How Did You Get Here, Part 2

margo martindale-thumbOne of the things that I love to do with this blog, is go through the list of search words or terms that has brought people here. Goodness knows, I spend a lot of time googling people or things, yesterday’s blog post being yet another example of such behavior. I am a curious type, some might even go so far to say I’m nosy. Others might call me Gladys Kravitz to my face. I once had a boyfriend whose nickname for me was Nosetta Barnhart.

But these search results confirm that I am not alone. I am not the only person who wondered if Rich Mullins was gay or watched Airplane on cable and had to know more about Stephen Stucker. There are others who share my devotion to Mary Tyler Moore and Eve Plumb and Faye Dunaway’s iconic post-Oscar photo by the pool. I am not the only person searching the internet looking for Herb Ritts’ pictures of Richard Gere in a Speedo.

Also, this may be bad, you tell me, but I like that folks have found my blog by searching the names of friends of mine. It’s like Michael and Michele and Linda and Kellum and Rupaul are all famous or something.

And finally, your searches will illicit my own searches. As soon as I post this, I am totally going to search the internet and find out what church Deborah Foreman does belong to. I want to know, IS Chris Kattan a jerk? Maybe I’ll find that topless Maureen Teefy photo as well as “themes for dorms for Christian guys.” DID Amy Grant and Joel Osteen ever meet?

The one thing I know for sure, is that we are all unique. Some of us are obsessed with 1970s sitcoms, others of us are obsessed with men in Speedos. The cool thing is, with only a few exceptions, this list could be a printout of the way my brain works. These people’s interests are my interests too. I always think, as imperfect as this blog is, I would love to be doing a search for Suzanne Pleshette and stumble across Easily Crestfallen. So, however you found me, I am glad you are here. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are a bit of an oddball. You and I might be the only two people in the world who are obsessed with that song from the end of Longtime Companion, but that’s okay. We are in good company!

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Starring Oklahoma

2483653_GA couple days ago, I went with my friend Vinod to see a screening of a film called August: Osage County that is coming out in a few weeks.  It’s an adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Tony winning play starring a who’s who of great actors including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, Ewan McGregor, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, and more.  There are a lot of heart-wrenching performances, but the one thing that stuck with me the most, the one thing I’ve continued to ponder since seeing the movie is the performance, or presence of the state where the movie is set and filmed, Oklahoma.

There is a pervasive heat that you feel the entire time you are watching the movie.  That sticky, sweaty, cloying heat is alluded to even in the title of movie.  If you’ve ever spent an August in Osage County or near Osage County, you know what I’m talking about.  The movie was filmed about an hour away from the town in Kansas where I grew up.  In fact, because of my Dad’s illness, I was in Kansas last summer, when they were filming the movie, and it was a particularly hot summer, some of you might even remember.  So, while Meryl and Julia and Margo and Julianne and Juliette were proximating a dysfunctional family dealing with a family crisis in the part of the world I know best, I was with my (probably slightly more functional) family dealing with a family crisis of our own.  

There is a funny scene in the beginning of the movie where Julia Roberts’ character Barbara, who grew up in Oklahoma but lives in Colorado now opines, “Who was the asshole who saw this flat hot nothing and planted his flag?”  And growing up there, it’s a sentiment I thought myself several times.  I used to say that the good thing about growing up in Kansas is that it makes every other place I go beautiful in comparison.  (That’s harsh.)  Later in the scene, I think Barbara gets it right when she says, “This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest, God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.”  

I wept every time the state of Oklahoma flashed on the screen.  Several scenes take place when people are driving down the road or driving through a small Oklahoma town.  Certainly, there was recognition for me when I saw those old-fashioned churches, or once grand country homes that had fallen into disrepair or that sky, wide open, both in day and night.  But it was more than recognition, it was wist.  And it was love.

I was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and raised most of my life, just 45 minutes away from there in Independence, Kansas.  I’m proprietary about that part of the world, because it’s still mine.  And watching this film, moments of which were masterpieces, I understood why people stay and why people leave and why they come home again, and also, why, even if you never come back to live, the plains will always be a part of you.erez-12

Charlene

italian-food-cultureThe summer between my junior and senior year in Bible college, I interned at a church in Syracuse, New York. It was my first experience living far from home and I loved it, but this story is not about the summer, it’s merely about one of the characters I met in Syracuse.  Her name was Charlene and she was in her fifties, she was Kathy Bates mixed with Margo Martindale and a dash of Rue McClanahan thrown in for good measure.  She was a member of the congregation and had an infectious laugh and warm heart.  She worked as a caregiver for an elderly woman and she lived in that woman’s home.  Years, later, when I read  Stephen King’s Delores Claiborne, I thought about Charlene and the tales she told me working a similar job.

