July 28, 2004

• Hairy Toes and Death by Chocolate

  The day just past was my son Doug’s twenty-third birthday.  We
  were both still up until nearly 5 AM “last night”:  Monday night /
  Tuesday morning (“tonight” is now almost Wednesday morning, 11:23 PM,
  and will be Wednesday before I post this).  I wished him a happy
  birthday as I finished up the photo blog of our water run and he was on
  his way to bed.  I had planned no celebration and bought no gifts
  for him.  Throughout this lifetime of his, birthdays (and
  Christmases as well) have varied widely, depending on our material
  circumstances at the time.  It is and always has been
  catch-as-catch-can for us.  That doesn’t mean the occasions are
  not recognized and observed.  Last year Doug’s birthday
  celebration was delayed until October, when we took a day and went to
  Anchorage for the Museum of History and Art and the Great Moscow State
  Circus. 

  One year, his sixth birthday, the only thing he got was a twinkie, and
  that came as a surprise to both of us because I hadn’t had the money to
  buy one until we walked out to the mailbox at the highway and on to the
  general store across the way and found out they had sold some of the
  herb starts and/or tomato and pepper plants they were selling for me on
  consignment.  We took it back home, and I found some old partially
  burnt birthday candles, stuck them in the Twinkie, lit them and let him
  make a wish and blow them out.

  His dad called this afternoon before Doug had gotten up, to wish him a
  happy birthday.  We talked a while and he implied that there might
  have been a gift for Doug if it hadn’t been so close to the end of the
  month.  I said, “yeah, every year Doug’s birthday is near the end
  of the month, in the middle of summer.”  The lack of gifts is not
  a big thing to any of us.  Gifts for special occasions were a big
  thing in my parents’ household.  They “saved” them, either waiting
  to buy some needed or desired item until the occasion, or buying it
  when the money was available and putting it away to be given at an
  “appropriate” time.  In my household, we either have money or we
  don’t and that determines whether we have gifts.  If something is
  needed or desired and there’s money for it, we don’t save it until the
  big days.

  Nobody around here is on salary, and Greyfox’s pension barely covers
  his cabin rent in town where he spends the summer to work. 
  Whether I have any cash to spare from week to week depends on the
  weather and flow of business at his stand, our joint outgo, my sporadic
  and completely unpredictable income, and whether I’ve gone to town and
  gotten any cash from Greyfox since I spent the last chunk of cash he
  handed me.

  Yesterday when we went to the spring, I had a free video rental card
  from the general store, for having gotten it stamped ten times when we
  rented videos.  I let Doug pick out what he wanted to see. 
  We both enjoyed his choice, Catch Me If You Can. 
  I had to take it back today.  As I was leaving, I asked Doug if he
  wanted anything from the store and he said no.  I said, “Not even
  ice cream, or birthday cake?  I could get you a twinkie.”  We
  laughed together at the memory, and he reminded me of the
  candles.  He said some cake and ice cream would be nice.  I
  said since it was Tuesday, I’d rent Master and Commander
  if it was in.  Tuesday and Thursday are 99-cent rental days, so
  it’s easier to justify renting a movie.  Besides, it’s his
  birthday, too.

  At the store, Master and Commander was out, but Return of the King
  was in.  With that in hand, I went to the pastry shelf, but none
  of the individual Hostess cakes looked good.  They never do. 
  In my opinion food that has a shelf life that long is not, strictly
  speaking, edible.  They did have something that looked very
  good.  It was a big box of chocolate fudge pecan brownies. 
  By “big” I mean 4.25 pounds, 36 brownies.  With that in my arms I
  went to the ice cream case.  A single-serving ice cream bar or
  sandwich just wouldn’t have been right, so I sidled over to the section
  with the half gallons.  My choice would have been vanilla, but
  this was not for me, not even a little taste of any of it is for
  me.  I know that strawberry is Doug’s favorite, but also know that
  strawberry doesn’t go with brownies, so I got him half a gallon of
  Death by Chocolate.

  When I flopped all that onto the counter, Becky gave me a shocked look,
  about like what I suppose Greyfox would get from someone who knew him
  if he went to the local liquor store to buy booze.  I told her it
  was the kid’s birthday, and I hoped he would pace himself and make it
  all last for a few days, since I couldn’t help him eat any of it. 
  She gave me a dubious look and I told her he had already eaten himself
  unconscious when he was about twelve or thirteen and now he knows how
  potent sugar is.  We were talking about my sugar addiction when a
  man I don’t know walked up behind me.  He gave me the oddest look
  as I picked up my purchases and turned away, saying to Becky the stock
  line from NA:  “One is too many and a thousand never enough.”

  Doug approved my choice of movies, and his eyes lit up when he saw the
  goodies.  He did say later that the brownies had a bit more fudge
  frosting than he liked.  He prefers them all gooey cake, with no
  frosting, the kind I’ve always baked at home until I stopped torturing
  myself with the aromas of forbidden pleasures.  Now there’s a big
  Zip-Loc bag of brownies on top of my yogurt tub in the fridge, but I
  can deal with it.  I’m strong.  Drugs don’t scare me because
  they can’t force me to consume them.  It’s my choice.

  We both loved the movie.  I had read the Hobbit during the very
  impressionable period when I was doing psychedelic drugs.  I have
  hairy toes like a hobbit, I love burrows and caves, have a gift for
  growing things… I know there has to be some hobbit ancestry
  there.  I was reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy about the time
  Doug was born, and when he was small we had audiocasettes of
  dramatizations of The Hobbit and the whole trilogy.  We listened
  to them several times over before he gave them to his friend
  Lindy.  They are ingrained in our consciousnesses, a part of our
  personal mythology.  The characters are our old friends and
  personal heroes.  Now a little taste of lust for Aragorn has been
  added to the love and respect I always held.

  One widespread and generally justified criticism of movies made from
  good books is that the visuals onscreen can never equal what we see in
  our imaginations when we read the books.  With the exception of
  Shelob, Peter Jackson’s imagination and the filmmaking technology at
  his disposal exceeded my imagination.  The movie didn’t look much
  like my conception of Middle Earth, but its vistas were broader, its
  cities grander, its monsters more imposing and lively, the hoofbeats of
  the Riders of Rohan more thunderous….  Seeing Gandalf race
  across the screen on Shadowfax… words fail me.  I’m too sleepy
  tonight for the second viewing I was determined to have before I return
  it.  Probably tomorrow….
  

  • 5:04 am
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