Tanya’s Radical Art

My mother doesn’t fight. Never says a word. She just controls the world with the ” dishes”.

Tonite for instance. Daddy didn’t want to eat chicken hash. A one pot meal with chicken, potatoes and onions…sometimes celery but she didn’t have any celery ” so I just didn’t put any in there”, ( she says)
He likes onions and green peppers cooked lightly in oil in the skillet and then mixed in with scrambled eggs. She doesn’t know how to cook ” that”. So I walk in and he has already diced the peppers and the onions and is stirring them on top of the stove. The eggs are being stirred, beaten and creamed.
She stands on the right of the stove. He on the left.

” Do I want something to eat?” They both ask. I am there to eat. Most times family members show up at meal time or by invitation, ” are you coming to eat?” I was invited for chicken hash. There is no chicken hash. All I smell is onions and green peppers. So I must have got my information misunderstood. No problem. I’ll have the eggs. Smells great.

As we sit at the table. Mother at the end of the table. Father to her left and me on the right. Dad and I eat our ” country omelet” ( No cheese, no beaten egg whites and no ham) Mother is in defiance.
She is eating the warmed up ” California Medley from last nights ” vegetables” ( boiled broccli and cauliflower).

I wish we had ” biscuits” he said last night. She always cooks ” cornbread” Biscuits in fact are more difficult to make. You have to use dusty flower, greasy lard, and a lot of milk. You have to mix, sift and put your hands in it to stir it. You have to roll in out, cut the circles of biscuits. Cornbread on the other hand. Put some in a bowl. Add some milk. Fry little spoonfuls in the electric skillet or for Oven Cornbread you just pour it in a hot iron skillet with hot grease and put in the oven. In comparison biscuits are just a big mess to clean up. Tonight with our omelets and California Medley we are having “Toaster toast”. Pop pre-sliced white bread in the toaster and butter on the way to the table.

To the observer at the table they would see nothing. They wouldn’t understand. I saw and heard it all.
It is a language that I wish I could have understood a long long time ago.

The used car lot belongs to Rusty
True’s BarBQ sells pizza
Thomas Drugs sells chicken salad

Tesha’s café feeds rednecks and brownfaces
Cottontown Bears is in Cross Plains and sells local honey
Tate’s Automotives sells concrete yard art

Terry’s Market sells gas for your car and your belly.
The Methodist Church is being sold by the Lord, Herb.
The Cemetery has “ Old lots for reduced prices”.

The sign on the cemetery says
ONE WAY IN.
DO NOT ENTER.

Men drive big trucks around
Boys drive tractors to town
Their mothers, girlfriends and wives
Live in SUV’s and mini-vans

I-65 and East Robertson Road run North and South.
Highway 25 is Main Street
Yates Cave Road goes to the city dumpsters

The Post Office is closed from 11-12
The dump closed mostly on Tuesdays and all day Wednesdays

The High School was built in a hole
The City Hall is on a hill
And the highest place in town is Terry’s Mkt Gas.

You can’t get your toes cut
Your nails polished
Or your back rubbed.

Shear Drama does more than cut hair
The Barber Shop doesn’t mind “ drop ins”
Randall and Paul Carr giveaway adopted mules and horses

Sherri’s will write your name most anywhere
At Fern Hill you can bring home some “ fainting goats”
Jerri will style your hair
The Doctor will shoot you
Dan Green can drug you.

The city limit borders the highway
You can beer in the gas station and the grocery store
There are no liquor stores.
Three bootleggers are there to serve you.

The park is mostly empty.
The Farmers Bank has two drive thru lanes
Tesha has one bench…only for two.

There is one bank
One “ official coffee shop”
One grocery store
One Dollar General
Several gas station on the interstate exit.
One Church of Christ
One Baptist Church
Two Methodist Churches
Mostly Segregated
No Jews. No Catholics and few Yankees.

You can ride a horse
Be caught dead on a bicycle
And even ride your lawnmower to town

Freedom: Nothing left to lose or pay for.

Maturity: Been there, done that.

Rich: Appreciating all the things you do have
Mature: When I’ve eaten more manure than you can imagine

Poor: Spending money to get the things you already have

Intelligent: Smarter than you

In love: A new and sometimes distorted sense of reality

Mid-life crisis: I’m not sexy anymore and I don’t like it.

