Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Aimee Bender: Author, Teacher, Ladle, Giver

   You may or may not have seen my review of the book The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  It was penned by Aimee Bender and was the topic of our book club’s discussion dinner this month. As mentioned before, a new friend of mine (hi Julia!) connected us to this fresh author who very graciously devoted over half an hour of her personal time to call Oklahoma for some Q & A.  She willingly indulged the World’s Coolest Book Club (we’re still working on an actual name and mascot; I’m pulling for Lingonberries) with questions, remarks, answers, and creative explorations.  I will not pretend to be such a worldly and cultural person to have a ton of experience with author Q & A, but I do have enough under my belt to say that this lovely woman blew me away.



   Of the group of about ten women who read the book, seven of us could attend the dinner.  We all contributed to what would become a simmering gumbo of reactions to this unusual piece of literature, but the one sentiment we shared was gratitude to Ms. Bender for her generosity and openness last Thursday night.  With gentleness and humor, sincere artistic curiosity, and humility that almost had her surrendering ownership of the story she had crafted, Aimee offered the seven of us via speakerphone a glimpse into her soul and into her writer’s world.

   That is a good example of how easy-going she was; I felt immediately comfortable and called her by her first name throughout the interview, and she didn’t seem to flinch.  I caught myself way too late and now am hoping it was okay.  xoxo  She’s lucky, I suppose, not to have been attack-hugged through the fiber optic lines.
   Whether you are a writer at heart or an avid consumer of the written word, these thirty five minutes would have left you fuller and more inspired than you were.  One or two of our readers were less than enchanted by the science-fiction twists of Lemon Cake, so much so that they almost didn’t like the book as a whole by the end, but then hearing from Aimee deepened the discussion tremendously. 
   We flew through so many words and emotions that I could almost write a book over just the discussion of this fascinating book.  This reinforces my standing opinion that Lemon Cake will become a classic read for those bent on intimate family studies and emotional development topics.  For review purposes, though, I will hand pick some of the most glowing subject matter and trust that you might read the book for yourself then seek out some savory answers. 
   That is exactly what the author herself encouraged as we began the conversation!  She wanted to know what meanings we found in her book.  Wait.  Are you kidding me?  Is this a trick, or a mysterious question-that-leads-to-its-own-answer?  Nope.  She was innocently intrigued by how the story affected others, what they saw in it, etc. 
   One analogy she made was a reference to Bob Dylan: he considers himself not a songwriter but a ladle, a cup, just dipping himself into a river of music.  As Aimee’s soft, easy voice painted this picture for us over the miles, seven heads nodded slowly, approvingly, all around the room.  We got it, and we universally accepted her invitation to take her story for our own devices.

   But we remain readers, not novelists, certainly not writers of this story, so we were still brimming with questions which she indulged patiently.  In the next few days I’ll try my best to share the insights.

  

Just for Today

I will not strike back, even if I am right. 
I will practice peacemaking.
I will be pleasant and presentable
From early morning until late at night.
I will pray for my “enemy.”
I will try to learn something from everyone
Without expecting to learn it all from anyone.
I will have a plan and a program.
I may not follow  it exactly,
But I will strive to be a better steward
Of my time and resources today
Than I was yesterday.
I will count my many blessings.
I will revel in this beautiful life
And continue to hope for tomorrow!!
I will show fearless love!!
I will actively choose to do
The bravest, gentlest, most loving thing.
I will do my best at everything.
I will remember to consider
My signature and my legacy,
As well as my capacity for witnessing.
I will lift someone else’s spirits.
I will exhibit optimism
And walk by faith, not by sight.
I will learn something useful
And strive to make a real difference today
in the lives of those I love.
I will do a good deed in secret.
If I am found out, I will try again.

Hot Tub Summits

   One of the indispensable luxuries we afford ourselves in life is pretty regular time in the hot tub.  At our old house in the City we had one but tended to slip in at night, under cover of darkness, happy not to be seen and also not to be seeing much.  Now, the view is so pretty and our habits are so different that we prefer to soak early in the morning.  Sometimes so early the sun finds us already warm and relaxed at her ascent.
   We crawl out of bed, groaning but hopefully smiling, trading kisses with tightly sealed (unbrushed) mouths.  I flip down the sheets and toss away the bed pillows, letting the bed rest and air out before it gets made again later in the morning. 
   Our short walk down the upstairs west side hallway offers a view of the pond.  Or puddle, depending on the severity of drought conditions at the time.  This is great way to gauge the morning’s weather.  Choppy water means wind; glassy water means a calm day.  The presence of egrets or blue herons means, well, just that the birds are hungry and the fish are at the surface, I suppose.  This is all extremely cryptic and requires a trained eye to interpret.

