Sunday Baroque

Jammed in the corner of my bed, in the corner of my room, in the corner room of my house is where it was safe to wake every morning. Contentedly nestled in the corners. It was absolutely necessary to keep every body part covered by blankets in case a roaming bandit, who might stumble upon my house and decide it was ripe for the picking. Any skin peeking out from comforters and hand sewn quilts would result in a swift and merciless death at the hands of a decadent, black-hearted swashbuckler, whose ship had hit the rocky sand bed off the coast of my middle-class suburban town.

Being that my room was placed conveniently in the front of the house, I had no doubts that this burglar would slowly sneak through the window at the foot of my bed, with his gleaming saber clinched between his black tooth grin. And with a patched eye, glance at my bed and seeing no skin would frown and move on to another more thoughtless victim. I spent the sunsets of my childhood with my feet pulled into the fetal position as to not trip the burglar of the seven seas when he came in, lest I draw too much attention to myself.

No one would rob anyone on a Saturday though, so I always felt safe when I went to bed, and even turned up my nose at my dads tucking me in policy, which I was more than welcome to any other night; "Don't worry dad, it's a Saturday, all the robbers have church in the morning".

Sunday mornings had always been different. There was no school to dread and frantically avoid by the sniffles and a pre-prepared cough but there was also no Saturday droll of lawnmowers throughout the neighborhood or the beep beep of roadrunner, followed closely by my dads chuckles. No, Sunday morning had an ambiance all its own, an inextricable pattern of events that would ultimately end with my family sitting in the second pew from the back of the church, examining the bulletin for typos while the organ music bounced off the wooden pillars and stained glass windows into the ancient ears of half-asleep congregation members.

Streams of light slipped through the cracked blinds of my room creating a small, stripped pattern of light on the floor, in which my dog Wolfgang would lay. Dust laid along side him in thin sheets on the floor, where it rolled and turned like it was alive and well. It had always been dusty, in this particular room anyway, which gave it the sense of overlooked antiquity that an attic or an abandoned haunted house might have. Each dust particle swirled lethargically in the light streams and rested in a sheen on Wolfgang's back, as if he were Anubis himself, carved into the wall of a buried tomb to perpetually guard the forsaken souls of the dusty underworld.

Every movement in bed sent a cloud of newly revived dust into the already saturated air and up my nostrils for a near death experience every morning before breakfast. Of course, dust wasn't what woke me every morning; dust is silent and goes quietly to sleep as the world dies. The sound of my dad's slowly deteriorating coffee grinder blades dully crushing beans was enough. There was no escaping that grating sound, it came from all sides and all angle, robbing from me those last few moments of lazy blissfulness.

My dad always dragged me into coffee shops where this grinding sound was like elevator music to the herds of coffee sheep, waiting in line twitching and gyrating while talking on cell phones about important brewing issues, I imagined. The beans were in separate mini silos behind a glass case and I would ask my dad if he ever bought the most expensive kind, the Blue Mountain Jamaican, the premium coffee lovers cocaine, for a mere $40 per lb. His rebuttal was a humph, followed by the stock "talk to your mother". That must have been the resounding response by coffee lovers wives, for that silo of beans was always filled to the brim. Perhaps in a subconscious act of revenge, my dad always bought the whole beans when the pre-ground beans were the same price. My mom would groggily complain about this fact in the morning but my dad would always retort, "Grinding takes the flavor out of the coffee", after which he would continue grinding.

Sundays were no exception to my mother's incessant complaints, except that she was already awake of her own accord and slumped over the stove making eggs, while trying to yell over the coffee grinder for my sister and me to get out of bed. I never heard her, and my sister pretended that she didn't hear.

My routine was already set; no matter how much energy she wasted trying to out shout the coffee grinder. I got out of bed 4 minutes after I woke up, leaving just enough time for my mom to get annoyed but not enough for her to come storming in, allowing the noise to burst through the door like a bitter winter wind that slips through and causes everyone inside to shiver and yell at the newcomer. "Shut the door. Don't you know it's freezing?"

The consequences for not waking up weren't worth the extra 20 seconds of sleep. I rolled from the corner of my bed onto the floor with a thump, sending a dust mushroom cloud into the air and causing Wolfgang's ears to stand up.

Walking towards my door, each step sending a little dust puff into the air like cowboys spurred leather boots shifting the dust of a ghost town, I could hear the dull roar behind my door. As soon as I opened it, I would be confronted by the screeching sound of my dads refreshment, like surfacing from a dive at the public pool and being assaulted by the gossip of middle age women on rickety fold out lawn furniture and elementary kids screaming simply because screaming wasn't explicitly prohibited.

