long time ago, when I was a very young woman and my husband a very young man, we went to a movie called "Breaking Away." It is about four friends in an Indiana college town. The protagonist is a cyclist who has fallen in love with Italian cycling, and there they are, in his town. He learns rudimentary Italian and tries to befriend them, but they have no interest. Slowly he learns this is not a clique worth belonging to.

I had a similar experience in high school, my senior year. Somehow I fell marginally in with a group totally outside my circle. I really wanted to belong. But they had their own web of relationships that I knew nothing about. I got stuck far on the periphery of that web, ignored, while the spiders battled it out in the middle.

Now I am a grown-up, but I am still learning about trying to fit in where I don't belong. I keep trying to be good at skills that I admire and keep coming up short. I keep following the stories of people successful at skills that I admire and come away only with envy and frustration.

Can't do it any more. No more competing. No more dreaming. No more fantasizing about grand success where I have no chance. I don't have room for envy and frustration in my life.

I'm breaking away from the clique of unreachable aspirations.

I don't need you.

Good-bye.

The reason being

Thursday a.m.: Water main break Downtown so we skip the traffic and park on the South Side at Station Square.

Fine.

Thursday p.m.: I come home to something that sounds like a running toilet.

No.

It's the patio faucet, apparently burst from the 10 degree temperatures. And from someone who forgot to shut off the outside water valve in October.

That would be me.

Some people would marvel at the coincidence, proclaiming "Everything Happens for a Reason!"

I picture the 3 fates of mythology, spinning out lives. There's no reason for anything, things just happen. My pipe burst because of bad plumbing, cold weather and fallible memory.

The Fates do not give a rat's ass.

And they do not care about reason.

At  all.

Lives

One of my favorite publications is the New York Times' annual "The Lives They Lived" edition.
It has really evolved from its origins some 10 years or-so ago; now recounting some lives in graphic novel format, others in simple illustrations, and even including the unfamous: this year's examples being the community of Paradise Park, N.J., decimated by Hurricane Sandy, and the sad tale of Najiba, an Afghani woman martyred by backward Afghan men.
I came away from this year's issue, partly devoured early on Sunday morning when I could not sleep, with these keepers: (All quoted from the Times.)
From Susan Jeffers: "We live in a society that teaches us to grasp for control, total control of everything. But perhaps the grasping only makes things worse." Susan wrote "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" and "Embracing Uncertainty."
From Erica Kennedy: "What does having it all mean? Does it mean having some fancy title, executive perks, making a lot of money, having your book on the New York Times best-seller list? Or does it mean waking up and looking forward to your day, whatever you make of it?" Erica  was an author who wrote "Bling" and "Feminista."
From Kitty Wells: "Sometimes maximum impact requires minimum drama." Kitty was a country music singer who wrote "It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels."
One of the bittersweet emotions that wells up upon reading the obituaries of strangers is the great sadness of not having known them, or known of them. Only now that they are gone do I know anything about Susan, Erica, Kitty, Najiba, Paradise Park and the people who made it so.
Thank you for your stories. And for your lives.
Love, Katy