The Wormlips Scrapbook

Mom (now officially called “Small”) is so organized, she frightens me. She alphabetizes her spices. She writes down everything she’s cooking for dinner each night, along with the time it goes into the oven and at what temperature, and the time it gets whisked out.

Opening the icebox door, she showed me a casserole (“That goes in at 5:45”), a cookie sheet of potato boats, and a tray of shrimp arranged like flower petals around a silver bowl of dipping sauce. “And I’ll take those cheeses out at 4:30. But should we use this butter knife, or the sharp one?”

I followed her to the stove. “All I have to do is hot-up this gravy at 6:15. The roast comes out at 6:30 and it cools for ten minutes. “Now come look at this.” On the mahogany dining room table were cut-crystal water glasses, china plates, silver candelabra, ironed linen napkins and more.

This was at 8:30 in the morning.

Eleni slept most of the day yesterday and was short-tempered. I puttered and packed, feeling low, trying to sort out my Mexico things from the rest and hoping I can get through the next few days okay (hasty hellos, painful goodbyes, traveling). Lulu, the [mostly] even-tempered one, played on her computer. The previous days’ rain had melted the half-foot of snow so Eleni didn’t get to make a snow angel after all. Had she but looked on the bright side, she’d have thought to make a fabulous mud angel.

Lulu introduced Small to YouTube and now Small is addicted to the Susan Boyle video.

After this action-packed day, we enacted our customary bedtime ritual: Small says, “I know it’s early, but I’m tired. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight, all.” She kisses each one of us on the top of the head and vanishes into her bedroom, Stella at her heels. Ten minutes later, Molly, Eleni and I are piled with her and Stella on her bed chatting. Last night she talked about how fond she is of her fella, Ed, and how lucky she is to have him in her life… and how lucky she was to have Dad for all those years. “Some people are just plain lucky,” I remarked, not with self-pity but acceptance. “I know,” she agreed. “But don’t worry. You’ll find a nice man. You just need to tone yourself down a little. You’re very outspoken, and I think that’s offputting to men.” I found that I, myself, was offput by her remark, and thus I outspoke: “If I acted any way else, I wouldn’t be me.” Oh well.

Small got up early to make us all sandwiches for our trip. In her remarkable generosity, she gave us all yet more parting presents. She looked small and cute, framed in the doorway. Her mighty green-eyed beams — which she turns on us to frightening effect when we’ve aggravated her — were set to gentle.

“Great honk,” she cried suddenly, as she watched a 21-mile-long stretch limo climb her drive. It had darkened windows. I was intrigued. Like Stella when she sees a new car, I leapt into it, forgetting my humans behind me and barely saying goodbye for the novelty of it all.

Molly and Eleni were more sensitive. They climbed in reluctantly, settled in and gazed somberly out the window at their grandmother and my dog in the wintery landscape. Small waved and Stella wagged until we were out of sight. Meanwhile, I had long since slid to the floor and wiggled onto my back to face the ceiling, to snap photos of the puddle-shaped mirror framed by glowing tubes of light. I wonder why it’s there. Or do I?

Srambling back up to my seat, I saw the girls were still submerged in sorrow. “Are you okay?” I asked Eleni. “No. I’m such a wreck,” she confessed. Molly piped up, “Yeah, but you’re our wreck.”

Now we’re on the airplane. The public is very grumpy today. Lulu likes a window and I like an aisle, so we’ve had someone sit between us on both flights. Eleni likes strangers and has fallen asleep on the shoulder of a handsome one. When the other guy woke up, he kept scooping out his ears with his forefinger and examining what he found there before flicking it into the aisle.

You know how you wake up with a phrase running through your mind for no apparent reason? Stuck in my preconscious brain today was the following: “It’s no silver bullet!” It got me to wondering: what is a silver bullet? If you find one, what do you do with it? Hold it in your hand? Find a werewolf? Keep it in your pocket till you find a werewolf? Shoot yourself?

