I forgot to tell you about New Year’s eve. Everyone always asks about what your plans are for New Year’s Eve. In the past, we’ve spent the evening with friends in their homes and in ours but our favorite way of spending the evening is always alone, with a bowl of popcorn, our heads propped up on pillows, sitting in the dark watching movies. One of those lovely things that Esteban and I have in common, one thing that never really needed to be discussed and just sort of snapped into place, was the fact that we really don’t like hype. So this time around, when Esteban started to feel ill, we quickly responded to all of the invitations with ‘No thanks, we’re staying home.’
And that’s totally what we had planned to do, too. But then Esteban was feeling better in the afternoon and by the time I got home, I got a hankering for fondue. Ever since the lovely FenJu had suggested fondue back in June, but was thwarted by a need for drunken pantscakes, I’ve been haunted by the concept of fondue. It seemed very fun and also Esteban has been waxing poetic about the joys of that seventies staple since I met him. In fact, we actually own a fondue pot and two complete sets of fondue forks, but have simply never fon-done. We have but one fondue place in a hundred mile radius of our home, and it is about forty-five minutes away. I called, hoping that fondue was too ‘out there’ for the majority of the Wisconsin, but unfortunately, I had neglected to consider the cheese factor. Wisconsinites will embrace anything if it involves or otherwise glorifies cheese. The fondue place was booked solid for the entire night.
I relayed the news to Esteban. He considered this and said ‘Well, do you want to just drive down and see if they have a table available anyway? They usually have some cancellations.’ I agreed, figuring that if things got desperate and my upside-down reservation reading skills failed me, we could always go to our favorite Mongolian place, which was nearby.
However, when we got there, I jumped out of the car to see how long the wait was, but was giddy when the lovely hostess told me that she happened to have an open table for two in the bar if we didn’t mind sitting in the smoking section. Score! Esteban was shocked, but parked the car and then we sat in the bar and ate a ridiculously expensive New Year’s Eve dinner (and dessert was Bananas Foster, which made me realize that I both rang in and rang out 2003 with the Bananas Foster) until we were stuffed and I was tipsy on Shiraz and champagne. Then we drove home, pottered around, and were asleep by the time the big moment rolled around, which, more or less, had been our original intention in the first place.
I hate January. I think I’ve said this in the past. I hate it terribly. Miserable things seem to happen in January. Three of my four deceased grandparents died in January. I’ve been in four car accidents, none of which were my fault and all of which happened in between December 31-January 14th of different years. I just don’t trust January. It hates me too.
And this January is already no different. I got news that my step-grandfather died, which was very upsetting. You see, after my Mafia grandmother divorced my mother’s father (which was scandalous but forgiven by all who knew him, as he was a violent misogynistic drunk), in a rather shocking move for the conservative landscape that was Green Bay in the 50’s, remarried a full-blooded member of the Oneida Indian tribe. Warren was a professional wrestler who wrestled under the name ‘Chief Geronimo’, but not in the wrestling manner of today, with the fake blood and the soft but dramatic blows and colorful personalities. While he did have a persona, walking into the ring with a full feathered headdress and a scary scowl, he was a true athlete who worked out every day of his life until his late seventies, and even then, played squash twice a week until he could no longer drive himself around. He was 84 and had a very long healthy life, never really ill until the last two years of his life, and even that, he bore with a stoic grin. MG divorced him when he was cheating on her (he was also a drunk but had given up drinking in the mid-70’s), however they remained very good friends and he was pretty much a perpetual fixture at all of our family gatherings. In fact, even though he was never officially related to me at all (they were divorced by the time I was born), he was still seated at the reserved family table at my wedding. And my mom was very close to him. He was the closest thing to a father that she ever knew.
He didn’t want a funeral, had been actually quite adamant about it, but his daughter from a second marriage had wanted to do something, so on Saturday, we drove out to the reservation and found the new cemetery on the edge of nowhere. If there hadn’t been one tombstone there, I would have thought we were in a random field, as there were no signs, no people, no flowers, nothing, just a backhoe and the beginnings of a gravel parking lot. It was about twenty degrees, but the wind was brutal and made it feel like zero. Mafia Grandma told me to wear good walking shoes, since it had rained earlier in the week and there would likely be mud, so luckily I was wearing my Docs. We were on time, but the majority of his relatives were not. Aunt Brunhilda and Aunt Drusilla had demurred to Tracy, their half-sister, who wasn’t doing anything. We were all standing around the random configuration of parked cars, waiting for something to happen, waiting for someone to say something. Finally, Tracy wandered over to the hole in the ground and announced that they were waiting for the drum circle to arrive. We continued to huddle and continued to shiver and then finally the men with drums arrived. Finally, Tracy announced that her father hadn’t wanted anything special but we were having this for us, or rather, for her and her mother, completely ignoring my Aunts. But then the men started with their drums and their warrior song (Warren was a veteran of the Korean war), in a language that it seems as though I should understand but I don’t. It was a keening call and answer song, one man would yeee oww noo ahn oww woow woow and then the other five men would yee oww noo ahn oww woow woow back, the stand of bare trees bearing witness until their song surrounded us and their voices hushed the wind. I got goose bumps for the first time, despite the fact that I’d been out in the frigid wind for the last hour. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stiffen. It was all very beautiful, so much more human than any breathy soprano singing Amazing Grace in a carefully controlled choir loft. The cemetery was barren, so stark, that it was easy to imagine that this time and place had slipped away and we were ageless and without technology and that perhaps there were still men who rode horses and trapped for skins and traded for fuel oil and blankets. I wanted to squint and look into the sleeping woods a hundred feet away and imagine eyes of warriors called to reverence by the drumming and the repeated refrain of ‘Chief go hunt on fertile lands with many buffalo’. But the woods were stark and barren. There was nothing, just a weak sun and a quiet clearing and a landscape that was open and without comment.
