In certain indignity

In which our Hero has some vino and vignettes

I’m desperately trying to get back to a cadence of writing entries, and it’s so damn hard because I just don’t have much quiet awake solitary time in my life right now and this is sadly just a little less important than other things, however urgent it might be. Why? Instinct. I don’t really know.

Yet. I may later.

So some months ago, the family is gathered, and Willow accosts me and asks for advice about a situation. Her best friend’s father, who is some hot-shot something-or-other wants to take his daughter and her best friend he keeps hearing about out to dinner. Being who he is, he’s decided to take the girls to one of the top-shelf steakhouses in the city, and Willow figures I can teach her how to order a steak.

As she’s explaining it, Bone’s fiancee comes in earshot and starts listening. And to my amusement jumps right in to start answering the question, and I’m not too disturbed because her answer isn’t a bad one. Explanations about what the different cuts she knows are, and so on. Bone wanders by at that point and hearing his Lady speak, asks why she’s talking about steak, so we explain the situation and he jumps in to explain that it’s simple and again provides suggestions about how to order, and how the waiters will explain the steaks and she can just pick what she likes. Again, a good algorithm for how to pick a steak, I’m not criticizing either of them.

On the other hand, I’ve had a few years to accumulate experience and later at home, I wrote her an email explaining things my way. Which was a little of what the cuts mean, but mostly, pick what seems interesting. And if you have no idea what else to get, order X. Similarly, I gave her recommendations for the other sections of the menu.

It might seem a little over-doing it in terms of instructing, but menus are paralyzing. It’s like that old saying about fish: you can teach a person how to peruse a menu for fish and have her take a day to order something that she won’t feel entirely comfortable about. Or you can tell her which fish is good so she can order without embarrassing himself if she didn’t see an option that screams her name.

Speaking of Willow, she emailed me recently to let me know how her dinner went and to apologize for not talking to me as much. As long as she feels she can reach me when she needs to, I don’t think there’s any issue. I have no idea why she talked to me as much as she did, it’s better for her that she’s got her life and friends and work and school to throw herself into. She’s supposed to leave me behind.

On the other hand… I think she’s finally left me behind. I’m very pleased in a sad sort of way.

Bone’s fiancee needs a name. Not that she’ll feature more than my cousin Bone infrequently does, but it doesn’t hurt to give her a name. What personality quirk can I cheerfully misconstrue? Ah yes. Let’s call her Gaga. Okay, so Bone and Gaga have been together since high school. Around 10 years. And they finally got engaged and are getting married this summer. She seems a decent sort, though my evening with her at this one party very nearly matches the time I’ve spent with her in the previous decade.

In any case, when she sat with us to talk to Willow about steaks, I figured this was a bad time for me to do my usual fade to somewhere else quiet that the two of them had interrupted. Instead, I sat and teased quietly, letting the conversation mostly go on without me as the cousins seemed to nucleate around the spot.

But the funny part came a little later, as I was talking to Bone on the far side of that room, while Gaga still sat at the table on the opposite corner. Raising our voices over the noise, another cousin asked Bone if he was excited about the wedding. “I’m excited for it to be over!” he answered. And from the other side of the room, we heard a bride-to-be’s “Hey!” of protest, over the distance, the dull roar of conversation.

My mom’s older brother has been having some health issues, to the point that his children were starting to fly home to be with him, in case it was a “while they could” situation. He’s stabilized now, and the two sons who live here were back and visiting with us a few days ago. As they were leaving, one started telling us a story.

Seems that their sister was also home from elsewhere in the world, and helping care for dad. Feeling playful, after cutting my uncle’s toenails, she then proceeded to paint them. This by itself was cause for a great deal of laughter, because he’s a loud, gruff old man and it’s funny to picture him like that, and sweet in a very goofy sort of way.

But we were only getting to the punchline. He had a medical procedure scheduled and when the cousin telling the story got to the hospital, the staff were scandalized and refused to do the procedure while he was in this “condition.”

“So then I had to go to the store to get nail polish remover and go back to the hospital to clear off my father’s toes. And the staff are asking, Who did this to him? and I can’t say it’s my grown sister, so I blamed [some grandkids]”