BABY’S FIRST HALLOWE’EN

Hallowe’en, 1982.

“Baby,” in this case, refers to the Mistress of Sarcasm, here enjoying - or, more probably, putting up with - her very first Hallowe’en, twenty-seven years ago today. The photograph was taken less than five miles from here, in our old neighborhood... during our first sojourn in the Atlanta area.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, and she has outgrown that bunny costume. Lookee:


Hallowe’en, 2009.

Now a full-fledged Grown-Up, this year she’s dressed as a Jazz-Age Flapper. [A glass of Bathtub Gin would make this outfit complete, but the Mistress does not care for Hooch.]

And yet, some things don’t change. She may be twenty-seven years older, but she still loves her Hallowe’en candy... thanks to the sweet tooth she inherited from her Daddy!

THUS OBSERVETH THE MISTRESS

We were standing in front of a shop window at the Galleria, the Mistress and I, when we spotted a particularly repulsive outfit. Fluorescent pink mohair...and was that a clump of feathers? Gaaah.

Me: That looks like something Betty Rubble would wear.

The Mistress: Yeah...but only if Betty Rubble had a stroke and forgot how to dress herself.

[And that, Esteemed Readers, is why I call her the Mistress of Sarcasm.]

ONE OF THOSE DADDY MOMENTS

The Westminster School campus.

There are some moments in life that have an elusive sweetness that is hard to describe...but I’m going to take a crack at it anyway, for there have been several such moments this weekend. Daddy moments.

I am blessed with a wonderful wife and two fine daughters (keyn ayin hora). Over time, I have been privileged to see both She Who Must Be Obeyed and the Mistress of Sarcasm functioning in their professional capacities – the former as a classroom teacher, the latter as both a jewelry designer and as a concierge – and in both cases, I have been Mighty Impressed.


SWMBO, flanked by the Mistress of Sarcasm and Elder Daughter.

This weekend, I finally got to see Elder Daughter in her professional element, and likewise, I was Mighty Impressed.

For the past three weeks, Elder Daughter has represented her employer at a series of day-long events targeted at educators. The program – Teach Africa Phase II – was held in Houston two weeks ago, Los Angeles last week, and now in Atlanta at the Westminster School.

The Westminster School is one of those High-End Private Schools, the graduates of which are sure to feel right at home at most Ivy League universities...except fot the fact that the campuses of the Ivy League universities will feel somewhat cramped and undersized.

As one of the featured speakers, Elder Daughter (I am pleased to report) more than held her own amongst a roster that included the Congolese Ambassador to the U.S., a senior vice president of the World Bank (and former Ambassador from Uganda), the director of the Southern Center for International Studies, and the CEO of the Africa Society.

It’s a sweet feeling, to see your little girl, now All Grown Up, speaking – nay, mesmerizing – a big audience of Serious People.


Elder Daughter dominates the lectern.

But the real Daddy Moment was yesterday afternoon, as I was dropping Elder Daughter off at her hotel.

She was booked at the Renaissance Waverly, a lodging establishment over by the Galleria in northwest Atlanta, a mere stone’s throw from the old offices of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. Back in the 1980’s, we used to spend a fair amount of time there – Sunday brunches, et cetera – and later, after we moved away, I would occasionally stay there in the course of visiting Atlanta-area customers...or going to see the Masters Tournament. It was, as they say, a Fancy-Pants Crib.

As I stood at Reception and watched my daughter take out her own Corporate Card and hand it to the desk clerk, I thought back to all the times I had done the same thing. Checking in at the Waverly. The building looked pretty much the same, but in that moment I realized just how much water had flowed under the bridge. How many years it had been.

Enough years to transform Elder Daughter from a little girl into a fully-formed Grown Up Professional Woman. Intelligent. Confident. And beautiful.

And I smiled.

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

This morning, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I awoke to the distant rumble of thunder in Savannah, we heard the sound of a baby’s wail coming from somewhere on the floor below.

That sound triggered a flood of memories for us no less effectively than did the aroma of Marcel Proust’s madeleine for him. Remembrance of Things Past, indeed.

For it was 29 years ago today that we became parents. Yes, indeedy: it’s Elder Daughter’s birthday!

