you were unkind.
You will never regret being kind, even when it didn’t work out.
Tag: dailyprompt
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When I was a teen-ager, my idea of hell was a housing development I’ll call Shangri-La. We didn’t live there, but friends did, and every now and then my family would get in the car and take the long drive out for a barbecue or dinner party or some other celebration.
The friends were nice. Their kids were nice. Their dogs were nice. The house was nice. But if it were a daytime event, and we lingered too long, and the food was consumed and the conversation petered out, the vaccuum that was Shangri-La would start to close in.
“Go out and do something,” one of the adults would say to us.
And so we would walk, block after stultifying block, past new, identical brick ranch houses with sliding glass doors and identical front yards planted with young, skimpy trees. There was no shade, no thick-boled live oaks or bunchy, low-branched magnolias, no spanish moss, no interesting wooden two storied houses with ghostly histories, no hills (this was Louisiana, after all), no bodies of water beyond square blue pools, no ruins to peek into and explore.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing for teenagers to do in that well-manicured, upscale, cropped green desert but sit on the monkey-bars and smoke pot at the deserted local school. And I hated pot. It made me feel stupid.
All of the teenagers we hung out with there seem to have grown into nice, law-abiding adults, but for years, I was convinced those suburban pools of sensory deprivation were hatcheries for incipient school shooters and serial killers.
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It was invented in New Orleans, I believe, by an apothecary named Peychaud. That’s why Peychaud’s Bitters are an important ingredient. Here is the recipe my brother gave me:
Chill an old fashioned glass in the freezer. Get it really really cold, thirty minutes ahead of time.
Put a sugarcube (or two) in a cocktail shaker and douse it with Peychaud’s Bitters. The cube should be saturated. I usually add a small splash of water.
With a cocktail muddler (or some blunt instrument), smash up that sugar, bitters and water until you’ve got a syrupy mixture in the bottom of the shaker.
Now add ice and two ounces of Rye Whiskey to the shaker.
Pull the chilled glass out of the freezer and add enough Absinthe to coat the inside of the glass. Rotate the glass sideways so the Absinthe swirls around and covers the inside surface area. Since the glass is so cold, the Absinthe should thicken and adhere to the sides. Dump out any excess Absinthe in the sink.
Strain the cocktail shaker into the glass. Twist a lemon peel around the rim and drop it in the drink.
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I don’t care whether they agree with me or not, so long as they don’t take disagreement as a personal affront, and are interested in talking about it.
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Daily writing promptTell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
I bought them in 1996 because I was planning to travel to Europe with my new boyfriend, Michael. They were comfortable, durable, ugly and waterproof. I had seen a TV ad for shoes like them that showed a pair being walked through rain and puddles, the unseen owner pausing in inch-deep water before a larger pair of brogans to rise briefly on tip-toe — apparently to kiss the other owner. This appealed to me tremendously.
And so I wore them and walked in them with Michael across London, Paris, and Antwerp. They proved themselves in Antwerp, when, late on the night of October 31st, we walked arm in arm beneath an umbrella through a downpour, Michael grinning and weaving slightly from the Belgian beer he’d enjoyed as we edged around and through crowds of students out celebrating Halloween. When we got back to the hotel we had to peel off our wet clothes and run ourselves a hot bath, but my feet, at least, were still dry and warm.
For years, they lasted, at last failing on a wet day in San Francisco when I felt rain trickling in and soaking my socks. Unwilling to give them up, I carried them to a cobbler on Polk Street, who did his best. Unfortunately, after he was done they no longer fit as well. I finally gave up on them after an anti-war march left me with a very sore, bruised, big toe.
Still, I did not throw them out. They are stored in my closet, and I toy with the idea of finding another cobbler who might be able to fix them. There’s always hope.
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This question prompted me to look around the room, try to decide. There’s the small, light pillow a friend gave me, which was made, he explained, for throwing at cats when they are misbehaving. That friend is long dead now, a casualty of the AIDS epidemic, but I still use the pillow occasionally on my current cat.
