Generations
Nov. 6th, 2007 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogWe've received word in the past day that my brother-in-law is probably too unstable to be sent home, and that it's just a matter of time. One of my ways of dealing with grief is to find something to bring out laughing, the heartier the better, and one of my surefire sources for that is watching Kevin Smith's movie Dogma.
For all the controversy it generated, it really contains a lot of genuine spirituality, such as Salma Hayek's character (admittedly, fresh off a scene as a stripper) saying,
When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you HAVE faith.
For me, all denominations aside, there's one aspect of afterlife I absolutely have faith in: that we live on in the lives of the people we touch and in the memories of the good we did in the world. Nothing brings that home more, or better, than seeing it in your own children.
I am not making a trip this week for the dead or the dying, but to reconnect with the parts of their lives that still carry on. I regret how easy it is to lose touch with them over months and miles, but no matter what, we're still family, and still bound by the common experiences and memories that bind us.
----
Some of this mushiness comes about because of an unrelated development: Emily has just become a coffee drinker.
She hemmed and hawed about it, but finally got to the point of asking me over the weekend how to measure the grounds and how much water to put in the carafe. The past two mornings, I've had leftover coffee to drink from her efforts, and they reminded me in the most touching of ways why I never became a coffee drinker until long past her age:
My mother made perhaps the worst coffee in the known universe.
Some of it may have been the cheapness of the product (Maxwell House was as good as it got, and if a better price "fell off the truck" at Rock Bottom, that's what we'd get), and some the age of the electric percolator, but mostly, I think, it was the recipe. Mom and Dad definitely kicked it old-school with the adage about "a scoop for every cup, plus one for the pot." I never quite understood that last part; was it chemistry, physics or some kind of metaphysics which assumed that "the pot" would feel bad if you didn't offer it up a scoop of sacrifice?
As a result, the 10W-40 liquid in the kitchen could only be described as English coffee was described to me, several years later, when I moved there: seldom drunk and rarely drinkable. I stuck to milk and, yes, the occasional shot of Coke at 6 a.m. When I went off to college, Mom included a hot pot in the obligatory CARE package, and when a week of latenighters made me finally resort to self-caffeination, I dug into it and discovered what kind of instant coffee she'd packed along with it:
Decaf.
That was 30 years ago, her death not quite a decade ago, but her essential spirit lives on in a granddaughter who she did meet, and know, and adore. And who still has as much to learn about making coffee as my mother ever did:)
For all the controversy it generated, it really contains a lot of genuine spirituality, such as Salma Hayek's character (admittedly, fresh off a scene as a stripper) saying,
When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you HAVE faith.
For me, all denominations aside, there's one aspect of afterlife I absolutely have faith in: that we live on in the lives of the people we touch and in the memories of the good we did in the world. Nothing brings that home more, or better, than seeing it in your own children.
I am not making a trip this week for the dead or the dying, but to reconnect with the parts of their lives that still carry on. I regret how easy it is to lose touch with them over months and miles, but no matter what, we're still family, and still bound by the common experiences and memories that bind us.
----
Some of this mushiness comes about because of an unrelated development: Emily has just become a coffee drinker.
She hemmed and hawed about it, but finally got to the point of asking me over the weekend how to measure the grounds and how much water to put in the carafe. The past two mornings, I've had leftover coffee to drink from her efforts, and they reminded me in the most touching of ways why I never became a coffee drinker until long past her age:
My mother made perhaps the worst coffee in the known universe.
Some of it may have been the cheapness of the product (Maxwell House was as good as it got, and if a better price "fell off the truck" at Rock Bottom, that's what we'd get), and some the age of the electric percolator, but mostly, I think, it was the recipe. Mom and Dad definitely kicked it old-school with the adage about "a scoop for every cup, plus one for the pot." I never quite understood that last part; was it chemistry, physics or some kind of metaphysics which assumed that "the pot" would feel bad if you didn't offer it up a scoop of sacrifice?
As a result, the 10W-40 liquid in the kitchen could only be described as English coffee was described to me, several years later, when I moved there: seldom drunk and rarely drinkable. I stuck to milk and, yes, the occasional shot of Coke at 6 a.m. When I went off to college, Mom included a hot pot in the obligatory CARE package, and when a week of latenighters made me finally resort to self-caffeination, I dug into it and discovered what kind of instant coffee she'd packed along with it:
Decaf.
That was 30 years ago, her death not quite a decade ago, but her essential spirit lives on in a granddaughter who she did meet, and know, and adore. And who still has as much to learn about making coffee as my mother ever did:)