Parade Rest

It’s Memorial Day– we’re usually Up North for the weekend eating whitefish and Dorrit Circles and catching up on lost sleep… but this year, with Friend Ericka’s wedding approaching, we decided to stay closer to home to get things in order.

So we went to my nieces’ parade today. It’s not really their parade, of course, it’s the town’s salute to Memorializing… but they were marching in their junior high band and we went to wave our Exchange Club little American flags and cheer them by.

My sister, Robby, and I marched in this same parade years ago, too. It was my favorite. I loved the pomp and circumstance of it and the quiet reverence paid by our percussion section when we passed along the cemetary edge– they’d tick-tick-tap along the rims of their drums and the hairs on my arms and neck would stand at attention.

I’m lucky. My family is near by and safe and out of harm’s way. They aren’t in Iraq or Afghanistan or base camp.

Today I felt guilty for staying seated when the American flags went sailing past. I know I should’ve stood… but Jack was leaning against me and it was nice to have his normally busy little body quietly still for a bit.

He really likes parades. He waved his flag (and then all of ours, too) and noted the “FireTruck!” and “PoliceCar!” as they drove along the route.

And, later, we stopped up at the cemetary to check on the geraniums on my Dad’s grave. He wasn’t a veteran of any wars (though he used to make up Army/Navy/Marines stories for our benefit) outside of the little skirmishes we’d have as a family. I’m sorry he was not here today to see the girls go marching past with their uniforms and shy smiles. Or to see Jack waggling four flags at once in happy cadence with the drums.

I’m missing the whitefish feast, too.

The Dear Hunters

Our weekend trip to the Galena area yielded a host of new happy memories… and a pound of perfect morel mushrooms.

Most of you know that morels are definitely in the finals of Terri’s Favorite Foods. Every May I salivate thinking about their earthy taste and nutty goodness when fried properly with egg, flour, salt, and pepper. (Friend Chris swears by the condensed milk he uses, too.)

My grandparents used to have a little cabin in the woods. We’d gather there for various weekends and holidays… A lot of Mother’s Days were spent there. It coincided with the morel season and my grandparents would tromp out into the woods in search of them, with the rest of us in tow. My mother was also a good ’schroom hunter. My Dad and I not so much. We never seemed to have the knack or patience for finding the little clumps. I remember one year when Dad and I were scarfing the chocolate I’d had in my coat pocket and the two of us were asked to move over a step or two– my grandfather’s walking stick nudging us out of the nestling of morels we were standing in. Oops.

Back at the cabin there would be washpans full of morels. And later, a platter would heap over with them. We’d eat them until we were completly sated and then some. It seems unreal now when I buy them and have to carefully count pennies to do so.

Those weekends at Grandpa and Granny’s cabin are all in the past. Grandpa died 11 years ago– unreal to think of that his gravely voice and way with a pancake spatula are lost to my small son and nieces. The cabin’s gone, too– it was sold several years ago and we no longer have free access to roam those woods or play in that cold, cold creek. (I wonder if our old Barbies in their butter tub boats were ever found or, if they went Paddling-to-the-Sea??) Jack would have loved it there. (And I would have had a heart attach with the open loft.)

Still. Every May there are Morels. Thank God.

The ignorant pigs are the parents

Unless you live under a rock you’ve probably been inundated with the news about Alec Baldwin and his phone message rant to his young daughter. The whole thing seems to be a mess. His poor choice of words. His ex-wife’s poor choice of disclosure. Even his daughter’s seeming lack of availablity. Everyone seems to have an opinion. It’s hard not to.

There’s something about it that cuts to our own guilt or stance. Still, if you back up a bit, you can see that there are at least 6 sides to that story. For me the saddest part isn’t what he said (because we’ve all said stupid, heated things– most of us just don’t have them posted on the world’s kiosk) but the fact that so many years after he and his wife ended their marriage they are still this bitter and ugly to each other.

Maybe I’ve mentioned it before but this is why I have a lot of respect for Uma Thurman. I caught her on Oprah months ago. I’d never been an Uma fan (outside of that Letterman bit at the Oscars– I thought it was hysterical. Apparently there was only two other people in the world who laughed with me. Poor Dave.)– I’d seen more of her ex-husband’s movies… Their marriage, by her account, ended not so kindly and in her carefully chosen words you could sense that there was a lot of pain still present. But what impressed me was her earnest belief that, on the day she and her husband separated, she’d lost the “right” to speak of him in anything but postive terms to their children. Her theory was that because their children’s family was now fractured her kids wouldn’t have the luxury of seeing a disagreement resolved the way they would if they were all under one roof… that she or he might be angry one day but the next it would be resolved. Her job, now, she said was to make sure they knew that their father loved them and that he was the very best father they could ever have– just as her husband now focused on her as their mother, too. She might not respect him as a husband or lover but saw the obvious value in him as a parent.

You don’t often here a lot of wisdom out of the mouth of a Hollywood resident. I think she’s nailed it though.

I don’t know the ex-Baldwins and highly doubt that I’ll be at a cocktail party with either of them anytime soon but I hope they get their act together. If nothing else may they at least find a bit of gratitude that without the other their daughter wouldn’t exist. (Why don’t they see that big, “DUH!?!” ??)