For Christmas I asked for the earmuffs that runway directors have or the bright orange ones that hunters use at the shooting range. My mom said that was a silly thing to ask for and bought me a talking Ninja Turtle that used to say "cowabunga" but now moaned unintelligibly when you squeezed his shell. The talking turtle was now sitting a the foot of my bed, covered in dust, seemingly misplaced, even though I had just played with him the other day. Opening the door was the hardest part but I did it every Sunday and walked out with my hands on my ears and dust falling down out of my hair; emerging from my embalmed sleep.

Mom was banging pans around in a clamoring attempt to usurp my dad's stranglehold on the noise level in the house but to no avail. Dad would stand at the corner of the counter, puffing on his pipe and looking at the bird feeder through the window over the sink, unaffected. Defeated, my mom would turn back to the eggs, scrambling them while saying something over her shoulder to me, which I could only decipher by her lip movements. "Hurry pup and seat so you will have time to address" is what she was saying, at least, I think. I never thought to ask.

But every morning for years she had always been the last one ready, running out to the car with a tube of my grandma's passion red lipstick in her fingers and a Bible in the crux of her arm. I never knew why she had to apply makeup in the tiny, misshapen car mirror on the bumpy suburban back roads of our neighborhood because she was already dressed at breakfast in one of her numerous multi-colored "spring" sweaters and plain black slacks: her hair would be up in purple curlers resembling vandalized hay bails, waiting to be taken into the barn. Maybe she was late because she spent too much time frying and scrambling eggs but were all thankful she did but not because of the eggs.

Good things do not come to those who wait but to those who wait on eggs. In a frenzied haze of worry, business and the creeping suspicion of going deaf, mom would set the eggs on the table and like a joyful punch in the gut, the grinding, disheartening buzz of my dads ancient coffee grinder would cease, leaving room in the air for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 or Haydn's Opus 33 or one of Vivaldi's seasons to drift through the house as a melodic backdrop for my families jabbering and scrambling attempts to get to church.

All I knew of classical music was the names of composers and that was simply because my dad would name all our pets after them (Bach the iguana, Amadeus the goldfish and our deaf tabby cat Ludwig, who always ran into table legs). Every piece would blur together into one colossal work of classical music. During the interval of peace dad would brew his coffee quietly, each drip plunking in his worn Peregrine Falcon mug. He would puff smoke bursts quietly and badger my mom quietly about how the eggs were runny, and we would all grumble discontentedly but in the silence of Sunday Baroque.

The Venomous Tongues of the Amish

My mother is not a health food fanatic; she is a health food enthusiast. Our house isn’t constructed solely of wheat or anything like that but there is a carton of soy milk in the fridge and apples grown in Eden nestled at the bottom of our brown paper lunch bags. Of course there are those convenient rebuttals to my mom’s tirade about healthy eating, such as the reason behind Grandpas 81 year life despite his cigarette, alcohol, and chocolate indulgences. Intermixed with his pocket of change and heart medication are caramels wrapped in gold aluminum that he pops like pain killers and places in my hand after he shakes it goodbye.

Resilience is my mom’s reply. Enough resilience can change your life or in my Grandpas case, prolong it. A will to live or a fighting spirit that death acknowledges by ringing the door bell and seeing the slats of the blinds break with an eye looking out with a glare. Even so, my mom ascribes to a certain way of thinking, a one track mind, which makes it difficult to convince her of the color gray and the independent political party. Hopefully my Grandpa eludes death to give hope to all those who equate long life with happiness along the way but he could be sitting in George Orwell’s mock utopia and my mother would still shake her head and slice him celery sticks.

It was warm out but I had the windows rolled up because the whirring noise that the wind makes when it comes through your window and creates that eternal white noise sound is irksome. So the air conditioning was set to 3 and the volume of the radio to 10 to assist me on my seemingly unnecessary trip to Ezekiel’s Home Grown Food.

In order to get to this Amish run shop I had to turn off of the main paved road and rumble along a dirt path, the type your car would break down on and leave you to be brutally murdered in a horror movie. With weathered prairie grass growing on both sides, seas of gold that no man would ever attempt to swim, this road lead to the utopia of this barren habitat, Ezekiel’s. It was not so much a store, more of a dilapidated stand built from the forest of trees surrounding it. So, stumps were strewn across both sides of the shop and ancient roots were grasping for light from the tilled soil, aspiring to trip unsuspecting children who wanted to know how old the tree was by counting the rings until they ran out of numbers and had to start again with one. “Mommy, that tree was six tens old.”

