That Bowl Thing...

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:         That Bowl Thing...

The picture shown above is a classic helmet-to-helmet sort
of confrontation icon, sort of, seen often in the 
panoply of professional football images...  like!

 It's a kind of ritual.  We all have them, I suppose...  rituals.  Some are pleasant, even delightful, if spent with family and food, laughter and fun.  Some are purely insipid, like having to listen to the tedious droning of a vapid and vacuous politician...   A certain male senator in our state is a prime example, like a leaf blower at full and obnoxious volume when there are no leaves to be blown!   

There's a point to this lament, or complaint or explanatory narrative:  I prefer college football.  I tend not to be among the rabid devotees of the professional variety.  But, on the Sunday that has a great percentage of the populous anchored to their enormous television screens with bibs on to catch dribbles and drooling, chips and dips and other foodstuff droppings owing to a kind of inattentiveness when eyes are focused primarily on giant screens, I join my family for this particular ritualistic mayhem.

SweetHeart makes her famous and delicious chili, an enormous pool of the stuff, a complete dinner in a pot.  I help by cooking the meat that forms an important component of the stew.  And, I open cans and toss the empties into our recycle bin.  The day is so frenzied that sometimes I feel I'll land straight-jacketed in a bin of a different sort.  But, one has to be strong and brave; one is compelled to participate or one may incur various forms of torment.

On the Sunday in question, our family members watched a team called the "Rams" defeat a team known as the "Bengals."  One would think a tiger should be able to defeat and devour a member of the sheep family.  Apparently that's not how it works in the

Wait a minute!  Are these guys supposed to
be pals?  I mean, why isn't the guy on the
left eating the guy on the right??!!!

violent arena of professional football, bets and predictions, team spirit and hearts' desires notwithstanding! 

I suppose it is fitting that we fill large bowls of chili during the contest...  It's that bowl thing....   Continuity, sort of...   I watch pieces of it, the contest, that is, but spend most of my time talking nonsense or interacting with my much-loved children, grandchildren, or wandering around the home of my younger daughter who hosts the ritual annually.   

My eldest grandson is an encyclopedia of films, you know, movies, motion pictures.  We enjoy our conversations, and he reveals names of good films, favored directors and film score composers.  He's quite wonderful, and he actually makes films and scores them himself.  Remarkable talent, he is!

Our younger and also much-loved grandson and his uncle, my beloved son-in-law, spend a bit of preliminary and half-time moments competing in an electronic game we disparagingly term "Hut, Hut, Hut, Doodledy Doo," owing to the strange voice of a

presumed Quarter-of-the-Way Back "artificial intelligence" automaton announcing signals!  (We don't know what the voice really says, but it sounds ike "Doodledy doo..."  Could be some other sort of gibberish?...) 

He, the aforementioned grandson, has a new version of "Hut, Hut..." that he variously identifies as "Madden" or "Hut, Hut... Doodleldy NEW..."  

We enjoy pre-contest stuff, like Charcuterie platters and tasty hors 'doeuvre that both daughters concoct.  For me, these are pleasant diversions, distractions that allow me to remove myself from the pre-game babble, player profiles and re-run snippets of contests past.  I like to wander about, pretending to be interested, seeking other outlets to occupy my brain, such as it is.

And then there's dessert, cookies, ice cream with SweetHeart's homemade chocolate-y fudge-y topping that, when allowed to harden, becomes a delicious fudge, like the kind one might find in a candy shop (or "shoppe," if one prefers that rather overly cute and

fatuous version.).  Other baked goods from time to time, and depending on who decides to bring what!  

Did I mention dog walking?  Another necessary distraction that removes the walkers from the warmth of home and hearth allowing for an aid to digestion.  We all tend to overly consume, all of the comestibles being so delicious!  A good walk helps to re-locate the consumed stuff into different compartments of the belly, or maybe creates more blubber nodules...  Something like that!  

