e were only about 45 minutes into our 7-hour drive north when the traffic came to a complete standstill just south of Milwaukee. The highway was in the middle of construction and we were totally boxed in with concrete dividers and rumbling semis; there was no way to peek around to see what was going on. The midday traffic had been light, so the abrupt halt was foreboding, promptly confirmed by the distant but oncoming sound of sirens.
We sat idling for about five minutes, but when the truck driver next to us turned off his rig, we realized that we might as well settle in and get comfortable. “There’s big accident up ahead of us,” he said, “a south bound semi crashed into the divider and flipped over into the northbound traffic. There are bodies. Both sides of the highway are completely blocked off. We’ll probably be here a couple of hours at least.”
The grim news traveled quickly through the trapped traffic, and one by one engines were turned off and people emerged from their cars into the bright sunlight. I got out to look around and check out our new randomly selected social group. The truck driver broke all my stereotypes as he stepped out of his van. He was neat and trim, wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt, and looked like he would be coaching a kid’s soccer game on Sunday. Immediately ahead of us were a youngish looking man and woman who looked like they were returning from a business meeting. They just didn’t look like a romantic couple. But that image was shattered when the man sat on the trunk of the car, took off his shoes and starting clipping his toenails. When he began to brush his teeth I revised my first impression and concluded that they had been married for years. The older man in the sedan in front of them had a back seat filled with boxes of light fixtures. He said that he had been in many traffic jams over his many years on the road, but never one so close to home. He could almost see his house from where we were trapped.
I thought back to my days of commuting on the subway in Chicago from my apartment on the north side of the city, through the business center and then out to the sketchier West side. Occasionally, the subway would stop between stations for no apparent reason and I would irrationally fear that I might be stuck in this claustrophobic tunnel for the rest of my life. If so, who would become my friends amongst this random collection of riders? The easy choice would be the other medical student, or would I, by necessity, branch out and strike up a conversation with the guy wearing a do rag and hoisting a boom box, or perhaps with the kind but world-weary matriarch with huge bunions and cracked calluses, or maybe the pretty younger woman whose tongue was currently in the ear of her boyfriend?
But here at least we weren’t in a dank and germy tunnel, and in fact it was a beautiful day and people began to mill about. It actually seemed like a perfect setting for an impromptu block party. Our son Ned said that if he had a football he would look for someone to play catch with, running routes between the cars. I thought how great if we could find a couple of bridge players in the mix, and set up a game on the hood of our car. A perfect way to pass a couple of hours in the cool spring sun. Years ago just Nick and I were vacationing in the Caribbean and we put a sign up on the activities chalk board announcing that we were looking for middling bridge players. We were thrilled to see that room 214 responded and that evening we met our mystery opponents in the lobby. They were an older couple, that is to say they were probably about our age now. The husband was a retired engineer who had built airplane bombers. He slammed back whiskey after whiskey and sniped at his wife, who more than held her own. It made for a very entertaining evening of bridge. Just last New Years we found Phil and Linda on a whale watching boat trip in the Sea of Cortez. We had a fabulous time playing bridge with them for three straight nights, and if we had maybe one or two more nights we might have exchanged addresses and Christmas cards.
Ned had now returned from his walk up the highway. “The crash is really close, just ahead, under the bridge. It’s a mess. I saw an EMT with an axe breaking a window to get a guy out. The tipped over semi is straddling both sides of the highway. There are spilled hamburger buns all over the place.”
I had not realized that we were so close to the accident, and immediately began to think of the series of coincidences that put us one ripple away from ground zero. At home, I thought that we were all set to go, and then at the last minute Ned hadn’t finished packing. When we finally headed out, Ned took an unusual route to get on the tollway, which probably set us back another minute or so. These were the most proximate factors that put us snuggled safely in traffic some 1000 yards away from a near death experience, but I probably could come up with an infinite number. Before leaving, Nick took the dogs for a final bio break. If they had promptly pooped instead requiring a couple of laps around the driveway, we could have been the bloodied bodies lying among hamburger buns.
I grabbed my binoculars and started walking towards the crash. The binoculars must have lent me an air of authority, because many people asked me what was going on. When I repeated Ned’s story, almost universally people said something along the lines of, “I don’t mind sitting in this traffic, that could have easily been us up there.” As I walked further, I felt that I was approaching a bright line for the victims, separating the time before and after the crash. I imagined waves of communications rippling out, sending on tragic news that would forever change lives. Nick’s mother happened to call, and then she called Nick’s siblings to confirm that we were okay, on the off chance that one of them heard that there had been a major accident near Milwaukee, and the even more remote chance that they knew we might have been in the area.
It made me think of a book that I had read in middle school called “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder. This was a popular book since it was on the reading list for three years straight from 7th to 9th grade and thus was a perfect choice when you had to write a book report. I think that I wrote three straight book reports on this ancient Incan bridge spanning a chasm, which suddenly snapped and hurtled 5 seemingly random people to a violent death. The tragedy is witnessed by a monk who then seeks to understand why God made these choices and how he engineered the set of circumstances that put these specific people on the bridge at that very moment. He never finds an explanation, is accused of being a heretic and both he and his book are ultimately burned in the town square. So if you strip away the story line, and Wilder’s elegant prose, the book report could simply conclude, “Shit happens, sometime good, sometimes bad.”
I felt awkward about being a gawker over road kill, so I headed back to our car. I noticed that other traffic was slowly being rerouted along a side road and realized that cars just a little further back had the good fortune of being able to exit – even though they were just inching along. These cars were in the second ripple from ground zero, not close enough to the accident to think about near-death experiences, but close enough to our predicament to say, “Boy were we lucky not to get trapped in that traffic standstill.” While I did not want to gawk, clearly the news media did, and I heard news helicopters hovering over us. This distinctive thwapping noise immediately made me think of the Vietnam War, imprinted in my memory from the many hours of nightly news in the 1960s. With nothing else to do, I pondered on distinctive noises of our most prominent wars. World War I is silent occurring before the arrival of the talkies. For World War II, I think of the menacing sound of German shepherds barking as they strain at their leashes, the sound of armies marching on cobblestone streets, and the dissonant two tones of French sirens – I suppose you would call them klaxons. And then somewhat embarrassingly, the Korean War is represented by the M*A*S*H theme song. I am out of touch with the audio from our current conflicts, since I no longer watch the news.
I snapped out of it when Nick said, “Hey I think that they are making progress. They must have the bodies off the road, because now they have some device up there removing the concrete barriers.” And then suddenly traffic started forward; we were rerouted back south and then the traffic fanned out to fill up side roads as we made a big detour back north. Altogether not a bad 2 hours. Now we were on our way again, eagerly rushing into another infinite set of unforeseen coincidences.
Ever since you took your first breath and your life began,
Coincidences and circumstances have determined your life - - - - .
So don’t fritter away your nights foot loose and fancy free,
Or squander your afternoons taking - - - - in front of TV.
But also don’t spend too much time wondering what life is all about,
You’ll be wasting time waiting to see if your life - - - - out.
And don’t worry about making long term investments to get ahead,
Because with a - - - - of the fingers, shit happens, you may be dead.
Click here for answers
Our Fridge/Ourselves
arrive past midnight after a long day of traveling – a one-day round trip from Chicago to San Francisco – and the house is still. Only the dogs are up to greet me, but instead of the appreciative thump of a tail on the floor, they just fuss about me with whimpers and agitation. I am stale from the endless plane ride, so I don’t want to sit down, and I am still a little jazzed from the trip, so going to bed is not an option either. What to do to regroup and feel at home? The refrigerator beckons, I fling open the door and look inside. My husband has fond college memories of the well-stocked refrigerator as a homecoming beacon and the feeling is still the same.
I close my eyes and remember the refrigerator of my youth, which we called the “ice box.” Milk came in glass bottles then, delivered by the milkman Lou, who would arrive at breakfast, step over the idle dogs and peak into the fridge to see what we needed. My mother always marveled that he got it just right, knowing that we needed more milk during vacation, or that my brother was the only one who really liked cottage cheese. There was always a Pyrex bread dish filled with individually peeled and cut up carrots floating in icy water, and a bowl of Jello in bright carnival colors like lemon yellow, lime green, cherry red. All of that is gone now. Milk comes in a plastic jug, quart sized now because we are empty nesters, my mother's carrots have been replaced by identically milled carrots that sit in a bag, and the unrealistic Jello is no longer in style.
My cousin tells me that the gender identity of the kitchen and refrigerator, a.k.a. the domestic sphere, has been the subject of Ph.D. theses. In my parents’ entirely traditional marriage, the domestic sphere was clearly the responsibility of my mother, who faithfully made my father three meals a day for over 50 years. Other than the occasional foray to get a glass of ice tea, I bet that my father could go days without opening the refrigerator door, and months without going to the grocery store. When he became a widower, the domestic sphere became his by default. One day I was trying to help him make a grocery list and plan some meals. He suddenly said, “I have always liked coconut, but I have not had any since I was a kid.” Now coconut was something that my mother would never let into the house, “It reminds me too much of toenail clippings,*” I remember her saying. I wondered if my mother’s refusal to buy something that my father loved was a symbol of her domestic dominance or my father’s passiveness. That Christmas I got him a whole array of coconut creations to try and make up for 50 years of unrequited love – homemade cookies and brownies and other overly sweet store bought goods. His coconut phase was very short-lived when it became apparent that he had no interest in the domestic sphere and he turned over responsibility to a Polish housekeeper. Now the fridge was filled with interloping ingredients such as sausage, sauerkraut and other Polish favorites.