The dirt road was less than appealing to me but not because of the obvious resentment I held about having to drive to Ezekiel’s or the fact that all I could see in my rear-view mirror were the heads of moles who had poorly chosen to build their houses on the train tracks, pop up out of the flattened earth. No no, association is what ruined this ride as it has ruined numerous other experiences in my life. My father seemed to make a business of it with his fake plastic fin in the shallow end of the pool and my grandpa sitting on the edge singing the JAWS theme music, while I was floating along in the placid water with only my reflection reminding me of my hatred for swimming. Needless to say, I grew content to sit in my plastic lawn chair and read novels.

On this occasion it was one of my mother’s many Capri wearing friends who had rode with me on my first trip to Ezekiel’s. When we got to this road she wisely stated that this is what it must have been like for the pilgrims when there weren’t any roads. Oh, those poor, brave pilgrims! Somehow I don’t think the pilgrims had air conditioning or Amish fruit stands, or Barry White on the radio, maybe that’s what she had meant. But wasn’t this still a road? So whenever I approach and drive on this road I start thinking of pilgrims, Barry White and how unfortunate it is that my mother has such a low caliber of friends.

The stand grew larger and larger the closer I got and I once heard that everything looks perfect from far away and that was certainly so with Ezekiel’s. When I pulled in front of the store there was a sign hanging on two bits of rope that said “EZEEKEELS”. I’m not sure if they just let their 4 year old, crayon clutched in their fist firmly against their palm, tip barely showing, scrawl the letters out in an overly excited fashion, or if it was meant to bring a light-hearted spirit to the store. Whichever reason it was, it annoyed me. They had also not cut the two ropes at the same length so the sign was hanging at an odd angle which made it seem all the more unprofessional. I always thought the Amish would adhere to a stricter work ethic than this.

They had two wooden doors on hinges like you see cowboys kick open in the movies when there is about to be a showdown with the stranger drinking a beer quietly at the bar. I stepped in and was consumed with that raw dirt smell, which admittedly, adds to the atmosphere. It seemed like everything had been picked out back of the shop, which it very well might have. Dirt was still on the potatoes and you could still see the little tubers attached to them. “That’s how you know they’re fresh” my mom would always say and I supposed she was right even though what was growing out of the potatoes hardly looked edible, fresh maybe.

I reached inside my coat pocket and found the list my mom had made and scanned through it to see if I was near any of the items already. With people squeezing peaches and smelling cantaloupes all around me, I felt the need to delve into the fruit examination even though I was unsure of myself. Soft is good but not to soft or you have to eat it right away and we like to save our fruit.

An older man beside me was knocking on a watermelon and holding it to his ear listening for the ocean. He listened for a second; a slow smile crept across his face. It seemed as if this man held the key to the mint, so to speak.

“What do you hear to know that it’s ripe?”

Looking up from his examination with a stare that begged my pardon, he spoke as if I were under water, with his lips exaggerating every syllable in a tone easily condemned by any self-respecting elementary teacher.

“Boy you are going to have to a-speak up, I don’t have time to a-stand here a-watching you talk. I’m old if you haven’t noticed and you are a-wasting my life.”

For some reason his yelling made my hands flail about in a hopefully compensating body language attempt while asking him again.

“You got the jitters boy? Just a-get this one, it’s just ripe enough.”

With that, the watermelon guy pushed a watermelon toward me and gave me one last quizzical glance before walking away with his chosen watermelon under his arm like a folded newspaper. I picked up the watermelon and held it to my ear…nothing. Must be a talent that comes with age like enjoying grapefruit and watching the 6 O’clock news on two separate channels.

We weren’t a family that indulged in exotic fruit, so the list was simple and thankfully short. The most interesting item on the list were cucumbers which I was having some difficulty locating. Feeling somewhat abashed about my last conversation regarding the selection of fruit I decided to pick whom I would ask very carefully. Over by the celery there was a lady tearing apart the stocks in search of celery bugs or something and by the look on her face and the way she wore her “Don’t Mess with Texas” shirt, with the sleeves seemingly torn off in a fit of rage, leaving little strings hanging down her arm and her sports bra peaking out the now gaping hole. I decided that there had to be a better candidate.

Gingerly walking toward the cherries I scanned for someone to casually start a conversation with when I saw cucumbers lying in a woven basket right next to the squash. Making my way over to them I noticed out of the corner of my eye, which is the only way you can notice anyone in a grocery store, a woman slumped over the potatoes. As most middle aged women, she obviously knew her way around fruit and had previously been probing her cucumber before I had gotten there so I decided this must be the proper way to test for ripeness.