And consider this:  My brother once lived in a suburb of Cincinnati, but he also lived in Milwaukee, Denver, and now Dallas.  I think he has mixed allegiances!  I mean, it's a bit tricky, isn't it?  Bengals, Cowboys, Broncos, Packers??!!  I wonder if his children had a feet ball jersey sewn from fragments of all four team logo designs?!  Perhaps that's a topic for another time...  and another rant!  

Readers may note that the
helmeted rat boy is also 
a bit perplexed...  

(I mean, isn't loyalty supposed to be sort of exclusive?  Confined only to one team, not four?  This is a ponderous concept...  One needs to give this more thought, maybe an essay...  a manifesto?)

 Um...  One more observation:  As a society, we're obsessed with superlatives.  I mean, "Why 'Super'?" Baseball has the World Series.  Maybe play that "last game of the season" in footsball using the best of seven concept.  Oh, I see, them padded combatants, they'd all be dead or near dead by that time!  It's a Big Money thing, isn't it?!  The more hype the big money guys create, the more money they all make.  Yeah, it's a money thing...    

[A Confession:  If I'm being honest, I do enjoy "That Bowl Thing" ritual.  It's a fine reason to gather with family members, even if the giant television screen is a kind of distraction, roaring and chasing us from other more scholarly pursuits, butting and battering our heads and brains with mayhem and chaotic scenes of people knocking one another about, trying to dismember and maim!  (Is that what's meant by, "Heads will Roll...")  Such fun, aina??!!] 

Humbly Submitted, 02-17-2022 by Joel K.

   

     

     

 

"You're Perfect, Honey!"

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    "You're Perfect, Honey..."

If I understood the architecture of pedestals...  for example, "plinths" and "dado's" (if those are correct terms!), I'd erect one and put her up there, along with other immortals previously cast in stone, plaster or bronze.  Maybe a slightly wobbly one, as none of us is perfect, with the possible exception of her children.  At least that's the modifier she ascribed to them continuously, constantly throughout her lifetime.

Gigi (given name,
Virginia) in her
favorite pose.

With all the mountains and landfills of stuff and detritus that's available on the Internet, one wonders if included is a survey on how our society, in general, regards fathers-in-law and...  more particularly, those oft maligned but entirely memorable MOTHERS-in-law.  Mine was an absolute treasure among the troves of them, past and present.  She left some years ago, but left us with delightful stories and recollections.

As a young suitor to her only daughter among four children, I was nervous; I was shy.  On one of the very first encounters with the family, I came to call, knocked on a screen door, the primary door having stood wide open.  "Hello," I called.  "Anybody home...  hello!"  

"Honey, say, 'Say Beep' "!  It was her voice, a bit raspy, the voice of an older woman, a fun-loving sprite.  

"What?" I quizzed, bewildered, a bit more nervous that I had been a moment ago.  

"Say, 'Say BEEP,' honey!"  

"Um...  Beep," I echoed, tentatively.  At which point I heard people "beeping" all over the house.  I sort of "got the idea," eventually.  I met brother John in a closet.  Brother Jimmy was under a bed.  I met brother Bob in the bathtub, just standing in the tub, not bathing!  "Good lord," I said inside my spinning brain, "What the hell kind of goofy family is this?"  

We all stood around chatting, laughing.  At some point I heard, "This isn't fair.  No one's found

Gigi (at left) with her sister,
Lilian, always referred to
as "Sister"...  as "Original
Auntie" by the rest of us.  

me yet!  I can't stay in here when all of you are having fun!"  It was the soon-to-be mother-in-law.  She was hiding but hadn't as yet been found.  I then went into the basement, as directed, to find the father in his workshop.  "Say Beep," I said stupidly.  

"I don't play ' Beep'," he said loudly, angrily, glaring at me as if I were a feckless home invader with a skull full of defective or dead brain cells.  I went back upstairs and announced, "He doesn't play 'Beep'," amid consuming laughter.  Having planned it, the family enjoyed my discomfort.  

