Add to Dictionary?

Hyacinth

Two sweet Syrian women work where I work and they’re the most wonderful. Once they gave me an Easter egg decorated in an Eastern Orthodox fashion, and we had an interesting conversation about Jesus, who fascinates me even though I’m not at all a Christian. Eastern Orthodoxy also packs a real punch as a topic (try Mount Athos if you need convincing) and I’m interested in how different Christian groups choose their holidates.

So when we came back to work after New Year’s, I wished her a merry Christmas and then said, “Oh, but wait, do y’all do the later date?”

“No, we do December 25,” she said. “Then we do both dates for Easter.”

“Oh that’s fun!” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “After everything He did for us, it’s the least we can do!”

I’d actually stopped by to compliment her new hyacinth, one of those plants whose selling point is that you can almost actually see it growing before your very eyes. It smells wonderful.

Astonishing material

Anne Lamott:

“Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, ‘Well, that’s pretty much what I thought I’d see,’ you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. […] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.”

Just bummers

Carolyn Hax:

Tell yourself — out loud even, like a dork — that things really don’t work this way and you aren’t starring in the Cosmic-Conspiracy Show. What you’re dealing with are just bummers, which are not only better than catastrophes but also make you tougher, more resourceful, funnier (that’s where narrative skills come in handy), more empathetic, and more grateful for the good things that come your way.

a song with no end

when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can’t cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

— Charles Bukowski

This poem is from a battered, beloved posthumous volume called The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps. From the acknowledgments: “These poems, written between 1970 and 1990, are part of an archive that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death.”

I bought the book in 2004 at Marathon Used Books in Marathon, Florida.

Merc

On Top Gear they call Mercedes vehicles “Mercs” with a hard K sound. Maybe we don’t do that here because it sounds like it should stand for Mercury.

I parallel parked my giant loaner car in front of my building. A person across the street, driving a Mercedes SUV, was adjusting her parking, or so I thought. She stopped the car in the exact center of two parking spots and turned off the engine.

That’s about enough of that, I thought.

“Ma’am, you’re blocking two parking spots,” I said. “There’s half a spot behind and half a spot in front and it would be nice if you could move.”

Just then, my neighbor, who runs a fashion business out of a studio on the ground floor, came out of the building. “Is there a problem?” she said to us. Apparently the poor parker is her customer. Oops! Sorry you have inconsiderate customers.

Stan

Stan is 93, but he plays euchre five days a week and I think that keeps him young. His hearing is also incredible. Once we played each other in the semifinals and he kissed my hand at the end. I nearly died from the charm of it. Today his face lit up as he described a recent trip to Alaska and told us everyone should go there at least once. He recreated a high-altitude train trip that I’m pretty certain my beloved late grandfather took on his own late-life pilgrimage to Alaska. Train rides are old-guy bait!

His mantra at the hearts table is “How sweet it is,” which he kindly whispers under his breath during almost every hand. He has just about the best attitude, and the tiniest shred of, I think, a Polish accent. What a heartbreaker. When I offered him the cut, each time he turned it down: “I trust a pretty girl. A pretty girl gives you good cards.”

“I’m not gonna lie, Stan,” I said. “I’m trying NOT to do that.”

Harry

This morning I woke at 6:30 to drag myself to the far south suburbs for an annual hearts tournament I’ve grown to love for many reasons. My friend used to work for an organization that puts on a hearts fundraiser, and that’s where I met two avid hearts players who invited me to this tournament for the first time.

One of them, Harry, is very kind but very serious about hearts, constantly spinning strategy in his mind, trying to stay a few steps ahead. He makes my playing style look like a Jackson Pollock test canvas. Because of all of this precision and strategy, what he hates most in the world, it seems, is every fourth hand of hearts — the one where you keep the cards you’re dealt instead of passing three cards.

This year Harry wasn’t at the tournament. But every four hands, I heard each dealer say something like, “It’s the Harry G—- Memorial Hold Hand.” Infamous all the more in absentia.

Cuantos años tienes?

In 2010, a census worker came to my building and talked to me for about five minutes. Later the same day, I saw him struggling to communicate with a neighbor who only speaks Spanish, and employed my low-level Spanish to help them. It was like this XKCD strip where he explains spaceships using very common words. Point to myself. (In Spanish) “I have twenty-two years. You have how many years? I live in U.S. all the years. You live in U.S. how many years? One person lives in my home. How many people live in your home?”

Today I saw her and her four-year-old daughter walking toward the park. We managed to talk about Ray’s recent heart surgery, and she said her husband had laparoscopic heart surgery that was much less invasive. We each mixed Spanish and English words.

She recently got a job as waitstaff for weekend events at a Jewish community center. She said the word for Jewish, in Spanish, which I didn’t understand until she said, “The men wear hats like these?” and outlined a yarmulke on the crown of her head. Her English is leaps and bounds better and she said her job is helping her learn. My Spanish is, alas, not improving.

Millie

There’s a woman at work whom I know a little and like. She’s friendly, she has beautiful and stylish hair, and I was once able to give her some Excedrin Migraine when she needed it. Headache sisters.

On Election Day she and I ran into each other at the Starbucks by our office, where there were at least five times more people in line than there usually are. We’d both woken up earlier than usual to get to our polling places before they opened at six a.m., but when your workday starts at 7:30 each morning, it’s not much of a reach to wake up at 5:45 instead of 6, say.

Today is my birthday. As I walked down the primary artery of the building, I saw a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” banner hanging on the wall of someone’s cube — hers, as it turns out, because we have the same birthday. “How old are you?” she asked. “Twenty-seven,” I said. “I’ve got a couple on you,” she said.

She told me about her freshman-year dorm floor, where, beyond improbably, three women shared a birthday. There was a girl on my childhood dead-end street born on the same day, year and everything, and I consider her to be my first nemesis.

Snappy’s guy

My bowling team and I frequently visit a seafood joint named Snappy’s before or during league bowling. A guy works there and I don’t know his name but we’re friendly. He knows my team and our name and everything.

This last time, the Bears game was on. “What, oh god. I cared about this last week, I’m not doing it again,” I said. (We’d watched that game at Nathan’s and the best part was the delivery we ordered from Noodles Party.) The boys and I small talked a bit, until they both suddenly craned to look at the 19” tube TV angled in a corner by the ceiling.

“Oh, some points happened?” I said.

Snappy’s guy smiled at us. “Sheee’s fun to watch sports with,” he said.

absturbation

Skyfall apparently won’t be released in China for some time, so Tony wouldn’t let me talk about it and instead we discussed my “Love Life,” such that it is (not). I have a new handsome friend who merits discussing.

Ray

Ray is my neighbor. He used to live directly across from me but moved to the fourth floor about a year ago. It bums me out that we don’t see each other as much as we used to, and my new neighbor is boresville by comparison.

This morning I put a load of colds in the washer and ran into Ray on the way down.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“I was in an accident, but I’m fine,” I said. “But my car is totaled.” I pointed at the bruise on my clavicle, and showed him the airbag burn on my wrist. “How are you, Ray?”

He pulled up his shirt and revealed a foot-long scar. “I had a triple bypass,” he said. He lifted the hem of one shorts leg and revealed another long scar: “They took a vein from here.”

“You win!” I said.

He had a heart attack at three in the morning and drove himself to the hospital. “I was going to stop by and tell you what happened, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he said. “Ray! Always tell me, always interrupt,” I said.

I might shift gears and tell anecdotes about people for a while. That’s what I feel compelled to do lately. Yeah?