Cucumber in one hand, I began to poke it with the index finger of my other hand but the juices that stared to emerge from the wound let me know that I had tested with to much force. The lady who I had watched do this looked up from her sweet potato smelling and glibly said “Cool as a cucumber huh kid?” I looked back at her with a half-hearted smile and nodded my head. Cool as a cucumber, what does that mean? Should I be offended? Putting the damaged cucumber in my basket, I excused myself and walked past the cucumber lady on my way to the counter.

Awkwardly carrying two watermelons and the basket of assorted fruits and vegetables I walked very slowly toward the counter. There was a young Amish guy working there. Wasn’t old enough to have the Amish beard but he had the black hat pushed back on his head in a rebellious manner and the black suspenders with his pristinely ironed white dress shirt on underneath them. His jacket was draped over the wooden chair behind him as he rose to greet me. In a truly outdated fashion he tipped his hat to me as I approached and feeling somewhat insecure in how to respond and having the sudden urge to curtsey, I simply nodded my head, which furrowed his brow.

While he was weighing my produce I noticed a stereo sitting on the floor behind the counter which had head phones plugged into it. Normally this would mean nothing except I was at Ezekiel’s Home Grown Food not Joe’s Records. Thoroughly interested, I scanned behind the counter without seeming to suspicious to my cashier’s wary eye. Leaning up against one of the counters legs was Eminem bowing in front of the red curtain. Immediately looking away and avoiding eye contact with the cashier I stared at the counter which had a sign torn form a notebook with black permanent marker in block letters saying, “Jesus tips”.

That will be $42.73 please the cashier said. Digging in my pockets for the fifty dollar bill my mom had given me I kept my eyes focused on the counter, determined to walk out of here as if I had seen nothing. I felt so guilty for noticing it, but maybe it wasn’t guilt, just surprise. I’m sure this is the feeling I would get if I discovered my dads secret porn stash and he had walked in just as I had found it.

As he was taking the correct change out of the cash register a look had come over his face which slanted his eyes and thinned his lips. I put the bills in my pocket and the change in the little ceramic chicken coop on the counter and began to gather up my bags. Just as he handed me my last bag he grabbed my sleeve and pulled me closer across the counter. I felt like the morally bankrupt narks in the movies who give information to both sides and this guy had just found out I had ratted on him and had drawn his gleaming stainless steel pistol and held it to my temple. He leaned in and said, “I know what you saw, now don’t say shit.” Very calmly, even keeled and perfectly sure that he didn’t need to raise his voice to convince me of anything, he let go of my sleeve, tipped his hat again and replaced the headphones.

I walked through the hinged wooden doors into the sunlight, which blinded me momentarily and continued to stumble toward my car in somewhat of a shocked stupor. Playing what he had said over and over in my mind. Who was I going to tell? Was there an Amish court that I could appeal to? Verbal abuse while attempting to purchase produce, is that against their code of conduct?

Mole Hills Are Mountains to Ants

Why don’t they ever have single tables at Bob Evans? It is depressing to sit at a table meant for four all by yourself; looking at the empty chairs surrounding you as a constant reminder of what could and should be. Sometimes there are instances in life that have no words to describe them, for only a sigh can sum up the circumstances. A sigh was fitting for this morning at the table for four, sipping my black coffee scanning the restaurant, which was filled with elderly couples who ate in silence and meticulously checked their silverware for imperfections. This must be what marriage ends up being. It is that silence that you used to sit in when you first met and didn’t want to say much because you weren’t sure what was appropriate. They now sit in silence because they have already said everything there is to say, appropriate or inappropriate and they are well aware of what their partner would retort if they were to mention something. “Cold out this morning isn’t it?” “I told you to wear a heavier jacket but you were to busy curling your hair all morning, who are you trying to impress anyway?!”

Interesting, not sure if I ever want to get old. I take another sip of lukewarm coffee and try to find my waitress so she could warm it up for me. Usually they are so punctual about warming up coffee because their income depends on tips and tips depend on the happiness of the customer and the only thing that makes a customer happy is getting what they want quickly. It would be a sad world indeed if everything operated like a waitress and customer relationship. The only way to get paid or have friends or marry someone was if they were happy and got what they wanted. No sacrifice, no emotional fortitude, no unconditional love, no forgiveness; just being paid or loved on the effervescent whim that someone is happy. I suppose the world is not like that.