We remember it so well. SWMBO’s water breaking sometime around midnight - fortunately, we had fortified her side of the bed with a deck of towels for just such a possibility - and the quick dash to the local hospital. My ditty-bag, packed with a half-dozen Forever Yours (now known as Milky Way Midnight) bars, in case I needed fortification. My Intravenous-Bottle Mishap. Nurse Jo “Jo Jitsu” Mutter, squeezing SWMBO like a tube of toothpaste in the final moments of labor. The squalling, red-faced, vernix-encrusted Thing of Beauty that emerged at 8:33 am after a long, sweaty night. Elder Daughter (then Only Daughter) had arrived. It was love at first sight.


Elder Daughter’s first day on Planet Earth: May 11, 1979.

And two days later, She Who Must Be Obeyed celebrated her first Mother’s Day as an honoree.

There have been many Mother’s Days since then, and with both girls out of the house and on their own for several years now, it is an increasingly rare treat for SWMBO to enjoy their physical presence on this day. It was therefore especially sweet to be able to spend the weekend with the Mistress of Sarcasm...and to look forward to SWMBO’s next birthday, when Elder Daughter will be with us to celebrate.

As for said Elder Daughter, I miss her dreadfully after having spent close to a fortnight as her Constant Companion enroute to, in and around, and enroute from Japan. She’s an accomplished young woman, this daughter of ours. The course she just taught at Washington D.C.’s “Learn-a-Palooza” on How To Dance at a Party was the most heavily-attended of all 74 events on the schedule...she produced an amazing show two months ago at the D.C. Arts Center in her spare time... she has met with the Ministers of Education of both Egypt and Morocco within the last three months...and she conquered her fear of heights long enough to ride a mountain ropeway gondola with Mt. Fuji looming over the horizon. Can you tell I’m a Proud Daddy?



Elder Daughter riding the Hakone Ropeway, April 22, 2008. “I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer...”

And so: To Elder Daughter, on the conclusion of her 29th trip around the Sun, the happiest of Happy Birthdays to you, and may you enjoy many, many more (bis hundert-tzvantzik yoor), all in good health.

To She Who Must Be Obeyed, the apple of my eye, the light of my life, a happy 30th Mother’s Day. May our children continue to give you every joy, a joy that is evident whenever you hear their voices on the phone, whenever you hold them in your arms. And may you continue to have sweet memories of those early days of motherhood.

[They may come in handy in a few years, when I’m back to wearing diapers.]

ANOTHER EVENING WITH ELDER DAUGHTER

After sitting through the first day of a two-day course on Late Career Financial Planning (with topics such as “Cat Food: Occasional Treat or Dietary Mainstay?”), I drove into Silver Spring to pick up Elder Daughter at her workplace.

She’s an associate producer with the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, a not-for-profit corporate arm that donates technology and teacher training to under-resourced communities throughout the world. They also produce educational documentaries for the learning centers they set up, focusing on a range of subjects from math, science and health, to history, culture and media literacy. Here’s a video that illustrates the kind of stuff she does:



Did I tell you I’m a proud daddy, having a daughter who takes the imperative of tikkun olam - repairing the world - so seriously?

We headed down into the District and ate at a hole-in-the-wall Jamaican place, snarfing down plates of jerk chicken and curry chicken roti and washing it all down with pineapple-ginger juice. It was delicious. I can only hope that I will not suffer the painful aftermath that occasionally attaches to the consumption of jerk chicken.

Afterward, we returned to Elder Daughter’s place, where I stayed long enough for her to thrash me in three games of backgammon. (How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child child who can beat you like the gong in a J. Arthur Rank production.)

Driving back to my hotel, I listened (appropriately enough, considering our Evening Meal) to the Easy Star All-Stars Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae homage to Pink Floyd. Hillsides sparkled with a thin layer of freshly-fallen snow. The Washington Monument was a searchlight-washed alabaster spike, the coppery full moon in total eclipse riding in the sky above it. I regretted not having my camera with me.

Cold. Cold as the proverbial witch’s tit. But I didn’t care. I was warm inside, and it wasn’t just the jerk chicken working its magic on my viscera. I had spent a few hours with a beautiful and talented young lady, and on her account I was suffused with Fatherly Pride. A good, good feeling.