I open my eyes and look at our fridge to see what it says about our family. I immediately notice the large jar of black olives, which to me symbolize a shared domestic sphere and the inevitable compromises one must make in a marriage. A blossoming relationship is marked by one partner achieving a dedicated drawer in a bureau, progressing perhaps to a shelf in the fridge, but with marriage a refrigerator definitely becomes shared space, hence the olives. I abhor olives, to me they look like tiny shriveled and necrotic body parts, perhaps stored as grisly trophies by some serial killer.* But I try to be a loving wife and look away instead of throwing away. On the other hand, I am besotted by raspberries, but Nick hates them insisting that the seeds always get caught in his teeth. In the winter, I never buy raspberries for myself since they are so expensive. But I am blessed with a loving husband who still thinks I’m worth it, and tonight I find a small container of raspberries greeting me home.
There is one non-food item in our fridge, a small container that looks like leftovers from a Chinese restaurant, but in it are two cubes of shredded wheat. Fortunately, the label is prominently displayed; these are actually the eggs of a praying mantis, which at some exact moment in summer should be placed in our garden to stave off bug infestations. I have stored the eggs for several years now, and I have yet to wake them from their deep slumber and give them their moment in the sun. Two times I have tried to foist them off on family members during our large Christmas grab-bag gift exchanges, but when everyone leaves the praying mantis eggs are always left behind.
My mother stored various non-food items in the large freezer in the mudroom. When we would dive into the freezer looking for popsicles, we often had to paw past piles of frozen laundry. This was my mother’s ingenious tactic for postponing ironing by taking wet clothes from the washer and simply dumping them into the freezer. When extracted and allowed to thaw, the clothes would be the perfect dampness for steam ironing. The most unusual thing in my parents’ refrigerator was a dead bird, a Connecticut Warbler to be exact. I can imagine the moment, my mother sitting in the sun porch, startled by the sickening thud of a bird hitting the window. She looks down and sees the agonal flutters of the distraught bird, the small lively eye suddenly glazes over and the fluff goes out of the feathers. The dogs might be pawing at the door, seeking an opportunity to stalk prey that is still warm. My mother does not want to subject the bird to this ignominy, particularly since a Connecticut warbler is an unusual bird, and one that she has never seen on her many bird walks. So she scoops the bird up, stores it in the freezer compartment and occasionally shows it to other bird watching friends. It remained there for decades, and I was ready to transfer the warbler to my freezer when we cleaned out the house after my parents died. But the bird had mysteriously vanished, perhaps at the hands of a startled caretaker who took control and neutered the family refrigerator.
The side doors of our fridge are clogged with an astonishing array of mustard and salad dressing. Growing up, there was only the sickly yellow container of French’s mustard and maybe two bottles of salad dressing – syrupy French and Wishbone Italian. Now I count 4 different types of mustard and 7 different kinds of salad dressing, and I know there are more unopened jars in the cupboard. I think that we are suckers for any comfort food of our youth that has been gussied up as “gourmet.” Certainly we have succumbed to the gourmet pop corn and potato chips that have replaced Jay’s and the gourmet/decadent chocolate sauce to replace Hershey’s syrup.
We also buy in bulk, which is totally ridiculous considering that on most days we are a household of two. But Nick, who does most of the shopping, finds it hard to resist Costco bargains. There is a large container of “Spring Mix” salad, a definite improvement over the iceberg lettuce of my youth, but the restaurant quantity is far beyond anything that we could eat. I notice that some of the leaves have turned the wrong color green, some have gone limp, and there is some sort of brownish green liquid beginning to accumulate in the bottom of the container. There is a brick of cheddar cheese the size of a door stop, which has a creeping white mold, and an enormous chunk of parmesan that has acquired the color and texture of the jumbo callous on my right heel.* There is also a mysterious vegetable in the drawer that might be a jicama, the detritus of a failed attempt to make a more interesting meal. The sheets of phyllo dough in the freezer have been there as long as I can remember. The three containers of sour cream reflect my inability to make a grocery list. We use sour cream rarely, typically mixed with horseradish when we have corned beef, but when I get to the grocery store, I can never remember whether we already have some, or if we do how old it might be. The sour cream is in an opaque container that drifts to the back of the shelf. So I never know what I am going to see when I pry off the top. Tonight I see a shimmering fur-bearing slime the color of an vivid bruise,* and I pivot and chuck the container into the garbage.
There is also a jar of homemade Mayhaw jelly, an annual Christmas gift from my uncle for the past 20 years. I was surprised to keep receiving the jelly even after he died; it took me a year or two to realize that his namesake, my cousin, had continued the tradition. We have a large extended family, and it makes me smile to think of jars of Mayhaw jelly in kitchens all across the country. When I was visiting my 88 year old aunt, she asked me to get some crackers from her cupboard. When I opened it up, there must have been 8 jars of Mayhaw jelly in there. Family unity expressed in jelly.
I also spot a large baking dish of leftover lasagna that is a source of some irritation. It has been picked at for several days and only a smidge remains, but no one will finish it off, since that person would then be responsible for cleaning the dish caked with stubborn cheese and sauce. So the dish will sit there for a few more days until someone finally succumbs. However, the eater can always dodge the cleaning bullet by deciding that the lasagna dish might need soaking for a day or two. So it will sit in the kitchen sink at the bottom of a pile of dirty dishes that are slowly accumulating until someone volunteers to empty the dishwasher.
Even though a careful family could probably live out of our refrigerator and freezer for weeks, I conclude that there is not much to eat except a slice of bread with my cherished raspberries. I close the refrigerator door, which has nothing on it except for two taped pictures of my childrens’ footprints from the day they were born. When we moved into this house, one of the first things I wanted to do was to transfer the refrigerator art. I put up one footprint and was stunned to see the magnet slip straight down to the floor. I grew up before someone had the bright idea to spawn an entire knick knack industry of refrigerator magnets and turn the refrigerator into the family bulletin board and ephemeral photo album. Apparently we had inherited a high end unit, whose manufacturers deliberately created a non-metallic door to avoid trashing up the sleek lines of the family fridge. But I have grown to like the bare refrigerator door, which projects an image of cleanliness.
Before people come by, I dedicate a good chunk of time beating back the creeping clutter. But it is all a façade, because if any one opens any door, including the refrigerator, they will find a jumble of this and that. When I am a guest, I assume that a door – whether closet, bedroom, medicine cabinet, refrigerator – defines a personal space that should be respected. It’s not that I am embarrassed by anything in my fridge – the food is healthy enough and there is no disturbing excess of liquor or cookie dough – but I might not be proud of the disarray, and outdated food might undermine confidence in my party-night cuisine. I remember one particular incident with my mother at her friend’s house, who asked her to go upstairs to find something. On the landing of the stairs, we could see into three bedrooms at once, and all of them had unmade beds. My mother whispered to me, “Mary doesn’t make her beds.” I would not call my mother a neatnik, but there was never an unmade bed in our house, and I think that she assumed that this was a routine standard for a housewife in the 1960s. She was appalled and I truly don’t think that she ever looked at Mary in the same way again, but at the same time regretted what she had found out. I tried to keep up the bed making standard for years, but recently have given up, preferring to just close the bedroom door. Same thing with our fridge. Our fridge/ourselves.
* I think that I have inherited my mother’s ability to demonize food by using unappealing human analogies.
My mother was totally in charge of the fridge for over 50 years,
Consistent with my parents’ - - - - - of marriage regarding the domestic sphere
So my father set - - - - - his love for coconut and let my mother’s taste prevail
Since she refused to buy anything that looked so much like trimmed toenails.
And then suddenly the fridge was controlled by housekeeping - - - - - from Warsaw,
Who didn’t like coconut either, and filled it with brats, sauerkraut and cole slaw.
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Home Style Chunks
set the five cans on the kitchen counter, awaiting Ellen to conduct the taste test. I will only try one, since to open all of them would be too wasteful; my choices include Harvest Moon, Wild Buffalo Grill, Mediterranean Banquet, French Country Café and New Zealand Summer (which is of course our winter). Each label is decorated with a rustic water color painting of the ingredients. Harvest Moon has a picture of a cornucopia with some pheasant feathers sticking out surrounded by fall leaves and a few miscellaneous vegetables, the Mediterranean Banquet depicts a bag of brown rice and a bottle of olive oil in addition to a rack of lamb, and French Country Café says “Bon Appétit!” next to a roasted chicken, some apples and peas. When I shake the can, there is a sloshing noise which makes me nervous, particularly since the can also claims that it contains “home style chunks.” Chunks of exactly what, I think. Despite the homey labels, canned chunks bring back grim memories of cafeteria mystery meat and shit on a shingle.
