The Wangless Angel

On the countertop, just to the left of the sink, a statue of a naked angel resides in my bathroom. He is rather elongated, tall, with his head tilted back and one arm reaching up towards the heavens.

I gave him the name 'Forsaken Angel', because apparently, he was left behind after participating in quite a battle. One of his wings has been torn off. Both hands are missing. His feet are mired in some kind of molten goo that keeps him bound to the Earth. A snake twines around his body, holding him back; and when you look at him, with his head tilted back and his arm raised, you just know he is asking for divine help.

Art that satisfies makes you ask questions. And, this piece makes you ask, "Will he get the help he is asking for?" "Will he be saved?" "Will he be cared for after his sacrifices made in battle?" You look into his face and get the answer, "Yes." This is satisfying art. Our daughter, Carrie, made it in her first sculpting class at college. It is the one piece of her work that I asked to have when she moved out. I told her it was payback for her weighing ten pounds at birth.


Have you ever wondered if anything you say to your kids sticks in their heads after you say it? Well. It does. My kids were always asking me questions with complicated answers, although they never asked me why the sky was blue. Hmmm. Oh, well.

Some of the questions I could answer right away, some I had to look up, and some of them I just had no idea what to tell them. But, I did not ever want them to think I couldn't help them with their questions, so I kinda gave them answers...but not really.

Now, the other day I'm looking at this naked angel in the bathroom; I mean, I've seen him six or seven times every day, sometimes more if it's the day after we have chili and, after all these years, I notice, really notice.....he has no wang.

And just then, a flash from the past hits me. Smacks me right upside the noggin.

When Carrie was about 12 or 13, she asked me if boy angels had wangs. Yes, she said wang. It was the popular slang at the time. Well, of course, I can't really answer a question like that, so I
give her one of my non-answers. I tell her, "If boy angels have to pee, then they have wangs, but I don't know if angels pee or not." She considers this non-answer answer for a moment, and then says, "Okay," and leaves. Another crisis averted and it all sinks into memory for a dozen or more years.

So, now, as I look at the wangless angel, I realize that all those years ago Carrie decided for herself that angels don't pee and that, yes, she was listening. It's nice to learn she was paying attention and makes me believe some of the other stuff, the good, important stuff I told my kids, stuck with them.

As a side note, the wangless angel does have a butt crack. I don't know where that detail came from because I do not recall the subject of angel butt cracks ever coming up between this parent and that child.

Big Soup

We had Big Soup for supper tonight. For St. Patrick's Day I usually cook up a huge pot of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Or as my family has always called it: Big Soup.


Big Soup is what my sister, Jean, named any kind of a boiled dinner after she saw the stewing pot full of whole vegetables and a single chunk of meat burbling in the broth. She was only a few years old at the time.

Now, a New England Boiled Dinner is poor people food. You know, sometimes poor people eat pretty dang good.

Anyhoo, my mom would cook up a boiled dinner two or three times a month. She most often used a ham. She would put this huge hunk of meat in a humongous stewing pot and cook it all day. By the time I got home from school, the kitchen was all steamy and you could almost taste the air.



At four o'clock, mom would add the vegetables. First, in went 2 or 3 small, whole, peeled onions. Scrubbed potatoes, whole, with the skins left on, were put into the bubbling pot next. Then whole peeled carrots went in. Last in was the quartered cabbage.

By five o'clock, it was done. My mom was a farmer's daughter so we ate farmer food on a farmer's time schedule. Dad, who was not a farmer, didn't seem to mind and neither did any of the rest of us. We ate our meal with thick slices of crusty Balkan bread to soak up the juice. I think they call it 'artisan' bread now. La-di-da.

Anyway, all this was going through my mind today while I was in the kitchen making Big Soup with corned beef and cabbage.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Mr. Flowerchild Finds Himself

It takes so little to amuse some people. And I, in turn, am amused at their amusement.

Take, for instance, Mr. Flowerchild and the GPS given to him by our eldest child.

Kid #1 bought this little device two summers ago in preparation for his and his girlfriend's move from Michigan to Arizona. "In case we get lost in the desert, Ma," he told me and I just gave him a look because I knew it was all bullshit.

First of all, he knows how to use a regular ole map. Second of all, he knows not to get off the road in an unfamiliar area. Third of all, he just wanted to buy a new toy. Eh, it's his money.

Only, after it came by UPS, the kid is a little unhappy with the device....it doesn't do all the things he wanted it to do. It was hard, but I kept my mouth shut. I don't know what the big deal is about these GPS things anyway. I mean, how long have we been on this planet without knowing where we are at every given moment and managed to survive? My god, it's like it's the end of the human race or something if you don't have one of these things.

Really. I reckon if you don't know where the hell you are, you got no business being there in the first place. I, for one, know where I am and have always been able to locate myself without having some wee machine tell me.

Anyhoo, Kid#1 has a friend named Ralph who has more money than he knows what to do with and also likes to buy toys like GPS's. Ralph didn't like his first one so be bought a different one and, since his first one was about ten time fancier that the one Kid#1(always monetarily challenged) had just bought, Ralph very kindly gave him the cast off.

So, instead of returning the less-than-perfect GPS, Kid#1 gives it to his dad.

Again, I keep my mouth shut. I would have returned it and used the refunded money for the trip. But, again, eh, it's his money and what do I know?

So, now Mr. Flowerchild has a GPS and knows where he is all the time. I, of course, already know where he is. Usually, he's on the couch. The only difference between now and when he didn't have a GPS is that now, eleven satellites know he is on the couch, too.

Sometimes he walks around the backyard with his little GPS held out in front of him. He likes to try and see if he can fool those eleven satellites. "Oh! They found me!" he'll say, and then move to the front yard to see what happens there.

They find him.

They always do.

He likes to take it for rides in the truck with him, too. Takes it fishing and back and forth to work. Heck, they even go see Grandma together. He spends a lot of time with his new best friend and I would be jealous except, fortunately, I'm still sane.

Actually, I'm somewaht stunned that he has adopted this little piece of technology. He has a kind of phobia about computers and the like. The kids and I often accuse him of being stuck in the past....somewhere in 1963 as far as we can reckon....so this fascination he has for the GPS gives me hope that one day he might learn how to make the remote for the DVD player work.

In the meantime, I am just going to have fun watching him find himself. Maybe one of these days I might tell him what a good memory his new best friend has...that every place he goes a tiny map is permanently etched into a little memory chip. So if he ever goes some place he shouldn't oughta, not only will eleven satellites know he's been naughty, I will, too.