Chopin – Polonaise in G Minor
Needless to say, Valerie missed school again on Friday. Everybody, even Mom, talked to her like she was an unexploded bomb all that day. Except for Dilsey Murphy when she called.
“Val? Do I need to get somebody else as a sitter?”
“Well…”
“You know you already told me you would. I’m sorry you had a bad night last night, but this is too short of a notice. I don’t think I can get anybody else. You wouldn’t want to mess up Tim’s whole love life, would you?”
Well, she had to seriously think about that one for a second. But then it made her laugh.
“No. I seriously want you to tame the wild beast for me. And besides, I was looking forward to playing games with Troy Zeffer and reading books to him and stuff.”
“Thank you. I owe you a big one after this.”
“Well, wait and see how you feel about it after an evening with Tim. You may curse me after that.”
It was Dilsey’s turn to laugh. “Thanks, Val. You’re the best.”
“I know.”
Her life was basically destroyed and she would have to live with having a nervous breakdown in front of her worst enemy. And she had destroyed Uncle Dash too. How was she ever going to make things up to him? But talking with Dilsey had definitely been helpful. It was good that Dils had not let her get away with anything, just because of a little old world-ending meltdown and depression.
The next day she showed up right on time at the Zeffer house.
Pat Zeffer met her at the door before she even knocked.
“Ah, hello, Valerie. I’m so glad you could make it tonight… in spite of…”
“Oh, you heard about it?”
“I’m sorry, dear. I know you probably don’t want to talk about it. In fact, are you sure you are up for this tonight?”
“Actually, I need this.”
“Well, please come on in. You know, Troy was excited when he learned you would be his sitter for tonight. You know how much he loves you.”
“Well, I love him too. Very much. He looks so much like Ray.”
“Oh, you think so too?”
“Of course. He has Ray’s dark-chocolate eyes and adorable dimples.”
The comment made Pat smile and draw in a deep breath before letting out a small sigh.
“It makes me ache in my heart to look at him sometimes,” the doting grandmother said. They both moved into the compact little living room and seated themselves together on the couch.
“It seems like forever since Ray’s been missing,” Valerie said carefully.
“Ah, yes. That…”
“Has anybody ever found a clue to…?”
“No. Never. He has disappeared as completely as if he was never born.”
Valerie swallowed what might’ve come out as a sob. This old woman knew how she felt about Ray, but she did not want to add to any burdens. Ray had simply vanished shortly after Troy was born. No ransom or suicide notes. No goodbyes. He didn’t take the car. Or any money. Or anything that Pat or the police could determine.
His mother had always said, “An angel must have took him straight to Heaven, like Elijah.”
But the truth was probably far more sinister than that.
Anyway, little Troy came waddling in with his toy tiger in hand. On seeing Valerie, he dropped the toy and gave her a big hug. She then pulled him onto her lap and cuddled him a little.
“Valerie, I know what happened at the father/daughter dance. I would understand if you need me to cancel my plans with Roy Withers in Clarion tonight. In fact, I’m available to talk to if you need a friend to talk to about losing loved ones.”
“Honestly, Pat, I’m all right to stay with this little guy tonight. I wouldn’t have come if I thought I couldn’t handle it.”
“If you’re absolutely sure. But, you know, starting the sentence with Honestly is how someone starts telling a half-truth. Or, a whole untruth.”
“You deserve to spend some time with Roy. He’s a widower, and he probably needs you to make him laugh as much as you need to tell him some funny things.”
“Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right.”
“We’ll be fine, Troy and me. I need him to make me laugh as much as he probably needs to do something funny.”
“Okay. Bedtime at 8:00. And get him at least a little damp in the bathtub if you possibly can.”
“Sure.”
Mrs. Zeffer jingled her keys goodbye at Troy and was off to Clarion for whatever kind of romantic adventure lonely old grandparents could have.
“So, I do someting funny now?” Troy asked.
“Sure.”
