DNA is not destiny.
At least, I hope not. Considering some of my ancestors. But it is certainly one of life's signposts of who we are.
Several years ago, my mother joined the Daughters of American Revolution. Yup. The DAR. Forever destined to bear the cross of Marion Anderson's glory.
But the great contralto had no bearing on my mother's membership. She was there to feed her genealogical jones. I was a bit surprised because I have never seen her as one of the bluenosed set.
She called me to tell me about her first meeting. A long-time DAR member sat down and welcomed her to the group. In the social dance of trying to place my mother on the appropriate rung of the social ladder, she asked how Mom was qualified to be a DAR member.
Mom responded: "Well, I have four Mayflower ancestors." Her interlocutor smiled and leaned in closer.
"And my husband has five Mayflower ancestors." She leaned in a bit closer.
Mom then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. "But that is not our most interesting family heritage." Now, the woman was close enough to hear a whisper.
And whisper Mom did: "We have a first. One of my husband's Mayflower ancestors was the first Englishman hanged in Plymouth colony."
The DAR dame nearly fell over backward in her attempt to distance herself from Mom.
About two days later, my boss and I were sharing tales about our mothers. He told me that his mother had called him about this "terrible" woman she had just met at DAR. It was, of course, Mom.
The relative in question (John Billington) was a real piece of work -- "terrible," as far as his fellow colonists were concerned. The year after the colony was established, he was punished for challenging the orders of The Great Myles Standish. He would challenge additional orders of the leadership. And he would be punished.
He was even accused of leading a revolt against the Plymouth church leadership. Being one of the first people to challenge the conformity that had theoretically brought the pilgrims to the New World.
If that had been his life crimes, he would have been hailed as a martyr to liberty (as were Roger Williams and Anne Hathaway). But his non-conformity took another road to martyrdom.
This is how Nathan Philbrick described the action in Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War:
In the summer of 1630, the profane John Billington fell into an argument with his English neighbor John Newcomen. A few days later, while hunting for deer, Billington happened upon Newcomen and shot him down in cold blood.
What Philbrick leaves out is that Newcomen attempted to hide behind some trees, and Billington purposely searched him out and shot him in the shoulder -- a wound that led to a painful and lingering death.
And did my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather confess guilt and ask for forgiveness? Never. He argued that he should not be executed because the governor lacked the authority to kill him and the colony needed colonists (like him) to keep it alive.
The governor decided he did have the power to execute Billington and that the colony could live on very well without him. Hang he did. And entered into family legend.
So, there you have it. A man with a libertarian streak, a large dose of hubris, and an almost complete lack of self-awareness. I will leave the dot connection for you.
But he certainly makes for good stories.
When I talk to people in The States about my life in Mexico, one of the first questions they raise is health care.
I am always ready for the question. If you have been following this blog for any time, you know how highly I think of the Mexican medical system. The doctors are well-trained and more interested in relationships than in generating income. And, as a direct result, Mexican health care is affordable.
But that is not really what concerns the Americans I meet. The true worry hangs low in the subtext because America is a land where certain issues cannot be stated aloud. Especially, when the topic has the potential of conjuring up that deadly, conversation-stopping appellation. Racist!
Some will whisper their concerns out of the earshot of polite society. "Aren't you afraid of all the -- diseases? I hear the place is filthy."
I am always frank. Yes, my little village is very dusty. And our sewage infrastructure could use a bit of work. But, filthy? No.
As for diseases, we get the occasional Dengue outbreak -- just like The States. And a lot of us contract worms -- like people throughout the developed world.
But I must admit I have never seen a display in Mexico like the one I saw yesterday in the Bend Walmart.
"Lice Treatment." A full shelf from top to bottom.
This may be the last time I feel the need to defend health in Mexico.
While I was writing today's post on foodies (the whole food), a C. S. Lewis passage kept popping up in the back of my head.
I couldn't use it in the earlier piece, but it deserves a place of its own.
