Memories and Disappointments

Yesterday morning, we woke up to snow and cold. My morning visitors canceled giving me ample time to shovel walks to office and come + 200 feet of sidewalk. My neighbor, Adib, showed up with a rather impressive gas-powered snow-blower ... one of those so-called "random acts of kindness" that bumper stickers recommend. I don't know that Adib is all that far away from the Fourth Quarter and it felt particularly heart-warming to have a neighbor come and offer to widen the maybe 18" swath I cut on one of our sidewalks.

In any case, in between shovel shifts, I made soup, as planned, and, with M, made potato filled crepes ... potato blintzes, anticipating the weekly visit from our youngest's brood. It was curious how disappointed I felt in the soup. It had a flavor I couldn't easily warm to. M liked it but I was stuck with a sense of "yuck." Memories popped up of when my maternal grandmother's kitchen morphed from the wonderful baking smells of a Hungarian kitchen to the image of my clerical grandfather wiping out unwashed glasses and placing them gently into a white cabinet. The glasses were no longer sparkling ... the plates betimes crusty.

M and I are a far cry from that ... what do they say: 75 is the new 50 -- interpolate, as you will. The three grandspawn and thei parents, indeed, gobbled up the soup and blintzes and some Vegan pestoed pasta and gleefully took home leftovers. The eldest of the three did, in response to some comment about my oddness, quietly proclaim that her sense of me was "less odd than psychotic." True, a moment later, she described the severity of social networking addiction in her schoolmates by noting: "Take some rats ... Put'em in a cage ... Crack on one side ... Facebook page on the other ... Watch 'em run for Facebook!"

So, what are these feelings that I've been writing about for several years, now. Can't say that I have any handle on it. Grandma and Grandpa led a noble life ... Grandpa with his many followers ... his congregants ... his sheep. Grandma running the home and occasionally picking up a nearly 500 year old dream book and helping Grandpa's Little Sheep understand their sleepy-time dreams.

M and I are doing pretty well. My youngest and spouse were talking with us after Dinner (Yuchy soup and all) about Facebook and how people tend to present pictures of this wondrous life that they are leading. I wondered if I was doing the same. They assured me that my kvetching about the travails of Life in the Last Quarter was different ... I'm a tough sell ... I'm still not convinced that the soup was up to some bizarre standard which utilizes the changes in the kitchen of two Old Hungarian immigrants as some hazard that I need to avoid.

And Sonny and Cher's beat just goes on!!