The cans have been sitting on my counter for two weeks now as I have put off the taste test, but I have promised myself I will do it and Ellen is due to arrive any minute. This scenario began to unfold when I went to the Grayslake Feed Store to pick up 300 pounds of corn gluten for our lawn. Grayslake is a bit northwest of our suburban home, just far enough away from Chicago to be in a semi-rural farming area, so in addition to lawn products they stock all sorts of animal feed. As I walked in I saw a curious sign that said, “We proudly sell the Honest Kitchen Food, made from 100% human grade ingredients.” I asked the salesperson, “What does human grade mean – do people eat this stuff?”
The check out girl, incongruously adorned with black lipstick and nail polish and glittery mascara, turned up her nose and said, “Well I certainly haven’t tried it, but I suppose you could if you wanted to. You do realize that this is dog food, don’t you?” It turns out that the Honest Kitchen makes dehydrated food that mostly resembles an expensive bag of peat moss. Apparently all you have to do is add water for a perfectly balanced human grade meal. The term implies that the manufacturing plant undergoes more frequent and thorough inspections by the USDA, and human grade is distinguished from feed grade, which can include such extraneous body parts such as feathers, beaks and claws, or parts of “4D” animals, i.e. those that are dying, diseased, disabled or deceased.
The in-store advertisement for human-grade food said, “We believe that your pet deserves the same nourishing foods that you feed your family,” and that "all the ingredients can be found in your kitchen." I am in complete agreement that pets should have the same diet as humans; in fact, “Leftovers” or “Table Scraps” would be ideal names for a dog. It is the dog’s role to be the handy clean up crew for spilt milk and all those Cheerios that kids fling from high chairs. My mother would routinely put gummy roasting pans with adherent pieces of meat outside by the back door for the dogs to enjoy – they would do a more thorough job than any grease-cutting detergents or scrubbers. This was also my mother’s delaying tactic for the final clean up - when entering through the back door you often had to tip toe around an array of pans that all appeared spotlessly cleaned. Occasionally my mother would do a sweep of the bushes to retrieve missing pans that had been pushed in there by determined dogs. In those hectic days when the household was full of children there was absolutely no need to purchase dog food. As the kids slowly departed, the critical mass of scraps to support two dogs dwindled and my mother reluctantly started purchasing dog food.
I was tempted to buy Honest Kitchen for our two dogs who have been subjected to exactly the same meal for their entire lives, but the food just did not look that appetizing. My attention was drawn to the next items on the shelf – the Merrick 5 Star Entrees for dogs, which now stand on my kitchen counter. Apparently, labeling regulations state that you can use the terms “human grade” in promotional literature or in store advertising, but not on the label itself, since people might get confused and eat it. There was clearly no chance that I was going to mistake Merrick dog food for human in the store. First off, I was in an animal feed store, and secondly I was surrounded by bits and pieces from the slaughterhouse floor. Next to me was a big bin of pig hooves, which in human terms look the jumbo yellowed toenails that podiatrists make their living at. There were multiple bins of rawhide – tied into many different shapes – one selection was dyed to look exactly like a hot dog in a bun. Behind me was a bin of pig's ears and knee joints, which looked entirely human and still had little bits of ligaments attached to them.
But if I took the Merrick can out of this setting and put it on our pantry shelf, it could mix in perfectly with our row of canned soups. Everything about the label is designed to make it look appealing to human palates. There are the names themselves, of course, and then the list of ingredients make you think of one of those fancy menus that try to dazzle you with quality sounding ingredients. The Wild Buffalo Grill includes “cracked pearled barley,” which I suppose is much yummier sounding than plain barley. The French Country Café includes “garden peas,” again a mystery since I assume that all peas come from a garden at some point. Harvest Moon includes not just wild rice, but specifically “Minnesota” wild rice, and each can has a specific type of apple, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith or Fuji. And then if the picture on the can is not enough, the store bins have actual pictures of the food to hammer home the human-grade promise. But instead of putting Wild Buffalo Grill realistically in a dog dish, it is artfully poured into a soup bowl and decorated with a rosemary sprig for garnish.
I have always thought that labeling is an interesting marketing exercise. Most of the Merrick labels are consumed with required information on the percentage of ingredients and nutritional value, but the Merrick family found themselves with a little strip of empty label where they could additionally extol the virtues of their 5 star entrees. I envision some family member who was a frustrated writer, itching to let loose on the label. Each can presents a way over the top vignette:
French Country Café:
“Whether it’s a corner café on the streets of Paris, a Cottage tucked along the French countryside or a trip up the Eiffel Tower with your significant other, they all spell the romance of France. This savory delight inspired by the many culinary artists from across the pond will have your dog begging for more in a heavy French accent in no time. The Merricks say Merci Beaucoup.”
As I first read this, I am confused by the term “significant other.” Are they referring to a dog, or is this a very PC reference to a human companion? I do know that dogs are routinely welcomed in French restaurants, where diners can slip them scraps under the table. How about those culinary artists in France? I am sure that they would be dismayed to hear that they were the inspiration for dog food. I would also love to hear the audio of a dog barking in a French accent.
Wild Buffalo Grill
“It’s winter in the Rockies at a quiet cabin with the one you love, a good book and a warm fire. The taste of the west is on the menu tonight. Buffalo and a host of tasty vittles are warming on the stove. The Merrick family is happy to share this original taste with your canine friend. The Merricks say Howdy and thanks.”
Hmm… same issue here, is “the one I love” a dog? Perhaps so, since a dog in a cabin is a familiar American scene. But if I am snuggled in with my dog, why am I cooking the dog food on the stove? The words “original taste” strike a slight disturb point for me, since originality in a dog food sounds a little risky. Personally, I would have described the taste as “comforting.”
New Zealand Summer
“There is something so peaceful, so still about imagining a herd of sheep grazing on the grassy fields of New Zealand. A simple life of a shepherd is not so simple but oh so comforting for the sheep to know that they are under His watch. The hope is for a place someday that offers a peace that transcends all human understanding. The Merricks hope your dog Baa’s over this dish.”
Wow, this vignette veers off into religious symbolism. The capitalization of “His” watch must mean that the shepherd is God or Jesus Christ watching over the flock with a resulting transcendent peace. That’s quite an aggressive agenda for a dog food label. It is also a little confusing if you read this label from the point of view of the actual sheep. While the label states that a simple shepherd must be comforting for the sheep, I can’t help but notice that the main ingredient of New Zealand Summer is lamb, and that the shepherd is ultimately leading the sheep to slaughter.
I have now spent quite a bit of quality time with the Merricks. In recognition of their creative efforts to market in human terms, I come to the logical conclusion that a taste test is in order, but even though it is human grade, it does make me nervous. All the scraps that my mother fed the dogs would be considered human grade, but I remember horrible pieces of greasy gristle and home-style chunks of fat. I quickly eliminate Mediterranean Banquet and New Zealand Summer since their principal ingredient is lamb, which is a meat that I am pretty neutral on, but since I would never order it in a restaurant, why would I select it now? Furthermore, the label specifies lamb liver. As a kid, I enjoyed the liver and squash my mother served us; somehow the bright orange squash and rich brown liver made a visually appealing plate. But then during my pathology residency I had to work in the autopsy suite and the morgue. I routinely handled slippery, jaundiced and cirrhotic livers, which killed any thought of ever eating liver again. That leaves me with either duck or buffalo as entrees, and I decide to go with Wild Buffalo Grill since the second ingredient is water.
The door bell rings and Ellen is here. She is wavering in her resolve, but I am impressed by her loyalty to see this through. My personal marketing strategy is to impress upon her that “tasting” dog food is critically different than “eating” dog food. I certainly would not want my friends to think that I eat dog food, and my husband Nick is thoroughly appalled at this whole exercise. But I point out that tasting consists of something as trivial as putting the tiny tip of your pinky into the “sauce” and briefly touching it to your tongue. Eating on the other hand implies a deliberate and measureable caloric intake. Satisfied with this framework, Ellen relaxes her defensive position of arms tightly folded across her chest, and she agrees that Wild Buffalo Grill sounds the most promising. We shake the can as directed, and then also note that the label states, “Keep fresh water available at all times,” clearly disturbing advice. Nick is watching us at the kitchen counter while he makes a traditional lunch of cold cuts, pickle and cottage cheese, and offers the helpful observation that all dog food recommends a ready supply of fresh water. For our dogs’ sake, I wonder if I have been irresponsible by letting the toilet bowl serve as their emergency fresh water supply.
Back on task, we nervously peel back the top of Wild Buffalo and stare at symmetrical chunks swimming in shimmering sauce interspersed with recognizable peas and carrots. One-two-three we each pinch off the smallest corner of a chunk and taste it, and conclude that it is not bad. French Country Café is next and we both agree that Wild Buffalo tastes better. While I acknowledge that dogs who have the privilege of eating 5 Star Entrée dog food probably eat better than a sizeable chunk of the human population, I also know that I have been deeply acculturated to think that dog food is repulsive. So there is no way that our tasting will ever segue to eating, and we stop our testing at two cans. I pour a sample of French Country Café into the dog dish and call the dogs. Ironically the dogs do not taste anything, they simply wolf the food down in a couple of slurpy bites, beyond any possibility of savoring the efforts of culinary artists. While I am sure that they were appreciative, I do not hear any barking in French.
The Merricks want their dog food to stand out on the pantry shelf
And they hope the homey picture on the label will just sell ------.
If not, there’s a list of yummy ingredients and stories of how it’s made,
They’re no ------ in there, but at least everything is human grade.