In the first weeks of my internship, Charlene came up to me at church and told me she wanted to take me to lunch after the service.  She took me to an Italian restaurant and told me to order anything on the menu that I wanted.  She made sure I ordered an appetizer (fried ravioli) and a huge entrée (lasagna) and a dessert (death by chocolate) and even asked me if I wanted to order wine.  “It’s okay if you want some wine, I won’t tell anyone.”  I resisted, though I’ll tell you now, I was a bit tempted.  The reason this meal lingers in my memory was the generosity with which it was offered.  She wanted me to eat like a king.  She told me not to worry about how expensive the meal was, it was something she wanted to do.  

She took me to this Italian restaurant two or three times that summer.  If she had an ulterior motive, it never surfaced.  I believed then and believe even more now, that she just wanted to do something nice for another person.  It wasn’t until years later that I realized what a sacrifice these meals must have been for her.  She did not even have her own apartment, merely a room in her employer’s house.  She did not drive a new car, I don’t think she had a bountiful 401k. Now, of course, I am much closer to Charlene’s age than to the age of the boy, sitting there stuffing his face with fried ravioli.  (It was good.)  I’m certainly not as economically set as I’d like to be and some nights, I lie in bed worrying about my financial future.

A few months later, in December of that year, I had an opportunity to do something nice for someone. In fact the someone in question was Charlene, she had quit her job and moved to Joplin to go to Ozark Christian College. While there were things she liked about the environment, I believe that being a 50-something non-traditional student living in dorms in an ultra conservative part of the country bore its share of challenges. But she was beloved on campus for her wit, kindness, and unfiltered opinions. At Christmas time, she did not have enough money to go home to Syracuse for the break. She couldn’t afford a plane ticket. It so happened, I had a $400 voucher from whatever airline I flew home on in August (I’d been bumped from my flight.) For months, I’d dreamed about how I would use that voucher. The day I talked to Charlene and she told me she wasn’t going home, I must say, it pained me a little when the idea of giving my voucher to her came into my mind. I thought about it for a day or so, and then I decided I’d let her use my voucher. (These were the days when vouchers were transferrable.) I’ll never forget how excited Charlene was when we drove to the airport to buy the ticket. She was so grateful. It’s 25 years later, I still don’t regret my decision. Whatever trip I could have taken would never have had the value that it did for Charlene.

It’s kind of obnoxious that I’m telling you, bragging sort of, about an act of kindness that I committed so long ago. If I was truly humble, I wouldn’t share that part of the story, but the big reason I share the story is, I think generosity does not come naturally for many of us. Or at least it doesn’t come naturally for me. It’s something I have to work on, cultivate.
And yet, if generosity was something that Charlene struggled with, I never saw it.

So, now that I am a drinking man, I can raise my wine glass to toast a wonderful woman. Wherever you are, Charlene, you taught me a lesson in kindness that I will never forget.

Where would you go?

fashion straps marais paris HR

Sometimes when I am at Happy Hour with a group of friends or bored at work (which is never, because I always work very hard and the people I work with always work very hard) I like to play a little game called “Where would you go?” The rules are simple. When you get home tonight, you will find a bundle of cash ($25,000) that MUST be spent on a one week vacation and you have to leave first thing in the morning. You can’t save the money or give it away. You must spend the entire amount on your vacation. Where would you go? I love to hear people’s answers. Hawaii, New York, France, Vietnam, India, U.S. road trip, Machu Picchu. I believe the vacation we dream about says much about us. As for me, my answer is always the same, Paris. I’ve never been and have always dreamed of going. Like Carrie Bradshaw tells Aleksandr Petrovsky’s annoying daughter in the penultimate episode of Sex and the City, I’ve only been there in the movies. And television, and books, and Google Earth. I have ALMOST visited Paris a few times, but each time, a plan changes and I don’t go. It feels like I’ve been there. I’ve included the link to a movie called Paris Je T’aime. Twenty short films by twenty different directors make up the movie, my favorite being “14e Arrondissement” about a postal worker from Denver visiting Paris for the first time. It wouldn’t be the gem that it is without Margo Martindale’s performance. And every time I see it, her visit is my visit. We walk the streets, stare at the view from our hotel room, go to the Eiffel Tower, practice our French, and sit on a park bench and eat that really delicious looking sandwich. Watching the movie is a five minute vacation from my ordinary life. The reason I love my little game is it gives me a chance to close my eyes and, for a few moments, imagine myself in an exotic location. So, I’d go to Paris. But enough about me, where would YOU go?