An Evening Meant for Peaceful Elegance.

A Lesson in Civility.

Last Saturday morning, the air was warm and fresh as it came through the open windows where a bird sang his morning greeting in the oak tree just outside the windows.  I headed downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of hot coffee.  After pouring my cup and taking a sip, I turned to look out the window at the burgeoning dawn.  The sky, while it mostly was a pale robin’s egg blue, it was the ribbon of yellows and oranges that caught my eye, but it did not last.  Within the minute, it disappeared while the sun rose above the horizon.  Poof!

Later that afternoon, Best Friend suggested we treat ourselves to a nice dinner out at a place with comfortable booths, and I agreed at once.  I recommended a refined restaurant on the outskirts of town, the kind we visit only on special occasions.  He made an 8 PM reservation, and once our usual Saturday chores were behind us, we dressed for the night.

He wore a dark suit with French cuffs and his best cuff links.  I chose an all‑black dress and carried a silver clutch.  The drive was easy, traffic was moderate, and the sky above us glittered with stars, a first‑quarter moon, and a few wisps of clouds drifting lazily across the darkness.

We were seated at our usual quiet corner table overlooking the river, which is a view that never disappoints us.  One of the things I like about this restaurant is the seating, with its high backed booths that make lingering over a meal feel luxurious.  I’ve even joked that they’d make a fine addition to our own dining room, if we were to ever change the décor.

We ordered cabernet sauvignon and a small appetizer of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus while we waited for our main entrée of rib eye with twice baked potatoes.  Our table felt like a small island of refinement amid the evening bustle.  A crisp black linen tablecloth draped gracefully, its smooth surface catching the soft flicker of the white candles set between us.  Their warm glow cast gentle halos across the glassware, making the cabernet shimmer like garnet.  Overhead, crystal chandeliers floated like luminous constellations, scattering delicate prisms that danced across the high‑backed booth.  The whole setting created a cocoon of quiet luxury and an atmosphere meant for savoring, lingering, and speaking in low, contented tones.

We settled into light conversation until a pair of women burst in with a gust of noise and bravado.  They spotted friends at the bar, and from that moment on, the restaurant’s atmosphere shifted.  Their loud chatter and laughter dominated the room, making it difficult for anyone else to enjoy their own conversations at their private tables.

Nights like this remind me how delicate civility can be and how quickly it can be undone by those who mistake volume for presence and carelessness for authenticity.  A beautiful setting, a fine meal, a shared moment of peace: all of it deserves a measure of respect.  When people abandon that, they don’t just disturb the room; they diminish the experience for everyone around them. And perhaps that’s the real loss, not the noise itself, but the growing sense that grace, courtesy, and simple self‑awareness are becoming rarer than a quiet table by the river. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our meal and our time together.

 

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Friends I Didn’t Know I Had.

A Lesson in Covetousness and Phoniness.

Every once in a while, we go all out for Chinese carry out.  We have a pretty good Chinese restaurant, The Happy Wok, right around the corner in our neighborhood.  So, once a week or so we order out:  an entrée with a spicy kick, maybe two eggrolls, fried rice, and a quart of soup.  Most of the time, they give us a good handful of fortune cookies, sometimes they forget.  This gives us a couple of times to sit down to a feast, since it’s a lot of food.

Well, one time we got a half dozen fortune cookies, so we opened two of them and read them aloud.  Best friend’s foresaw financial abundance:

Mine was about gaining a lifetime of meaningful connections:

I laughed, but good.  I quipped, “Well, we’re going to hit the motherlode at our silver mine, and when the word gets out, we’re going to have an abundance of devoted ‘friends and family’ coming out of the woodwork that we didn’t know existed.”

We both laughed, knowing it would be true.

 

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Hot Tea and Buttered Bread.

A Lesson in Appreciation.

As I stepped onto my terrace and looked across the meadow this morning, a small breeze brought a reminder that was a chill in the air, and 74 degrees Fahrenheit is a chill when the daytime air temperatures have been in the upper 90s!  Last night, a bit of a cold front passed through, along with a heavy thunderstorm, as it sometimes does here.  Now, this morning, I inhaled the fresh air and watched as the rising sun brought the dew on the grass to sparkle and glisten.  The colors of the new sunrise shifted from a pink-apricot sky and settled into a mundane blue grey.  The clouds were just as grey, too.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it rains again later this day.  In the distance, a flock of birds chirped away.  A fresh new day is upon us!

Here we are, mid-summer.  The days are warm, the thunderstorms are strong, and every day is fresh with new life.  I took note that the trees are fully leafed out and green in their full summer regalia.  Even the fields are inviting.  I went back inside just as the breeze kicked up again.

Oh!  There it is!  The timer just went off on the stove.  You see, the bread I’m baking this morning is done.  It’s a pan de mie with oats.  It is a French sandwich bread with a tender crumb and baked in a Pullman load pan.  It’s among the best breads I bake.

It’s now time to bring out the butter and a hot cup of Earl Grey breakfast tea to get my day started!

What is familiar in my world is comfort, just as the changing seasons, jazz, and a slice of hot buttered bread and hot tea are.