Early on in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes:
Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by
simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting
the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out,
that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think
that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for
food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think
there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct
among us?
The food/sex analogy has never worked very well for me. But his description of food obsession struck home.
Lewis may as well have been talking about me. At some point in my life, I became infatuated with good food. I read all of the haute cuisine magazines. I would read Bon Appetit and Gourmet under the covers with a flashlight.
I bought cookbooks just to enjoy the voyeuristic thrill of reading about ingredients mixing together and climaxing in a heavenly platter of sauced meat over rice.
And I knew I had really slipped into the land of food obsessives when I joined a gourmet dinner club where we monthly swapped dishes. I looked forward to each get-together.
OK. Maybe my foodiness was not quite that bad. But food, for a long time, has been a central factor in my life. I love good food.
And that brings us back to Lewis, who addresses the same concern from a different spin:
There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be
everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main
interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food
and dribbling and smacking their lips.
Living in Mexico has given me a different perspective on food. Where I live, food is merely a fuel to keep you running through the day. Most meals made up of the three or four core ingredients of Mexican food. But it meets its purpose.
When I come north, I really understand Lewis's point. In most parts of the world, families go hungry every day. Laurie at honduras gumbo regularly reminds us of that with her missionary work amongst the children of Central America.
Whenever I watch American or Canadian adults throw away plates of food, I think of the teenage couple I encountered on the Havana Malecón. They were selling sex for the promise of a meal because the Revolution had failed their basic needs.
As Kurt Vonnegut would say, here's the moral.
If those of us who have been blessed with resources would be willing to stop obsessing about our First World problems and voluntarily share our resources with the rest of the world, perhaps our lives would come into better focus.
At least, that is what a Rabbi taught two thousand years ago. He was correct then. He is correct now.
This is something you will not see in Mexico. At least, not in my neck of the jungle.
That Barnum and Baileyesque sign is in front of the Whole Foods store in Bend. If you have not wandered the aisles of consumerism lately, you may not know the name. But Whole Foods is to the upwardly-mobile foodie set as Aspen is to the Hollywood set.
Food has become an American defining factor in establishing one's class status. At least, how shoppers want to portray themselves.
The phenomenon is not entirely new. Reagan-leaning yuppies did their best to cover up their family origins by buying BMW convertibles and flashy condominiums.
Little has changed. Now, Obama-leaning professionals cover up their family origins through their food choices. You can spot them with their mating calls of "my mother boiled all of her vegetables" or "I never knew arugula existed until I attended Bryn Mawr."
I know all of that because I went through both phases. With my red BMW and now my craving for Boar's Head pepperoni.
But there is no getting around the fact that foodie Meccas lend themselves to self-parody. I can only imagine what my Mexican neighbors would make of this sign.
Jason satin body wash? It sounds vaguely like a service in a San Francisco bath house.
Even when the signs are clever, they are just a bit too precious by half.
I am not a cupcake fan. Never have been. But, while I have been living in Mexico, something happened to the little treats we ate in grade school. They are now the size of bundt cakes and decorated as if they were about to set foot on the Folies Bergère stage.
Where I come from in Mexico, goat milk is a food product. In Bend, it appears to be what you use when you run out of lye.
In Melaque, a man rides by my house daily offering freshly-made tamales for about 10 pesos -- less than a dollar. In Bend, they cost $5 each. And I am willing to bet which one is tastier. Even that allergy warning on the glass will not help the northern version beat out the authentic tamale.
My Mexican neighbors may be bemused by this sign. But no more than I am. And I am not even going to attempt any metaphors. I can see those wave-off lights ten miles away.
Maybe Whole Foods is simply an ironic street theater created by Oscar Wilde. It can certainly be enjoyed at that level. But I will miss the cheeses when I return to Mexico.
Especially, the hodgepodge of fromage. As silly as it sounds.
Sharing time with my brother is like visiting the writers' room of The Onion.
