dear people with children (or with opinions about children)

tuckova1 Comment

How
do you handle your child's holiday giving? Because I am lost. I think
that up until about (some age) you tell the kid the list of people to
whom they should give gifts (which is sort of sadly correlated with
"people from whom they can expect gifts" but here we are), and you
discuss those people's interest, hobbies, etc., and then you take the
kid shopping. Or, even better, you make the kid create something for
each person. But this year I left Squire to his own devices and he did
nothing for anybody. Whoops.

I think it makes more sense in terms of the "spirit of giving" for
him to MAKE something, something personal. For the last couple years I
had Squire make the Christmas cards with his own sweet hands, and that
was his contribution to the gifties. But this year he didn't want to
make the cards himself, and I didn't want to stand over him screaming.
He also didn't want to just pick out gifts for me to buy and ship, nor
did he want to take credit even when he helped me pick, which I
appreciate in a way although it left him sort of stranded. I suggested
alternatives (draw a picture? write a letter?) but I feel like, dammit,
it's not MY GIFT. In retrospect I think I cut him loose too soon, but I
really don't know.

Understand that I am not talking about epic gift giving. I give
Christmas gifts to family only, for… well, complicated reasons. Of
course also there's the "husband who doesn't do Christmas" element to
consider. The man just doesn't. And what I "just doesn't" is pretend to
buy individual presents from other people. And why should I nudge a kid
when there's an adult in the house modeling the very behavior I'm
saying isn't okay? And why isn't it okay? (I know why I think it isn't,
and it's to do with "fairness" but really: if some people don't
celebrate a holiday, why do they have to give gifts to the people that
do celebrate that holiday, right?)…

So I dunno. All gifts this year that went outside our trio came
from me, and I signed them as being from the three of us. And now
Squire is in minor anguish because he didn't really send anything, and
he SHOULD be in anguish, in my opinion, because people sent him things.
I like to hope that this anguish will translate into him moving off his
butt next year and doing something for the people who do things for
him, but… am I supposed to be driving, still? Did I take my hands off
the wheel too soon?

Your thoughts?

chocolate

tuckova1 Comment

Standing in front of the chocolate selection at the grocery store. This grocery store has two aisles only; it is not The Saddest
Grocery Store (where the check-out woman, always the same woman, was
walleyed and threw your things down again as she rang them up and
looked like when her shift was over she would likely kill herself if
she could get up the energy) but it is pretty damn sad, and it is also
the only grocery store between here and home and you have to buy some
token gifts. So you have decided you need to buy some chocolate and in
this store there is 1/3 of an aisle devoted to chocolate so you're
thinking: 10 people, 10 bars? or 10 boxes? you don't want to look cheap but at $3 a pop the tokens are adding up.
And
this old man is standing next to you and also looking at the chocolate,
and you do the thing where you shift a half step to the side to imply
that you're allowing him space I mean you
can't really open up much space when you're both looking at the same
thing but this is elevator manners, right. And he says, "There's a lot
of chocolate to choose from here!"
You're like an old man magnet you
were saying just the other day and here is evidence. They like to
flirt, they like to pinch you sometimes, it's a whole thing. You
find them sweet as long as they don't breathe on you. Part of the thing
is about staving off the moment when they realize you're foreign
because then they get all flustered and it's so much for everybody. So
you venture "yes" to the chocolate comment cause that seems safe.
He says, "With such a selection– I'm sorry, do you mind listening to the ramblings of an old man for a moment?" and
so you swing around the eyes. He's wearing the intellect's beret and
surprisingly smells pretty okay, which since you've cut back on smoking
everything smells like it has a foot in the grave so this is altogether
good, worth a smile at least which your smiles are worth more than the
stock market these days.
And he goes into chocolate and varieties
and the chocolate of his childhood and basically the plot turns on his
desire for a real hot chocolate, a hot chocolate like from Holland,
like from his childhood. If you had any idea what he was talking about
you would bring him home and make it for him, but you don't and so
you're smiling watts and looking helpless. And he says thank you for
listening to him and you grab 10 bars and go and pay.

