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Published on 04/28/1997 All articles from this issue

Ruminations and peregrinations

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

We lunch at Cafe Andrea on Quiche Florentine with shredded carrot and dakon salad. My friend says, "One eats with the eyes as well as the palate." My lunch passes the eye test.

Later I buy a Bateau for Cris. Bateaus are custard-filled pastries. I salivate - and renounce them. Arteries, you know. Cholesterol. All that gunk. Cris doesn't worry about arteries. Cris believes each human is allowed so many heartbeats. When they're used up it's over!

My friend says, "Life isn't fair."

She's right. Some of us get more heartbeats than others.

"Per vero," my mother-in-law Rosie would have agreed. My friend puts a western spin on this. "Per vero," becomes "For sure."

We commiserate on the inevitability of "falling apart."

"All at once," my friend says. "It creeps up and when you turn your back it hits you over the head."

A day later I come down with laryngitis. I'm suddenly afflicted with writer's block. And there's a lump on my head.

Cris gives me a cough drop. "Robitussin, and I think we've got some Pertussin in the closet."

"If we do it's older than I am."

The Kaiser advice nurse recommended it for laryngitis. It's been a year since I consulted the Kaiser advice nurse for a similar complaint. No point calling again. She'll ask l0 questions and make three recommendations. With blue cough drops, red syrup, a bottle of apricot juice and Vitamin C I've got the bases covered.

Cris pours a shot glass for me. "The expiration date on this is l999," he says. The thought occurs that Pertussin and I have something in common - an expiration date!

Our Denver son calls. "I've got laryngitis," I croak. "And writer's block"

"Read the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and your local paper. You'll get a ton of ideas."

My son knows these things because he is a columnist for "Lo-Do," a Denver monthly. His name is on the masthead and he makes more money than I do. He reads my mind. He knows my range of subjects more intimately than the lines in his palms. He could write my column in a minute flat - left handed! He is also a geologist with a weakness for fossils. This makes him a devoted son. This causes him to fax encouraging words. This makes him call when I'm halfway through my noodles Alfredo and putting the snatch on the last asparagus spear.

"Go out and look at the comet, Mom. It eats not. Neither does it drink. It dances in the sky like a premiere ballerina. If that doesn't cure you call the advice nurse."

Forget the comet. And the advice nurse. And the New Yorker etc. Because l5 minutes on the phone with this son and the nice lady who shares his chicken wings is all I needed.

Mom? Writer's block? Sick of words? What an absurd idea!

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtimecontributor to theTown Crier.