August 04, 2003
vacation voodoo
On Sunday, we drove to the Oregon Coast.
Two words. Nice Sand.
Two more words. Ocean Cold.
Two final words. Tourists Suck.
Pictures.
Being a tourist in the land of your birth is sort of disconcerting. For one thing, if you read a guidebook, chances are there are things about your hometown that you didn't know anything about.
Meet the troll, who lives under the Fremont bridge.
I knew about the troll -- he's sort of a landmark in Seattle -- but I have to admit that I'd never actually seen the troll before. First time I'd actually gone looking for the troll. The thing under his left hand is a small VW bug. The brightly colored insects crawling all over him are children, one of who inevitably fell down and started to bawl.
That troll probably has to listen to an awful lot of crying children. No wonder he's always so depressed.
"A few years ago, there was terrible accident here," Mom offered by way of colorful commentary as we strolled around beneath the bridge. "A big bus, it fall over the bridge, and everybody die."
There was a moment's appalled silence. "Oh," the Guy said lamely.
"I remember that," I said, also lamely.
"Once, we come down here to purify this, because spirits of dead people here," Mom added with characteristic cheerfulness. "Maybe trapped. It very very sad."
The Guy said nothing. I suspect he thought she was hinting something. At him.
Mom was in the middle of the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute, a yearly one-week workshop that began almost fifteen years ago with Dad as idea-man and director. Monday, as it chanced, was her half day; she took us to see the troll, and together wandered the quirky, alternative streets of the Fremont district. At one small gallery, she stopped to buy me a set of five glass chickens: my birthday present.
"Peese," she said when I began to remonstrate with her about who should pay for them. "I get for you, or else I have to thinking present for you on ther birthday."
That ended that argument before it began. Last year she gave me a white wicker purse that she had found in her closet. I've interred it in mine. I thought it at least deserved the mercy of a charitable burial. Some day I'll pass it on to my children and thus carry on the curse.
The ostensible reason we were in Seattle was to take Mom out for dinner. "Might as well," the Guy said. "Since I'm going to die young."
It's odd to me how the Guy can't seem to let this thing go. He's convinced my Mom wants him dead. Every time the subject of my mother comes up, he inevitably makes some remark about his impending demise. Most times, he also adds a darkly ominous comment about how he's been cursed.
I pointed out to him that it's completely unreasonable for a network engineer in the twenty-first century to believe in voodoo.
He pointed out that his parents were from a small island in Africa, so he could believe whatever he wanted. And that if anybody could wish someone to death, it would be my mother.
"I hope you do die," I said heartlessly, at one point. "I hope you drop down dead. It would serve you right."
He eyed me gloomily. "You're just like your mother."
Hear that? 'Just like your mother.' Last refuge of the damned.
For dinner, we narrowed down the choices to Thai, Italian, and Japanese. It was hot outside, and we stood around the car, staring blankly at each other; none of us was willing to commit to a specific cuisine, laboring under the anxious certainty that someone was hiding a desire for something else. This is the Japanese way. It drives the Guy insane. Variations on this mental ataxia have taken place most nights in our relationship. The only difference was that now it was a menage-a-trois.1
"Do you want Thai?"
"We could have Thai."
"Or we could have Japanese."
"We like Japanese."
"What do you want?"
"I don't mind. Anything is good."
"Do you want Greek?"
"Greek's good."
"No, really. What do you want?"
"Anything's fine."
"You don't have a preference?"
"No. I want anything you want. What do you want?"
"I . . . don't know."
"Thai?"
"Thai is good."
We would have quite contentedly starved there, making little darts towards culinary supremacy only to retreat just short of decision, if Mom hadn't been on the diabetic's timetable: food at 6, 12, and 6.
"Japanese?" she suggested, tentatively.
It was the closest we'd come to a decision. As this was the first hint of an inclination on her part, the Guy and I decided sycophantically that Japanese was exactly what we wanted, and jumped into the car.
We went to a restaurant called -- get ready for it -- "I [heart] Sushi."
Really.
No, really.
"It's called what?" The Guy whispered me when we saw the sign. When my Mom had described the place, its name had been clearly articulated as, "I Ruv Sushi." That was bad enough. Actually seeing the sign and realizing it wasn't only 'I Ruv Sushi,' it was actually 'I [heart] Sushi,' was a blow to right-thinking Japanese-food lovers everywhere. Who did their marketing? Sanrio?
You know what?
It was good.
It was delicious. Sashimi, sushi; we gorged on fish and loved it. And, because it was a treat, I brought some back to my Mom's house to share with the ancestors.
At a place called "I [heart] Sushi," too. Who would've thunk it?
Figures. Trust Mom to know where to find a good piece of tail.
I really wish I hadn't just written that.
The institute required Mom stay on campus at Seattle Pacific University, the site of the celebrations, which meant that Mom's house in Bellevue was a child's dream come true: big, empty, and without parental authority.
That night, Binky came to visit with her dog, Cheeseburger. The name Binky, as my regular readers will know, is a pseudonym which refers to a polar bear in some distant zoo who once -- very properly, I'm sure -- ate a small child and left only a shoe behind. We cannot but applaud this intelligent act on the part of an intelligent animal. Many a time has passed when I've wished I, too, could have aided a belligerent sprout of humanity past that last inch into Darwin Award territory.
Cheeseburger, it will interest people to know, is not a pseudonym. There is no notable resemblance to a cheeseburger anywhere about the dog, save for a slight paunchiness around the middle. On the other hand, by the time they left, the name Cheeseburger came to feel peculiarly appropriate. Prior to meeting him, I'd always pictured cheeseburgers as grave, ponderous, contemplative things that occasionally licked their genitalia like bestowing a benison, much like a Great Dane or a particularly plump tabby. Now I've come to the conviction that in private, cheeseburgers are eager, frantic, needy, desperate things. After all, what's the difference between a cheeseburger and a hamburger? A slab of processed cheese. I know what processed cheese does to my intestines. Is there any reason to suppose it doesn't do the same thing to a cheeseburger?
After Binky left, we cleaned the house and planned to go to Mount Rainier the next day. "It's beautiful," I assured the Guy. "It's considered the sister mountain to Mount Fuji."
"Didn't it explode?"
The house was empty except for us. No Mom. On the other hand, God was there. So were the ancestors. They had an altar each, down the hall.
We slept in separate rooms, just in case. Never can tell if an ancestor's got a big mouth.
1. I really wish I hadn't just written 'menage-a-troi' in reference to a group that consisted of me, my boyfriend, and my mother. I really do.
Posted by yhirata at August 4, 2003 11:33 AM