Dadio
Happy Father’s Day to the man who gave me my strength, my ability to stay calm in stressful situations, my love of puns, and my awe (not dexterity, just awe) of how things work. I use one of his little sayings at least once a day- “you’re never lost as long as you have gas in your car”, “there’s no wrong way to do it”- and every day they make me feel a little smarter.
How cute are we?
Collector’s item
This is a 10 year old bottle of Pepsi.
Yes, it does have “Ramesses the Great” stamped onto it, and yes, it does have quite a history. Jump if you want to hear about it.
I use it to soak up my tears
I learned to read at a very young age, before my brain could really grasp some of things I was reading. This meant that horror novels blew my mind. This also meant that when 3 year old me found an ornament on our Christmas tree that said “1978- The Gordons…” and then listed the names of my mother, father, and only sister (and not me), I didn’t understand that I wasn’t listed because I hadn’t been born yet. And it upset me. Greatly.
This coupled with the fact that my family are all compatible with each other on the Chinese Zodiac (but not me), and the fact that there are probably twice as many baby pictures of my sister than me (classic second baby issue), made me feel like I was somehow not special.
Then I discovered this:
Today is a beautiful day
Not to get too personal and non-Gynomitey on you, but as some of you know, my grandmother passed away last Friday, the day after Christmas. I was lucky enough to be home for her final days and got to spend some time with her before the funeral.
My grandmother had been writing editorials to the local paper for over 40 years. She had a lot of fans, and people wrote in and asked about her so much that in 2007, the paper did a story about her, and printed some of her greatest hits. Her most recent editorial was published on Christmas Eve, two days before she passed, and was called Today is a Beautiful Day. She would occasionally get feisty and political, but mostly, she wrote about things like being a mother, finding a spider, and watching the sun rise. Here, listen:
Like a Phoenix from the ashes….
I was thinking about how everyone is touting Robert Downey Jr’s epic return to the spotlight in Iron Man, and how it makes his character and his acting so much juicier that he was such a drug addicted hot mess just a few years ago, and it made me wonder: what if River Phoenix had survived the 90s? What if he made it through all of his addictions, went to the Cirque Lodge or where ever celebs went in the 90s, came out, beautiful and scarred, and continued acting?
Would he have played Batman? Oh god, can you see it? River Phoenix as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker? How gorgeous and nuanced and amazing would that have been? I mean, nothing against Christian Bale, but he is just an actor delivering lines. Sure, he says them nicely, but I’m beginning to think that I want all my superheroes to have struggled with addiction. Maybe that’s what helps them truly understand the battle of good vs evil, of responsibility vs standing idly by, of carrying a heavy weight on your shoulders that you cannot shake.
Or maybe I just wish I could see River Phoenix in a Batman costume.
Regardless, I decided it’s time to learn a little about the Phoenix family, as they are/were a fascinating bunch.
Gynomite goes on vacay!
If you need Kumail and I this weekend, this is where we’ll be. Every year for…. 48 years now, I think, my entire extended family has packed it up and moved it out to this little puddle about an hour away from the North Carolina coast. The legend goes that my great-grandparents were driving to the beach and their car broke down in front of this little shabby motel called Melwood Court, so they decided to stay there instead. 48 years later, and we’re still there. It has one pay phone, next to the road, and we all rejoiced when remote controls were introduced a few years ago. In short, it is a luxury hotel.
Be back Sunday! Kisses!
On the universality of the smell of burning plastic
I’ve always been somewhat awkward around other people’s parents. I consider myself a pretty socially skilled creature in most situations, but presenting myself to someone else’s mom and dad? Yikes. My parents and I have a fairly grown-up and casual relationship wherein I can say filthy things around them and they laugh, and I’ve always loved that. That expectation, coupled with the fact that I tend to revert to saying sexually inappropriate things when I am nervous, makes me a ticking, cringing time bomb. I won’t go into examples, but I’ve made parents glare at me, cock their heads sideways like a dog hearing a weird noise, and shake their heads with concern for me.
It runs in the family- my sister once met the family of the guy she was dating at the airport for the first time, and upon seeing them, shouted “HAPPY EASTER!!”. It was the day before Thanksgiving.
It seems completely fitting that since I am such a raging success with parents, and since I’m always concerned that I’m not doing the right thing around them, that I would of course fall in love with a Muslim man with very Muslim parents. They are both fluent in English but have spoken mostly Urdu in their lives, have lived in the States for about 6 years, and upon learning of my existence over a year ago, decided they wanted to meet me. And off we flew to New Jersey. On the way I asked Kumail endless questions about social mores, the big no nos, what was just mildly frowned upon, and showed him every outfit I planned to wear to make sure it was demure enough. The fact that the word “demure” was going to have to describe me was terrifying enough.
We met, and at first, no one knew what to do with each other. Kumail and I became strangely formal with each other, and as I was gestured into the grand sitting room of his parents’ home, I sat rigidly and spoke very little. They were clearly absolutely wonderful people who loved their son and had great hearts, but I wondered if we’d ever be close. My own mom told me to always remember that they made the man I love, and that helped. We visited often, and gradually we moved out of the formal sitting room and into the kitchen and living room, where Kumail, his brother, his parents and myself all folded ourselves into huge couches. We all stopped trying to impress each other, bonding instead over teasing Kumail and the amazing food we always eat together. Warning me that the food might be a bit too spicy turned into continually forcing me to eat everything on the table, and speaking all English in my presence became switching to Urdu on occasion, which is somehow comforting. I even found that if I just kinda pay attention to the context, tone, and gestures, I can pick up on what is being said, and amuse them with my guesses. Sometimes I say a word or two in Urdu, which makes them laugh every time, but far from embarrassing me, I can see that they’re proud of me, as well as teasing me. They are Muslim, yes, and they are also smart asses and silly and fans of Clint Eastwood and all things spicy. A few weeks ago when we were at their house, chatting around the kitchen table, Kumail’s mom put some naan in the microwave and it quickly became evident that the naan was not in a microwave-safe dish, as the smell of melting plastic filled the kitchen and smoke rolled out of the microwave. There was a mad dash for the microwave and then for the sliding glass patio door, and the burnt plastic/bread monstrosity was tossed out. We started laughing and didn’t stop, and as I tried to catch my breath, I could only think of how many times that exact scenario played out in my own home growing up, and I marveled at how universal family can feel.
