Category — Books

Chris and I were talking the other night about our parents as grandparents. I mentioned that I thought mine have done a pretty good job of not “parenting me through parenthood.” My in-laws haven’t caused trouble either, but, to be honest, I expected my parents to have a harder time.

I’m sure my mom has wanted to jump in. She’s told me more than once that it’s time to start carrying a wooden spoon so I can “tear that baby’s hiney up” any time I want. And just last weekend I coaxed a little criticism out of her over lunch at La Madeline, where Caelyn helped herself to individual servings of Land O’ Lakes sans bread. My dad thought this was brilliant: “Would you like a little more butter, Caelyn? Katy, go get her another one!” My mom couldn’t keep the disgusted look off her face. I couldn’t help but comment, “Caelyn, your Grammi Roo’s makin’ that face because there’s no way she’d have let your mommy do what you’re doing.”

Mom straightened up in her chair, “You got that right! But I’m not the one who will have to deal with the consequences.”

True, but I figure 2 tablespoons of butter now and then can’t do any more harm than the daily ding-dongs that showed up in my lunch.

Anyway, the butter incident is actually what sparked the parents as grandparents talk. Truthfully, while I did expect restraint to be difficult for my mom, I still anticipated it because I knew that my dad would be hard-pressed to let her offer more than casual advice: “Ruth, you’ve got to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them.” And my mom would be hard-pressed to not do whatever my dad said.

(This was not my dad’s stance while I was growing up. His policy states that prevention, protection, and intervention are always the right option until a child reaches 21. At that point, if said child is benefitting from your money via higher education, you retain the right to lay down the law on the things that destroy a person’s life, the greatest of which would be smoking.)

So, even though I haven’t done a lot of things they way they would, they’ve done a good job of not letting it get to them. I’m afraid, though, that the time will come when I’ll cross a line and my mom, fearing the spiritual demise of her grandbaby, will have to say something.

I love my parents. I’m glad for their example, and I welcome their counsel and prayers. But (I’ve mentioned before) that we are very different people; we have different parenting styles too. And, while we mainly have the same values, we disagree on a few big issues. So, naturally, I plan on approaching some things differently than they did. If there really is a “line,” I figure it’ll be crossed when we get to those issues. And I figure two of the biggest stink-raisers will be sex (which I’ve written about here) and rock n’ roll (which I’ve written about here and here).

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Pan-Seared Ahi Tuna Sandwiches

Chris found this for me about a week ago. I’ve wanted to tell you about it, but I’ve held off, thinking I’d rather wait and show you my finished book. But, let’s face it. I’m not going to have it in my hands any time soon.

I started out thinking I’d just do 20 recipes at a time. I was entering them carefully, one by one, but by the time I’d racked up 6 complete recipes, I’d thought of lots of others that I wanted to add but didn’t have enough time to do right then. I was afraid I’d forget my inspiration, so I made entries for each of those with just the titles, thinking that I could go back and edit them later. I came up with 70-something! All of them are straight out of my head, which means to make sure I’m writing them down correctly, I’ll have to wait to write the entries until the next time I cook the item.

So it’ll be a while.

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In case you can’t tell by the title, you and I are in the midst of another Adventure in Senseless Blogging! Truth be told, the topic of this post absolutely could make for serious bloggin’. But, honestly, I’m not in the state to do much serious blogging.

I’ll be upfront with you on another point too. The title of this post addresses what I wish I was really writing about but feel conflicted about whether or not I should. Basically, I’m being cryptic and taking advantage of you. But at least I’m being honest about it, right?

If you disagree, now would be the time to bail. . . .

So my family was in town last week. Two of those days, Mom and I watched my niece so my sister could go to a conference. While Caelyn and Claire napped, Mom and I sat in the living room. I got out the laptop. She got out a blanket.

“You takin’ a nap, too?”

Mom looked at me with the same face she makes when the waiter at Abuelo’s asks if we want “dessert nachos,” and she wants some but doesn’t want to be the one to say it: “Maybe, unless someone wants to talk to me.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. What are you reading about?” she hinted, with raised eyebrows.

I wasn’t reading anything, but I said I was thinking about some personality stuff online that I’d checked out recently: “You wanna take a test?”

“Sure!”

And that’s how we ended up spending the next two afternoons personality testing. I started her off with the Enneagram. Mom was uncomfortable with the open-endedness of the questions. She wanted me to further define about 70% of them. In the end, she came out as a One. (If I’m not mistaken, that’s what I predicted.)

Personally, I think that assessment is pretty accurate. (I’m trusting you to have the skills to Google “Enneagram One” and any other terms I might toss in.) But Mom wasn’t so convinced:

“Are you sure this is THE VERY BEST personality test?”