[The eclipse photo above is a pastiche combining my November 2006 shot of the Washington Monument with Sissy Willis’s striking image of the blood-red moon at totality.]

PUTTING ON TH’ TRAINING PANTS

Les flageolets, les flageolets,
Pour vôtre coeur, la bonne santé.

- Old French Proverb

At 3:15 yesterday afternoon, I was perched in my dentist’s chair, making the acquaintance of Mr. Permanent Crown Restoration. Less than five hours later, I was having dinner with Elder Daughter, almost within shouting distance of the White House. Modern Aerial Bus Technology never ceases to amaze me.

I’m here in the general vicinity of the Nation’s Capital to take a training course at the local Big Outpost of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. It’s my first visit to this particular facility, a place once as inaccessible to me as the surface of the Moon. That’s because this used to be the headquarters of one of the Great Corporate Salt Mine’s competitors, and contact with competitors in our industry is permissible only under tightly controlled and unusual circumstances. But then came the Merger, and the formerly untouchable became, well, touchable.

It’s a little like having a family living down the street from you and being told you can’t play with their kids or go into their house. And then, one day, your Dad announces that he is marrying the Widow Woman who lives in that house, and that the kids you weren’t allowed to play with are now your step-siblings. Now you get to check out all the stuff in their basement.

This place, unlike our Sweat City headquarters, is packed with fine art and museum-quality Industry Artifacts. And it’s huge. I’d call it “Battlestar Galactica,” except that name has already been snarfed up to describe another competitor’s headquarters.

But a conference room is a conference room, no matter where you are...and a two-day training session will test your sitzfleisch. The good thing is, I’ve checked my eyelids for pinholes several times, and I haven’t found a single one yet.

Last night, I met Elder Daughter at her D.C. digs, just a few blocks from DuPont Circle. We walked up into Adams Morgan to snag dinner at one of the local French eateries, the cold wind sharpening our appetites all the way.

Elder Daughter recommended the salade Niçoise, so we split one. You can’t go wrong with a salad that includes lettuce, tomatoes, sliced boiled potato, hard-cooked eggs, tuna, tiny Niçoise olives, and the odd anchovy fillet.

I challenged E.D.’s adventurous spirit by recommending that she order the ris de veau - calf sweetbreads. Sweetbreads were a favorite of the Momma d’Elisson, but I resisted ever trying them until they landed on my plate at Chez Panisse, the Berserkely-based temple of American food-worship, twenty-four years ago. They were delicious...and last night, Elder Daughter tasted them for the first time and enjoyed the hell out of them, despite their being Mysterious Organ Meats. (Thymus and/or pancreas, in case you were wondering.)

Meanwhile, I had the cassoulet, the quintessential French comfort food. Simply put, cassoulet is the Gallic equivalent of cholent, the fragrant (and fragrance-inducing) Jewish sabbath bean dish. To describe a cassoulet as a Bean and Meat Stew - which it is - is to do the dish an injustice. This version was rich with sausage, lamb, duck confit, and flavorful, long-simmered flageolet beans. I will leave the question of whether it was wise to eat a plateload of cassoulet before spending a long day in a confined space as an exercise for the reader. Discuss amongst yourselves.

On the way back from the restaurant, E.D. cracked me up with her spot-on Eartha Kitt impression. I’d better start developing some resistance to her sense of humor (which strangely resembles mine), or I’ll be pissing my pants all through Japan in a couple of months.

COVER GIRL

The South Magazine, February-March 2008 issue.
­©2008 The South Magazine. [Click to embiggen.]

Above is one of two covers for the February-March 2008 issue of The South Magazine, Savannah’s bimonthly Arts ’n’ Cultcha Periodical. Does that young lady look familiar, or what?

Funny...when our friend Laura Belle saw the magazine, she did not recognize the Mistress of Sarcasm at first, thanks largely to the makeup and hairstyle. Then she allowed that the picture resembled a combination of Elder Daughter and the Mistress.

At first I didn’t agree...but now perhaps I do, because it also resembles this other Close Relative:


The Momma d’Elisson, 1943.

Spooky, ain’t it?