Wild Buffalo Grill is probably more nutritious than meals many children get
But I can’t ------ my gag at eating home style chunks intended for my pet.
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A Wedding and a Funeral
have been mistaken for an accomplished musician two times now, with predictably disastrous results. It is perhaps understandable since I became the family custodian of my mother’s two octave set of brass carillon bells, which she used in her various musical endeavors, including family bell ringing at Christmas time. I get calls at holiday times, “Oh, Bobbie, can you and Nick come for dinner, and by the way can you bring the bells, we had so much fun when your mother would help us play Christmas Carols.” I felt like the klutzy kid who got to play baseball only because he had a back yard big enough for a pick up game and a freezer full of popsicles.
But I was happy to supply the bells and music, which my mother had carefully color coded so that even the tone deaf could participate. I had learned enough at our family bell ringing events that I qualified for participation in a real church choir – but only because I brought my own markers to color my music and because I could count out the measures, compensating for my lack of any intuitive feel for the music. However, I certainly didn’t know the names of the notes, and had only a marginal understanding of musical notation – arpeggios, formatas, martallatos were all beyond me. But my rudimentary skills were adequate for after dinner entertainment. In this setting the only goal was get the mildly inebriated “choir” to produce a Christmas Carol that was vaguely recognizable.
The Wedding
Mary Washburne’s request was different. “Bobbie,” she said, “Do you think that you could play the bells at my wedding?”
While honored at such a request, I quickly pointed out that I was not a musician, but that I could certainly bring the bells and music as long as someone else organized the group.
“Oh that’s fine,” she said “One of the ushers is a professional musician, and my sister is very musical along with some of the other guests. If you can just bring the bells up to Michigan, we can take over from there.”
I readily agreed to her plan and we decided that the “pick up” choir would play “Jubilate” as the guests arrived and “Ode to Joy” at the end of the ceremony. There were a few disturb points that I hoped would fall into place once I got there. The first was that the wedding was in mid-June in the upper peninsula Michigan, at the absolute peak of bug season. Ringing bells requires both hands, and thus there would be no opportunity to shoo away the likely hordes of mosquitoes or flies, or both. Secondly, the ceremony would be performed along a remote lakeshore. There certainly wouldn’t be any music stands, and I was worried that the music could just blow away. I had faced this issue years before when some friends and I had attempted to be street musicians with the bells, playing Christmas Carols along State Street in Chicago. We solved the problem by pinning the music to each other’s backs and then standing in a tight circle so that everyone had a back to read from. However, Mary envisioned that our choir would stand around a picnic table.
I dutifully arrived with bells and music but was horrified to learn that the musical usher was a last minute no-show, and that I was his secret understudy. The wedding weekend was so event filled that we had time for only one rehearsal, where we practiced while wearing the mosquito netting that Mary had thoughtfully provided the entire bell choir. Since the dense netting made vision difficult, most decided to risk it and go without. I was also concerned about the eighth notes in Ode to Joy. I had learned from prior bell parties that the slightly faster pace of eighth notes could really throw people off. I carefully explained to my choir that if anyone missed a note, they must resist temptation to go back and correct the error, since this could be the flick that would send the dominos falling - everyone would be at a different place on the piece with a resulting atonal chaos.
The wedding day dawned crisp, cloudless and unbelievably, bugless. What an auspicious start to a wedding. The bulk of the wedding party was hiking to the wedding site, but I arrived early by car to set out the music on the picnic table using small stones from the beach to keep the music from blowing away. There were a few elderly people there who had opted out of the hike, and one asked, “Is this a professional bell choir?”
What the hell, “Yes,” I said proudly, “we are a bell choir all the way from Chicago.”
The wedding party arrived and my intrepid choir assembled, some of them sweating from the hike. I raised my arms to launch us into Jubilate, and then realized that I had no idea how to move my arms as a conductor. But I was relieved to see that it didn’t matter since the entire choir was totally engrossed in their music and any arm waving I did was totally superfluous. I just tried to keep everyone on track by calling out the measures in my best “I mean it” tone. I judged the piece a success, primarily since we all finished at the same time. However, I was still nervous about those eighth notes lurking ahead in Ode to Joy.
We once again assembled at the end of the service, and immediately got off to a very rocky start. Ode to Joy sounded like some sort of avant-garde piece with a few clashing notes interspersed with total silence and then another little trickle of notes. The responsibilities of a conductor weighed down upon me – it was time for a “lonely at the top” type of decision. I gave the universal symbol for abort with multiple slashing motions across my neck, “Let’s start again,” I hissed. We rebooted and successfully navigated the eighth notes. Aside from the uneven rhythm there were two small glitches. My brother Tim had the simple responsibility of setting down his F major and picking up the F sharp for one note – just one note – which he did not do. This wrong note was a grievous error, akin to standing in a group of people and letting go with a major fart, which makes everyone wrinkle their nose in disgust. To his credit, Tim fessed up and avoided an “he who smelt it dealt it scenario.” Unfortunately his confession consisted of a very audible “Shit” in the middle of the piece. My sister-in-law Jill was doing beautifully, the picture of concentration, but all of a sudden laid down her bells and just stopped playing. Jill was 8 ½ months pregnant and her belly hung over the picnic table totally obliterating the last two lines of music; she thought she had finished.
I breathed a sign of relief when the piece was over, clearly recognizable as Ode to Joy. When we played the first piece, the wedding party was filing in and the bells were simply background. But Ode to Joy was the main show, and as I turned around, I realized that everyone was staring at us in various degrees of amused disbelief. On a scale of “Wow, what a stunning choir” sliding down to “What were they thinking?” I think we fell somewhere to the right of a charmingly quirky performance.
Mary’s request to organize a wedding bell choir amongst the bugs and the breeze
Fills me with anxiety and unease but I respond to her - - - - -.
After one false start, we play Ode to Joy competently and well
Until brother Tim has a mental - - - - - and plays the wrong bell.
It sounds horrible, and he wants to apologize for his grievous mishit.
Unfortunately, the one word that - - - - - to his mind is an audible !Shit!
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The Funeral
applied my lessons learned as we planned a memorial service for my mother. While the choir consisted of family members with some musical ability, I decided to hire a professional director. I pulled out Ode to Joy again and assigned the part with the eighth notes to Jay, my most talented cousin. I put my less musical relatives into damage control positions beyond the range of the melody where errors could be easily absorbed. After all, this is my designated spot in my church bell choir. Nancy, the director, showed up for one rehearsal and then informed me that she would not be able to attend the service itself. Once again, I was thrust into the role of conductor, but I insisted that Nancy at least show me the correct way of moving my arms so that I wouldn’t look like a frantic nestling learning to fly. Oh, “that’s simple,” said Nancy, “just remember, ceiling to the floor and then out the door,” describing an “L” shaped movement.
She took over the rehearsal and whipped the choir in shape. However, I did notice that Jay went absolutely white-knuckled every time the eighth notes appeared, consistently rushing and jumbling them up. Jay is an improvisational musician, the kind of person who shows up at a wedding with a harmonica in his pocket so that he can jump up and jam with the dance band. I realized that these enviable skills were probably not well suited to the rigid demands of a bell choir where you have to play your notes as written; there is absolutely no coloring outside the lines. I think that is why I have found some musical success with bells, I just simply count and follow the rules and am not distracted by any innate musical talent. By the end of the hour, our bell choir was sounding pretty decent and Nancy wished us luck and left. We were so pleased with ourselves that we decided to play Ode to Joy twice, once at the brief family-only graveside event and then immediately following at the formal church service.
We ran into a major glitch at the graveside. We were short one set of music, so I was in the ridiculous situation of trying to conduct a choir without music. Even though I could now move my arms professionally, my choir really only wanted me to call out the measures, which of course I could not do without the sheet music. I was purely a token presence at this point. I started the choir, and immediately noticed that some of my ringers had gone astray. There was no discernable Ode to Joy. The floundering choir members took it upon themselves to call out the measures, but everyone had a different concept of where we were in the music, particularly my cousin Ned who had inadvertently turned two pages at once and was way ahead of everyone else. I was literally facing the music, actually an ideal position since I had my back to the astonished mourners standing around the grave. We limped to a staggered finish line. Fortunately, it was a very forgiving audience, who commented that my mother would appreciate both the heartfelt attempt to honor her legacy in bells and the outright comical result.
We all headed off to the church, hoping that a bad dress rehearsal would make for a good opening (and closing) night performance. Once again I stood up in front of my choir. They intently stared at me in nervous anticipation, and the large congregation was deathly still behind me. The choir was in my thrall, waiting for my signal to begin. Truthfully it was an exhilarating experience to have such complete control over a moment. I raised my hands and the choir picked up the bells in unison, and we began. Over and over I beautifully choreographed the ceiling to the floor, and out the door movement as I whispered out the measure numbers. I saw Jay clench his teeth again as we approached the eighth notes, but he hit them just right this time, and on we sailed to a triumphant end. In that brief moment, the heavens shone down upon us and I was a conductor.
As the minister starts the memorial with a few homilies,
I nervously sit in my pew and murmur silent - - - - -,
This song has to be a success because the service will only be complete
If the - - - - - of our bell choir are both smooth and sweet.
