For Better, For Worse, For Lunch

Sometime in the last couple of years I saw a young standup comic, a guy, riffing on relationships, which is a pretty reliable comic vein to mine. He said that no one he knew looked at people who had been together for 30 years and thought, “Man, I gotta get me some of that.” That is the perspective of a young person, for whom sexy appearance is all. Yep, when we’re young we all want to have the zip and appeal of a 1958 Porsche Speedster, although in fact most of us could be more aptly compared to a 1958 Nash Metropolitan. By the time you’ve been married for over 30 years you’re more like a 1959 Cadillac – you’re wide, you have tail fins, your mileage is pretty high and your miles per gallon are pretty low, and the repairs and maintenance are murder. You know what else you are after thirty years? A really comfortable ride. Rick and I have been married for going on thirty-four years now, and I have to say I’m pretty happy I’ve got me some of that. It’s after thirty years, when attrition has set in to your physical being and you have to do what my spiritual director calls the “spiritual heavy lifting of later life,” that you are glad if you are fortunate enough to have your one true friend by your side. We are currently in that period of adjustment that takes place whenever one of us goes through a major change. In this case, he is now retired and is at home full time. That’s a pretty big change. For most of our married life, he was gone at work. There is an old joke that goes like this: the wife of a retired man says, “I married him for better or for worse, not for lunch.” This joke dates from the days when the traditional roles were more defined and adhered to. The man went to work and the woman stayed home. When he retired he came home and started sticking his nose into what had been her well-oiled and organized life. Resentment ensued. It’s no mystery why retired guys get part-time jobs, or play a lot of golf, or spend a lot of time out in the shop, or are otherwise processed out of the house. Their marriages depend on them getting out from underfoot. I am not criticizing this paradigm. We all make our bargains with life, and live with the consequences. I am glad that Rick and I don’t have that situation. We were friends for years before we became romantically involved, and that bedrock friendship has been a saving grace over the years. It was always there, no matter what happened. The friendship and the smart ass remarks – that’s what we’ve always had. It may not be Paris, but it’s worked for us. So now that he’s home, it turns out we still enjoy each other’s company, and we’re returning to the comedy that was our friendship back at the beginning. For example, when I get out of bed to go down the hall and return to find that the dog has slithered into my warm spot, Rick suggests we should have named her “401K,” because I have to roll her over. Rick and I are blessed in each other, we think. Still, it is weird having him at home all the time, probably more for him than for me. Our friend John once explained to me that this is how it is, especially for men. The job is your identity, it’s what you do and it’s who you are, and your whole life is centered on it. I started laughing as John explained this, and told him that I have never, not once in my life, felt that way about a job. For me a job was a way to pay bills so I could go on singing and writing, and buy some shoes for the kids. I abhorred workplace politics. I wanted to do my job and go home, where my real life is. Now real life is at home for both of us. It’s a change. Last night I called a friend whom I was going to visit today. I asked if her husband would be home, because if he was, I’d bring Rick along so the two of them could meet. I know that Rick and my friend’s husband have some things in common, starting with growing up as military brats. As I waited on the phone while my friend talked to her husband about my bringing Rick to visit, I suddenly had this thought: I feel like I am arranging a play date for my husband. When I told him that, he laughed. I’m going to have to watch that tendency to arrange things for him, though. I know we’ll both be happier if I mind my own business and let him mind his. That’s the kind of thing you realize after the first thirty years together, and if you’re fortunate, you’ll get yourself some of that.

Our Own Personal Fiscal Cliff (with a Segue into Chicken Heart Stew)

