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Tuesday, 07 July 2009
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Paraszt Party
My grandmother called it a “Paraszt Party” (“Peasant Party”). It did not commemorate any special day; there were some summers when we had a Paraszt Party nearly every weekend.
The night before, my grandmother (sometimes along with my mother) sliced onions and bell peppers. The slices (about half onions, half peppers) were placed in jars of cold water with a couple drops of vinegar. The jars were closed and crammed into the refrigerator.
My Uncle Joe (a/k/a Uncle Kid, Uncle Joe Bagga Donuts, Uncle Joe Bagga Brownies) went to the Hungarian bakery at the top of my grandmother’s road for rye bread and pastries. My father got the slab bacon from Drotos Bros., the Hungarian Butcher over on North Avenue. Auntie V and Uncle Carl brought the Bull’s Blood (Hungarian red wine… nasty stuff, but tradition is tradition) and the beer.
I have no idea how to spell that dish – onions, peppers and bacon drippings with a little of the meat on rye bread – but it is pronounced: shoot’-nee-sulla-nuh. It’s greasy, crunchy and smooshy, and I love it.
Once everyone had a sandwich or two (some of the guys could put away three), out came the Bull’s Blood and the violins. Toasts and music went on into the night. Sometimes I sang; sometimes my Auntie V did. My mother was often asked to sing, but she always declined.
Once, while everyone around us giggled with drink and danced in silly circles (and sang, mostly off-key), I asked Cousin Steve why we had peasant parties when we were not peasants.
He laughed and said, “Sweetheart… your grandmother only calls it a Paraszt Party because shoot’-nee-sulla-nuh is what the peasants ate.”
He kissed my cheek. “She should really call them Hungarian Parties. We’re really just celebrating being us.”
The family stopped having Paraszt Parties years ago.
Every year, Brother #2, The Wolfman comes up north for a few weeks’ visit. He and his wife (and usually, my two nieces) stay at the home of a family friend.
They have Hungarian Night on one Saturday, every year. The guests are not all blood relatives, and they are not all Hungarian, but everyone cooks something Hungarian, mostly "peasant food". The Wolfman usually makes Chicken Paprikas and Cobasztash-Teysta (egg noodles, bacon and cabbage). Others make Turdoszt-Teysta (egg noodles, bacon and cottage cheese), polocinta (think blintzes), and Kobaszi (you probably call it keilbasa). Sometimes, we have shoot’-nee-sulla-nuh. There is always an ample supply of Bull's Blood (God help us all) and beer.
My brother dresses as a Roma (Gypsy). It’s really not much different than the way he dresses all of the time.
No one plays violin; my brother supplies CDs and dances by the pool like a wack-job.
A few years ago, I sipped Bull’s Blood (God help me) and watched my second oldest brother dance like a madman. His youngest daughter sat on the bench next to me. She was embarrassed by her father’s antics.
“I don’t understand why we have these parties, every year. I mean, look at him!” She made a face and pointed to her father, dressed colourfully, kerchief on his head, dancing alone in a circle. Teenagers.
I stood up, turned to her and smiled. “We’re just celebrating being us.”
With that, I ran over, grabbed my brother’s hands, and danced in circles with him until we were both quite dizzy.
Monday, 29 June 2009
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The Pitching Summer
In memory of my mother“Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”
-Warren Spahn
June. School was done for the year. On weekdays, the shop across the street let out at 4:30. At 4:35 in the afternoon, the parking lot adjacent to our yard emptied out.
By 5:00, we were there, most of the neighbourhood kids, two or three of my brothers, and usually, a bunch of their friends. Bases were put out (my older brothers had made those bases years ago). Mitts were distributed. Teams were chosen.
In 1978, the summer before I turned eleven (My birthday is in September), I had been trying everything I could think of to win my mother’s good opinion. I had been at it for about three years. Home life had not been great before my father’s suicide in 1976; afterward, it was sheer hell.
But earlier in 1978, I was inspired, watching my mother as she watched a Mets’ preseason game on Channel 9 (WOR). Of course! Baseball!
How did I never think of it before?
My mother loved baseball. She had played stickball and softball as a kid in her old neighbourhood in Black Rock. When my older brothers played in school and Little League, my mother spent hours with them, pitching, throwing, catching, and batting… practicing.