We start and I notice that Jay’s face - - - - - as we near the tricky measure,
But everything goes well, and our hearts fill with joyous pleasure.
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Infinity Plus One
just caught a snippet of the little boy's conversation as he excitedly told the librarian, "It is going to last forever, like 140 million bazillion years." Ah, yes, I do recall that troublesome challenge of turning the philosophic concept of forever into a concrete number. In my grade school days, we would said "infinity plus one." Ricocheting comments like "can so," "can not" could be promptly ended by saying, "can so, infinity plus one." Somehow using math seemed so concrete and definitive compared to saying "forever" or even "forever and a day," and the phrase had such a specific context that no one ever thought of saying "infinity plus two." However, I certainly never pondered the deeper implications of infinity or forever, or its mirror image, zero, the null and void.
The early 1960s was a troublesome time to think about forever. We would sit in church and recite, "as it was in the beginning, now is and ever shall be, world without end," smugly confident in the permanence of this world and our dominance. But then the next day we would have bomb drills at school. The siren went off and we immediately scurried beneath our desks and put our head between our knees and our hands over our heads. Some of the luckier classes would crouch in a windowless hallway which seemed more secure than our flimsy wooden desks. Regardless, as a fourth grader I intuitively knew that nothing could save us from the bomb. We were all doomed - no world without end for us, we were headed for the void.
Meanwhile our next door neighbors were busy building a bomb shelter in their basement. For reasons I never completely understood, we had a prickly relationship with the Cartons - even our dogs snarled at each other across the property line. Therefore, it was something of a surprise when the Cartons invited us to bunk in with them in the event of a nuclear attack. Perhaps Mrs. Carton was just trying to be neighborly as a payback for all the block parties my mother worked so hard at. Perhaps she wanted to create an invitation-only scenario to avoid the anticipated chaos that would descend on her bomb shelter door, like the last helicopter out of Saigon. Regardless, my mother politely declined the offer saying, "I'd rather be dead than live in a world like that." I tried to put thoughts of my impending nullness aside. Instead I wondered whether the world my mother was referring to was the thought of sharing cramped quarters with the Cartons, or the broader context a post apocalyptic world. But the fragility of a world with an end was troubling.
"Mom, what will I feel like when I die?" I asked.
My mother was not a deep thinker, and tended to push difficult questions aside, but she was infinitely clever and said, "Well, remember what you felt like the entire time before you were born, well I think that you will feel the same way the entire time after you die. It is the now that is important."
This simple philosophy seemed to settle the issue for a while and the collision between infinity, forever and reality did not come up again until high school. My sophomore year I had reveled in geometry where I found security in the unassailable truths in proofs of geometric figures - side/angle/side, angle/side/angle, side/side/side. You were given point A and point B and the challenge was figuring out how to get from one finite point to another. But the destination, not the journey, was the final truth. English was another story. I struggled with our English teacher who aggressively challenged us to interpret the William Carlos Williams poem the Red Wheelbarrow.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
The teacher said, "Do you think that the three points of the wheelbarrow represent the father, the son and the holy ghost? What about the chickens, are they a symbol of man's dominance, while the rain represents man's impotence? Why do you suppose the wheelbarrow is red as opposed to some other color?"
"Good lord, I thought, "You've got to be kidding. This is just a farm scene, and the wheelbarrow is red only because the farmer had extra paint after he fixed up his barn. Why can't a wheelbarrow be just a wheelbarrow?"
The truth was that since there was no one correct interpretation I really didn't care about any interpretation. In English, there was only point A and an infinite number of ways of getting to no particular destination. I was so happy to rush off to my math class.
Unfortunately the safe haven of geometry segued to calculus and math started to have symbols. We were formally introduced to irrational numbers, like π (pi), the ratio between a diameter and a circumference. For practical purposes pi was 3.14, but in reality the ratio went on to infinity. Clever classmates would get up and recite pi to ten or twelve digits, and I suppose that you could earn some cachet by claiming that you were the only person on earth who knew the final digit of pi, but the pressing question from the calculus teacher was "How could pi be a real number if it cannot have a defined value. Can infinity be real? Is there any such thing as forever?" I trembled - math had just gotten messy and philosophical and was veering off into the uncomfortable vagueness of the red wheelbarrow. The teacher then wrote the irrational number 0.99999 stretching out ad infinitum. He said, "let x equal .99999 and let 10x equal 9.999999, and when you subtract the first equation from the second the infinite string of .9999's will cancel each other out, leaving you with 9x=9 or x=1:"
10x = 9.9999999
x = 0.9999999
9x = 9 and then x=1
"Now, students here is the paradox, you can see that x equals both 0.9999 and 1, proving that at some infinite point the fraction will become one." In that moment I realized that there could be no such thing as infinity, forever or eternity and that the world must have an end. It is just that we cannot know when the end is, when that last 9 will flip over like a odometer and trigger a mass conversion to the number 1.
The teacher then went on to explain that if we believed in infinity, we would not be able to sit down. The surprising but seemingly logical line of reasoning was that before we could sit all the way down we would first need to sit half way down, and then a quarter of the way and an eighth of the way with smaller and small fractions extending on to infinity. Our ass could hover ever closer to the seat as we continued to halve the distance, but if infinity existed the fractions would keep getting smaller and we would never get there. As I sat there in calculus, I also realized that I should not be able to get up, but the bell rang and I stood in total defiance of infinity.
The sitting and standing example was actually a good example of the opposite of infinity, i.e. infinitesimal, the smallest number possible. At some point there must be a fraction so small that it becomes zero. But we have rejected that scenario, since no one wants to admit that there are hopeless situations. There is a funny line in the movie "Dumb and Dumber" where the clueless doofus Jim Carey character is trying to wrangle a date with the attractive Lauren Holly. She says that there is no chance that she would date him, and he replies "really there is no chance?" To throw him a bone she replies, "yes maybe one in a million." He beams ecstatically and says, "Well there is hope," and we all laugh at his delusional optimism. But his odds are a lot better than anyone who buys a lottery ticket. As the pot grows bigger and bigger, more and more people rush out to buy a ticket even as the odds approach zero that any one individual will win. But there it is in the paper the next day, some lucky bastard defying infinity by sitting in the lap of untold luxury. You can't deny hope if someone has got to win.
Calculus was the end of my math career. It lost its appeal as it became more philosophical than practical and symbols exceeded numbers. As I progressed through college I assiduously avoided any English courses and focused on the comforting facts of science. The last course I took in college was the required course English 101 where I got randomly assigned to a poetry interpretation class with a bunch of eager freshman.
I panicked, "it's going to be that damn red wheelbarrow again with a bunch of chickens in the rain. Unless I can figure out what it means I might never graduate."
But then I realized that even though there was a definite appeal to knowing when I was absolutely right, the impossibility of being totally wrong was also pretty attractive. There are infinity plus one possible interpretations why chickens in the rain are important; I took a personal one, ran with it and aced the class.
Forty years later, I still look to numbers for their concrete value as I have pursued a career in medicine, and I still avoid the collision of math and philosophy - after all if two wrongs cannot make a right, how can the multiplication of two negative numbers be positive? The threat of nuclear war has been assimilated into the deep background of daily life, and the new owners of the Carton's house turned the bomb shelter into a very snappy wine cellar. Point A is receding into the distance, but I don't spend any time dwelling on the where, when and how of point B and beyond, and appreciate that it is the big uncertain mess in the middle that makes life interesting. Our son Ned told me about his 19 hour journey in a hot, dusty, overcrowded train in India. A Muslim man asked him where he was going to be after he died, at which point Ned said, "Well I'm willing to be surprised." My mother, who is now beyond point B enjoying the hereafter, must be smiling at her grandson's here and now response.
Math and geometry were my favorite subjects when I was just a youth,
I thought, "numbers - - - - - - - the universe" and provide us with the truth.
But in calculus, mathematical concepts of infinity began to appear,
And when added to philosophy suddenly things became - - - - - - -
Infinity must have a beginning and an end, a paradox that is hard to comprehend
Unless of course a - - - - - - - attack brings these thoughts to an apocalyptic end.
So don't get - - - - - - - worrying about the heretofore and the hereafter,
Just hope that the uncertainty of surprise brings you love and laughter.
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My Life in Song
have inherited many gifts from my father, both genetically and by example - reasonable looks (except for my fleshy earlobes), brown hair that just refuses to go grey, kindness, loyalty and commitment to family. But among my siblings, there is one thing my father and I share exclusively – our inability to carry a tune. While this would seem to be a minor setback, it was aggravated by the rich musical talents that my mother bequeathed to all 5 of her sons, who all married similarly talented wives, so my father and I emerged as real outliers. This became painfully apparent during the musical skits for family occasions that my mother created for all of us to perform in – family birthdays and weddings, where you would have the additional stress of performing in front of the bride’s family, all of them total strangers. The skits would typically involve some sort of recurring refrain, like Alouetta, where you had to sing your two lines over and over again. Both my father and I would struggle mightily – on the first go-round I would sing too high, and then when it came around to me again, I would overcompensate and sing way too low. In addition to being off-key, family members would comment that my voice was too “breathy.”