Lonely: Nobody to share meals, ideas and time with

Sollitude: Being alone and liking every minute of it.

Retired: I don’t do that any more and I don’t know who I am either.

Investment: Spent way too much money on the front end

Crazy: Their opinion is way different than mine Childish: My own way in spite of the consequences.

Smart: Did it in a few steps without a mess or extra costs

Bless your heart: You are in deep shit and there’s nothing you can do about it

Just let me Cry sometimes
When I need to be alone
When I don’t have the words to express
My tiredness
My lack of communication
My distance from you
My disgust with myself.

Just let me Cry sometimes
When I need to figure out
that this is my life and you can’t always fix it for me

Just let me cry…sometimes
So I can believe that your life doesn’t fall apart when my does

Just let me cry…sometimes
So I can figure out things for myself
that a nap can change the world
and a tear won’t destroy it.

Just let me cry…
And say its okay
that you will love me even when I don’t love myself

And then when you look at me
You say its okay
I cry and you love me anyway

To this day I don’t think it is a good idea.  Money sent to ” help” one only seems to turn into a very painful situation for all. If you give to one the other one will say, ” you didn’t give it to me.”  There is no such thing as giving without expecting something in return, even if it is a thank you. Even thank you’s seem to be scarce.  I expect someone to do something with it to help them  I don’t intend to finance your problems, your habits or your other friends.  If I give it to you then you should ” do better” with it than if I had not given it to you.

Such as if I give you $ 500.00  and you buy a lottery ticket.  You are in big trouble with me.  If you buy you a new set of tires, good.  You might be safer on the road.  If you buy your friend tires … bad. 

I have given people money and in the end I am feeling bad.  One: they don’t appreciate it because it came to easily.  Two: they expected it and thought ” I owed it to them”.  Three:  They blew the money that I worked so hard to get.

In the end if someone in your family needs a bill paid.  Pay the bill to the company.  Don’t give them the money to pay it themselves. Two: if the people you lend the money to make more money than you do and they are just living ” too high on the hog”.  Write them a KMA check.  ( Kiss My Ass)

I thing the Bible was right on this one: Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

Yesterday at dusk we drove thru what used to be an ocean floor
Across the muddy cornfields of summers harvest
Where trees and animals used to live
And now only skeletons of corn lie dusted with snow.

Grown for fuel to put in our gas tank
So we can drive endlessly in SUV’s
Gas to replace the once beautiful trees
that saved our air and made us green

We drove into the city full of cars
To buy stuff made in China
With plastic in our wallets
and a pain in our heart
to buy something for somebody
something they won’t like
for something they have two of already

And all the children in the world who go to bed hungry
cause we’ve grown fuel instead of food

And peace on earth, goodwill to all men
except for our enemies in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon to be Iran.
Cause they have what we want and that is more gas

Outside my window in Belgrade everyday Serbs are lined up in front of the German Embassy to get their visas to go and work in Germany.  They want “guestworker status”.  Most never learn to speak German, particiapate in German culture and bring their money back to Serbia to build a big house they that live in a few months out of the year. 

Most have lower paid jobs: jobs that Germans don’t want to stoop themselves low enough to do:  Cleaning the streets, bathrooms, businesses, etc.  There are others who will work in skilled jobs such as construction, road building, etc. but for the most part if Germans wanted to do these jobs at the wages and the conditions given to ” guestworkers” Germans wouldn’t be importing labor from surrounding countries.

The same is with the USA where I live.  We import Mexicans and othes from Latin American countries.  Americans complain about them but they don’t want to work to harvest crops( especially tobacco where I live in TN) or clean the motel rooms, mow the yards, etc.

In other European countries they import Turks.  All the citizens of the host country complain, ” those dirty aliens” but still they refuse to take out their garbage, clean and repair their own country.

Germany loses its culture cause it imports Serbs.  Serbs lose their culture, their families and their way of “everyday life”  just because each is ” too too something” ( good I suppose) to do the ” dirty things”. 

So if the Americans would mow their own yards, tend their own fields they wouldn’t have to worry about the strain of American tax dollars on delievering health care and education to poor Mexican kids.  Germans wouldn’t have to be doing the same and the immigrants could just stay at home with the family, work there and raise their own kids.