I realize I am mixing my metaphors. Yesterday, it was a television sitcom. Today, it is a satirical newspaper. But the point is the same. Conversing with him is an E ride ticket on the Big Punder Mountain Railroad.
Yesterday I referred to "cascading puns." Here are three examples. All within one hour.
We were discussing how the current president had grabbed more power for the presidency during his term in office. Darrel summed it up. It's just more Barackracy.
My mother then regaled us with a tale of driving down a narrow logging road in our car. I was probably four; Darrel was two. We were riding in the back seat, and Darrel claimed I threw one of his shoes out the car window. Mom responded: "Too bad. I can't stop on this road."
Darrel's coda for the tale: "You were being mis-Steveious.
But my favorite was our discussion of what types of new food we would try on our family trip to Mexico next week. I thought Mom should try menudo by telling her it was a type of soup.
Darrel's response? "No. it's a tripe of soup."
This is going to be a fun trip.
Note -- The photograph at the top of this post has nothing to do with the infamous accusation of the defenestration of the shoe. But the cast of characters is there. Only the Mercury is missing. In its place is the Ford pickup that you met in another tale of near tragedy: tres desperados.
"Your family is just like a sitcom."
So said my friend (and former house sitter) Jordan when he first met them. At the time, I thought it was an odd analogy. But he meant it as a compliment. And I think he was correct. In some respects.
We are one of those classic sitcom families -- like Modern Family. Earnest. Witty. People who genuinely enjoy being in each other's company.
That may sound a bit egotistical on my part. But I am calling this one as I see it. If you want to spend a good time with cascading puns, fractured cultural references, and old-fashioned banter, this is the place to stop.
And all of that is best displayed preparing and eating a meal.
Yesterday's theme was Mediterranean. Christy, my sister-in-law, had just experienced what she thought was one of the best pasta carbonaras she had ever eaten. She asked what I thought about having it for dinner. Pasta. Cream. Bacon. Parmesan. What is there not to like?
While shopping for ingredients at Safeway, I saw a display of heirloom tomatoes. The type of tomatoes that make you remember how good the store-bought variety once tasted.
I make an outstanding Greek salad. And I now make it only when I can find heirloom tomatoes. They usually run around $12 a pound. Today they were only a bit over $3 a pound. So, I gathered up some cucumbers, sweet onions, South African peppers, Kalamata olives, feta, lemons, and mint.
We were ready to go. While Christy made pasta carbonara, I sliced and diced my Greek salad. With the addition of a loaf of crusty bread, we could easily have been taking a dinner break from a hard day sailing the Adriatic.
Over dinner, my brother, mother, and I decided that we would fly to Mexico on the 24th. That will put them there on one of the busiest days of the Mexican holiday calendar -- semana santa: Holy Week. Not many northerners get the opportunity to see my sleepy little fishing village in high gear.
Until then, I intend to enjoy a few more episodes of our little family sitcom in Bend -- before we take it on the road.
I ask you -- what kind of chance did I have in life?
Here I am at three or so -- dressed up as if I am heading off to court or hitting the campaign trail. Or, more likely, to be a Fuller brush man.
Now, there are people who claim that I was born 35 years old in a three piece suit. Complete with an attaché case. Maybe I wasn't three in this photograph. This may have been the delivery room of Mast Hospital. Cameras seldom lie.
I am now in Bend. A moving van showed up at the Salem house Friday morning. A few items that were headed to my mother's house in Bend (along with a lot of large items headed to Goodwill) were quickly tucked away.
Simultaneously, my house sitter and his family were loading up some of my other Stuff -- for him to use in a future apartment.
The result is that by 9:30, I had said my final farewell to Salem and the house was turned over to new buyers. I wish I could say it was turned over clean. But we had a short time frame to make what was once mine someone else's.
While packing away things at Mom's house, I ran across an old photograph album that includes some very interesting images. Some I will share with you in the next few days.
But this one sums up my mood today.
I knew I was saving up that smile for something.
