Dieter: [murmering to self] Mary on a pogo stick, those giant olives stuffed with feta cheese sure look good. Mmm, artichoke hearts… And they must have a dozen kinds of Italian bread here.
Pat the Diet Angel: Now, now. You’ve already had three tomatoes for lunch.
Mike the other Diet Angel: And a bottle of mineral water.
Dieter: Where’d you guys come from?
Pat: You don’t really want to know.
Dieter: [Looks over at frozen foods aisle] Since when have they had Haagen D

I sometimes wonder if my feelings about living in the Netherlands will change when I am very old, when the children are gone, when perhaps my partner is as well.

When I am left here alone.

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The best thing about angel gin is you don’t have a hangover the next day, and your memory actually gets better. Like now I remember the way Marcia W. stretched out seductively on her side, head full of shiny black hair propped up on one hand, on the radiator in speech class in 8^th grade, batting her big, heavily-mascara-ed eyes at me, and the way our teacher, an attractive young woman on whom I also had a crush, said something to her like, “You’re wasting your time, Cleopatra.” I suppose she realized that I was a late-blooming dolt.

And I remember the way my uncle who lived next door to us named all his cows, and his pickup trucks. And the way it took him over an hour to get his motorscooter started when he dragged it out of the shed in spring and gave us all rides around the field.

He also brought back a suitcase full of firecrackers from Hawaii in the days when they were still illegal in Washington State. I can remember finding a dead baby bird with some friends, who stuck two firecrackers down its throat and blew it to pieces.

I can remember that the cultural highlight growing up where I did was visiting the home of a highschool kid when he was away and asking his parents if we could go look at his 40 gallon tropical aquarium, because the aquarium stood on a cabinet that held his Playboy magazine collection.

And we used to go into the filbert orchard and dig enormous holes. And the wild grapes that grew there were sour, and the yellow cherries were sweet, but gave you a bellyache.

Fu*king angels.

I grew up alienated from my hometown in South-West Washington State, and wanting to get out as soon as I could. Looking back, the alienation and dislike were probably exaggerated and amplified by romantic ideas about the rest of the world, but maybe not. When I go back to visit, it doesn’t really feel like a homecoming. The big fir trees where I played as a kid were cut down when they widened the road; my childhood home was first burned in a drug-related arson fire, then razed to build a mall.

It’s not uncommon. In the course of some genealogical research I found out that the Chicago neighborhood where my father grew up 70 years ago is now under the tarmac of O’Hare airport.

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He’d been to confession again, after so many years; he cried when he told me about it. He hadn’t been since before he eloped to Reno with a Presbyterian. “He thinks if a priest touches him it’d go ssssss,” his brother (the funny, charming drunk brother) told me once at breakfast in the diner with all the old men. As a boy he’d wanted to be a priest or a bartender when he grew up. Loss, though — sickness, so thin now he lost his wedding ring when it fell from his finger, and that favorite brother’s death — both scared and shielded him enough to face a priest, to carry his heavy old church into a newer, reduced one.

The good bathtub adjoined his bedroom; when I went in to wash the kid I saw the pamphlets the priest had given him arranged on his dresser.

Christmas and Easter, he stayed home when we went to church. Now I do that.

Lost three kilograms over the weekend.
Made it around the Monday morning garbage truck on the way to work today.
Cleaned car in and out on the weekend.
Beautiful sunny day.
Found a parking spot right in front of the office.
Drinking gin with angels.
So far, so good.

“Dad, can I fly to Edinburgh for the International Harp Festival?”
“Eh, let’s see… we’re broke, there’s a war on, increased risk of terrorism internationally, and SARS outbreaks all over. No.”
“Puhleeze?”
“Well, okay, just this once.”

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