Friends and family members called her "Gigi" (the "i"- sound short, pronounced as in the word, "rig").  My mother-in-law was a funny woman, and she was great fun, full of adages and platitudes, many voiced at entirely inappropriate moments.  For example, my wife and I were seated at her kitchen table discussing family matters or children, something mundane.  At some point Gigi announced, "To thine own self be true, Honey!"  My wife and I stared at one another, and then at her.  I said, "And now, back to the conversation."  Her comment was completely out of context.  She seemed not to care.  

At another point on that same occasion, Gigi asked her daughter, "Honey (her favorite term of endearment!), how long have you been with me?"  

We'd better explain!  This is a
cartoon image of an exemplary
Mother-in-Law on a pedestal...
used here for symbolic purposes.

"What..." I said.  "Is she a valued employee, soon due for a gold watch?!"  Gigi laughed heartily.  She could laugh at herself, a rare gift, and indicative of a rich sense of humor, perhaps a richer "sense of silly."

She knew her own mind.  (We were glad somebody did!)  My wife's brother, Bob, was over at the family home one evening when my wife and I were visiting as well.  He was a Milwaukee policeman and about to go on duty.  Bob's assignment on that occasion was to guard a prisoner.  Gigi said to him, "Honey, Mumma's going to pack you a nice lunch -- a picnic! -- for you and the prisoner.  I'll make some nice sandwiches; I'll wrap them up pretty with chips and cookies and napkins, maybe something to drink.  Won't that be nummers, Honey?  You and the prisoner will have such a nice lunch together."

Bob was becoming agitated.  "Mother!  I'm not taking a picnic lunch to a prisoner, a hardened criminal...  He could be a bank robber or a murderer.  I won't share a picnic lunch with some felonious jail bird!"  

She ignored him.  "And I'll put in some nice fruit.  Do you think your prisoner likes apples or oranges, Honey?  Should I pack in some nice cloth napkins, gingham?"  Bob's ears grew purple with frustration.  His eyes grew wide and his scalp moved back an inch or two, something his rubbery face and head did when he became truly annoyed.  He objected vigorously.  She pressed on.  He eventually walked out carrying a full basket of food that included gingham napkins, and lots of "nice" cookies for the prisoner.

Gigi enjoyed Manhattan cocktails daily, after 4PM.  She taught her grandchildren how to make them using the family's preferred brands of whiskey and sweet vermouth.  "Now put your finger in and stir twice.  Then carry the glasses in to us...  just look straight ahead when you carry, Honey, and you won't spill."

Gigi always made her Perfect
children smile!  That's her
Perfect daughter
(pictured above...)

She objected to marriage vows that "pledged" an unequal balance of power to the man.  She was a feminist, an exemplary mother and grandmother, loving, generous, honest, always a powerful advocate for her "perfect" children, and grandkids, too, of course.  She had 10 of the latter, and shared her time and her love with them equally, and with remarkable generosity. 

Wonderfully idiosyncratic, she was a terrific cook and baker, but seemed always to guard her best dishes and baked goods.  She'd hold back certain ingredients and measures when divulging her recipes, a bit maddening to those who requested them.  When my wife would ask a simple, single question, for example...  "how much flour?"  Gigi would answer, "Now Honey, go to the market and look for the baking aisle, then try to find Hodgson's Unbleached Pre-Sifted..."  

"Mother, please, for pity sake, I only asked how much flour, not a guided tour of the grocer's baking section..."  Her mother would then continue to provide a full set of instructions, from starting the car, buckling up, which market to patronize...  The amount of flour would forever remain a mystery.  Gigi took the secrets of her best recipes to the grave!

It's been more than 20 years since she left us, but we continue to tell her stories and cherish her memory and her extraordinary gift for making us laugh and giving us joy.  In my geezerhood, I hope I can be a fraction as good a father-in-law (father and grandfather too!) as she was a glorious and memorable mother-in-law...  mother and grandmother too.  And, oh yeah, try to remember, Honey's, "A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss!"  (She'd insert that nice little platitude into her conversation constantly, though it never actually fit the context!)  

Humbly Submitted 04-15-15 -- Joel K.