This year, on top of the holiday stress, we are looking at my husband’s being laid off from his job. He plans to make the best of the cards he has been dealt by calling himself retired. The man is 67, after all, and on dialysis. People have retired with less justification. Over the years I’ve heard many people talk about how they wished they could live and work on the island. This is the dream – not to have to commute, but to live here in paradise all day, every day, and only leave when absolutely necessary. Rick and I have lived that dream. The only fly in the “live and work on the island” ointment is that most jobs pay lower wages than you’d get on the mainland for the same work, and most jobs do not have benefits or pension plans. You accept those conditions because you’re so gosh darned lucky to have a job on the island, and most island businesses can’t afford benefits and pensions, anyway. Like some others who have lived the dream, we will now have an income from Social Security and nothing else. I keep crunching the numbers and it looks like we’ll be fine, except for not having any money in the budget for food. I’m not sure how we’re going to roll with this. I am thinking lentils, peas, and beans. This is okay. Lots of people become unintentional vegetarians after they become unintentionally retired. We’re okay. We have a home, and good friends and family, and it turns out that all those platitudes about friends, family, and love being the things that really count are true. The one about having your health is true, too, but that ship has sailed for us, so, eh. The non-vegetarian recipe I’ll be making a lot is chicken heart stew. In November of 1977 I did a folk concert tour in the interior of British Columbia. While I was there winter set in. I learned the joy of using an outhouse at -20 Celsius, which in Fahrenheit terms is, “really really cold.” I arrived for my last concert in Prince George, B.C. and took a taxi to the house where I was being put up. When I got there, I found a note from my absent hostess welcoming me, saying she’d be back later and to help myself to some chicken heart stew that was simmering on the wood stove. It was the first time I’d ever heard of chicken heart stew. I was a little worried. There was an “eeyew” factor. I dipped up a bowl and ate it and liked it a lot. When I got home to the island I tried to re-create it, and it became a family staple over the years. Even the kids liked it. It’s a great warm cheap stew for a January night. Here it is: Chicken Heart Stew, a la Casa Tuel Take a package of chicken hearts and rinse the hearts in cold water, then throw them in a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Simmer them on medium for 45 minutes or so, skimming any foamy sludge that forms on the top and throwing it away, unless you’re one of those creative people who has a good use for boiling chicken heart sludge. While the hearts boil, chop up: One green pepper, seeds and membrane removed One onion One large carrot Two stalks of celery Add them to the stew after that first 45 minutes. Let the stew simmer for a further 15 minutes. Drain the vegetables and hearts, reserving the stock. While they’re draining, make gravy.

Here's a picture of my gravy whisk. My mom had one. By the end of her life, the metal on the bottom was worn thin from decades of whisking. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium skillet, add 2 tablespoons of flour, and let the flour cook in the butter until it turns light brown, stirring constantly, 3 or 4 minutes of so. Mix in one cup of the stock you reserved, and you can throw in a little white wine if you’d like, to make your gravy. Add the drained hearts and vegetables to the gravy and season to taste. We eat it with a savory blend – Italian seasoning for example. If it’s not wet enough to suit you, or if you need to stretch the recipe to go around to more bowls, add as much of the stock as you wish. You can eat it on its own, or add toast, corn bread, and/or a salad if you like, same as any other stew or soup. So there you go, a good cheap winter meal if you’re not quite committed to that vegetarian diet, which I’m not. Enjoy.

Egg Cups

This image is from the website eHow Mom: How to make egg cups http://www.ehow.com/how_8030726_make-egg-cups.html Breakfast this morning was a piece of toast and a boiled egg, a little pullet pellet of protein. Have I mentioned that I finally realized why people ate boiled eggs in little egg cups, scraping the egg out of the shell with a spoon? Never could understand how that method arose. Why not shell the darn egg and eat it? It finally came to me: The eggs were fresh, perhaps laid that morning in the family chicken coop (or “slave quarters” as I once heard a back-to-the-land hippie describe his chicken coop back in the 70s) out back of the house. A fresh egg clings to its shell, not like the warehoused eggs we buy at the supermarket now. When we, through some fluke of merchandising, get a fresh egg and boil it, we curse it as we try to free it from its shell, losing chunks of our breakfast in the effort. An old egg is easier to peel when it’s boiled. The membrane between shell and egg separates easily and we get what we think of as a proper boiled egg, a smooth shining white oval, ready to be salted or buttered or chopped into salad and consumed. A fresh egg – well, you might as well stand it up in a holder, crack off the end, and scoop out the contents with a spoon. And so was born a whole line of dining crockery. That’s the trouble with coming in to the movie late, my friends. You have to figure out the plot backwards. Egg cups.