“Deet-da-deet dah-diddly-waaaagh!” he sang. His puckered little face had Ray’s dark brown eyes and Ray’s dimples. And as she stared at his chuckling face while he cracked himself up, She suddenly remembered how much she missed sweet, gentle Ray Zeffer. He and Carla Sears of Belle City had made this little boy while they were still young and in high school. Carla’s parents hated Ray for it. They forbid the two young lovers from getting married. But they were against abortion. And they made the young couple miserable. Up until Ray suddenly disappeared. Then they took over the lives of both Carla and her baby son.
“Va-ahl-urrr-eee. I canst breathe!” complained Troy.
Realizing her error, she released him from the bone-crushing hug she had put on him.
“Vaaahluuurrreee? Why is you sad?” He was still trying to make her laugh.
She gently pulled him back into a more comfortable hug. And then she cried. It would last for an hour more.
#3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.
Catch a Falling Star 
Strawberry Fields
This foolish essay about berries that mean love to me is only partly inspired by the Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” That’s because, of course, their song was only about meditating. In the lyrics they take you to the “Strawberry Fields where nothing is real… but it’s nothing to get hung up about…” They are talking about a blissful place of no worries where we all need to go. And then staying there forever.
This, of course, I could never do. Worrying about the future is tattooed on my behavioral imperatives in the dark part of my stupid old brain. And while I often found that place of no worries, and lingered there for a bit, I found you could never really get anything done if you stayed in that state of strawberry fields forever.
But don’t get me wrong, strawberries are a critical part of every healthy mental diet.
You see, my meditations on strawberries when I was a child of eight, nine, and ten centered on the strawberry patch at Great Grandma Hinckley’s place.
She was, as I incorrectly recall, slightly older than Jesus when I was that age. By that I mean, though she seemed museum-quality ancient to me, I had derived wisdom about life, love, and laughter from her before Sunday School taught me any of those things said in Jesus’s words.
And I was given the task of mowing her lawn in the little plot of land surrounding her little, tiny house in the Northern part of Rowan where I also lived and grew and celebrated Christmas and Halloween and Easter and the 4th of July. And though I was doing it because she was so old, I never even once thought she was too old and frail to do it herself. Grandma Hinckley’s willpower was a force of nature that could even quell tornados… well, I thought so anyway when I was eight. And she gave me a dollar every time I did the lawnmowing.
But there were other things she wanted done, and other things she wanted to teach me. There was the garden out back with the strawberry patch next to it. She wanted me to help with keeping the weeds and the saw grass and the creeping Charlie from overrunning the strawberries and choking them to death. (Creeping Charlie wasn’t an evil neighbor, by the way. He was a little round-leafed weed that grew so profusely that it prevented other plants from getting any sunlight on their own leaves, causing a withering, yellowing death by sunlight deprivation. I took my trowel to them and treated them like murderers. I showed them no mercy.)
And Grandma always reminded me not to be selfish and eat the very berries I was tending in the garden. She taught me that eating green strawberries (which are actually more yellow than green, but you know what I mean) was bad because they could give you a belly ache, a fact that that I proved to myself more than once (because eight-year-olds are stupid and learn slowly.) She also taught me that it is better to wait until you have enough strawberries to make a pie, or better yet, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. She taught me that delayed gratification was more rewarding in the long run than being greedy in the short run and spoiling everything for everybody.
She always gave me a few of the ripe strawberries every time I helped her with them, even if I had eaten a few in the garden without permission. Strawberries were the fruit of true love. I know this because it says so in the strawberry picture. Even though I probably never figured out what true love really means.
My Great Grandma Nellie Hinckley was the foundation stone that my mother’s side of the family was built on. She was the rock that held us steadily in place during the thunderstorms, and the matriarch of the entire clan of Hinckleys and Aldriches and Beyers and other cousins by the dozens and grandchildren and great grandchildren and even great great grandchildren. I painted the picture of her in 1980 when she passed away. I gave it to my Grandma Aldrich, her second-eldest daughter. It spent three decades in Grandma’s upstairs closet because looking at it made Grandma too sad to be so long without her. The great grandchild in the picture with her is now a grandmother herself (though no one who has seen this picture knows who it is supposed to be because I painted her solely from memory and got it all wrong.) But Grandma Hinckley taught me what true love means. And true love has everything to do with how you go about taking care of the strawberry patch.
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