Tag Archives: Musings from the Dream House

Notes From the Carpool Line

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If a friend says, “I need to lose some weight,” while peering over either tea cup or cocktail glass, the only, only, appropriate response is, “I think you look wonderful.” If you can go on to say something like, “And who is cutting your hair, he’s an absolute genius,” all the better. No one today does not know the ins and outs of calories and fat grams and building the core. What she is asking for is reassurance, not your routine. For the love of Pete.

Image by Tom Leonard for House & Garden from The Well-Lived Life.
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Can You Go Home Again? The Hell if I Know.

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I loaded the three boys into the car. We headed to Dallas the four of us, that perfectly symmetrical number that Mr. Blandings had always encouraged; the number of perfect seating be it plane or cab or cafe. We set off to see my hometown and then further south to Dallas, a sort of growing up annex, to see my father and step-mother.

The drive to Tulsa is the drive of all jolly, light-hearted car trips. Four hours. A straight shot. About the time you are ready to get out of the car you are there. The boys had not been to Tulsa before. I only go back for reunions or funerals and these occasions had seemed easier alone, “You didn’t know them; I’ll go by myself and come right back. It will be easier.” I wanted them to see it, though I was filled with trepidation. My childhood resembled my children’s in no way. I did not grow up on a leafy street, playing in the front yard, riding my bike to get ice cream. My neighborhood wasn’t dangerous, just ugly. And empty, though the houses were occupied.

We traveled south, though Spring had yet to show, and it was a drive that can only be described as brown. Oklahoma can be a funny place. I took note of the series of “Marriage Matters” billboards. They seemed to have replaced the pro-life billboards and I wondered if they were sponsored by the same people. Often the signs were close to either another billboard advertising a casino, or close to a casino itself. Oklahoma, as I’m sure you know, means “Land of the Red Man.” I know this because of a semester of Oklahoma history in high school with the slimmest text book I have ever held. Smaller than a Nancy Drew mystery. As we passed the first casino, maybe it was Choctaw Casino, I began to try to recall the five civilized tribes, one of the staples of Oklahoma history.

Cherokee
Choctaw
Chickasaw

Maybe Sioux. Was it three “C”s and then two something elses? Or four “C”s? There was something disconcerting about my knowledge of Native American history and the preponderance of casinos. The same feeling you get when you see the lottery winner with his big, fake check, knowing that he will now be invited to every Sunday dinner where before his phone calls had gone straight to voice mail.

Cherokee
Choctaw
Chickasaw
Creek

That seemed right. Coming in to Tulsa from the North is not all that welcoming. It’s a lot of construction and junky strip malls. I did not call the boys’ attention to the fact that we were there. As we neared my old neighborhood I was stunned. It was achingly sad, horribly depressed and ugly. It’s worse, surely. Isn’t it worse? It could not have been quite this bad when I lived there. I was often oblivious to such things, but I think I would have noticed this.

As we turned the corner into my neighborhood, the boys sat up a little straighter in their seats. My heart was in my throat. I knew how it looked to them and I wasn’t sure this had been a good idea. Coming around the curve I could not look straight on, but turned my head slightly to the side as I said in a false normal voice, “That’s it. The one on the left. Right there.” And I am embarrassed to admit that I felt shame. I did not want them to see it, this childhood home they could not begin to imagine.

They were silent. Searching. They’ve been raised to be polite and even though they put that aside to discuss gas often and much, they could not find words to put to what they were seeing. The youngest finally said, “I think that looks like a nice place to grow up. I like the basketball goal.” The middle added, “It doesn’t look much like Kansas City.”

“Parts of it do.”

Then I drove them down the winding green and leafy streets that look like home. We ate at my favorite hamburger joint from growing up and when they declared it better than Mr. Blandings’s favorite hamburger joint from growing up I did not defend his haunt; I let this stand as something good.

We stopped to get gas and the boys trolled the aisles for candy for the second leg of the trip. As I paid I looked down to see the headlines of the Tulsa World, “6,000 Cheer Palin, Beck,” and tried to remember why I came.

As we turned onto Peoria, a street I’d traveled a million times, I remembered. Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole.

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Inside Spring Break

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The boys and I drove to Dallas for Spring Break. (Is Spring Break capitalized? In our life it is.) We went through Tulsa, where I grew up, which is another story for another day as it is still tumbling around in my head and my heart.

