Lord, Let Them Eat Cake

The line that grabbed me--instantly--in this poem is the one that says, "knowing your sisters will drop by and say Lord yes/they'd love just a little piece;" in those sixteen words, my entire childhood flashes before my eyes. My mother had seven sisters; all of them amazing cooks, and at least three or four of them had a freshly made cake on hand every single time I ever visited. The sisters were always dropping in on each other and the standard answer was always, "Lord, yes, I'd love just a little piece." In their rich Alabama drawl, "Lord" had about three syllables; it is one of my favorite "sound memories" and one that still reverberates in my brain and makes me smile, years since I sat eating cake in any of their kitchens.

The other line that grabbed me was "Everybody should/drink coffee with their nephews," because they should, but I never get to because mine live hundreds of miles away. In a perfect world, I would have coffee with my nephews (okay, tea; I don't do coffee) once a week. But we all know the world is not perfect, and I think that is, finally, why I love Ginger's poems so much. She takes our imperfect world and ekes out whatever goodness and beauty she can find. And as I read somewhere, fleetingly, this morning, "There is goodness in every day, no matter how bad it seems."

2010 Poetry Parade: Day 21

Down on My Knees
by
Ginger Andrews

cleaning out my refrigerator
and thinking about writing a religious poem
that somehow combines feeling sorry for myself
with ordinary praise, when my nephew stumbles in for coffee
to wash down what looks like a hangover
and get rid of what he calls hot dog water breath.
I wasn’t going to bake the cake

now cooling on the counter, but I found a dozen eggs tipped
sideways in their carton behind a leftover Thanksgiving Jell-O dish.
There’s something therapeutic about baking a devil’s food cake,
whipping up that buttercream frosting,
knowing your sisters will drop by and say Lord yes
they’d love just a little piece.

Everybody suffers, wants to run away,
is broke after Christmas, stayed up too late
to make it to church Sunday morning. Everybody should

drink coffee with their nephews,
eat chocolate cake with their sisters, be thankful
and happy enough under a warm and unexpected January sun.


From An Honest Answer (Story Line Press, 1999)
Used with the author’s permission.

Random Rants

• As discussed in depth in my last post, I love Christmas music. And I think it's nifty that Baby Jesus gets so much air time during the month of December. But could some program director, somewhere, PUH-LEEZE!, explain why, when every recording artist who's ever held a microphone has recorded a Christmas album, radio stations play the same twenty songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over? One of the two Greenville stations playing 24/7 Christmas gets points for adding "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" this year, but I'm still waiting for the Andrews Sisters' "Angie the Christmas Tree Angel," "Pretty Little Dolly" by Mona Abboud, Harvey Danger's "Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas," or Barenaked Ladies " Elf's Lament." Come on, deejays; how many times can we listen to Amy Grant sing "Sleigh Ride"and stay sane??!!
• So Oprah weighs 200 pounds. WHO CARES?! Is she still smart? Yes. Still beautiful? Yes. Still generous, and funny, and a great role model? Yes. NONE of those qualities is even remotely related to weight and to denigrate her because she's not a size 10 is demeaning to women everywhere. I don't like Oprah's taste in books and I liked her better when she wasn't a gazillionaire, but she's an amazing woman and a stunning example of overcoming adversity. To measure her worth by her girth is prejudice at its ugliest.
  
  
• WHAT IN THE WORLD WILL WE DO WITHOUT ALAN AND DENNY? The only show I have watched on television for the past three years is "Boston Legal." It wasn't for the meek or the innocent, to be sure, but the razor-sharp dialogue, in-your-face challenges to bad behavior by pharmaceutical companies, credit card companies, and others who prey on the vulnerable, beautiful friendship between two male, wholly heterosexual (to a fault!) friends, and sheer outrageousness of Denny Crain's take-no-prisoners approach to life made this show a joy to watch. I respect the needs of those involved to move on, but I mourn...oh, how I mourn...the demise of Crain, Poole, and Schmidt. Amid the brainless blather on television these days, Shirley and her boys were a fresh breath of brilliance.



• Are there people really dumb enough to waste time opening e-mails dated 12/20/38???? Is postdating an e-mail by thirty years actually an effective marketing ploy for spammers? Perhaps it preys on the all-too-often-proven theory that people don't read, which is apparently how ice cream and sugar manufacturers decided they could weasel a pound out of their product without anyone noticing. (Note to manufacturers: we noticed.) All I know is, if you've put something in my mailbox that could only have been sent by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I have one word for you: DELETE!!

Well, gee, it feels good to get all that off my chest. But I can't stand to leave things on a negative note right here on the fringe of the first noel. So here's a list of good things to think about this week as we make our way toward Christmas Day. Write and tell me your favorite holiday things!

• Reading (or sending) a Christmas card and thinking about how much that person means to you
• Sitting by a fire, sipping hot cider and watching snow fall
• Singing carols, in harmony, on the front lawn of someone who doesn't expect it
• Having a houseful of guests you adore but don't get to be with very often
• Having the day off and getting to stay in your jammies all morning
• Walking through a mall or down a busy downtown street not to shop, but just to enjoy the sights and sounds
• Watching a children's Nativity pageant--the bathrobes and "Psst! Hi, Mom!" kind
• Sitting in the glow of the Christmas tree lights after everyone has gone to bed
• Seeing families on front lawns Christmas afternoon, testing out new bikes and skates and riding toys
• Playing pick-up football after Christmas dinner

Aren't you in a great mood now? :-)