From the 15 Year Old Lawn Chair...

You Can’t Eat Your Soul Mate (Unless You’re a Spider)

Have you ever felt an emotional attachment to the product of your first solo culinary experience? Such as the first “acceptable” pancake after a long line of “mess-ups.” What the inexperienced chef doesn’t realize, and I count myself as one, is experience doesn’t mean perfection. My dear father is a pancake master and it matters not to him if the pancakes are of different sizes. Me and my naïve culinary perfectionism would squirm when flipping the pancakes insufficiently. The thin crispy appendages sometimes made would give me unrest. And then it came: the perfect, limbless pancake. I was overjoyed enough to christen the pancake with a lasting name, but was already worried about the next pancake. Would it come out as perfectly? Would this fresh flawless flatbread be the first and last of its kind? No. The next one came out just as wholesome and complete as the one before it.
At the urgings of my father, also standing as Pancake Master Matthew that day, I was to save the last pancakes for myself. The final dribbles of batter in the bowl were to be mine. I was perfectly fine with that. My two circles of perfection were put aside in a place of honor to be saved for later. Later came and went with the arrival of my mother back from Roanoke with another homemade delicacy: cheese straws. Crispy, yummy, light, and cheesy are the qualifications of the cheese straw, but preferences vary. In light of the new snack, my pancakes were forgotten.
The next morning, this morning, I staggered out of bed, bandied words of inspiration with my mother, and set about thinking of brunch. It was already eleven o’clock in the morning so it couldn’t be too breakfasty. I opened the fridge and spotted them, the pancakes, plain as day in a plastic bag, set atop a container of Parmesan cheese. My pride from the day before rushed back and I gazed at them fondly before I realized I was standing with the fridge door open, a big no-no in my household. I closed the door and turned around. Lo and behold, the box of cheese straws. I was in a fix. Cheese straws or pancakes? Pancakes or cheese straws? A truly impossible puzzle. Into the kitchen walked the Master of Pancakes himself, my father. I posed my dilemma to him and the conversation that followed went something like this:

Me: “Well, do you want the pancakes?”

He shook his head.

Me: “All right, I’ll have the cheese straws.”

He laughed and said: “I said I didn’t want the pancakes!”

Me (rather defensively): “Well…!”

Him: “Oh, the poor, poor pancakes. They don’t feel loved.”

I was ready to hug the pancakes to prove my love of them, but I contented myself with scooping cheese straws onto a paper plate with a stunningly superior expression. As I nibbled on my chosen provision, I puzzled over a snappy comeback, fully aware that it was going to be ten or fifteen minutes late. I conversed some more with my father, indignance running high, until he announced that he was going to eat the pancakes. I was so distraught that all previous comeback ideas melted away and I had to start at square one. But this go 'round there was a time limit: I had to come up with one before he finished eating the pancakes. In a fit hysteria, I squeaked, “But they were my soul mates!”
My first perfect pancakes were lost to an expert chef. It was during a period of mourning that I realized: he did that on purpose. He purposefully ate my immaculate pancakes to show me their insignificance. I could always make another, perhaps one even better. Now, because of the brilliance of the Pancake Master, the novelty of pancake perfection will never wear thin due to the impending doom of consumption. Each time I will have to start over at square one and each time will feel like a success. And each perfect pancake, no matter how many are made over a lifetime, will always be something to be proud of.

It starts with a dollop. Such a practiced thing, universal; unique. Grandma’s dollop seems to hold everything about her. Maybe that sounds like an insult, but it’s not. Those portions and sizes we dish and serve are the fingerprints of deeper hands. Few things come from a single source. A dollop is one of them.

She pauses over granddad’s bowl of cereal and milk, centering the little carton of coffee cream. In one swift move, she tilts, drops the dollop, and stops. There’s just enough to be a treat and just enough to be a sacrifice, everything about her.

