Neanderpundit

We go to mass every sunday at 7:30. I hated this when I was a kid, but I also knew that early mass meant we got to eat soonest. We were old school catholics, nobody ate until we had been to mass. When I started serving mass, I would work hard to get early masses just so I could get out and get home and eat. On some very special sundays, when dad had an extra tenner in his pocket, we’d go to Golds corner restaurant and eat. That was a treat, there. We could all have different things. My sister would order belgian waffles. I’d order a ham and cheese omelette. Mom got cereal. Cereal? You can have that at home, mom!! Dad got an over-easy egg on top of a stack of pancakes with a big coffee. Our favorite waitress, a willowy Whyan girl, would wait on us, my teenage hormones working overtime.

So these days, my anchor is the sunday morning mass and breakfast. Very little gets in it’s way. The three of us, sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast after mass, talking about the sermon, reading the comics, giggling at each other’s jokes. The daughter doesn’t seem to mind the early hour, as she likes to see the people we know that always go to early mass, and to early breakfast. We don’t wait to be seated, we just walk in and take our booth. The waitresses know what we want, and bring it. We haven’t looked at a menu in years. I pray every sunday evening that the next sunday morning is exactly the same with no changes. I hope your anchors are as deeply rooted and as pleasurable.

When we were five for dinner, mom, dad, my sister and I, and Gramma, Mom and Sis sat on the refrigerator side of the table, I sat on the opposite side, and Dad and Gramma sat at opposite head ends.

We had a pepro-bismol pink dinette with chrome chairs that had shiny vinyl cushions. Ugly as the asshole of a goat. They were of the classical Bruer design, and they took quite a beating during their life.

Gramma was a big woman, fore and aft. The chair she sat in showed this by it’s sag- and one day, it let loose.

Now, as I have said before, Lucky sat underneath any chair my grandmother was on. We all sat there, eating jello chocolate pudding out of mom’s faux wood salad bowls, and gramma’s chair creaked. And then she was gone. She dropped from sight like magic, she was there and thennot there so fast we thought the rapture had come. this was followed by a quick yipe, and we all looked under the table. The dog, sensing something amiss, had scooted out from under the chair in the nick of time and yiped, not because of being crushed, but because of running headlong into mom’s avocado Norge, and rebounding off, just to have gramma’s pudding dropped on her furry little head. Gramma sat there surrounded by the pieces of her disembodied chair, the dog next to her covered with pudding.

Dad was concerned, of course, for gramma AND the dog, but then he had to leave the room, his face red with supressed laughter. My sister and I feared additional helpings of slumgullion if we laughed, so we shut up. I gave gramma my chair and ate my pudding standing up. Gramma ate dad’s pudding, and lucky ate gramma’s. Dad sat on the basement steps holding his sides and laughing like Muttley, trying to keep quiet enough not to piss gramma off.

yes, Lucky licked Gramma’s teeth that night too.

Afterwards dad bought a set of six institutional chairs, the ones restaurants use, tough indestructible things.

When Lucky was between two and five, about, she was gramma’s dog. Unquestionably. Touch Gramma, and lucky would go off on you. Four pounds of fast snapping jaws and attitude. Anyway, Lucky followed gramma around wherever she went, sat beside her, under her chair at the table, on her lap while she watched TV.

Gramma had the habit of sitting in the living room after dinner, and falling asleep sitting up on the couch. Her head would fall forward on her chest, and her teeth would fall out. Then lucky would lick those teeth absolutely clean, holding them between her little black and brown paws. Mom would come in from doing the dishes and wake gramma up, she’d pick up those teeth and stick them right in her mouth.