My mom never missed a Mets game (later in her life, she became a Yankees fan, something to do with Mike Piazza and The Mets’ new management… It was weird… But for years and years, she was a hardcore Mets girl). When she was in labour with my younger brother, Tadpole, back in 1969, she disappeared from her room in the hospital. They found her in the TV room, watching the pennant race. When “The Miracle Mets” won the World Series that year, my mother called Tadpole her (and The Mets’) good luck charm.
My mother knew the game better than anyone I’ve ever known. She was knowledgeable when it came to the history of the sport, and she could spit out stats on almost any player that ever lived.
If I played really well, maybe she’d see me? Notice me? Like me (I knew she loved me, and I loved her; we just didn’t like one another much)? I wanted to be good; I wanted her to think I was good.
As soon as it started getting warm out, I approached Brother #3, The Professor.
“I want to be a pitcher,” I told him when we were alone.
I thought he would laugh at me. I was relieved when he nodded and said, “All right. I’ll teach you.”
I am left-handed. Everyone else in my family (and in the old neighbourhood) is right-handed. The years before 1978, I had played outfield and then first base; I was used to holding the glove in my left hand, catching the ball, dropping the mitt, and throwing the ball with my left hand; there were no lefty mitts.
The Professor suggested that I try to pitch right-handed. The first ball I threw with my right hand just missed my oldest brother, Tallboy’s head. He had been sitting on a bench at the picnic table (far, far away from my target), smoking cigarettes and watching.
“Sorry,” I called.
He picked up the ball and walked it back to me. “Why are you pitching right-handed?”
I nodded toward The Professor. “He says it’s easier.”
Tallboy laughed. He turned to The Professor. “Easier for who? She’s gonna kill somebody!”
Brother #3 shrugged. “She said she wanted to be good. There are no good left-handed pitchers.”
“Is that so?” Tallboy said, his arms crossing his chest, cigarette resting in a corner of his mouth (I call that his Billy Badass Pose). He squinted and said, “Warren Spahn.”
I had no idea who that was. Neither did The Professor.
Tallboy looked at me and said (cigarette dangling), “He’s a lefty pitcher. Won a lot of games. One of your top pitchers of all time.“
He lifted his chin toward The Professor and squinted. “Lefties make great pitchers, asshole. Everybody knows that.”
Every sunny afternoon after school, Tallboy, The Professor and I would go out into the back yard. There, they taught me how to pitch. I held a mitt in my right hand and pitched the ball with my left.
I was determined to be good. I went to the library on Saturdays and read any book I could get my hands on: anything to do with baseball and pitching.
I learned through reading and practicing that being a southpaw pitcher in a world of right-handed batters was cool beans.
When the neighbourhood “season” began in June, I was ready.
My mother sat in the window that faced the parking lot, as she usually did during the neighbourhood softball games. She had a comfy chair, a bag of Ruffles potato chips and a cold bottle of Dr Pepper. She was ready… until she saw me approach “the pitcher’s mound”.
“Hey! What’s going on?” She called out.
I smiled up at her. “I’m pitching this year, Mom!”
“Hm.” She seemed surprised, but she did not seem impressed.
Once the game began, she yelled out advice to me.
She had done that with a lot of the kids over the years, but she had never said a word to me. I smiled at her, thanked her, and took her advice.
My first time up at bat, I hit a good one and made it to second. When I looked across toward home base, where my mother sat in the window, she was leaning forward, eyes wide. She smiled and waved at me.
I glowed and waved back.
I barely noticed Tallboy (my captain that day) and The Professor (captain of the opposing team that day) both cheering me on, commenting on how well all of the practice was paying off.
The next time I was up at bat, close to the window, my mother called down pointers and encouragement to me. Again, I smiled up at her, thanked her, and took her advice.
I got tagged out and awaited some kind of… I don’t know, something negative from the window. Instead, as I made my way to the bench behind and to the left of home base, my mother called out, “It’s okay, Van! You’ll get ‘em next time!”
We barely spoke civilly to one another, but that summer, while baseball was “on”, she noticed me. I felt like she even liked me a little.
Last August, my mother passed away (She had dementia; then, she broke her hip on June 28th and developed pneumonia while at the rehabilitation center.).
