Speak for yourself

I was reminded last Friday of something that happened a long time ago.

I've told you about it before, I think, but I'll re-summarize for those of you with that Who-me? look in your eyes.

It was when our eldest daughter turned fourteen during the Indian-summer days of 1994.

To honor her birthday, I threw a tea party for Stephanie and two or three of her friends.

After the girls had arrived and were seated, since I was busy preparing plates, I pressganged Audrey into service as waitstaff.

Our guests sat at a table in the window and were served their meal and what-not, all semi-formal and proper-like.

Serve from the left, I instructed my second daughter, and she obeyed.

At one end of our long kitchen, farthest from said guests, as the first part of the meal was concluding, I delivered one last mini-lecture to an aproned Audrey.

It went something like this:

Go to the right side of each girl. If she is talking, wait until she's finished. When you get her attention, ask whether she would like her dish removed. If she says yes, remove it from the right side and bring it to the sink.

My ad hoc employee appeared to listen carefully but what I failed to realize was, being age eleven, she was officially over her budding career as a server/caterer.

I know this because when I nudged her toward the table and she approached the first girl, without waiting to make eye contact and with zero ceremony, she said:

You done?

I still laugh when I think about it. I don't like to laugh alone so feel free to chuckle alongside me.

So it was that last Friday, a self-imposed rest day when I on purpose decided to do as little as possible, I wandered into the kitchen and spotted the ingredients of an as-yet-unmade loaf of banana-nut bread on the counter.

Specifically, a loaf of banana-nut bread I had intended to make that morning, to give to our postman that afternoon. The last banana-nut bread loaf of the season, as it were.

The mail comes at varying times but usually between three and five.

The ingredients had been grouped together on the counter after dish-doing the night before so that I would see them when I came into the kitchen on Boxing Day -- when, by the way, we do no boxing* -- and be reminded to get the banana-nut bread loaf made in the morning so it would be ready when the mail came.

But if I saw those recipe components as I made coffee, nothing about them induced me to so much as touch the ingredients, much less assemble them into something edible. And now it was all but too late.

Undaunted, I activated the oven and quick as a wink had the loaf in there, baking. It started to smell good.

Audrey and Dagny arrived for a visit. Then Erica joined us. We all went out to sit on the front porch because it was a very fine day indeed, all sunshiny and warm, and Dagny loves that.

At the appropriate time I went in to check my loaf of banana-nut bread, which was all but done. I went back outside for a few more minutes.

Then I said, I'll bet the postman (who loves to receive my banana-nut bread both at Thanksgiving and at Christmas, and who had assured me he would be delivering the route on Friday) will be here any minute.

So I went inside and spread out a length of tin foil and got the loaf out of the oven and set it aside on a silicone heat-safe square, to cool.

That's when I heard Erica's voice.

Mom, he's about three doors down, she said.

So naturally I began obsessing (it's how I roll) about the fact that the bread was still hot and I couldn't possibly wrap it in the foil yet because if you do that, it sweats and the top of the loaf becomes soggy and when it's unwrapped (no I don't use that easy-release stuff, step off), the bread is sort of swampy and not just right.

So I said to Erica, Go down there (to the mailbox) and ask if he can come back!

Erica began wandering (very non-committally, I might add) down the steps toward the sidewalk which leads to the driveway which leads to the mailbox. I could see the little white truck inching towards our address.

What am I saying? I thought. He doesn't have time to come back. He wants to go home when he's finished.

So I quick-quick grabbed a spatula and in seconds the perfect (albeit very hot) loaf was on its tinfoil runway and I was wrapping it and shoving it into a leftover Christmasy bag with Andrew written in Sharpie on the bottom.

(No; the postman's name is not Andrew. Well; it may be Andrew. Even after all these years, I don't know his name. The bag had, the day before, held a gift for my son.)

I ran out the front door yelling for Erica, who had by then sidled down maybe three (of fifteen) steps. She is not by nature a hurrier, and even less so when on orders from me.

I handed my quasi-reluctant helper the bag from which too much banana-nut scented steam emanated, and I began issuing detailed instructions.

Tell him it just came out of the oven and I didn't have time to wait for it to cool because we just happened to see him coming down the street just now and since I'm sure he doesn't want to come back later for it, when it would have had time to cool, I've just wrapped it up hot and thrown it into this bag and I would never normally do that because now the loaf will sweat as it cools. So when he opens it and the top is soggy, please tell him I'm so sorry that I sort of blew it and didn't get the loaf into the oven earlier today so that it would be completely cool before I wrapped it in the foil and put it in the bag and handed it over to him, because I sort of forgot and I'm so so so sorry. Oh and tell him I said Happy New Year.

Or words to that general effect.

I think Erica may have ignored all but the first few words, this not being her first rodeo.

So then I stood anxiously beside the greenery-swagged front door to see that my directives were followed to the letter and that some other mailman hadn't taken over the route that day, in which case I could sing out that Erica need not bother after all, it was the wrong guy.

I don't dole out my loaves of fresh-baked banana-nut bread -- sweaty or not -- to just anyone, Christmas or no Christmas.

(I'm inclined to be far more Dickensian: Are there no grocery stores? Are there no bakeries?)

But indeed once I had a visual, it was confirmed that the postal employee who loves my banana-nut bread (it takes me back to my grandma's kitchen when I was a boy, he always says) was, as promised, the one driving the truck.

Erica reached the end of the driveway mailbox just in time to hand over the bread and just as I was beginning to form the trite-but-true thought Timing is Everything -- albeit with the caveat Almost, in light of the fact that the bread hadn't time to cool -- I heard my daughter say:

She just took it out of the oven!

Real bright and enthusiastic, like that was a good thing. And she handed over the bag of bread. Done and done.

I waited for her to explain why, in the case of the bread in that particular bag, it may not be such a good thing that it just came out of the oven.

But that was the sum total of her commentary. Erica, like her sister two decades before her, was disinclined to acquiesce to my request of further and most detailed explanation.

Pirate offspring.

Then: Thank you! The mailman, spotting me lurking by my front door, hollered. And he waved, and I waved, and he was gone. Trundling away down the street with his loaf of nostalgia becoming stickier by the house number.

Proving once again, if you want it said correctly (and using five hundred words when five would suffice), speak for yourself.

And that is all for now. Go and eat some leftovers.

=0=0=0=

*I'm aware it's nothing to do with pugilism, but rather with putting stuff back into boxes. We do neither.

Comments

[irene]

Doesn't that just kill you when you;ve gone and told them a bunch of stuff and they "paraphrase". My son usually says, "can you do it?" and generally I do, just because as you say...

[Sally]

Okay, I have to say this reminds me of my own mother who, with regularity, felt she had to tell me what to say - and she'd talk so long, I'd forget what she said in the first place. ;)

Also reminds me of the time when I was about five years old, and the doorbell rang; Mama said "Oh Lord, I hope that's not Ellen!" I went to the door and said "Oh no, Mama just said she sure hoped it wasn't you." My behind was red for a couple of hours. :)

xoxo

[Donna (Texas)]

Hahahaa...love your stories girlie!
I've been guilty of running out to give things to my mailman only to find it was the wrong guy...sigh...I hand it over anyway...
hughugs