I first became aware of my deficiency in grade school; in fact my first formal rejection of any kind involved music. There were tryouts for the grade school choir, and I marched in full of confidence since I had been told multiple times, "You Browns are such a musical family." The teacher asked me to sing along as she thumped away on the piano. I still remember the music abruptly stopping and the teaching calling for the next applicant. I was stunned when I did not make the choir, since with a handful of exceptions – me, Kathy Washburne, Emily Clow, Peggy Huber and Nini Swift - the rest of the class was in.
The initial sting of rejection became a scab that would not heal as the choir was consistently shown preferential treatment. During my childhood in the 1960s, everyone rode their bikes and arrived at school early, a scenario that seems totally improbable today. The school did not want students entering the building before 8 AM, so they set up crossing guards in front of the entrance and everybody had to wait until the appointed hour. It was a seething mass of bicycles, except for choir members who would break free from the crowd and gaily sing out, “I have choir practice so I get to cross early.” The crossing guards always seemed to be the cute boys who would theatrically open the gate and let the singers cross. Since the choir was almost the entire 8th grade, I felt like a loser behind the gate with all the younger kids.
Later that year we had tryouts for the school play, one of the social highlights of the 8th grade. The play was a musical called the Thirteen Clocks. There were limited speaking parts, so most of the class was housed in the chorus. I was stunned and insulted when the cast was posted and saw that I was assigned to the chorus. I already knew that I could not sing, so this casting meant that I was a worse actor than a bad singer. I realized that my role in the chorus was really damage control rather than any affirmation of my singing ability. I was not housed, I was warehoused in the chorus. I lip synched throughout the play.
In the meantime, my mother exploited her musical talents to great success. “I always like to add another string to my bow,” she would say. She participated in a church choir tour and fulfilled her dream of singing in a cathedral, started a bell choir and a singing group that entertained children and shut-ins, organized and performed in community theater and wrote musical plays for grade-school children. My brothers had speaking and singing parts in their school plays. My father and I sat on the sidelines until we were mustered up for family skits. I was proud of my father’s good humor as he repeatedly humiliated himself in front of an audience. However, over the years I did notice that he developed a serviceable work-around. He managed to learn the one tune that my mother always used for her skits, creating some sort of muscle/ear memory so that his singing was not entirely wretched. I continued to struggle.
As an adult, I tried a different tactic and followed my mother’s footsteps by joining a bell choir. This seemed like a perfect compromise, since I did not need to sing and was only responsible for four notes. All I had to do was recognize when to play them. Fortunately this wasn’t too hard since I was tenacious counter and could usually figure out where we were in the piece, especially since I circled all of my notes in colored coded markers – red for right hand and blue for left. All the other choir members recognized their notes by sight alone and actually knew the names of the notes. But this has been a tremendous experience, a great team effort, particularly when we get some applause at the end of a piece. I was getting just a whiff of the joy and camaraderie my mother experienced in her musical life.
But my inability to sing still gnawed at me, in part because I had inherited my mother’s other gift for word play and writing ditties. For my mother’s 60th birthday, my brothers and I created new words to the tunes of some of her favorite hymns, Fling Out the Banner, Once to Every Man and Nation, Onward Christian Soldiers, All Things Bright and Beautiful. However, the best hymn was Rock of Ages, which we changed to “A Jock for the Ages” in honor of her athletic abilities. The evening was a ripping success; my mother loved the irreverent humor, clever word play and singing, but most of all I think that she loved knowing that her talents would live on.
I have used “Rock of Ages” many times since then as part of birthday and family celebrations. It has a nice steady rhythm, a limited range of notes and simple rhyming scheme that make it easy to adapt. If I really want to slather it on, a birthday verse could go like:
When you joined the human race
The world became a better place,
On this earth no one’s more kind,
You’d give your eyeballs to the blind.
Your loving friendship we hold so dear,
So raise a toast of birthday cheer.
But singing remained a problem. You might ask, why not read it instead? Yes, that would be the easy choice, but the verse would fall flat. I have found that when sung, lyrics can be infinitely sappier and cornier than anything that is read, so I go ahead and continue to put my finger in the socket and try to sing it.
All these thoughts were running through my mind as I took one of my brainstorming bicycle rides through the local Forest Preserve. I thought back to my father who found some success in mastering one song. “Perhaps I could just focus on Rock of Ages and really learn how to nail just that one tune,” I thought. I emerged from the Forest Preserve onto the corner of Rte 176 and Waukegan Road and noticed a sign stapled to a telephone phone. I assumed that it was some tragic plea to recover a lost pet, whose life expectancy would be minimal at this bustling intersection. Besides, there was no foot traffic here and cars would not be able to read the sign as they whizzed by. When I looked at the sign more closely, I was startled to see that it was a handwritten sign advertising singing lessons! I felt that we were made for each other – an atonal singer with a breathy voice and a singing teacher who advertised on a telephone poll. It was a deus ex machina.
I committed the phone number to memory, but then it took me 1 ½ years to work up my courage to call. I recruited my friend Marion to accompany me, since this whole scenario seemed a bit sketchy; I didn’t want to be the innocent victim lured into an evil trap on the premise of singing lessons. Sofio answered the phone, and in a Russian accent that could have come out of a James Bond movie, he asked me if I sang in a choir or was a soloist. I explained that my goals were much more modest – I only wanted a couple of lessons to get some tips on how to sing one song, and one song only. I would bring the sheet music.
There was a pause, and Sofio said, “I am professional singer and only teach singers. I not teach you.”
What? I was indignant. It never occurred to me that I would receive such a resounding rejection – how could anyone advertising on a telephone pole afford to be picky about their students?
While I am sure that I could find others who would let me pay them, I now appreciate the 45 year symmetry bracketing my singing rejections. Perhaps it’s time to set aside my loftier ambitions and just go with what I’ve got. A long time ago I bought a sweater, hand made by some hard working Peruvian. The tag on the sweater said, “The minor irregularities in this garment are part of its handmade charm.” I took this aphorism to heart as I evaluated my amateur efforts at knitting or sewing, but over time the saying has become the life lesson that my father accepted many years ago. The irregularities in my quavering, breathy voice will just have to be part of its charm.
In my family musical prowess is the talent that - - - - - -
In skits, I struggle to perform the multiple refrains.
I am not a - - - - - - so no matter how hard I try,
The first verse is too low and the next one too high.
But over time I - - - - - - myself to my atonal voice
And accept its irregular charm as the logical choice.
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As Lolita Lay Dying
s a child, I was a reader, voraciously consuming books like the Boxcar children, or the adventure series by Enid Blyton (Sea of Adventure, Circus of Adventure, etc.). Once I had run through all of these, I would save up my allowance and go to the Surprise Shop and buy a new Hardy Boy mystery. (My identity as a tomboy was so firmly established that it never occurred to me to buy Nancy Drew.) Old family photos show me sitting at the beach quietly reading while the rest of the family went swimming. On one vacation I had packed poorly and had to read the single book I brought over and over. My mother gave me a book quiz, and when she asked how Ellen held the lion, I was able to give the correct verbatim reply of “fondly.”
My love of reading was certainly not nurtured by my parents. My mother hated bedtime rituals and felt that reading out loud was only a manipulative trick to prolong the process. She wanted to snap her fingers and have us all march dutifully to bed. In her defense, she was dealing with 6 children. Besides I never cared, since I could read a book faster than anyone could read it out loud. I adopted the same strategy as a parent, and thus have felt a bit guilty – maybe if I read more to my children, they would enjoy reading more themselves. Oh well.
After grade school, “reading” was no longer a class and you were pretty much left to your own devices. Certainly in college and medical school, there limited time for anything other than textbooks where reading was purely a communication device. But just as I had been eager to find out whether the Boxcar children ever found their kindly grandfather, I was just as eager to find out why Hitler did not invade England when he had the chance or how energy was transferred in the citric acid cycle. I would situate myself in the library with a big textbook on my desk and a brand new yellow highlighter, which I would sniff to appreciate its chemical odor, and then off I would go for several hours. At one point in medical school, I had such an extraordinary volume of material to consume that I sat up in bed and arranged all the books around me in a tight fortress. When I went to sleep at night, I simply lay back quietly without disturbing any of the books. When I woke I merely sat up, picked up a book and resumed where I had left off. In the afternoon, I would move the operation outside to a lawn chair, occasionally napping off as I was surrounded by my books. At the end of the study period, I was perfectly tanned only on one side of my body and I looked like the two disparate sides of a pancake.
In the midst of this long non-fiction period, I did manage to read a few novels which generally occupied the comfortable middle ground of an engaging story, well told. But I will never forget the two that taught me that in talented hands words can go beyond their meaning and that the plot line can be an incidental vehicle to showcase their beauty. I encountered William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” in high school, a shortish story told in multiple voices of the Bundren family from backwater Mississippi. The family is making a rare trip to town to bury the family matriarch, Addie. Each family member has a separate agenda, young daughter Dewey Dell wants an abortion, her father wants new teeth, the youngest brother wants a train set. Sometimes the punctuation and phonetic spelling are sketchy and the story line is garbled. Unlike a linear narrative, you have to work at this story and reread passages. At one point, Darl goes on this existential riff:
“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied of sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel know he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not.”