know when you’ve got it good

tuckovaLeave a comment

Oh, Christmas. Today Squire is at a "concentration camp" (survey says:
this will never not be funny) and so Friar and I were at odds and ends
as to what to do for about thirty seconds before we decided we would go
to the pub and play Scrabble. But Domov was noisy and Severka was full
of reservations and even Sklipek (which I love but Friar does not as
the owner is a little too Uriah Heep for his taste) was fully booked.
We tried Pisek and Prokop, too, with no tables empty. We tried the
herna down the street but they had a big screen TV and a jukebox (two
strikes) and we were out. Havran was rejected for their tendency to
open the doors and windows and Hawaii has nasty low tables and the
weird wine store doesn't have a bathroom and there we were. Seriously:
10 pubs walking distance from the house, and I felt like Mary and
Joseph. FINALLY we decided to go to the new(er) wine bar and maybe get
a couple bottles and just go home, and LO,there was room for us in the
inn, so we sat at a moderately uncomfortable table and played Scrabble
(I killed) for 3 hours while they brought us glasses of tramin and beer
and the wine bar owner's grandchildren played semi-obnoxiously
underfoot and the radio played, and I swear I am not making this up:
Queen, Joanna Newsom, Nik Kershaw, Joan Jett, Support Lesbiens, and
Depeche Mode. I mean, this is what I remember right now. It was three hours of bizarrely awesome music.
I hate the winter with more unreserved passion than I have ever loved
anything, and I am frankly unbearable from basically November to March,
and it is merely December. I don't know how anybody manages to like me
right now; I imagine it's like how I managed to like Squire when he was
two years old except that I do not have sweet baby fat that you can
kiss while I'm sleeping. I'm sorry I'm an asshole, really I am.
BUT! I am counting my one two three to seven blessings this week, and let
me tell you: ten pubs within walking distance? TEN. WALKING. I am sorry
but that is awesome. And I love love love the mix tapes that Czech
radio makes for me every day, and I'm sorry every day that I don't talk
about how my control freak tendencies have met their match in the stuff
that gets RADIO PLAY here, because really: Nik Kershaw and Joanna Newsom? FIND me a radio station that will do that in another country.
And so that's that. Tomorrow we're going to the cottage, because with
Squire in absentia we simply don't know what to do with ourselves other
than the same thing we usually do.

ghosts 2

tuckovaLeave a comment

She's been all over the house this past week and I really wish she would go. She fair stinks it up with her lipstick-tipped cigarettes and the sour lemon drops stuck together in the candy jar. It is not merely that nothing is quite right, but that nothing is ever right at all. Screams at me for leaving the bathmat on the floor and calls me a gypsy slut, refuses to speak to me for a day for calling her a whorehouse proprietor ("ma'am", I'd said), and marks everything I write with red pen. Gives me books she says I am too stupid to understand and dolls I can't play with, their glassy eyes sitting in proxy judgment when she's out of the room.

Over ten years she's been dead and I still don't have a happy memory that I can lay her to rest with, and so she comes swooping in periodically, too much make-up and a housecoat, like an evil Auntie Mame, with her quirky anti-charm. I have no beauty, no brains, no redeeming features, nothing to recommend me. Just in time for Christmas this year, which she managed to bile up when she was alive, and I find myself not wanting a tree, lights, anything, just because it would give her one more thing to find failing in me.

We shared a birthday, birth order, and red hair, and I am terrified every time she comes around that someday I will turn into her.

duly noted.

tuckovaLeave a comment

It is interesting to note how many people seem to equate not admitting they are wrong with being right, when they are so much not the same thing that they're at least as opposite as wrong and right.

In the future everyone will think about love all the time.

tuckova4 Comments

1. In the future, I live in an apartment and my other friends are also in the
building, and we visit each other and have coffee and cakes and wine
parties and conversations that are endless because we will finish them
tomorrow. There is collective shopping and a certain amount of gossip.

2. In the future, I live at the cottage and have in particular chickens, maybe rabbits, and also some
vegetables I've learned to grow, plus apples and berries, and somebody comes once a month with
necessaries and my hair gets wild and some people think I'm a little
crazy because I know something about herbs or whatever.

3. In the future, I live winters in Greece or someplace warm, leaving when the rooks
arrive from Russia and coming back when they're well and gone; there's some small place where the tourists go in season and I walk on the windy beach in the morning, and in the summer I come home to the beer garden and the ordinary life of trams.

day dried my eyes

tuckova3 Comments

Oh the nights of hot weeping how I would like to have them behind me.
So much else behind me now that these few things are weird stragglers,
they're like the people who went to the bathroom too long and got
ditched by the group and they come back all abandoned but instead of
having the sense to quietly leave they think they can get the party
started again on their own. The party is over, you can go home now. The
rave has lost its ravey flave, the… yeah I can't top that. Go away
now being my point.