There my waitress was, over at one of the booths taking someone’s order. She had that look on her face that waitresses get when they aren’t quite sure if you could be that rude. “Were you listening honey? I said well done and believe me I know what well done looks like. They sure don’t make them like they used to.” “Dear, do you see this lettuce? Are you trying to give me E. coli?” People always tack on a “dear” or “honey” when they are insulting a waitress’s intelligence or just chewing them out. I guess it makes them feel like they can just speak their mind as blatantly as they want if they use some empty term of endearment.

I could tell that this waitress, my waitress, had not been a waitress very long because the knot for her apron kept coming untied and she kept trying to keep it on with one hand during the whole conversation. And she was constantly digging her toe into the ground like a 5 year old that just drew a sun on the wall with a blue crayon and was being scolded by her mother. I got out of my window seat and sat on the aisle chair, which is one of the advantages of sharing a table with yourself. I could now clearly see that there were two middle aged, obese women wearing flower pattern sundresses scolding the waitress about something or other. The waitress had a crestfallen look on her face, like she had smashed one of her mother’s good china plates but the lady kept shoving her salad under the waitresses face and yelling that she had no ranch dressing and she had already asked for it twice. The waitress kept trying to say something, her lips parting halfway and her eyebrows going up but the lady wouldn’t let her say anything. Kept rambling on about how this establishment had been going downhill and she wanted to see the manager.

My coffee now sat in front of me, forgotten and growing colder by the minute. Trying to seem casual I continued to watch this tirade and I could see the manager approaching. He was a short man with glasses, partially bald and strutting about with a man void of purpose in every other facet of life but demanding what little respect he could from his minimum wage peons. You could see his name badge glitter in the sunlight peeking through the partially closed blinds and he adjusted it so it was centered on his left breast pocket and strode toward the now emotionally distraught waitress, my waitress.

Assessing the situation, and showing why he was in charge he launched into his consoling manager voice and assured the two women, who by looking at them were regular customers, that this waitress in no way represented this establishments ideals and that they would be compensated for this grievous misunderstanding. When did not getting ones ranch dressing become a grievous misunderstanding? Best friend sleeps with wife, material for the next romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz. Not getting ones ranch dressing, grievous misunderstanding. I could see it now, a homeless man throwing his blue plastic tray across the church basement in a fit of ranchless rage. Demanding to speak to the manager and all the 12 year old, youth group participant, with her hands clad in plastic gloves can think to do is point at a portrait of Jesus hanging on the cross wearing his crown of thorns.

This manager wore no crown of thorns and my waitress did not have plastic gloves on but there sat two of their own, waving that damn salad under the waitresses nose and shouting about dressing. The scene dispersed and I watched the ladies gab about this and that, the usual gossip for middle age women at brunch. What Oprah had given away yesterday, or how they had kept on their new low carb diet for a week and a half this time. I sat there staring into my cup of cold coffee and thinking about that waitress and then about that portrait of Jesus and the homeless man. Then I saw those two ladies start to make their way out of the booth. Of course they had to get some momentum going to get up out of those booth seats. I watched them saunter out of the restaurant, to go shopping and listen to Bing tell them that this was the greatest time of year while they drove around fighting people for parking spots at Macy’s because they had to conserve walking energy.

Feeling tired of sitting at my four person table staring at now ice cold coffee I decided that it was time for me to leave but I wanted to say goodbye to my waitress. However, she was no where to be found; vanished into the throng of people coming in and out wishing each other Merry Christmas and then leaving lousy tips. Dejected, I left some money on the table for her. Probably more than ten percent or however much you are supposed to tip. While walking past the table that had been the location of the demise of what emotional stability my waitress had once had, I saw that the two women had left no tip. All I saw was an uneaten salad with 3 white bowls of dressing sitting next to it and the check with a smiley face at the top and written in red bubbly writing, “Have a nice day, I’m really sorry about the dressing” heart Julie. The manager obviously had declared that the women didn’t need to pay for the meal but there sat that receipt with the apology, with no tip in sight and that uneaten salad. I don’t know though, it’s not that I see the best in people because it feels like trying to find Waldo but I thought that Julie already knew what people were capable of.

A small thing can have a tremendous impact and sometimes these seemingly small things only become larger because we are too small to have the right perspective. I know that credit will be given where credit is not due but sacrifice wouldn’t be hard if you received the credit and so often in life the right thing to do and the hard thing to do are the same. Today I can live with myself, and just because I have seen the lack of people’s character does not mean that another should not be able to cherish their own ideals of a world bent on love and hope. A ten dollar renewal of hope.