The commentary that seeks to explain this passage far exceeds the length of the entire book, but to me Faulkner brilliantly describes the challenges of identity with simple unadorned language. Come to think of it, just last night, I had trouble emptying myself for sleep to welcome a dreamy new identity. In another chapter, Dewey Dell says, “I feel like a wet seed, wild in the hot blind earth,” a phrase that exquisitely captures the limitless possibilities of youth unencumbered by responsibilities or realities. I have not reread As I Lay Dying in the last 40 years, but occasionally at the library I will go into the stacks, flip through the book and find that phrase, easily spotted at the end of a chapter. I feel the same way when I happen to walk by my jewelry box, open it up and check up on a much loved bracelet.
I first encountered the novel Lolita in a bizarre way. A friend was giving Nick and me an engagement party and unexpectedly showed the movie as after dinner entertainment. This was in the pre-DVD days, so an at-home movie was a real novelty. Somehow Rich had gotten hold of the actual film reels, a projector and had set up a sheet for a screen. We all sat transfixed, watching the grainy movie that was slightly distorted by the undulations in the sheet. Lolita tells the story of a middle aged man with the improbable name of Humbert Humbert* who has a consuming obsession for a nymphet, his namesake stepdaughter. Deglamorized, Lolita details the chronic rape of a 12 year old, but the alliterative language and word play is so magnificent that the novel is number 4 on the Modern Library list of 100 best books. I rushed out to get the book the next day. In most novels I riffle ahead, since the whole point of reading is to find out what happens. With the author Nabokov, I can just sit back and let the lush prose and sly humor wash over me.
“Once a perfect little beauty in a tartan frock, with a clatter put her heavily armed foot near me upon the bench to dip her slim brave arms into me and tighten the strap of her roller skate, and I dissolved in the sun, with my book for fig leaf, as her auburn ringlets fell all over her skinned knee, and the shadow of leaves I shared pulsated and melted on her radiant limb next to my chameleonic cheek.”
In contrast with Faulkner’s simple language, the Russian Nabokov finds obscure English words that would even escape the most diligent preparation for the SAT vocab. Periodically, he lapses into his native French or even Latin. I stumble across the phrase, “those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts.” I had never seen the word crenulated before or since, but I know immediately that this is the one perfect word to describe the little chain of pockmarks left by bunched up elastic. And then there is the word “phocine,” as in “[Lolita] retreated to her mat next to her phocine mamma.” I initially thought that phocine was just a typo for porcine, a word that could easily convey Humbert’s disgust with the mamma who stood between him and his obsession. But a word like porcine would be a pedestrian choice for a linguist like Nabokov, so I was intrigued enough to look it up. Phocine: seal like. Of course, the single perfect word to describe a well-oiled, sleek, but overweight woman beached and basking in a nearby lawn chair. I should expect no less from Nabokov.
Puttering through the library, I was thrilled to find an audio version of Lolita to entertain me during my 7 hour drive through the upper peninsula of Michigan. When I popped in the cassette, I realized that Jeremy Irons was Humbert Humbert, reading the book in one of those cultured English accents that Americans always fall for. His sonorous tones were simultaneously reptilian and thoroughly compelling and the hours flew by as I reveled in the language. I would heartily recommend Lolita for your next long distance journey, but would caution you to pay attention lest you get distracted and carelessly swerve into oncoming traffic. When I first saw the Michigan squad car tailing me, I felt sorry for the poor sap ahead of me who was about to get arrested. And then I realized that I was the target. What had I done? I was stunned when the policeman said, “Ma’am did you realize that you were doing 85 in a 55 mile zone? I explained that I had just been caught up in a book, but wisely decided not to educate him on the charms of Lolita.
Forty five minutes later, I was arrested again, this time in Wisconsin.
*Humbert Humbert joins Sirhan Sirhan and Boutros Boutros Gali in the elite group of people with repetitive names.
A Fanagrammatic Lolita
Ah my nymphet, with languid limbs and dewy - - - -,
Your bare necked tawny nape, and puerile hips,
Your feckless sibilant - - - - is the essence of pure bliss,
And beckons me forward to proffer a clandestine kiss.
I lie helpless and bewitched in your tremulous thrall
Into your voluptuous abyss, I - - - -, tumble and fall.
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The Banana Incident
erhaps I remember the day so perfectly since it was the first time that I had come to a distinct conclusion all by myself, one that has had lifelong consequences. I was about 8 years old at the time.
I was sitting on the couch in our “play room,” a largish room adjacent to the kitchen, where our mother could supervise all of us 6 kids while she was making dinner. At 5 PM, we would watch Garfield Goose, (in retrospect) a bizarre show featuring a goose puppet who was “King of the United States.” Garfield, who wore a little crown, would communicate by madly typing out messages which he would then hand to the host Frazier Thomas to read. Frazier was a portly, genial man who wore an over-the-top military uniform, complete with epaulets, brass buttons and elaborate braiding, a style later co-opted by Michael Jackson. These one sided conversations were interspersed with cartoons. Our favorites included the action cartoon “Clutch Cargo and His Dog Paddlefoot” or the Christmas cartoon featuring the hardworking elves, “Hardrock and Coco and Joe.” Dinner would be at 6, and the only snack allowed prior to dinner was either a piece of toast with honey or some fruit.
So there I was sitting on the rumpled old couch eating a banana, my brother sitting next to me trying to pick ticks off the dog, when I experienced my moment of perfect clarity - bananas were the most repulsive thing that I had ever experienced. Right in the middle of Garfield Goose, I stood up and threw my half eaten banana away and I have never had one since. I was grateful that I figured out the truth at such a young age. My 8 year old intuition has now deepened into a mature understanding of how bananas simultaneously assault all five senses.
Sight: Even as an 8 year old, perhaps I was subliminally responding to the banana as a phallic symbol. The small patches of brown suggest rotting and death, not a good image for the phallus.
Taste: I am a huge fan of mouth feel as a component of taste. The appeal of flan, for example, is all about mouth feel. The best chocolate chip ice cream has a cool creaminess interspersed with the exact quantity and quality of chips that perfectly resonate with my taste buds. The phlegmy mushiness of bananas makes me gag.
Feel: For me, the limp, clammy drooping peel takes on the personality of spineless people who insinuate and drape themselves into your life.
Smell: I can detect the penetrating smell of a banana at 100 yards, which sets me off on a frantic search for the offensive item, or the offensive person eating the offensive item. The worst is reaching under the car seat and finding an abandoned, black, slimy banana peel.
Sound: Bananas are a noisy food with a sticky, smacking and cloying sound. I find it near impossible to be anywhere near a person eating a banana.
My aversion to bananas has grown to freakish pet peevish proportions, perhaps driven by a carefully constructed hard-wired neural network that loops together all five senses. If I see a banana, I also smell it, feel it, hear it and taste it resulting in an exquisitely synergistic revulsion. My family loved to take advantage of my banana issues; my brothers would eat a banana with great drama and then taunt me by waving the peel in my face or blowing banana breath at me. One time I was napping on a couch and my brother extracted an old banana peel from the garbage and carefully draped it over my face like a giant starfish. I woke up as if I was drowning, gasping so violently that I got one of those hot things in my neck.
Outside of the family I was able to keep my banana aversion under the radar - with the exception of one evening when we with our new friends Sallie and Jay. There were several other couples there and I got the sense that Sallie did not know any of us particularly well, so the dinner was a bit more formal than a bunch of well-worn friends standing in the kitchen chatting and chopping up vegetables. We were all seated together in the living room with a plate of hors d’ouevres while Sallie was thrashing around in the kitchen.
One of the guests was an athletic guy appropriately named “Jock.” I knew the type, a nice enough guy, but some sort of banker who had been transferred from the east coast to Chicago under duress and was just biding his time until he could scurry back to the motherland of New York, Philadelphia or Boston. Jock and his ilk would say things like “We can turn left on red in New York, can you do that here in Chicago?” While standing on the shore of the largest body of fresh water in the world, they might say “The one thing that I can’t live without is the smell of salt water – I can’t believe that I won’t be spending my weekends at the Cape this year.”
Perhaps I felt in competition with Jock and his cute-as-a-button wife, but I wanted to prove to Sallie that as a life long Midwesterner, I had greater potential as a friend, I was in it for the long haul. I wanted to distinguish myself, so I got up and went into the kitchen to help. Sallie was frenzied trying to coordinate her multicourse meal and then it was my turn to frenzy as she handed me a bunch of bananas, asked me to peel them, then mush them up so that she could make a banana soufflé for dessert. It was major decision time, and a budding friendship hung in the balance – if I told her of my banana problem, that would put her in a bigger tizzy about her dessert and I did not want to stress her out even more – that was being a friend, wasn’t it? If I did help her, I would have to gag my way through the preparations, and then also enthusiastically eat the creation - but that was lying and a very shaky foundation for a friendship. Then I reasoned that my banana phobia was utterly ridiculous, and this was just the motivation I needed to get over it.
“How many bananas do you want me to peel? ” I said.
I barely made it through the mush up phase, and then came dessert. I gamely ate a few bites and began wondering if I could discretely dump my banana wad into my lap. Nick was enjoying his banana soufflé but then he totally blew my cover.
“Sallie, this banana thing is so good that even Bobbie is eating it – bananas usually make her puke. In fact, she won’t even let me eat them in the house. I always eat my bananas in the car.”