But Dallas was sunny and warm, where Kansas City was cloudy and cold, and it was a lovely break. Often when we are there the house is bursting at the seams with people and events, but this trip was quiet and easy. My father’s hair, which has always been thick and wavy, an on-going point of contention with my genetic lottery, is thinning just slightly in the front. He’s tall, so you wouldn’t notice, but when he bent over to show my youngest son how to shoot a pool ball I could see it. That almost imperceptible change was unreasonably significant.

My dad, while happy to go on the two-hour tour of Cowboys Stadium (yes, I did say two hours) decided to pass on the Nasher Sculpture Center. “I’ve done enough Sunday Morning shoots. You can tell me about it when you get back.”

The Nasher collection is extensive and the Calder pieces were not on display, but it was four thumbs up for artist Jaume Plensa, whose pieces are on display right now. Plensa’s work is an exploration of culture and nature, but particularly interesting to me as he incorporates text into many of his sculptures. That curtain of letters, top, spans the length of the entry and you must walk through it to access the galleries. It’s chimes are delightful.

As we were looking at some pieces in the permanent exhibit, the youngest began to get a little squirrelly. A museum guard, a bear of a man, came over and quietly held out his hand and said, “Come with me.” Hand up, head down, he walked quietly into the other room. I exchanged a look with his brothers and we followed to find the guard bending down and pointing at Twins I and II (second from top.) “You and your brothers can go inside, if you go one at a time.” Pure delight to be inside those sculptures, finding the letters of their names and Pi and Omega and “a table” depending on your perspective.

Song of Songs III and IV (third photo) can also be experienced from the inside. As could the Richard Serra sculpture (photo 4) though I did not go in, I could hear their laughter as they raced through. There was a secret room (Tending (Blue) by James Turrell), accessed through doors set into a berm. The boys came upon the doors and swung them open without a thought, traveling the tunnel that lead to a small space open only to the sky.

I marveled that they did not hesitate to go through that door or down that tunnel. I know if I asked them what their favorite part of the trip was they would say, “The screen at Cowboy stadium,” or “the Aquarium,” but I would vote for the forty-five minutes we spent here. I think either Charles, Kuralt or Osgood, would agree with me.

All images except the last via the Nasher Sculpture Center.
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Gibby Shelter

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Driving home from school yesterday the eldest Blandings boy said somewhat out of the blue, “I’m thinking since I like math I will either be an architect or an engineer.”  Architect, hooray, engineer, hmmm.

The middle responded, “I thought you were going to be a movie critic.”  “Oh, yeah, I’m going to be a movie critic at night.”  I chimed in, “I could be wrong on this, but I think movie critics have some kind of training.  A degree.  Work experience.  Something.  You can’t just be a movie critic.”

The middle, again, “I’m going to be one of those guys on cooking shows who says if stuff is good or not.”  “What?”  “Yeah, you don’t have to go to college for that.”  He doesn’t want to go to college, you see, as word has leaked that you have to leave home to do so.  “Actually, a lot of those guys, most, have been to culinary school.  Which would be awesome.”

“Then I’m going to go to culinary school for just one day and learn to make really excellent cookies.  Then I can be the cookie judge.”

“I,” declared the youngest looking out the window resolutely, “am going to be a night watchman.  At the Nelson.”

Really, who am I to judge?  I went to school to learn to boss people around behind the scenes of television new shows and have spent the last thirteen years honing my skills at crocodile stuffing and macaw manufacturing.  I have seen enough school productions to qualify for critical review, though I generally share these insights only with friends in the parking lot.

Some of us get side-tracked.  Take T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings.  He went to architectural school and wound up hawking knock-off chairs uptown.  Oh, and he was also a critic.

All images of Robsjohn-Gibbings’s designs from House & Garden, June, 1991; photography not credited.

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Bracelets I Cannot Afford

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The newest selection in the on-going series now titled, “Bracelets I Cannot Afford.”  While I love the black coral pictured above (it’s actually a necklace), I’d really like to have a bracelet made with the white branch coral pieces that I collected on my honeymoon.  I wouldn’t even need the fittings to be jewel encrusted.  That’s how grounded I am.

The necklace, and many other amazing pieces, at Kara Ross New York.

Image above from Elle, issue and photographer unknown.

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