Cruella de Ville Doesn't Read Fairy Tales

I'm always amazed at how well people know fairy tales because I have no memory of anyone ever reading them to me. Maybe my folks did, at least my mom, but I don't remember it and I don’t see that being part of my mom’s maternal repetoire. Too much ghastliness for her tastes and I’m damn sure her mother never read them to the little girl who became my mom.

I know my grandmother, Cruella de Ville, didn't read anything to me either or to my brother except maybe the Riot Act, preferring as she did to smoke in front of the TV while my brother and I cowered in our bedrooms afraid to come out. God forbid one of us should be in the bathroom when she needed to go. "There's only one bathroom in the house AND I'M AN OLD WOMAN!" she'd yell and I know that at least for me it had the effect of constricting whatever progress I might be making. My God, I thought to myself, is she gonna punish me for peeing or is she going to . . . . oh my God! . . . COME IN HERE?

Like I said, I don't think my parents read to me either; not that I recall anyway. Well, there was the one time when I'd stolen some milk money in the first grade and my mother suspected as much -- after all, what's a 6 year old doing with ten dollars of bills and change? -- so she read me the story of the boy who stole and got his hands -- that's hands as in the plural -- cut off. I confessed and feared books thereafter.

Okay, my mom didn’t read me a story of hands being cut off of some boy who stole something. She just sat me down and read a pleasant story that both calmed me down, I suppose, but also prodded some guilt in a boy whose mom was so nice and warm that she didn’t deserve a thief for a son and so I confessed, knowing, instinctively, that life would be better for it.

So, fairy tales? No, but I do recall going to the drive-in with my parents and probably with my little brother to see "101 Dalmatians" and being entranced by the whole spectacle of something so joyous, so engaging as an adventure with 101 spotted, happy pups appearing as they did on the largest screen I'd ever seen there in the middle of a warm summer night fragrant with popcorn, motor heat, and my parents' Winstons.

I Ordered "Lettuces"

Last night, at Universal Cafe in SF, I ordered "lettuces." The menu offered "lettuces." From a farm in Marin somewhere.

When the waiter quietly inquired, I ordered the lettuces with a measure of gravitas usually reserved for matters requiring careful deliberation; the tone used when indicating delicate procedures in crucial matters, much like a surgeon might say, "We will now tie off the aorta." Or, insofar as there was no eye contact between the waiter and me, the transaction around the lettuces was something akin to an assistant bringing me something to sign.

However, none of this occurred to me at the time I ordered the "lettuces." And so I ordered lettuces, not "lettuces."

I ate the lettuces, and to the extent that I thought about the lettuces further it was only to confirm that I enjoyed them, lightly tossed as they were with a bit of green apple and a vinaigrette of olive oil and an aged sherry vinegar. But then, upon leaving, I encountered a young colleague, SC, and her husband dining al fresco. And because we were at Universal, a little known but much honored cafe featuring local this and sustainable that, we naturally inquired of one another what well-considered choices we'd made from the menu.

We spoke reverentially, knowingly, in the celebrated specificities of the menu: ". . . Milo's farm chicken marinated in yogurt . . . grass-fed lamb sugo . . . belwether sheep's ricotta . . . catalan farm strawberries," et al.

Only then, when I stated I'd had the "lettuces," did I realize, "Wait, did I just say that I ate 'lettuces'?!!? Good Lord! Here . . . I’ll tell you what I really ate. I ate a salad! . . . accompanied by a ricotta tortellini with morels."

"PRETENTIOUS!" my young friend EC, fist up to her mouth, would cough scoffingly (though I heard no common-man protest when she scarfed the serving of olive oil cake with strawberries, a balsamic reduction, and creme fraiche).

Yes, yes, a salad is made up of lettuce and sometimes even lettuces, but the word "salad" has faithfully served to describe the dish since the late 14th century according to the OED. And while "lettuces" is soft and euphonious, it's also a bit comical in the plural with its staccato "-tuces" at the end.

"Salad," like "lettuces," shares the same or similar soft consonant sounds with an "s" sound, but by comparison with the comical "lettuces," "salad" seems elegant, even chic. George Clooney eats salads. Clowns eat "lettuces" . . . or rabbits do.

Does this mean I will risk opprobrium in culinary sacred spaces if I insist on ordering a "salad" when the menu celebrates local "lettuces"? Will the wait-staff bring ketchup, unsolicited, with my pommes frites instead of the preferred aioli? Or will they chuckle at me, knowing as they do that their feted restaurant wouldn't deign to carry ketchup though, my God, would it kill that great little bistro in Oakland, A Coté, to carry a bottle of ketchup? It's OAKLAND!!!

I do prefer ketchup.

My Life

Today is my father's 81st birthday and while I believe unhappiness has dragged at him for the better part of his adult life, despite a few triumphs of sorts, it's only this week that he's admitted to being unhappy. And scared. Jean, his partner off and on for 30 years, was diagnosed with lung cancer this past Monday. At some time today or tomorrow, she finds out if it's been invasive and, if so, how much. She's 68, and strong, and since her mother's looking at 100, we all just assumed Jean would take care of and outlive my dad. I know he's assumed it, too. But now she may pass before he does and my poor dad who's never had any practice or inclination at expressing his own turmoils doesn't know, really doesn't know what to say or how to say it if he knew.

But he's got to be scared. A cloud of confusion has been slowly settling on my father in the last year it seems. It's just another thing he won't speak to because it doesn't cloud his thinking all the time and he can take care of himself well. But that cloud is surely there. He couldn't, for example, understand the Father's Day card from my brother, Scott. On the cover of the card was a comic rendition of a golfer, but my dad kept saying to Jean, "That isn't Scott!"

He fakes comprehension with me sometimes by just saying, "Yeah" in a monotone to just about whatever I say or ask.

He just passed his driver's test. He has no friends, nothing to occupy him with other people. And though he plays golf most days, he always insists upon playing alone. He says, in front of Jean sometimes, that he misses my mother who died in 1985, about eight years after my dad left her. "We'd've gotten back together again if she'd lived," he says. He left her because he was bored. Boredom with her, he must figure, would not be as troubling as the constant tension and contentiousness with Jean.

But now Jean could die in months. And my dad would be left alone 3 hours from us.

My life could get more complicated quite soon. And that's as it should be, I suppose. I wonder, perhaps a bit selfishly, how my, how our freedom, Tina's and mine, will be inhibited by my dad's loneliness and needs. How will it effect our happiness? Because Tina and I are happy. We've been happy for a good 28 years or more. That's the care and gift I wish I could've given my dad: happiness. But it has eluded him.


Photo by tonyvel