I forgot to put Christmas Eve photos in here.

On to December 26. Here is my mother. She is very pretty. We stumbled upon a new name for her. From now on I shall call her “Small.”

Small is 81. She has many wonderful traits. She is generous, smart, funny, and a very good cleaner. She even styles her hair. However, over the years she has had the consistent propensity to give me — how shall I say? — evaluations of my hair. Since I was twenty-three, the first or second thing she says to me, after a long absence, is something like, “Now, your hair…it would look so much cuter if you’d only ____ ” [fill in the blank; it usually involves bangs and curls]. “Like me, you have a gigantic forehead. Your face looks so lonnnnnng. You look so much prettier when your hair isn’t all drooooopy.”

She remembers my hair in snapshots. “You know when I really liked your hair? It was in that picture…” One was taken when I was twenty-three; then, I would have looked good bald. Another was when I was with Mister Rogers and my hair was sproinging out on either side of my head like wings. There’s also the one when I did have wings — gold ones — in our church’s Christmas pageant. I was eight and my bangs were an inch long.

Just for fun yesterday, shortly before we went to visit friends, I pulled my frizzy hair into a ponytail at the top of my head and tied a red ribbon around it. Then I went in and sat next to Mom. “Ginna!” You can’t wear your hair like that! The [so-and-so's] will think you look ridiculous!” Mom is such an easy mark.

I released my hair from its erect position and then we went to see my courtesy-uncle and -aunt. I always love seeing them because, as my parents’ best friends, they were a huge part of my early life. Both are in their late eighties: still sharp, quick and witty. Uncle B. and Dad were like brothers, so these visits also help bring Dad to life a little.

They live in a beautiful old house and their driveway is about a mile long, rolling over some of Delaware’s prettiest country, along the Brandywine Valley. There were geese up the wazoo. (Most of the snow had melted off in the previous night’s rain.)

We arrived. To my delight, Uncle B. told a story about the canoe trip he and Dad took down the Okefenokee Swamp in the ’sixties. Their vessel went over a waterfall not marked on their map: a nearly fatal error. As he tells it, Uncle B first swam to the bank and pulled up his pants which had entangled around his ankles due to turbulent waters. Only when he was no longer bare-butted did he have time to worry about Dad, who had vanished underwater. But soon Dad popped up across the river, bashed and bruised but with rescued cameras in hand.

One of Uncle B’s favorite things to do for visitors is play the giant organ in the basement of their house. The music is piped up through a sort of window well above which is painted a Maxfield Parrish. You’ve seen pictures of it here on this blog before. Here’s another view.

After that we had dinner at the Greenville Country Club again, this time with Ed. We examined Eleni’s tattoos and played the staring contest game again. Mom was the victor until she encountered the steely-eyed Ed.

Ed was wearing a blazer onto which he’d sewn buttons from his grandfather’s uniform worn at Gettysburg. The initials are GAR: Grand Army of the Republic (Union soldiers, I was pleased to learn).

Nothing to say. Ho ho ho. Heh heh. Here are pictures. Mom’s tree, for example:

Here’s Mom wearing two presents: a spider from me, and meerkats from Molly:

Eleni got very emotional with gratitude when she received a generous check from her grandmother, and was consoled by said grandmother and her sister:

Ma’s fella, Ed, dropped by for a brief visit:

After I received abundant bounty from my daughters and my mother, we did regular relaxing things for the rest of the day. I hemmed some pants and knitted. Eleni slept. Molly played on the computer and talked on the phone. I called my friend M in Sac’to. As we tried to figure out the date for a possible visit, he reminded me that “thirty days hath September.” That was well and good, but we forgot what happens in December.

For the rest of the day I worried about as much as I could think to worry about, which is a lot. Now I’m going to get back to that.

Mom thinks I should do something different with my hair.

Happy array of winter holidays.