What is hard about being a grown up is remembering that you can be one
all the time. I don't mean you have to give up balancing on curbs because that would be ridiculous. I mean that you do not have to see that boy from eleven years
ago on the street and immediately dissolve into terror that he will
hurt you again, that you do not have to alert the teacher to the bully
while letting tears in your voice, that you do not have to fight back
against perceived authority by sulking louder.

It is funny how knowing yourself can make the same amount of things harder.

I was asked to be wise recently, whereupon wisdom fled me entirely; it
is entirely true that I am smarter for anybody than for myself and will
say soothingly to you to go ahead and be nice to yourself you are fine
a good person lovely inside and out, here is dark chocolate here is a tender
kiss, here is warm food and good books and my love, while some small part of my mind is searching
for a nice hairshirt for me, something in large because I am fat, and
something that is easy to put on because hideous girls who are all
thumbs can't get dressed in the dark, I don't mean can't get dressed
nicely but seriously, why can't I work these snaps. I need a pullover
hairshirt with just that little bit of lycra. No really I'm actually
fine.

I have this picture of Gustav Klimt in his garden wearing something by
Emilie, and I want to learn to sew well enough to make one for me, for
the three of us really, and one extra for you. I will make them in
burlap and silk and soak them in wine so that when you visit you can
spill over the sides as much as I do. And I will listen.

Morning (by Frank O’Hara)

tuckovaLeave a comment

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

five feelings for the last week

tuckovaLeave a comment

1. FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE = FUNNY
HER: Sorry I was in the restroom for so long. I met an old friend in there.
ME: Wow, I've never heard that before! That's funny!
HER: …?
ME: It's a great euphemism. In English, I think there's one about a visit from your auntie.
HER: I… didn't meet my auntie in the bathroom? I met an old friend from college.
ME: Oh, you mean you really met an old friend? Oh. Well now it's a different kind of funny.

2. PRAISE = AWESOME
ME: Here is the edited document.
HIM: I used all your suggestions- it is really important to have feedback from you.

3. KAPOW = TOUGH
Wii boxing is going to change my life.

4. MID-TERMS = IRONIC
A midterm meeting that starts with the teacher crying cannot end well,
but is so much better than having it start with me crying that I am
sorry to say I felt pretty awesome, all things considered.

5. COTTAGE = STILL
As in, it is still going on and it is one of the few places that I can
be still. I had a full Proust weekend, finished a book, ate a ton of
food, successfully started a fire without being backseat firestarted,
and generally am having trouble letting go of the notion that I might
live there some day.

Who’s your favorite Beatle?

tuckova1 Comment

When I was young we crowded around the pictures and we kissed them and
he wasn't my favorite but I knew he was everybody else's and I
pretended because I was good at that. He was objectively good-looking,
pretty in a girly way, and maybe that was my introduction to androgyny
and the appreciation of things that looked like other things or maybe I
was just trying to fit in, but anyway: it was a physical evaluation,
and oh, he passed.

And then in college laughing scoffingly at those people, because
then I loved a clever boy/man. I liked a person who set aside privilege
and if he did so from a bedroom that cost a fortune to make it look
stripped of grandeur I did not care about the hypocrisy because I cared
about a turn of phrase, an insight, a way of setting words to music
that made the words themselves music. And of course it was full of
principle and searching and striving, something better coming up,
glimpsed but not reached, hope. But mainly it was about loving what was
clever, and how that love is both complicated and pure.

Later, much, when I was even saying I didn't care, I would have
said that if I cared I would have gone for -not spirituality, but
spiritual searching. And ultimately, kindness. Thoughtfulness and
consideration and yearning, which is different from striving, because
it involves acknowledging that some things are out of your hands.
Understanding that it didn't have to be complicated in order to get the
job done, and understanding that getting the job done was important,
but at the same time devoting myself to what I cared about. It was
about showing up for the team but not necessarily being a team player.

And now, and now I really don't care, but if you asked me I might
say that my admiration is turning to the one that showed up every day.
Not the prettiest, not the cleverest, not the kindest, but the one who
chose to be on a team where he would, by virtue of the company of
diamonds, never himself shine. What would it feel like to be fully
confident that you were always good, but to understand that in the
context you chose you would never be seen as the best. I'd choose goofy, I'd choose an
utter disregard for appearance, a lack of interest in proving myself
every single second. I'd choose a silly affectation to give people who didn't really know me
something to work with in place of my real identity. I'd keep my true identity for people who mattered. I'd choose to get along with
everyone even when they're fighting with each other. I'm not saying I'm
there. I'm saying I'm realizing that it's worth my admiration.