Cleaning out her apartment, I found her journal: the black binder no one was ever allowed to peek into. I later found out that the black binder kept only her latest diary; I now have seven boxes of my mother’s journals. I put them into chronological order.Near the bottom of one box, I found a single sheet of yellowed paper. At the top, she’d written:
VAN’S STATS 1978
My mother kept track of every strike. Every ball. Every home run (not that there were that many!). Every run batted in. She wrote “highlights” from a couple of games.
I smiled, reading it. Then, I cried a little...
Written at the very bottom of the page, in the left-hand corner, circled and underlined at least a half dozen times: SO PROUD!
I never pitched a no-hitter. Whatever team I was on did not always win. My “career” was cut short by an injury; I never pitched again after 1978.
Who cares? My mom was proud of me.
Monday, 22 June 2009
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Currently
Alone & Acoustic
By Buddy Guy, Junior Wells
Give Me My Coat and Shoes
see relatedGrandma and the God Guy
Once I felt the God Guy’s presence in the Atlantic Ocean, I began looking for Him everywhere.
I asked my grandmother, “Have you ever seen God?”
We were making pasta at her kitchen table – well, Grandma was making pasta; I was making a crumbly mess of too much flour and not enough eggs.
She said, “I see Him every day.”
I looked at her with new eyes. Of course! If God would visit anyone, it would be Grandma!
“What does he look like?” I asked, giving up on my slightly eggy crumbs. I started to stand, but she stopped me.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Don’t stop now, Vuhn'-essa. You’re not finished.”
Her hands, gentle fingers gnarled with arthritis, quickly formed my crumbs into a well. She cracked an egg into it and said, “Now, you work.”
“So, what does God look like?” I asked again, fingers deep into gooey dough – it was eggy dough, now.
She giggled. “Like Mickey…”
“The milkman???” I was bowled over. How could God look like Mickey the Milkman?
She continued, “Like Terry…”
Wait a minute.
“Terry - Mister Garrison? From across the road?”
Grandma nodded.
I got even more confused when she added, “He looks like the sun when it comes up…”
My fingers stuck in the dough, I said, “You’re playing a joke on me.”
My grandmother laughed and tapped the tops of my fingers. “Keep working, Vuhn'-essa.”
My fingers began to move again. The former crumbs were now solid dough. The sides of my palms coaxed it into a round shape.
“God is everywhere, keesh lon. Everywhere.”
I leaned forward, turning the round over. I whispered, “Even here? Now?”
Grandma smiled. “He is every place, all of the time.”
I must have made a face. She rolled her eyes and laughed.
Grandma handed me the small rolling pin. She took the large one – the one my father made for her – and we began to roll out the noodle dough.
“God is in everything, keesh lon. You cannot see it all of the time, maybe, but you know He’s there.”
“In everything?” I looked down at my dough. Am I gonna eat God Noodles later?
I thought for a minute. Grappled with this new idea. “He’s in people, too, like Mickey?”
She grinned and stood to roll out her dough more evenly. I followed suit.
“God is in Mickey, and Terry… God is in you, too.”
I looked up at her. “In me?”
She nodded, no longer smiling. “Oh, yes. He is in all of us. God is in everyone and everything.”
I paused. “Is God in beer?”
“Yes.”
I continued to roll my little circle of dough. “God must really be in Daddy then.”
I did not understand why my grandmother thought that was so funny.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
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My Morning So Far
I woke up with one of Sam's claws stuck in my right nipple.
My scream scared him, causing the claw to dig in deeper for a second before Sam jumped from the bed.
Instead of jumping from the bed to the floor, Sam - twenty pounds of love encased in fur - attempted to jump mid-bed to dresser... ten feet maybe? He didn't quite make it.
He landed - clumsily... and heavily - on Mikey, our little girl kitty, who naps on the floor between the foot of the bed and the dresser.
She did not appreciate it and sounded like Linda Blair in The Exorcist as she shoved Sam's fat ass off of her. She then chased Sam (which always looks hilarious, because Mikey weighs about 7 pounds... it's like a sparrow chasing a mountain lion) into the dining/living room, where every item that was sitting on the dining room table was pushed to the floor. The big heavy scratch post was knocked to its side; it landed on the edge of the littermaid, and sent a pile of cat poop flying up and onto the wall.
