One of my favorites.

Linda Ronstadt’s version of Love Has No Pride is beautiful, yes, but harsh and sharp around the edges, whereas Bonnie Raitt’s is softer, resigned, and infinitely sadder in a more mature way. Bonnie Raitt’s rendition is on Dad’s iPod, which doesn’t surprise me.

About ten years ago, after Morgan moved out and I sank into luxurious, life-threatening despair, I dragged myself to the grocery store at 3 a.m., when I wouldn’t have to explain why I looked like death warmed over because everyone in the store looked worse. At 3, you can hear the music. I happened to be staring into space in the canned vegetable aisle when I heard the first improbable strains of Love Has No Pride. My heart was broken, well beyond the balm of tears. I felt pulled to get closer to the song. Just as it ended, someone tapped me on the shoulder. My hands hurt but I didn’t know why. A boy said, “Miss, would you like to get down from there?” as I realized I’d climbed the shelves and hung off the top in chin up position for a while.

I smiled and dropped from the shelf. Falling has never been a problem.

Last night, Todd and I searched the house for one of Dad’s guitars. Todd cased the music room and couldn’t find this most important one; I heard strain in his ordinarily even tone of voice. We found this guitar in the upstairs room to which we banished ourselves after Daddy declared Shut Up Time every night for the last weeks of his life. Todd calmed visibly when he opened the case and sat down to tune. It had been a long day but finally we were alone in Dad’s and Darla’s house. Children ran around us in pint-size throngs. Dara and her new boyfriend sat in the living room five feet from Todd because doors were open and we left the teenage lovebirds alone. Daria, her husband Tyler and I cleaned up after the memorial party until we finally sat down exhausted.

Todd: Two months ago, Dad closed his eyes and said, “I love that guitar.”
Daria and Tata: Mmmm.

Our earliest memories revolve around Daddy sitting in New Jersey living rooms, tuning and playing, tuning and playing. Sometimes he sang for us. Sometimes we sang along. We knew the words to Greenback Dollar, King of the Road and half the Weavers’ catalog before we could read. Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were our heroes. And last night, Todd found himself at a loss. What to play? What did he remember whole? Then, Todd laughed and started the intro something from just before Dad left us: Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard. Daria and I swung around and stared at each other for just a second. The children looked around like when she and I spun around and danced, singing at the tops of our lungs. Todd’s wife Bette sang along. The teenagers stared. Then Todd accidentally El Kabonged his toddler and six adults pretended we weren’t laughing hysterically. After the tears dried, Todd opened the Jim Croce songbook and played Operator, which our parents used to sing together in the kitchen more than thirty years ago. This means nothing to you. To us, it meant that our parents made music, made sculptures, made gardens and grew vegetables, and if they’d loved each other, our lives would have been very different.

Finally, the children lost patience with us. Todd put away the guitar, where I found it this morning and took this picture. All of Dad’s guitars will eventually go to California and be Todd’s.

This poster hangs in my living room now. When I left Virginia in April, I accidentally left this behind. I literally ached for it. In a way, it is nothing. Little holes in the plastic, faded spots and tears in the paper make this an unbeautiful object that tells a remarkable story. Dad moved to Europe in the spring of 1973, when I was ten and he was thirty-one. At thirty-one, I committed art crimes in the streets of New York; Dad, at the same age every bit as impetuous, peeled this poster off a wall in Paris because he liked it. The featured dancers are Jacques Marsa, Arlette Thomas and Pierre Peyrou – hoo! google that name and see the gossip in French – all of whom have enjoyed long artistic careers. That’s comforting. This poster came to symbolize for me everything that made Dad different from other people: he was curious, adventurous, interested in everything, less fearful than most people, wildly unconventional and capable. This image is exuberance, vitality, strength. This is just one story. And here is one ending.

Oh. My. God. Twisty:

It is with curled lip and bloodshot eye that I anticipate a total lack of surprise at the news that last month a 17-year-old Iraqi girl was stoned to death in an “honor killing” — words I cannot type without overloading my Oxymoronitron. I expect abhorrence, yes. Disgust, yes. A crushing sense of the futility of it all, yes. Surprise, no.