   Once in a while we see a deer sipping at the edge of the water, but this happens more often in the evenings.

   Assuming our still sleepy legs carry us safely down the stairs, we greet Pacino together.  Then Handsome heads outside to open up the hot tub while I pour, sweeten, and make perfectly creamy two mugs of coffee.  Drinking a hot, filling beverage while soaking in an equally hot body of water is sublime.  It liquefies your bones.
   The walk from the kitchen door to the hot tub is about thirty-eight paces.  And if the chickens have been released by now, it is a journey fraught with ankle pecking and hungry clucks and flutters.  Sometimes I drizzle a little coffee over chunks of bread for them, but usually I focus on reaching my handsome guy, knowing the chickens can get my attention the rest of the day.
   We immerse ourselves in not only hot, bromine-scented froth but also affection and loose thinking.  This is weird time of day for someone like me who dreams heavily.  That gray, blurry time that must be spent diving phantoms from reality, night from day.  Working on this mental task while watching the sun spread herself over the fence line is wonderful. 
   Handsome sits across from me, gradually waking up himself.  He doesn’t dream and so doesn’t need this sifting time, but he does think.  He thinks as hard as he works, which is too hard. 
   Steam tendrils rise and fall with the breeze, dragonflies zoom past, and roosters crow at horses.  The buffalo issues a few of his deep, rib-rattling snorts.  We look around the farm and can see every paddock, almost every animal from this vantage.  We take an informal roll call and start discussing the day before us. 
   Five days out of seven Handsome is soon off to the office, of course, and sometimes he feels like telling me what he’s facing there; other times we focus more on the farm and all the many lists here, both short term and long term.  He asks me, “What’s on your plate today, Sally?”  Sally is not my name, so I regard this as permission to answer in any wacky fashion I see fit.  “Painting elephants” is a fave response.  But since I am still in that gray dreamy time, the feasibility of finding elephants that need a good touch up cannot help but present itself to my Brainstorm Help Desk.  The idea always gets shot down.
   The comfortable looseness we enjoy at this summit of sorts allows us to touch on a dozen or more topics in a relatively short stay.  We are still deeply connected to each other as in bed, eliminating the need for much of the perfunctory conversation that litters the rest of life.  We can hit the headlines in our hearts and extract from each other genuine reactions and unedited, undiluted meanings.  Funny that it takes water to be undiluted.
   We tend to stay longer than we can afford to, eventually finding it more difficult to drag each other out of the water than it is to drag ourselves out of bed.  But once we’re towelled off the day has begun!  Our thoughts are crystallized, and our bodies are up to the tasks we have chosen.  I love the gift of starting my day with this man, with our ritual, with love. 

   The summit serves us well.

  
  

Couch Surfers (installment tres)

See the beginning of our couchsurfing story here.
And part deux here.
   Note:  For the sake of anonymity we shall for now dub our couchsurfers Romeo and Juliet. 
At least until I get an all clear smoke signal to reveal their real names, faces,
and social security numbers to the world. 
 
********************

   You would think we were awaiting two people who were sure to change our lives forever.  (Maybe we were…)  Handsome and I are accustomed to house guests, of course, as well as meeting new people and travelling ourselves, but this was a whole new ball game.  A strange melange of the three experiences.  Anticipation was thick in the downstairs of our house.

   I tried to be cool and calm, like him, but the harder I tried this the squeakier my voice sounded and the more I walked around stiffly on my tip toes.  Ridiculous behavior for a woman my age.  Which is 25.
   Everything was as in order as it could be and the head lights now shone still, directly in our front window.  A passenger door was opening.  Together we stepped out onto the front sidewalk to welcome our guests, and I knew immediately we were gonna like them!  They hummed with that good vibe, even from eight feet away.

   We all four traded introductions and warm, brisk handshakes.  I think I may have, without warning, attack-hugged them.  It happens.  My policy is hug first, ask questions and make apologies later.  Luckily, Romeo and Juliet both laughed at this and followed us inside the house with big smiles on their travel-weary faces.