In trying to catch one cat (it didn't matter to me which one), I did not see that my husband, who'd been up all night, left a bunch of DVD cases on the living room floor. I fell face-first into a half eaten plate of scrambled eggs with ketchup. I didn’t have time to go into my usual rant about leaving food in the living room (never mind on the floor), or even clean off my face. I was still chasing cats.
The cats continued their disagreement, running into the kitchen, up onto the counter, where I lost a plate, a coffee cup and my mind: Sam knocked the coffee maker (the one I was going to throw out today anyway; it's a hunk of junk and I bought a new one yesterday) onto the floor. He ran past me, followed by a still-growling Mikey, as the coffee maker bounced and landed on my big toe. I howled.
... And then, it was quiet.
The eye of the storm?
I washed my face in the kitchen sink and dried off with a paper towel. I picked up the broken pieces of china from the kitchen floor, swearing under my breath every time I stepped on a piece. It was still quiet when I was done.
Is one of them dead?
I hobbled into the bedroom.
Ken was sound asleep (he could sleep through anything, I swear), with a sleeping cat under each arm. All three of them were snoring.
I cleaned up the living/dining room and am now hanging out, plotting my revenge.
Sunday, 14 June 2009
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Jell-O Shot
“But all the while I was alone,
The past was close behind.
I seen a lot of women,
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.”
-Bob Dylan
The last time I saw her (about twenty years ago now), she was working on getting a grant to do research in California (something to do with sharks – Jell-O Girl is a marine biologist. You know me; I love a scientist!). We met up in Westport center (where I worked then) and had lunch at Oscar’s. We sat outside at one of the white plastic tables and talked.
I saw the crinkle in her forehead appear (by now, I knew that that meant). I asked her what was wrong.
She laughed a little: not the happy laugh, but the nervous one. She looked down at her hands.
We’d been broken up for a while; she went to school in Florida and a long-distance thing just wasn’t what either one of us wanted. I was sad about it, but I knew I was doing the right thing when I finally killed it.
Without looking up from her hands, Jell-O Girl said that she was thinking the whole way home (to Fairfield) about how she was going to say “fuck it” and ask me to go to California with her. Now that she was here, with me, playing catch-up, she realized that I was right in breaking it off in the first place. She said she didn’t want to be someone who tried to fence me in. She loved me just the way I was, wherever I was.
“The same way you love your sharks?” I half-joked.
She laughed (the crinkle disappeared) and said, “Something like that.”
I walked her to the train station (she was going to Manhattan that day). She had cried a little bit, so I slipped what was left of my Kleenex Purse Pack into her bag. I kissed her and watched her board.
After the train was gone from sight, I sat on a bench and cried for a little while. I knew it was good for both of us to be apart, but sometimes being a smart chiquita doesn’t make one a happy chiquita.
Jell-O Girl was the only woman I ever let myself really care about, and care for. I loved her.
Every now and then, I think about her... sometimes with a pang, but usually with a smile. She knew me, she understood me, and she loved me anyway.
I keep hoping to see her on the Discovery Channel or maybe Animal Planet with her sharks or something. That would make me really happy.
Monday, 08 June 2009
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Responsibility & The Hanged Man
Someone once told me that each key on a key ring represents a responsibility. I had no keys at the time, so I did not really “get” it.
At my first full-time job (at a psychiatric hospital/drug rehab… I know… the irony!), I had over one hundred keys. The 101st key was to the key box.
My job entailed running a switchboard, handing out keys to certain people at certain times, and calling codes. During the week, I generally worked the graveyard shift and helped out with off-hour admissions. When I worked weekend shifts (extra money), it was 7:30am until 7:30pm.
I was given busy work, which was usually finished within the first two hours of my shift. The rest of the night I read, watched TV, and wrote a lot of horrible short stories.
There was always a medical doctor who spent the night. I liked a couple of them, but most of them were schmucks.
My favourite was Dr. L. When I worked graveyard with him, he’d bring me coffee. We’d watch the late movie and talk. On weekends, we’d watch Nets and Rangers games. He gave me books now and then, great books, better than the trashy novels that the volunteers always dropped off at the front desk for the patients. I bought him a Rangers shirt once – kind of a joke; he is an Islanders fan (Pot Van sucks!).