End of the Year Sweeping Up

Illustration by Rick Tuel It is time to call it a year, and in the spirit of tidying up and finishing the unfinished, here are a few items I never got around to this year: First of all, you commuters, walkers, joggers, students, and bicyclists: wake up and wear something reflective. I am not a commuter, but I am a commuter enabler. I frequently give my son a ride to the ferry in the morning and pick him up in the evening. It is astonishing to me how many people are out on our public thoroughfares in the dark, wearing dark clothing. People suddenly appear in my headlights in or beside the road, which provides me a good cardiovascular workout, but holy carp, kids, it’s scary. To those of you who wear reflective clothes or vests or shoes and carry flashlights or other beacons to show you are there, thank you. You cannot wear too much of this stuff. If you are a bicyclist with a tiny little white light in front and a tiny little red light in back, you need to know that you cannot be seen. You need to slap reflective tape on every surface of your bike as well as your clothing. Please. Be mindful of how hard it is to see you. Don’t take for granted that drivers will see and avoid you. Be mindful of the terrible fragility of your human body. You will not win an argument with a car. It does not matter that you have the right of way or that you or your survivors can sue someone after the fact. Living a healthy life in an unbroken body is more to be desired than a broken or dead body and revenge. Trust me on this. Make yourself visible. Second, I have recently signed on as a volunteer for VIPP. One of VIPP’s pressing needs is for foster homes for dogs awaiting adoption. My husband and I recently took in a foster dog, and experienced the major pitfall of fostering: we fell in love with the dog and now she’s part of our family. As pitfalls go, not so bad, (our pitfall is pit bull, which I’ve been trying to resist saying but have failed) but we’ll have to be a little more hard headed for our next foster. You’ll be hearing more about fostering animals in the months to come, but for now I ask you to consider whether you have room in your home to provide a safe temporary home for a deserving pup. Think about it, and if you think you might be able to do it, look into it by contacting VIPP at dogs@vipp.org. Third, I was listening to God recently – most of you would call this meditating, being quiet and paying attention to what comes – and here is what I heard: preach tolerance. This little nugget of instruction has made me acknowledge to myself that, oh yeah, I do preach, don’t I? And I do preach tolerance. How often have I said here that we’re all in this together? I am ever mindful that the practice of tolerance is counter to my own human nature which is naturally inclined to be judgmental, jealous, and self-serving. I know I’m not alone in my reactive human nature. So you’ll be hearing more about that, too, but for now I leave you with this major contribution from a minor prophet: “…what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” - Micah 6:8b Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, or whatever it is you are or are not celebrating. I wish you well. Try to be tolerant of people who wish you well, even if they don’t say it the way you’d prefer, okay?

Christmas in Occupied Japan

Rick and his father, Mark, on the beach at Karatsu, Japan, September, 1951 Hello, boys and girls. Much as I love struggling with the problems of being human and attempting to write about those problems in a way that can make us all laugh, sometimes it’s good to take a break and bring in another voice, and another story. This week the guest columnist is my husband, Rick Tuel. A Christmas memory came back to him, and he decided to write it down. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, and are taking care of yourselves as you navigate December, a month full of various kinds of social, financial, and familial landmines. But we’ll talk about those another time. Meanwhile, here’s Rick, telling his story of Christmas in Occupied Japan: This is how I remember it, 61 years later. I think it was December of 1951 when the first grade class of us Army brat kids was treated to a visit by Santa Claus. We were the children of the second wave of Army occupation forces in post-World War II Japan. My mom and I arrived one year earlier, joining my dad, who was stationed in Sasebo on the island of Kyushu. In October of 1950 we were moved to a new base in Kokura. After a year in Japan I was already starting to lose touch with many of my early mid-western notions and stateside memories. The Korean War had broken out four months earlier, but that didn’t concern us kids. That Christmas of 1951 we were just excited to learn that Santa Claus knew where we were. Our class was transported in a big Army bus to the airport on the base at Kokura. The airport was little more than a soaked, grassy field by the side of a dirt road. It was a cold, wet day, gray and cloudy, and we were all in our good shoes and school clothes for this special occasion. A squad of G.I.s had been transported with us on the bus, giant young soldiers they looked to us, in starched, pressed fatigues and spit-shined combat boots. We all got off the bus wondering where Santa Claus might be in this wet, empty field. Then what to our wondering eyes should appear But an olive drab whirlybird loaded with cheer! It dropped through the fog and set down with a squish Confirming the promise of each Christmas wish! It was a two-seater helicopter with a loudspeaker and clear Plexiglas bubble housing the pilot and Santa, both in helmets and flight gear. It circled the bus with Santa waving and shouting, “Ho ho ho! Mer-ry Christmas!” After one pass it set down in the middle of the soaked airfield and G.I.s began picking up kids and running us out to the helicopter-sleigh, held tightly in their arms. They ran us out one by one, their energy adding to our excitement. Santa rubbed our heads, gave us each a small wrapped present, wished us “Merry Christmas!” and sent us back to the bus. Our G.I.s dropped us off at the door of the bus as the driver checked us off with a head count. Shortly the whole class was back on the bus, and we were all excited and noisy, talking about Santa and the Christmas gifts we held in our hands. The formerly immaculate, spit-shined G.I.s were grinning and covered with mud. Santa’s heli-sleigh powered up and lifted off, with the Merry Christmases! and Ho ho hos! fading away into the moist gray fog.

