Family and Jazz

My sister came down this weekend to see Poppadaddy and see our mother’s headstone. She arrived last night at my house, where we had salmon and lots of talk and laughter. My poor nephew M. is 16 and learning to drive. My sister isn’t allowed to sit in the suicide seat because she scrabbles at the dashboard in panic. I told her what Ben did when I gave one too many little screams: he threw his arms up in the air. And he was at the wheel. I stopped screaming. But my sister C. has to sit in the back seat. But my BIL isn’t much better. As an example, he decided it would be good for M. to practice driving in Waltham, where lanes come and go at random and where there is a traffic circle. Upon entering the circle my BIL told M. to “go straight.”

C. says that M doesn’t even want to drive, especially after practicing with his parents. I have suggested to Ben that he drop by and take M. out for some practice runs. They understand each other. And perhaps Ben can convince M. that he must stop for stop signs, even when he doesn’t see cars. M. argued with his parents about that one. Ben knows from experience that cops are particularly eager to stop young men who are driving, even if they aren’t doing anything dangerous.

My sister and I agreed wholeheartedly that there is nothing scarier than when your ADD kid starts driving. The irony is that it was Lady K., not Ben, who has had accidents. Ben is inclined to run into columns in parking garages, but K is the car totaller.

Anyway, today we went down to Haddonfield, where we found Poppadaddy in very good spirits. He, Poppy, C. and I went to Chili’s for lunch, with more chatting and laughing. Then we went to the cemetery, which is very pretty, with big old trees and a stream (“a drainage ditch,” says Poppadaddy, the engineer). Unfortunately, none of us thought about the fact that the stone is flat to the ground, which is covered with a very slick coating of snow and ice. So we couldn’t find the stone. C. says cheerfully that she will come back, because we want to cruise the downtown together and she wants to do some family research. (Mom left the family papers to C. because she’s less messy than I am.)

I had to leave then, because A. and I had a date to go to Shanghai Jazz. We had a marvellous late valentine’s dinner, including pomegranat martinits (with a splash of champagne on top) and listened to a great brazilian group. I bought the singer’s cd because M, that nephew I was speaking of, is in love with a brazilian exchange student at his high school and is determined to learn Portugese, even though he is not the world’s best language learner. C. tells me, by the way, that in their town exchange students don’t spend the whole year at one house. They do three months then move on. She will be at my sister’s house starting in March. Across the hall from M., staying in his brother’s room (said brother is a freshman at U of Vt.) I couldn’t tell her that Ben and Lady K. had revealed that M. and his friend are quite interested in one another. I could only gasp “are you going to set up a guard in the hall?” She said innocently “oh, they are just friends.”

Then A and I came home and watched two episodes of House from our Netflix disc, and now A. is fast asleep and I am happily staying up late because choir is cancelled and I don’t have to get up early tomorrow.

I love weekends.