Governments like their citizens to work outside the country.  They don’t have to provide social services for people that aren’t there.  They enjoy the benefits of the ” indirect income” from their citizens who send the money “backhome”

Now tell me.  Is that a simple way to lose a country?

As a parent you are not a child’s warden.  You cannot penalize them enough.

If you put them in time out the world will put them in prison.  If you take away the keys to the car the world will total the car.  The point is you as a parent must direct them in the right direction:  ” You drive drunk, my child. you will get arrested by the police, your insurance rates will increase and if the worst happens you can die or kill someone else in an automobile accident.”   So if you allow children to ” touch the hot stove”  they will soon figure out that its painful.  The pain they suffer is their own pain.  They do not fear you or your instruction.  They fear for themselves the pain and the suffering.  You, the parent are not to be feared or avoided.  The consequences of putting oneself in danger is.

Provide:  Provide what they need to accomplish their life goals.  Don’t buy the car, teach them to work for it.  They will enjoy the car even more.  Provide food to nourish the health of their bodies, not the junk or the drug money to kill them.

Protect: Young girls especially need protection.  Don’t throw them ” on their own too early” no matter how ” adult and intellectual” they think they are.  Help them understand when to call for help.  Who are their friends? What danger is there in certain activities.  Short skirts and high heels can get one in more trouble than the young adolescent can handle.

Young boys need protection from themselves: driving to fast, endangering themselves with people who can get them arrested, imprisoned or killed.

Parenting is not easy.  It is a 24/7 job for a long long time.  It is your job.

Your children are not your friends.  They won’t always like your instructions.

They depend on you for their lives.  Even small children have no idea what foods to eat  You have to put it on the plate.  Don’t ask them what they want.

You know what they need.  They need your guidance and direction.  It is your job nobody else.

Learning Languages Together.

It is difficult to have foreign blurbs and globs of sounds spitting out.  Sometimes my ears hurt from hearing that jabber.  Today I am trying to learn a new language, Serbian.  I have taken classes in Spanish at the community college but the whole class spoke English so we just said a world or two and went back to singing our English tone.   Its not the same as when everybody thinks you’re the one out of tune.  Like today I learned the verb ( Z calls it a werb)  Singular 1st person Ja sam.  Two person singular Ti si.

So when you think about English.. 1st person is I am…. then you are is incorrect because ARE is supposed to be for plural… so even in my own language it is incorrect to say You are… ( if it is one person) and every person I ever corrected that said YOU IS…. WAS correct.

Oh well tomorrow the plural… and when to learn that a house (Kuca) is a woman… and a road ( put) is a man.

My mother shows love by her cooking.  When I opened the refrigerator door I saw all her life, her beliefs and character.  Milk.  In a gallon plastic jug with a red screw on top.  Whole fat content.  Dad likes it that way. He won’t drink any of that ” watered down stuff”.  Butter sits wrapped in the refrigerator door.  No magarine or Country Crock.  She uses the ” real thing”.

Ball jars with homemade peach preserves, these fresh from a neighbors tree, brought to her on their way somewhere else sit half full in the back of the shelf.  Pickles.  All sorts kinds and shapes: Bread and Butter, Dill, Kosher.  Salsa, in a quart jar Tammy, her daughter-in-law gave her a long long time ago.  Better not throw it out…somebody might want some.  Some white plastic dishes with fitting blue tops anchor the bottom shelves…probably hash made from roast beef, boiled potatoes and onions…maybe a few days old…still ” good” she says.

When someone comes in she tries to feed them, ” Would you like something to eat?”  “Maybe a cup of coffee or tea?”  When my life seemed at different times to be falling apart; like when I got pregnant at age 18; or when I got a divorce at age 21.  She wouldn’t talk about it…she’d just say, ” would you like something to eat?” 

Her dishes always taste the same. Fifty years ago or today.  Her homemade soup would pass a quality control better than General Motors. Children always love to find her ” candy dish”.  It is there always filled with ” their kind” that “kind” changing as the kids did over the years.

My father, I do not remember when and if he ever sat down at the table to eat just one meal without complaining. ” The meatloaf has a strange tastes( probably garlic cause I made it not her) the cookies are ” too soft” and on and on and on.  I wonder out of sixty plus years as he ever sat down to one meal that was ” perfect” ?

Some people show love in other ways but if you want to know how much my mother loves you must first come to her kitchen.