When we opened our presents they turned out to be little hand-painted wooden Japanese figurines, about four inches tall, with clothespin heads, round bodies, and flat bottoms so they would stand up. They all had Japanese faces and black hair, and were all the same shape, but each one had a unique paint job, with different colored kimonos. You could play games with them, rolling them across the floor so they’d wobble this way and that, and sometimes they’d roll in such a way that they’d end up standing up. The bottoms were big enough to be marked with what in those days was an all-too-familiar logo: “Made in Occupied Japan.” I wish I hadn’t lost mine.

Queen for a Day My beautiful cousin Nancy and I were talking the other day, having a nice canter down memory lane as we so often do, and we remembered the 1950s television show, “Queen for a Day.” We both watched this tear-jerker show, which some have called a forerunner to today’s reality shows. The idea was that a few women would be interviewed by host Jack Bailey, and the one who told the story that got the loudest applause as measured on the “Applause-o-meter” was crowned Queen for a day, crowned with a glittering tiara, wrapped in a sable-trimmed velvet robe, seated on a grand throne and given a dozen long-stemmed roses, as well as given many prizes, starting with whatever she had specifically requested – such as a new wheelchair for her disabled child. Yes, the stories were sob stories, and the winner was the one who made the studio audience of women cry the most and applaud the hardest. The other contestants were also given prizes for being on the show, so none of them went away empty-handed, which makes me feel better about the show all these years later. I suppose many people would now and did then consider the show maudlin and manipulative in the extreme, which it was, exploiting the grief and misery of women in order to sell advertising. But that is a grown up retrospective on my part. As children, Nancy and I both watched the show in wide-eyed wonder. Nancy watched it with her mom, Chick, who was my father’s baby sister. Chick had multiple sclerosis and by the time we were small children it had progressed to the point that she was in a wheelchair full time. Nancy had only part of a normal childhood. She had to be home after school and in the summer to take care of her mom and help her make dinner. Chick died when Nancy and I were 16. Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a sneaky disease, and it goes at different rates for different people. Some people live with it for decades without much discernible effect. Some, like Chick, are quickly disabled and die within 15 or 20 years after diagnosis, when the nervous system finally fails to function enough to support life. What is it? Now we say it is an autoimmune disease, where the body’s immune system attacks the nervous system, and damages the myelin sheath which covers nerves, causing nerve impulses to slow down or stop. I have heard it compared to the fraying of the covering of an electrical cord, a metaphor that was more accessible back when electrical cords were covered with woven fabric. No one knows what causes it, although there are a lot of theories. There is no cure, although I’ve been hearing people talking about searching for a cure since I was a small child looking at my aunt in a wheelchair. People are doing research, looking for a cure, constantly. Nancy told me that she and her mother would sometimes play Queen for a Day. “It was probably on summer days. We’d do our work in the morning, and then we’d play.” Nancy would make a tiara out of cardboard and cover it with aluminum foil, and use a wooden kitchen spoon for her microphone. “Mom would roll up close to me in her wheelchair, and I’d ask her questions, and she’d make up stories. It was different every time. She’d maybe say, ‘We can’t afford to buy food for the kids,’ and say she had ten kids. She’d pour on the sob story. Then we’d do a drum roll and announce that Mom was Queen for a Day.” Nancy would crown her with the foil crown, wrap a blanket around her mom as her royal robe, and hand her the wooden spoon as a scepter instead of the dozen roses. Nancy would hand Chick a piece of paper upon which Nancy had written the prizes being awarded. “Then when we were done, we’d say, okay, let’s play cards now, or maybe it would be time to make dinner. “The last couple of years of Mom’s life, when she was bedridden, we reversed the roles. She’d be in bed and I’d roll in in the wheelchair. In those days I’d come lie on the bed next to her, and we’d talk, and nap together. Those were great bonding times.” So this week we’ve been telling each other, “You are Queen for a Day!” and we laugh. We live our own hard stories, as all the rest of you do, and we tell those stories to each other, and we applaud each other’s courage in the face of life’s random insults. We agree to meet for lunch, to go to Ivar’s for chowder, or to Gale’s in Capitola for Marion berry pie. And we laugh some more. Ah, it’s good to be the queen.