There’s also the fingernail-sized scrap of rosy nacre the ocean tossed at my feet on some beach decades ago, my grandmother’s engagement ring, still stored away and waiting for an assessment, my own engagement ring, the gold necklace my father gave me…
But after reading this prompt I got up from my desk and searched at length for a small glass perfume bottle, because I could not, at first, remember exactly where it was, and that made me a little anxious. After some effort, I found it.
A lover gave the bottle to me many, many years ago. It was a slightly uncharacteristic gift from him — more romantic than usual. He presented it to me in the small box that came with it, upholstered in pink with an Asian pattern, and I could swear he said at the same time, “this is not an engagement ring.” (That wasn’t necessary. The box was plainly too big for a ring.)
Whatever he actually said, I remember him seeming slightly anxious, as though it were important to him that I like it. And that, too, was uncharacteristic.
I suspect he got it in Japantown. The bottle is pale, frosted glass, oval, just big enough to fit in the palm of my hand. There is a picture on it of a couple, a strong, samuraish man leading a horse and smiling at a woman who looks down demurely.
“It’s very old,” he said. “It’s very valuable.”
We were together for twelve years. We split up over thirty years ago. He’s been gone now for twenty years, died young, and quite suddenly, of an undiagnosed medical condition that could easily have been dealt with if he’d known about it. I was happily married to someone else by then.
The day an old friend phoned to give me the news I lay down and cried a little, not because my grief was little, but because it felt mostly buried, like something moving around deep inside me, rearranging things.
After he gave me that bottle I hugged him and assured him, truthfully, that, yes, I did like the gift, very much. I still do. He gave it to me.
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Cooking at home.
Lying awake at night, worrying. -
I thought of patriotism as the kind of tribalism I encountered when I was young — people not only waving flags, standing for the national anthem and putting their hands on their hearts, but harassing and threatening anyone who didn’t. The mistreatment of immigrants and minorities, the blacklisting & ostracism of Communists or suspected Communists, the “patriotic” thugs I saw on TV as a child, beating up demonstrators, etc. etc.
It was the twenty-first century that first made me realize how deeply I love my country and care about it and its institutions.
First came 2000, and the shock of watching the Supreme Court appoint a president.
Then, almost on the heels of that, came September 11, 2001. It wasn’t just the carnage in New York City and DC that day, but the nightmarish aftermath, when the entire country seemed to have lost its mind. Attorney-client privilege, habeas corpus, the First Amendment were suddenly not hard and fast rules, but debatable. People in suits sat on Sunday morning talk shows, often opening with “I’m a liberal but…” then talking about torture and indefinite detention as things upon which moral and rational Americans could disagree.
And finally, came January 6, 2021, and the sight of a mob breaking into our Capitol, smashing windows and doors, smearing the walls with filth, threatening to kill people for daring to transfer power peacefully.
I love my country through and through, with my heart and with my mind. First, I love this country as most of us love our homes and family — its physical beauty, its foods, its accents, its folklore, music, literature, films…
But I also love its ideals, no matter how imperfectly they have been followed in the past.
I don’t care about whether or not the flag touches the ground or is folded properly. I don’t care if the person next to me isn’t reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
I care that the person next to me, even if I despise that person’s views, is free to voice their opinions, worship or not worship as they choose, run for office if qualified, vote if qualified, without fear of being destroyed for doing it. I care that our system of peacefully transferring power from one leader to another, one political party to another, remains intact.
And as I look at the upcoming election, I care about whether or not the man who already tried once to overturn our institutions and seize power does it again.
People like that — Hitler and Pinochet come to mind — often have a dress rehearsal before actually succeeding.
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Intentionally, yes. I’ve illegally parked, driven over the speed limit, trespassed, and even, in my youth smoked pot back when that could have gotten me in serious trouble with the law.
As for breaking the law accidentally, I lived for years in the American Bible Belt, where it was impossible to keep up with all the Blue Laws. I may have occasionally violated local ordinances by swearing, or drinking spirits, or playing cards, or buying dogfood/nylons/kitchen utensils on a Sunday. -
A Story of Dogged Persistence
Pam Troy 