I didn’t like my job. It was easy (boring), I had to work a lot of holidays, and it was not a cheerful environment, but the money was really good, so I stayed as long as I could handle it (which happened to be exactly two years).
There were several small incidents leading up to my wanting to leave, and one big thing that made me turn in my notice. One big thing that changed something inside of me forever:
There were four units where I was located, in the main building, and one large unit in another building on the grounds. All patients were supposed to be in their rooms by 10pm and lights out at 11pm.
I came in a little before 11pm that night. I had lent a book to one of the mental health workers on Unit 1A about a month before that night. He was leaving at 11pm and I wanted to catch him before he left, so I could get my book back.
After the second shift lady at the switchboard left, I called 1A.
I let it ring about 15 times. No answer.
I hung up, looked at the switchboard. No lights on. No noise but the ticking of the wall clock in the front hall. I called again.
I let it ring 10 times. No answer.
Unless a code was called, there were supposed to be at least two people at the station desk at all times. No code had been called.
I took the 1A key out of the box, put the switchboard on night bell and left my little office at the front of the building.
The lights at the 1A front desk were all out; normally, they were only dimmed, never completely out. It was completely silent – that was weird, too – usually, there were at least quiet murmurings, conversations between workers about sports, movies, or their families. I unlocked the door.
Once I opened the door and said, “Hullo?” I realized that there was one sound: a slow creaking.
I took a few steps forward and started to feel my nerves shaking just under my skin. I saw a shadow on the wall, something big, moving back and forth. I wanted to run away, but ran toward the shadow instead.
Across from the shadow on my left was a restroom on my right, where a tiny nightlight was on. As I realized what the shadow was, I yelled as loud as I could (I've got about ten years of operatic training under my belt – I can yell, folks).
No one came running.
I do not know what I would have done if I had not happened to be carrying my brother’s knife that night (I had lifted it from him earlier that day on impulse).
I kicked a folding chair into the bathroom from the hall and lifted him up (it reminded me a bit of trying to catch a fish with my hands; he kept moving, shoving at me, kicking me). I knifed the sash he’d used. Once it was cut and I heard him take a breath, I yelled again, bringing him to the floor, removing the sash completely.
No one came. I heard stirring sounds from behind patients’ doors, but no emergency team assembled.
Swearing up a blue streak, I ran to the front desk and called Dr. L. Got on the intercom and called a 99. Called 9-1-1.
Doctor L was there in seconds. I followed him into the restroom and sat on the floor by the formerly hanged man. I held his hand and looked into his eyes: they were a bright blue, and utterly beautiful. I brushed his hair up off of his face with my fingers and looked into those eyes until the ambulance guys showed up.
I stood up to leave and practically fell back down. “What the fu---?” I suddenly hurt all over.
Dr. L helped me to stand. “You got kicked, I think… a lot, I think.”
I did.
He walked me to my office, closed the door and told me to take my shirt off.
I laughed and said, “No way!” I hung out with this guy, worked with him on a nearly daily basis. I didn’t want him walking around, thinking about my boobs, and I didn’t want to think “He saw my tits once” every time we watched a Nets game together.
“Well, at least lift it up. You need to have your ribs checked." I consented.
“Nothing broken,” he said after forever, “… but you’re going to look extra pretty tomorrow.”
I took Tylenol and we sat together to fill out the incident report. When it was done and we each signed off on it, I went about calling the directors and everyone else on the “must call if such-and-such happens” list.
My supervisor came in at 7:30am. I handed her my report and met the doctor in the lobby. He and I went downstairs into the kitchen – I’d taught him that if you wanted decent food, you had to avoid the dining hall and make friends in the kitchen.
Robert, my best friend in the kitchen, made us pancakes.
Doctor L and I had a long talk over several pancakes and a vat of coffee. People were going to be fired, he said. I nodded. There should be more to it. This place is a hellhole.
“Where the fuck were they?”
The doctor shrugged.
I handed in my resignation that day, giving a few weeks’ notice.
About a week from my last day, I was working a twelve-hour Saturday, 7:30am – 7:30pm. I had my nose in a book; it was quiet. I only looked up when I heard someone clearing their throat.
The formerly hanged man stood in my doorway, smiling, eyes twinkling.