I could have killed him. Sallie looked apoplectic as she realized that she had forced me to touch and eat bananas, and that our chumminess in the kitchen appeared to be nothing more than a patronizing charade. I think Sallie also saw the potential in our friendship, but was dismayed that our relationship had not moved beyond politeness to honesty. I wanted to tell her that she had it all wrong, but it seemed too grade-schoolish to say, “ Wait, wait, wait, Sallie, I think that you are great and I think that we could really be good friends and I am willing to do anything to prove that, even eat bananas.”
There are two sets of 5-lettered fanagrams in the following poem, one marked with dashes (-----), and the other with asterisks (*****)
How to make a friend is a process that even Freud might think weird,
I can picture him listening to this silly story as he strokes his small - - - - -
He might treat my fragile psyche like - - - - -, he would massage it and * * * * * it
To expose my fears of bananas, though they may be dark and deep seated.
Once my soul was - - - - -, and the * * * * * truth exposed for all to see,
I could say * * * * *, Herr Freud,” for finally setting me free.
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Embrace the Placebo
ven since homo erectus had the good sense to stand up and oppose thumbs, the stage was set for the growth of our coveted frontal lobes, those precious pieces of grey matter that have turned us into imaginative, manipulative, and rational human beings – we think that we are the 10,000 pound gorillas that are beyond the force of nature. But if we are so rational, how can we explain the placebo effect – are our bulptious frontal lobes so prescient that they can convince us of things that are not even there, is the placebo effect a subconscious function that is designed to protect us from our rational selves, or is the whole thing just a conceit of our intelligence suggesting that if something cannot be proven, it simply does not exist?
The word placebo is directly derived from Latin meaning “I am pleasing” and originally described the secret administration of an inert substance to a patient who then got better with no logical explanation. This deceptive use of placebos has been nixed by the American Medical Association in this new era of shared decision-making – i.e. in the past paternalistic docs might have foisted off sugar pills on hysterical women with presumed imaginary diseases just to get them out of the office – with surprisingly good results. Now placebos are considered ethical only when patients are informed that they could be receiving one. Amazingly, even when people know they have a 50% chance of getting a sugar pill, there can still be a brisk placebo effect. The mechanism is unknown because the placebo effect is a very complicated interplay between the patient, the physician, the disease and the placebo itself, creating an infinite number of variations.
There you are feeling very vulnerable as you sit in your little paper gown in the doctor’s office, your back absolutely killing you. But then your heart goes aflutter as you look into the dreamy blue eyes of the chiseled physician holding the syringe of blessed pain relief. You want to be the best damn patient this Adonis has ever treated - maybe he will like you more, maybe he will bust his butt to treat your pain, or even better, maybe he will tell the grouchy receptionist to let you take the coveted early morning appointment. Squirt goes the placebo, and in breathless anticipation some hidden neural circuit responds to the whole situation by flooding your brain with endorphins and presto – your spastic back relaxes and you breathe a grateful sigh of relief. Okay, maybe your physician is butt-ugly with hair growing out of nose and ears, but you get an endorphin high by looking at the placebo – some studies have found that the placebo effect is more common if the pill is big and red, as opposed to small or some other color, or it may make a difference if the placebo is injected or swallowed. The type and severity of illness is an additional variable – some symptoms just get better on their own, or maybe your anxiety gets better when you finally report your sexist boss to human resources and get him fired.
In drug trials for antidepressants and pain medications, about 30% of people will show a strong placebo effect. Who are these self healers – are they all peppy upbeat PMA types, or prayerful churchgoers? Nope – there appears to be no pattern, even an ornery old cuss can enjoy a placebo effect. And while we should perhaps applaud these clever self-healers, the current connotation of the word “placebo” is pejorative, suggesting a gullible person of limited intellect who can be convinced of anything – basically a sap. There was a study of psychology students who were asked to assess the personality traits of placebo responders. Adjectives that came up included lazy, dishonest, deceptive and undisciplined.
The over the counter drug chondrotin sulfate (a powdered form of shark’s cartilage) to treat arthritis is an example. Placebo controlled trials have shown that chondroitin doesn’t work any better than a placebo. Friends have resisted being labeled a duped placebo-responder. “Wait a minute” they say, “I gave chondroitin to my gimpy dog with great success. Dogs can’t have a placebo effect, therefore, any improvement must be real.”
Okay, even if we conclude that chondroitin works on animals, we can just as easily conclude that in humans the placebo effect is just as good as the real thing. Dogs need drugs, but we can self-juice with endorphins (as long as we think we are given the drug). Alternatively, why are we so sure that dogs can’t self-juice? Let’s say you give your dog his chondroitin wrapped up in a yummy piece of last night’s filet, followed by many pats and hugs. That might put some pep in his step, followed by a nice long walk, where he can perhaps chase down some field mice, with more praises and hugs – sounds like a possible placebo to me.
The next response of friends might be “placebo, schembo, I don’t care how it works, just that it works for me and I’ve got my legs back.” Yes, that is the bottom line – but if you wanted to save a bit of money, you could get someone else to mix in some identical fake chondroitin pills into your bottle and probably have the same effect. The other little glitch is that health care insurance companies hate placebo effects, and will not pay for anything that does not work better than a placebo, no matter how effective. Placebos are often not cheap little pills, but can be surgical procedures, or very sophisticated implantable devices, like brain stimulators that might go for $50,000 a pop. Basically, why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?
While the placebo effect is regarded as real and not just due to imaginary illnesses, western medicine tends to label anything that is not understood on a physiologic basis as “alternative medicine.” Researchers have tried to climb inside the brain to suss out the exact neural network that is responsible. Very snazzy MRIs have shown the frontal lobes and other deeper parts of the brain light up when people respond to placebos, but as smart and rational as we might think we are, there are still currents deep within us that are beyond our reach, and the force of nature is one step ahead of us, creating a sophistication that surpasses our ability to understand it. Certainly, unraveling the placebo effect would be a major scientific breakthrough – imagine the possibilities if we could figure out how to get the brain to do our bidding without trying to trick it with fancy medical technology. But don’t count on this research, since there is simply no money in getting the body to heal itself. In fact, the placebo effect is a stubborn hurdle that stands between many drug companies and a whole lot of money.
Consider Allergan, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Botox, which is making a tidy sum on cosmetic uses. But health insurance will not pay for cosmetic treatments, and thus this market is limited by people’s willingness to part with their out of pocket dollars. A real killer app for Botox would be a common chronic medical condition that would require routine injections for an entire life. So imagine the dance of joy in the Allergan corporate office when word drifted up that dewrinkled folks were also reporting that their migraine headaches disappeared. Wow – about 36 million Americans have migraines! Wow – look at those stock options soar! Wow – early retirement! And the neurologists were giddy with excitement – Botox requires an injection and thus a greater reimbursement than just writing a prescription, and patients would have to come back several times a year. Wow – it’s an annuity!
There was only the teeny little problem of the placebo effect. Botox paralyzes muscles, but surprisingly has had no effect on tension headaches. The underlying etiology of migraines is unknown, but doesn’t seem to be related to any type of muscle, particularly the tiny little wrinkle muscles that were injected. There was no logical explanation for Botox’s effect; some even suggested a placebo effect based on relieving the migraine-provoking stress of a prunish face staring back from the mirror. Clearly, placebo controlled studies were in order and participants were told that they were going to get either Botox or saline injection. Even the neurologists were kept in the dark – they definitely had a financial incentive for Botox to work and if they knew, they might be able to subtly coach patients – “Now you do feel better, don’t you?”
Thud – the placebo response strikes again - no significant difference in the pain relief between the two groups. Then Allergan had the brilliant plan to do two phases of the trial. The first phase would inject either Botox or placebo, but these results would function simply to identify the placebo-responders who would be eliminated in the second phase of the trial. In fact the placebo-responders were called “wash-outs,” thus perpetuating the negative connotation of the term. With those pesky self-healers eliminated, the second phase of the trial was designed to be a more pure test of Botox, and tah-dah, Botox did appear to be somewhat more effective than placebo. However, these results only suggested that Botox was just as good as a placebo in the specially selected group of placebo non-responders, but there was no way of figuring out who these non-responders were in a routine setting. Dead in the water again, both with the FDA and with insurance companies. The placebo effect was proving to be a major headache - Allergan is at least 10 years into this research and the honey pot remains elusive.
I have wondered if I would be a “washed out” placebo responder myself. I used to think no, no one was going to put one over on me. I am skeptical and borderline suspicious by nature (not my most admirable traits), and thus I thought that I would be unlikely to respond a placebo. Besides I bet I could figure out which group I was assigned to. But as I get older, I am mostly just glad that I have never needed to be a candidate for a placebo controlled trial, and secondly, if there is a placebo effect, I will embrace it and rejoice in the undercurrents of my brain that are looking out for my best interests. At the end of a tough day, a good stiff placebo might be just the ticket.
How does a placebo work – is the brain - - - - - - at the wheel?
Are we are weak-willed saps who can be tricked into how we feel?
Or maybe it reflects how the forces of nature - - - - - -
To tap into the pleasures of an endorphin-rich synapse.
Even if you want to - - - - - - your Adonis Doc, there should be no disgrace,
The bottom line is who cares, lets all give the placebo effect a big embrace.