What amazed me most was the perfect entry. Never did she hit a cereal flake, causing the cream to splash and dissipate. It always hit a smooth pool of milk. It seemed to disappear for a moment, and I imagined the long stream of cream sliding through the milk and out the bottom of the bowl. Only when the last of the tail slipped beneath the surface did I notice the perfect coin of cream floating in the middle of the bowl.

My granddad had this every morning, never demanded more, or complained that it was too much. He trusted this measure. Fifty years together will get you that I guess.

When visiting for holidays, we grandchildren breathlessly waited for our moment, staring at the carton as my grandmother made her way around the table. Some ate around the perfect circle, some tried to scoop a tiny portion onto each spoonful, others reserved the entire amount for one final bite.

Forty years later, they’re both gone. My dollops are bigger, now. They always get bigger. The problem with bigger is the treat’s gone. I always thought the cream was the treat, but it turns out I was wrong.

What Am I Doing?

Though I have been homeschooling my daughter for six months, and things are going fairly well, I can't prevent the inevitable moment, while brushing my teeth, or on one of my walks, or sitting in my chair, when an invisible hand plunges through my chest to squeeze the air from my lungs.


"Are you mad?" says a voice. "You are condemning your daughter to a substandard education, isolation, ignorance to the ways of life in America."


"I know," I say.


"What about college? What about social skills? She will be apart, different."


"I know," I say.


If I let that moment pass without allowing it to overwhelm me, without running to the superintendent's office and enrolling her, I realize that I chose to homeschool my daughter for those very reasons.


She was getting a substandard education, one that is concerned with test scores, not knowledge. Students learn performance strategies, not information. Learning is a chore, not a pursuit, not a revelation.


The myth of socialization is one of the most difficult to overcome, but it must be. Under the pleasant euphemism we call socialization are militant hierarchies and cruel separatism. Let's face it, high school is run by high schoolers, not the school administrators. The limited emotional maturity of the ruling populace is reflected in the prevailing elite victimizing, sometimes with tragic consequences, the "lesser" class.

Life in America. I think this is the most significant reason for homeschooling. I'm not a big fan of the American path. Frenetic, near manic consumption, mindless competitive zeal, and a capitalist fundamentalism that exemplifies the worst of us.

Unlike most, however, I do not think that wedding our laws to biblical interpretations is the answer. The nascent sprint to the baptismal pool feels almost desperate. But that's a discussion for another time.

As these thoughts invade then fade, I'm once again convinced homeschooling is the right thing for her. My fear has not abated but is manageable.

When I open the door to her room and find her on the internet, researching Finnish composers, or translating a foreign song's lyrics, answering her own questions, the fear disappears. Learning used to be a scheduled event in her life, an exercise in appeasement. When she had performed enough tricks, she was released, allowed to do the things she desired. Now, learning is her desire.

Philosophies from the Lawn Chair over a Beer, Sometimes More, Depending on Present Company

Occasionally neighbors will drop by to get a piece of my salad years.

I’m nobody special. I shouldn’t say that; one of my great great grandfathers was a rear admiral in the navy, but I don’t want to use my celebrity. There are enough eighteen year-olds writing their life stories, their memoirs of wisdom gleaned from months at the mall.

I’m forty-three and unemployed, which is why I have the time to write this. I shouldn’t say that either. I do say many things I shouldn’t. I do have a job, just not one remunerated with money—I do love that word, except I want to say re-NUM-erated.

I home school my daughter. She’s fifteen and could write a memoir; I hope she does one day, so I can get a new lawn chair, a nice one, the kind that looks like a coffee stirrer to the “naked” eye—not that eyes can be dressed. When you say the secret passcode, it becomes a luxurious hover lawn chair. This is a doobie day, by the way.

Why am I doing this? Why do I feel the need to beam my drivel into the night, though I usually “lawn chair” during the day? Because it takes awhile to put it down, so by the time I’m finished, it’s dark. What a silly question. Have you ever looked at that word, question?

Quest ion, or the Spanish, Que' stion?