 

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Dead Man Dripping.

A Lesson in New Décor, a Bath, Dying, Waterfalls, and Horror.

When I lived at Whispering Oaks Condominiums many years ago, I had a cute place on the first floor.  It had two balconies, a galley kitchen, two bedrooms, two baths, and a combination dining room-living room.  It was small, decorating was easy, and I made it cozy.  All was serene until one Saturday night when the water came down in glistening sheets along the living room wall.  It came not from the condominium above, but from the condominium above that on the top floor.  The water continued flowing down to the garden condominium, below mine.

The owner was at work that evening, since he worked nearby at Marshall Field & Company department store, and he worked a late shift that evening.

Why the water was coming from that unit on the top floor, was anyone’s guess at that point.  That is, until the firemen reached the top-floor unit and found the door locked tight.  It was an ominous quiet, broken only by the sound of relentless water streaming from beneath the doorframe. With a sharp crack, they forced their way in, only to be greeted by the surreal sight of the overflowing bathtub, its porcelain edges barely visible under the torrent.  The man, naked, pale, and motionless, lay slumped against the tub’s curved back, his arm draped on the side of the tub, and a twisted grimace frozen on his lifeless face.  The scene was both tragic and bizarre, a moment frozen in time, where the quiet intimacy of a bath had turned into a macabre tableau.

The body in the bathtub was an older man, the roommate of the owner.  He evidently was drawing his bath while he sat inside the tub, died at some point, and the water kept pouring and pouring from the faucet and over the sides of the tub, throughout that unit and down to the three units below.

When all was said and done, the amount of drywall and painting repairs was enormous for all four condominium units, but insurance helped.  Repair crews swarmed the building in the weeks that followed, wielding industrial dehumidifiers and cutting through warped drywall.  The affected residents exchanged tired smiles in the lobby and hallways, commiserating over the shared ordeal.  The owner of the unit, still reeling from the news of his roommate’s passing, tried to reconcile his grief with the practical nightmare of insurance claims and restoration costs.  Each floor of the building bore its own unique scars from the incident of a soggy imprint of a life, and death, left behind.

Several months after Joe’s live-in boyfriend, Guiseppe, died in the bathtub, another waterfall occurred.  Joe scheduled carpetlayers to remove his old carpeting and install fresh wall-to-wall shag carpeting.  The residents in the general area heard the soft tapping of hammers and thought little of the work being done.  But soon after they saw it.

Water was once again running down their living room walls.  The wall was glistening with the water dripping and flowing down.

Once more, the residents living below Joe ran upstairs to see if it was his crew that caused a small waterfall.  And sure enough, it was.  The carpet layers hit a water pipe in the floor when they were reinstalling new carpet tack along some of the walls.  A hole in the pipe was punctured, and voilà!  The waterfall.

Once again, his insurance had to pay for drywall and painting repairs in the three condominiums units below him that were affected.

 

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Threads of Defiance.

A Lesson in Obedience and Conformity.

I lived in a homeowner’s association where wet towels drying on the balcony railings became the norm early on.  It was one hot summer afternoon, as I returned from work, I looked up at my building after parking my car in the lot.  There, colorful and flapping, were Ambrose and Un’iqué’s wet towels.  They clung to the eighth-floor balcony railings, the corners flipping up delicately in the breeze.  Although the colorful terry cloth towels looked pretty on an otherwise mundane beige balcony, the rules of the homeowners’ association forbade anything hanging on those railings.

But Ambrose and Un’iqué did it anyway.  Every Monday, which was wash day, their wet towels would hang until dry.  In the heat of the summer, every time the couple headed to the neighborhood pool, you could bet their beach towels would be draped across the railings after they returned to their apartment.  Over time, the towels became more than an act of defiance; they transformed into a symbol of quiet rebellion.  Neighbors began to notice Ambrose and Un’iqué’s colorful display as a sort of unspoken statement: life, with all its messiness and imperfections, could not be entirely controlled by rules and regulations.  They did it their way.

Of course, it was against the rules, by-laws, and such, but in the interest of so-called community harmony, the board of directors looked away.  It wouldn’t be nice to point out infractions, they’d say.  In reality, they broke rules, too, and it wouldn’t be right for a director on the board to be sent a friendly violation letter.

No matter that, the buildings started to look like New York City’s nineteenth century tenements.  Remember, it wasn’t all about not offending the offenders.

Soon, the monotony of the beige façades was punctuated by a patchwork of drying laundry.  Mrs. Delgado on the third floor hung out her hand-sewn quilts.  The Nguyen family draped their vibrant picnic blankets next to their toddler’s onesies.  Even creaky old Mr. Carmichael, once the staunchest enforcer of the by-laws, let his Hawaiian shirts flutter in the wind on hangers.  No one cared anymore.

The board of directors convened an emergency meeting to address what they called “The Towel Crisis.”  Yet, each time they discussed enforcement, someone brought up the sense of community the colorful fabrics had inspired.  The formerly frosty interactions between neighbors thawed, and people began smiling at each other as they passed through the hallways.