   I love big, genuine smiles. On anyone.  This is one of my favorite things in the world, and that night I was gifted with two right off the bat.  All remaining traces of anxiety dissolved in that moment. 
   We gave them a super brief tour of the downstairs rooms, assuming that after hours of driving they would need the water closet.  Pacino, our macaw, was overwhelmed by the late night appearance of new faces and immediately flooded the room with jungle calls, big, juicy greetings like HELLOOOOO, and exaggerated full body bouncing.  Inwardly I quizzed myself, “You did warn them about this, right?  Surely you told these good people that they would be sharing the downstairs with a noisy, messy, feathered toddler?”
   “Oh this must be Pacino!”  said Juliet.
    Whew.
   Handsome smoothly up shifted unto Host gear, one of the sexiest roles he plays in my opinion.  Yes, I can throw a little shin dig on my own, but it is never as fun as when we do it together.  Hosting, that is.  Ahem.
   Then, in the few minutes it took the three of them to unload suitcases and sort of settle in, I finished detailing the spread of food and drink.  Every light downstairs was on; Cajun music was playing in the background (light and bubbly, festive tunes, uncommon enough to probably not have negative connotations for anyone); and Pacino had more or less composed himself. 
   If Romeo and Juliet had big, genuine smiles a moment ago, their expressions changed to enthusiastic at the mention of food.  We all found seats at the dining room table.  Romeo decided to forgo the use of a fork , placing me in a small, cozy corner of heaven…
   Ladies and gentlemen who cook for friends or family, is there anything as gratifying as watching people consume and really enjoy your food?  Even if it is just from abject starvation, as may have been the case this evening, you know you are meeting a need in that moment, and it is such a good feeling. 
   We all four lingered at the table for well over an hour, refilling plates and glasses, nibbling on dessert, plunging into a sudden acquaintance.  At some point we migrated toward the couches and struck up a spontaneous dance off with Pacino. 

   Can you even imagine how happy this bird was? 

   Although it was a weeknight and we’d been busy all day, my energy surged around 10:30 p.m.  I felt like I could stay up all night talking with this young couple, soaking up our differences and similarities, celebrating that no murders were on the agenda.  I learned volumes about them.  Their origins and current lives, their travels, their plans, the books they read and the movies they watch.  Two fascinating human beings whose paths we may never have otherwise crossed.  We traded plenty of stuff about ourselves, too.  I mentally added a few good sounding titles to my reading list per Juliet’s suggestion.

   It was probably close to midnight when the yawns and crackly spine twists became frequent enough to agree it was bedtime.  I showed Juliet a few provisions in their bath room, prepped the coffee maker for an early morning wake up, and attack-hugged everyone once more.  Even Handsome, ignoring the fact that we were about to retire to our bed as a pair. 
  No foot rubs to boast.  But on the bright side, also no knives.  We survived to enjoy a great night’s sleep and then our first couchsurfing breakfast…

To be continued…

Couch Surfers (part deux)

Also see the beginning of this story.
   Where we left off I was in a small shopping frenzy, counting down the quarter hours till our out of state guests might arrive.  I had Hostess Butterflies, something that doesn’t happened very often these days.  I needed a shower.  Handsome was feverishly wrapping up his day at the office, due home soon. 
Allow me to say right here how fun it is
to share an adventure like this with my best friend! 
xoxoxo 
   What kind of people would they be?  Would they be able to tolerate my food?  Could we find anything to talk about, or would the next fourteen hours be filled with awkward silences bound by polite smiling and bath towel fetching?  If they are murderers, what would their chosen method of killing be? 
   “Pleeeeaaaase not knives.  Please let them be foot-rub serial killers.  And please let them wait till after dinner, cause I am famished.”  These were some of my thoughts.  But I wasn’t really worried because Handsome was home now.  And he is well versed in the art of Wife Protection.

   I arrived back at the farm with plenty of time to lob my chain store purchases into approximately their correct places, double check our clean sheets supply, and cook dinner.  Which, by the way, did not turn out to be anything classically Oklahoman.  I opted to follow Ina Garten’s advice and serve guests simple comfort food that I am confident preparing.  So we had PBJ’s and tortilla chips.  Not really, but it crossed my mind.
   I also rinsed off in the shower and doused myself with too much perfume, thinking that would either boost my conversation confidence or choke everyone into necessary silence.
   Our Couch Surfers had some travel delays but nothing problematic. They ended up arriving a couple of hours later than expected.  No biggie.  The extended wait had the wonderful effect of calming my nerves rather than amping me up further. 
   Around 8:30 that evening we spied headlights at the front gate.  I had just a bit ago put trays of food in the oven to rewarm.  So now I brought them out, turned on some cool music, and peed one last time. 
   Do you pee a little extra when you’re nervous or excited?