Chick, Nancy's mom, with Sam and Charlie the cats ca. 1960

Anger and Ultimatums One of my favorite ways of blowing off steam or working off a case of mad is to pull weeds. Several times a week I go out in the yard, put on my gloves, grab a trowel and a pair of pruning shears, and go to town on the buttercups, Stinking Robert, blackberries, and dandelions. Pulling weeds make me feel better, and it makes the garden look better. Doing chores in the house can have the same effect. News of someone’s death, for example, has sent me into the bathroom to clean the tub and tub surround to within an inch of its life. The activity vents the energy released by the shock, and it is not an activity that requires a completely present and with-it brain, and I end up with a clean bath tub. Unfortunately, physical activity can have an opposite effect. Instead of letting the steam escape, it can remind me of old, unvented steam. I can be putting the bed back together, neatly arranging the piles of blankets, sheets, and pillows that are our bedding, and will start thinking of something that bugs me. Today it was exercise, or more accurately, people who push exercise. People sometimes have encouraged me to exercise. They mean well. I do not have any argument with people who are active. I admire and respect them, and wish I was more like them, truly. But. When somebody tells me I should get out and walk in order to lose weight and take some pressure off my bad knee, all I can think is, if you haven’t walked a mile on a knee with no cartilage left, and lived through the pain for several days afterward, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so shut up. See, this is the problem with doing some physical chore. Rather than calming emotions, activity can rev them up, and you might end up saying or doing something rash. When I turned 18 I came home from college to visit my parents, and my beautiful cousin Nancy was there to visit. One night during that fateful weekend Nancy and I took my father’s pickup for a drive. We went out to a movie. My parents were not at home. It was the first and only time I took a car without permission, but I figured it would be okay. It would have been all right, too, if that Jeep Gladiator (I want to give credit where credit is due) hadn’t opened up a hole in its engine and dropped all its oil on Highway 1 somewhere between Soquel and the Freedom Boulevard turnoff. That might not have been a total disaster if I’d known enough to turn the engine off as soon as the oil light came on, but I was young and ignorant and instead thought, oh, I’d better get home right away. The engine kept going almost a mile before it ground to an oil-free halt, with all its now hot and oil-free parts wedged tightly together. Yep. I learned a lot about the working of the internal combustion engine that night. A couple of weeks later when I was back at college and expecting to stay there for summer school, my father was working around the ranch. He got to thinking about how I’d ruined his truck – he was a farmer and I had ruined his truck! A few days later I got a call at college from my mother saying I was coming home and getting a job and learning the value of money. She told me my dad had been out working one day and got mad as hell – and who could blame him? See, he’d been doing some physical job and it served to focus and stoke his anger at me, and it came out as an ultimatum to me. I came home from college all right. My parents came and picked me up, and on the three-hour drive home we got into an argument – I think it was over whether students should get letter grades or pass-fail ratings, not that the subject matters. We were a little north of San Ardo on 101 when the fireworks started, and our relationship was all downhill after that. Within a couple of weeks I had moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Alameda with my beautiful cousin Nancy. I got a job in San Francisco, met some kids who went to dances at places called the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore, started dressing in striped pants and smoking dope, and before you know it I was renting a room made out of a stairwell in an apartment building on the Panhandle, doing temp work in the financial district for money, going to those dances, and hanging out with the other hippies on Haight Street, and laughing at people’s ignorance when they called us beatniks. All because the truck broke and I didn’t know what to do, and my father lost his temper and handed me an ultimatum. Changed my whole life, and I couldn’t tell you even now if it was for better or worse. So watch out for those temper tantrums. Think real hard before you deliver an ultimatum. You never know what you’re unleashing, although it is nice if it turns out that you end up with a clean bathtub. That’s something. Note: That night my father came and towed the truck home, and he didn’t say a word, but when we got back to the house my mother greeted us and escorted us down to the hall to my room where she quietly let loose with the laughter she’d been holding in. It turns out that once back in the 30s my dad was changing the oil on the truck he had then, and he left the truck sitting with the oil drain plug out and went to do something else. Nancy's mother, Chick, needed to give a visiting boyfriend a ride home, and decided to drive him in my dad’s truck. So they hopped in and drove off, and within a very short time the engine ground to a halt. So I did to my father’s truck the same thing Nancy’s mother had done about twenty years before. My mother thought that was rich. It’s nice to remember now that my mom had some appreciation of life’s little ironies