Ambrose and Un’iqué, seeing their small act ripple outward, became minor legends in the community.  And while the buildings may have resembled New York City’s old tenements, there was warmth and vibrancy to them that was cultivated that not even the strictest homeowner’s association rules could suppress.

The heck with rules!

 

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Who Will Sit at My Table?

A Lesson in Lust and Trickery.

I’m just going to mention this now and then let it go, for it is a lesson for me for the future.  Over time, I’ve taken more discernment with people with whom I choose to surround myself.  Yet, every now and then I slipped in my judgement of who I let sit at my table, so to speak.

Oh, yes, I’ve let the wrong people into my life.  And sometimes I very imprudently let them overstay their welcome.

And for what?

Many times it was to make that other person feel good.  Well, I foolishly thought, I don’t want them to feel bad that they aren’t welcomed here, in my life.  These were people that liked me, but I knew deep down they were not the types of people I should have allowed in; they were the opposite of my own sensible values.

How stupid of me.

There are many examples I could give you, but I’ll give the most recent example of a luncheon I hosted.  I invited two people.  One of those people asked me if his current “love of his life” could come, too.  I thought about it for a bit, then assented.  All I knew about her was that she had a bunch of kids.

Okay.

Later I found out that she was married.  Still is, as far as I know.  That horrified me.  It angered my best friend.  I deeply regret allowing her to come into my home under that situation, being married to someone else.  Now, it should be no surprise to you that she is not welcomed in our home ever again.

If I would have known that she was still married, I would have replied, “Sure, she can come if she brings her husband.”

Oh, well.  Twenty-twenty hindsight, you know.

This is just one of many lousy choices I’ve made with allowing the wrong people to be around me.  Do I regret those poor choices I’ve made?  Of course I do; and who doesn’t?  Anyone who says that they don’t regret their poor choices is a fool, and a bigger fool if you don’t learn by it.  Yes, I learned a good lesson, which is to learn from those mistakes and not rush in making a decision on who belongs at the table.  Be astute.  Be guarded.

Here’s to a great rest of this year with whomever you and I decide to sit at our tables in the future.

And now, I put that person out of my mind, banished for all time.  Ciao!

 

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The Flashing Enigma.

A Lesson in Rubbish.

Back in the spring, for seven relentless days and nights, a strange light pulsed from deep inside a solitary garbage bag in the apartment house dumpster.  Two months on, I can almost imagine it is still flashing in a landfill:

 

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A Tart in the Making.

A Lesson in Modesty.

One afternoon a long time ago, when I discovered that the Stankles’ daughter had left her wet “M” on the condominium elevator floor (see my essay, “The Mark of Mordechi”), I also noticed another troubling pattern taking shape.

About a week later, as she walked through the lobby, this twelve‑year‑old was dressed in a way that was startlingly immodest for a child her age.  What shocked me was not merely the barely-there-bikini itself, but the contradiction behind it.  An exposed belly button with floss for bottoms and the top just covering the nips.  That’s it.

Her father is a “preacher” in a community fellowship.  Her mother teaches in a Christian school.  One would expect that parents who publicly live a life of Sunday preaching and Christian schooling would guide their own children toward modesty, dignity, and respect for themselves and others, particularly since it’s all laid out in the Bible.

If these parents claim to follow God’s laws, which includes the call to modesty, why is their daughter being sent into public areas dressed in ways that undermine or ignore those very teachings?

It was hard not to miss the wide disconnect.  The preacher man and his wife presented themselves as righteous leaders in public, yet the example they set within their own household tells a very different story.  They were rude and cold around people when it’s only them without the others, but the moment another Stankle appeared beside them, the transformation was instantaneous.  Suddenly it was All Christian, All the Time: doors held open, cheerful greetings, syrupy small talk, and enough forced sunshine to blind a person.  As a group, they radiated a kind of performative wholesomeness.  Alone, each one reverted to something far less Christian.

It does not come across as practicing what is being preached with a “Glory Halleluiah” on the stage every Sunday and Wednesday.

That is the deeper sorrow of it all; when those who are entrusted with shaping young souls fail to live the very virtues they proclaim, the child becomes the one who bears the confusion.  A home that should be a sanctuary of positive formation instead becomes a place of mixed messages.  I prayed that Maddee grows into a someone who has a clearer understanding of modesty and faith, and that her brother follows the righteous way, too.  But even more, I pray that her parents rediscover the integrity their public roles demand.  For the sake of their daughter, and for the sake of the witness they offer to the rest of us, I hope they all find their way back to the truth they profess and convert.

 

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Happy 250th!

Driving around town whilst taking care of errands, I waited for the red light to change.  The sun was out, the weather was pleasant, and traffic was light.  I looked to my right, and saw this interesting sight:

The New Liberty.

I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the United States and how much it’s changed.  It’s no longer a young, beautiful woman personified as Liberty, but an old guy in a wheelchair.  Little promise of a good life, but one that necessitates taking on a crushing job with little promise of advancement.  Maybe I think too much.

The light changed, and I drove off, leaving Mister Liberty to his corner.

Happy 250th!

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