“That was you, huh?” He asked. I nodded.
He said he wanted to thank me, and that he’d never forget what I had said to him.
I didn’t remember saying ANYTHING to him, but I nodded.
He said, “I never realized how simple it all is. You are right. The secret to life is to just keep breathing.”
I said that? That was something my grandmother always used to say. I always hated that expression.
I smiled.
Good one, Gram.
Tuesday, 02 June 2009
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My Dad and The King
After two tours in Korea in the 1950s, my dad was stationed in the states.
When he came back from Korea the first time, he was on a leave; his brother had just been killed in Korea, right in front of him. After going home to grieve with his family, he was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was trained to be a medic. He met and married my mother during this training period, and then went back to Korea.
Shortly after he returned, the little family (Brother #1, Tallboy, was a toddler, and my mom was pregnant with Brother #2, The Wolfman) moved to Fort Hood Texas.
One day, my father went to a rather trendy-but-cheap cafeteria-type spot for lunch. After loading up his tray and paying for his meal, he could not find a seat. A young soldier offered him a chair at his table. My father took it gratefully without even giving the fellow Army boy a good look. It was not until he sat down and looked up to thank the young man that he recognized him.
“You look like Elvis Presley,” my dad said.
Elvis smiled. “I am, sir,” he said and put his hand out.
(Whenever my father told this story, he smiled and put his hand out at this part.)
The King of Rock and Roll asked my father questions about his life, his time in Korea. They talked about the Army, their homes, their parents, and the girls who were waiting just outside to swipe souvenirs from Elvis’s lunch tray.
At Elvis’s request, my father pulled out his wallet and showed off pictures of my mother and oldest brother. Elvis looked the photographs over, smiling.
He handed the wallet back to my father and said, “Good job, man.”
When they left, my father was invited to ride back with Elvis. At first, he politely declined.
Then, the girls came.
My father said he was more afraid of that group of wild young girls than just about anything that had come at him in Korea. First, they grabbed everything they could from the table where the men had been eating; then the girls came running after the men themselves in the street.
My dad accepted the ride, but not before losing a shirtsleeve to the girls.
Later, at home, he told my mother about his lunch. When he got to the part about losing his shirtsleeve, my mother forbade him to dine with The King again.
I remember once, my father told The Elvis Story at one of our cookouts. One of the neighbourhood guys said something like, “I would have told my wife that I’ll go wherever I want, with whomever I want.”
My father snorted and told that guy, “He might be the king of rock and roll… but my wife’s the queen of everything else, jack.”
Saturday, 30 May 2009
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Yeah. That's Me.
I like to write. I have this blog, but I am also working on other stuff.
I thought about posting some of it here. I decided against that; my fiction is not like what I post as Samspeeps.
I started up a second Xanga, instead.
It is called Vignettery.
I hope you will stop by and say hey when you get a chance.
Happy weekend, everyone!
-Vanessa
Monday, 25 May 2009
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Memorial Day
Handsome, wasn't he? That's my daddy. He did two tours in Korea: first, he was in infantry; he witnessed his brother's death there. He was then sent stateside and was given the option to stay and work in the hospital where he was training (that was where he met my mom; she was a surgical aide at Ft. Benning). Instead, he completed training and went back to Korea as a medic.
My mom is the hottie in the middle. She joined the Women's Army Corps, much against her mother's wishes (not very ladylike). She was extremely proud to be in the WAC, and I am proud of her.
God bless everyone who has ever fought for what we have, and God bless those who continue to protect all that we've got.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
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Currently
The Guess Who - Greatest Hits
By The Guess Who
American Woman
see relatedPotato Chips
I used to think that being a chocolate-covered cherry would be awesome, sweet on liquidy-sweet. Turns out I am neither sweet nor liquidy enough. I will never be a chocolate-covered cherry.
I once believed that being a chocolate truffle had to be the ultimate experience, all of that sweetness on creamy, smooth sweetness. As fate would have it, I have a hard shell, but I am not smooth, subtle enough on the inside. I will never be a chocolate truffle.
I think that being a salty pretzel stick dipped in chocolate is my new goal. I can be sweet, and maintain my saltiness and crunchiness…
… Or, I could forgo the sweetness altogether and be a potato chip.
Just about everyone likes potato chips, right?
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