Because this shit never goes away, it will surprise no one that this girl’s murder began by eight men dragging her from her house into the street, and ended after they had hurled rocks at her for half an hour. Nobody will raise much of an eyebrow when it is revealed that a mob of people watched this murder, and that none of them felt sufficiently moved by notions of a higher moral purpose to intervene. There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary, even, in that more than one of the frenzied spectators possessed such sangfroid as to record the murder with a cellphone video camera and post it on the internet, where it is causing a mild sensation; after all, this is nothing that American soldiers haven’t done, and done famously.

Watch the video. Read the rest. Let this child haunt you. She should.

We made that possible – and this necessary.

Crossposted at Blanton’s & Ashton’s.

Today, the family celebrates the birthday of my niece, the Princess Fifi, the world’s youngest catalog shopper. She was born two years ago and immediately began assembling a wardrobe. We’re having a barbecue at Daria’s house, where we can expect gifts, appetizers and Chlorox Bleach Pens.

A few days ago, Daria expressed in comments interest in a loaf of bread I’d baked. I felt so exposed! Imagine how the bread felt. I shiver, just thinking about it! Regardless, then, on Thursday night, I set up no-knead bread dough and last night just after 6:30, I set the oven for 450 degrees and soaked the clay pot in water. Italian TV waxed operatic in the living room. The kittens tussled athletically on the carpet. My dinner was just losing its singular appeal when tranquility was shattered by the ear-splitting peal of my building’s fire alarm. Kittens dove under the couch for cover.

These are garden apartments, which means two apartments on the ground floor and two above, inside the firewalls. I ran for my door and my neighbor across the hall met me in the foyer. There was nothing to do but stand there because we coudn’t see anything but each other. We smelled smoke but couldn’t see it. As we stood there, staring at the bleating smoke detectors, her upstairs neighbors flung open the front door and bolted up the stairs past us, smiling sheepishly. “We smell it!” they said, and that’s all they said.

I said nothing. They’d left an appliance unattended and were too embarrassed to say so, which meant that they’d deal with the noise. My neighbor and I went back to what we were doing. The hallway was so thick with smoke I could smell it in my apartment and with bread baking. The racket was paralyzing. Doors slammed upstairs, then outside. The young couple upstairs has relatives here, and they were obviously seeking help with the situation.

This is not the kind of place where I’d know much about my neighbors beyond their names, if that, so I don’t know these two. They have two cats, they’re well-educated and keep a nice home. They’re the nice people I fretted about in December. You’ll recall I considered breaking and entering to find out if they were upside down in a ditch. I’d guess they’re in their mid-twenties, probably just a little older than Miss Sasha, and I guessed further this had never happened to them before because a few minutes turned into ten, then twenty, and still the distressing cacophony continued. I hated to intervene, but I couldn’t take it anymore.

I took my four foot step ladder into the hallway, set it up, climbed it and disconnected the ground floor smoke detector. Reluctantly, I took the ladder upstairs and disconnected the upstairs smoke detector. The silence that followed was better than a cold drink on a hot, arid day. Then I knocked on their door.

She is tall and willowy, almost delicate. I’ve seen her books so I don’t underestimate her intelligence. As I talk with her, I realize she depends absolutely on her more gregarious husband, and that I am old enough to be her mother.

Tata: Patricia, you had a little fire? Everything’s all right now?
Patricia: The toaster caught fire. It’s out. Dennis went to find someone to turn off the fire alarms.
Tata: I’ve disconnected them. Are you okay?
Patricia: I am okay. Dennis didn’t know how to turn off the alarms.
Tata: Okay, then. It’s simple. When the smoke clears, connect this to that, then screw this back into place.

Dennis bounded up the stairs a moment after Patricia closed the door. I explained the reconnection to him, searching his face for anything like wounded pride. A young man can be so easily hurt when women either trust him to know what to do or don’t rely on him, as I didn’t, and it’s always hard to know what will offend. I also explained that for the first weeks I lived here, the downstairs fire alarm went off every night at 3:30, so I can disconnect these things in my sleep. Almost.

Daria’s loaf of bread turned out beautifully despite the chaos.

One night, the first week we were in Virginia, Auntie InExcelsisDeo and I came to the same conclusion. It was in the air. I knew it, and I am always right about these things. Someone in that room was pregnant. Everyone said no. Everyone swore up and down that no, we were wrong. Summer’s new husband called from California and said only, “When is the baby due?” which shocked us all into silence.

So today we learn Miss Sasha is pregnant after all. I am going to have a grandbaby. Let the shopping begin.