BUT REALLY, IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE!

I turned my life around when I met Alan. Baby steps, sure, but even so, steps. I became a person who reads food labels and "due dates", or whatever one calls those stamped dates on food products which signify it might be best if you stopped eating said products after October, 2009. I follow rules for recycling (yes to plastic dairy tubs, no lids,) yes to plastic bottles (with caps on).

I no longer comb,brush or pick my hair. There should be a foot note here but I'm not going to bother. I will tell you, though, I do get lots of complements.

Go figure.

In order to assure my children and the people who may still love me out there in Bremerton-Land and beyond, I still am hell on wheels in a car and I still eat lots of canned peas when Alan's not looking. If canned peas have a due date, I do not pat any attention whatsoever.

I don't want to make them feel bad.

Back again to the Life Changes.I have become a woman who flies to New Jersey and New York and, when she (I) goes to New York, she always (twice) goes to see a Broadway play. So far (two trips), I've seen MEMPHIS and, last week, Sondheim's FOLLIES, with Bernadette Peters. To hear Ms. Peters sing "Losing My Mind" was rapture........to hear the actress who sang "Broadway Baby," an older woman playing a Jewish cleaning woman who'd seen show after show go by in the theatre where she worked.....was rapturiously magnificent.

As good even as eating Junior's cheesecake and letting it melt all over my tongue and into my throat and not swallowing until I absolutly positively had to.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

We first flew in to New Jersey where we stayed with Alan's sister Fran and brother-in-law, Leo. Once again, they generously opened up their house to us, including feeding us the best breakfasts - something chocolate and vanilla called Bobka, oh and something Fran cooked called Noodle Kuchen ohmygod it was SO good - - I ate my own piece and then I turned to Leo and ate his piece as well. For desert. Because, , with this kind of food, there is never enough. As one of the actors shouts out in the wonderful film about food in the film "The Big Night!" "There is NEVER enough! There is only NOT enough!"

Which is how I felt about Fran's kuchen. If I had been willing to drop the socialbility and reveal the fathomless level of my pure food-passion and utter selfishness which occurred to me both at the same time in one singular moment, I would have grabbed the entire kuchen, jammed it under my arm like a football player and run out of the house and onto the street down the street, the way my Grandfather did in North Dakota on Thanksgiving on some sunny, grisly day in the 1950's.

Leo spent time showing me books which revealed the differences between New York NOW and New York THEN (early 1900's)....hard to believe. Hard to believe what could be done back then with a penny, a nickle, a dime, hey, let's all go back and buy cars, houses, CANDY!

We could not find Alan's camera while in New Jersey so we have no pictures from Fran and Leo's. There are some pics from last May on my blog but none of Leo, which I regret. We found the camera on the second day of Alan's reunion and I'll try to get a few pictures into this blog. One will be of one of Alan's fraternity "brother's" and dearest friends, a guy named Byrde (not his real name but back then hardly anyone went by their real name and the nicknames stuck) and his sweet (but spicy) wife Alice, and Alan and me. We were eating desert after our meal at a Jersey place called Bogart's. Here we are, having eaten a scrumptous Jersey meal:

And of course, the reunion of the Something Something Chi's - - I obviously don't remember and Alan isn't here to give me the information. The college was Mammouth college in New Jersey and I think I am correct in saying that Alan's fraternity was the.....most raucous, most creatively raucous, most organically, orgasically raucous, psychologically,raucous, disgustingly raucous fraternity......ever experienced up to that point (1964 - 69??)--especially on such a beautiful...distinguished and historically famous, even, college on the East Coast. Later, I believe the college shut this particular fraternity down, but NOT before the lads made plenty of videos of themselves, which they called "The Monkey Tapes".

Here are Alan and his dear friend Barry, who used to sit around with Bruce Springsteen (sp?) and play guitar at Alan and Barry's place. Barry went on to form a band of his own.



To view the Monkey Tapes which could be torture to many brain or digestive systems - - and then to look around the room and see so many judges and attorneys and scientists and teachers, coaches, musicians, teachers, admen, businessmen, absoutly proves the old cliche about the acorn never falling "that far from the tree". Because these guys, in their late teens and early twenties, rolled miles and miles away from their tree .....and NOW look at them. They rolled right back.

This is Alan and Dr. Peter, an electrical engineer. They got that gulpy thing going in their throat when they hugged goodby.



So. Politics? Money? Didn't matter. What mattered was the love. You could hear it in the voices. That little gulpy thing that happens in a man's voice when hr's trying to hold the tears in but he just can't manage it and it starts spilling out like globs of honey.......globs of honey from big ol' love holds and crunches that started out as mere male pats on the back.....

To watch Alan go through that was great fun. Or maybe not "fun", exactly, so much as that feeling you get when you know you are witnessing a rare dose of intimacy and tenderness. More like that.

The reunion was held at Sal's house; Sal,who wrote the commercials, "I Can't Believe I Ate the WHOLE Thing" and "That'sa Some Spicy Meat Ball!" as well as hundreds more. Yup, they live in a mansion. Yup, with an elevator. With so much food you couldn't count it all. With the meatballs and the sausage and the pizza and the salads and the breads and the morning fruit and bagels and lox and egg dishes and ohmyGod I can't remember - and a HUGE cake with a frosting-photo-copy of the OLD Mammoth College on top and yes there was lots of alcohol and nope, not one person got drunk. Not ONE.

And they called a couple of guys up who, due to force of circumstance, couldn't attend. I'm changing names here......."Did you hear about Bobby? Ah, God, it's terrible, it's a shame, and that it should happen to him, and then there's Jonesy from New Mexico, can you believe that? God, I always loved him, hey, let's go call him, let's go call him right now, do you think it'd make make him feel better or worse if we called him? Better? Yeah? Worse? You think so? Jesus, I don't know, I just can't stand it, my wife says I wouldn't know a feeling if you pulled it out a my ass, but I can't stop thinking about him, I gotta call him, come on, life's too short, anyone else with me? You? AlRIGHT! You TOO? Oh, Christ, we gonna be on the phone all night here! Yeah,yeah, sure, but it's something we got to do! We GOT to, right? Don't we got to? We love him,we got to TELL him that! SHOW him that! If he cries, he cries, hell, I'M gonna cry, I'll tell you THAT right now! Let's go! We'll do a conference call,lots of phones around here, so........okay, let's go this is what you do when you love somebody and they're hurtin' and they're....you know, they're alone...huh? Don'cha think? This is what'cha do, because, really, it's all about love!"