I told her that I really like it, but to understand the Enneagram and get the most out of it, you have to do more than just take a test. You’ve got to really consider it, because the Enneagram isn’t just about personality traits. It’s about motivation.

She looked at me dubiously, “What about that test Jennifer made Kevin take? Can you give me that one?”

I assumed she meant the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which I informed her could be taken for free in short form, but not in full-form. And, just like that, we were out of the Enneagram and into Jung.

It’s not surprising that she’s an (extreme on every trait) ESTJ. When Dad got back from the mall, she talked him into taking the test too. He turned up ISTJ. My sister’s an ESTJ.

And, me? I’m a (fairly extreme on every trait) INFP. (No wonder I’m a Four.)

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Yesterday was our 4th anniversary. (Yes, it was also Juneteenth.) To celebrate, we enlisted Cristin to babysit and had dinner at The Melting Pot in Addison, where we ate on the night we got engaged. Then we caught The Promotion at the Angelika Film Center at The Shops at Legacy and wrapped the night with a stroll and two double-sized cappuccinos.

I have to tell ya. It was pretty darn nice. We dressed up and everything! And we haven’t done that for a date, since, well, the last time we had dinner at The Melting Pot.

Over fondue, we tried to recall how we’ve marked our previous anniversaries:

1. We were still in Abilene. We know we ate crab at Red Lobster. We think we purchased and watched Jurassic Park in bed with the top layer of our wedding cake.

2. I was huge. Caelyn only had 11 more days of sweet womb time. We had crab again. Neither of us remembers what happened afterwards. Maybe we came home & I fell right to sleep. Maybe we went to the theater. If we did, we can’t remember what we saw. I think it came down to Cars or Nacho Libre, and we saw the former because of the time. (I STILL haven’t seen Nacho Libre.) Or maybe it was Mission Impossible: III. Last night we were thinking we saw Superman Returns, but we actually caught that one two days before Caelyn arrived.

3. We did a back-to-back double feature with Ocean’s Thirteen and Mister Brooks, after packing it away at Saltgrass.

I know what you’re thinking. Since we’re obviously not mondo-anniversary celebrators, why would we have a big-to-do date for the 4th? It’s not like 4 is 5 or 10 or 35.

Honestly, we didn’t have a reason, other than the fact that I had told Chris that I thought he ought to take me back to The Melting Pot if and when that unforgiving black skirt I wore on our engagement night fit again, and we both could’ve more than used the retreat from the norm.

So we made a night of it.

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“sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it, but
most repeat the same theme over and over again, it’s
as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange
and off and important to them, it’s done by everybody
because everybody is of a different stripe and form
and each must work out what is before them
over and over again because
that is their personal tiny miracle
their bit of luck”

– Charles Bukowski, “me and faulkner”

* This post’s title is from the same poem and is not necessarily my perception of music.*

Allie’s brought us back to hip-hop, once again providing some good points. Points I very much agree with on some level. (It’s funny that this conversation is happening on/because of my blog, since it began upon my first mention of hip-hop ever and my street cred is barely worth noting.)

If you haven’t already, go read Allie’s post before you start this one, because I’m not planning on doing a lot of framing here. But I will do just a bit. . . .

You’ll all remember that Lex originally asked Allie how she could decry misogyny in hip-hop yet read (and enjoy) Bukowski. I followed that by saying that I agree that tolerance of certain themes ought to span various forms of media. Allie’s basic premise is that while Bukowski and rappers discuss the same things, they do so in very different ways. Bukowski as a broken man, rappers as glorified sex kings. It would be hard for me to disagree with that assessment.

Obviously, they are different in style and presentation. Bukowski’s got more emo in him than most rappers. (I’d even say that Bukowski’s edge is often times much sharper than hip-hop’s.) Perhaps they’re even different in intention, but we can get carried away assigning motive and intention to artists when we really have no clue.

However, this argument against hip-hop rests on the assertion that in order for art to be valuable and worthy (?) of our consumption, a) it must reflect the brokenness of humanity and b) the artist must be willing to recognize his brokenness.

If art really is about humanity, though, recognition isn’t required. A lot of us, no matter how “broken” we may be, refuse to admit it. In fact, we do our best to shout, show, et. al. the exact opposite. If art is about reflecting and exposing something within universal humanity, then hip-hop ought to count, if not for its accurate depiction of how many cultures and (American) subcultures view women and sex (not to mention its political statements, stories of broken homes, etc.), then for its accurate reflection of how many (if not most) people deal, at least publicly, with their brokenness.

Isn’t pride, after all, a form of brokenness?

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