I can’t figure out if listening to Chet Baker during the holidays makes me want to kill myself or fall in love over and over again. I’m not sure which one is worse, Chet or Sigur Ros, but I find that both are phenomenal when it’s cold outside and visions of cigarettes and rivers of booze refuse to leave your head.
Tonight I took my paternal grandmother out to dinner with my mom and Brother J. At dinner, mom pulled one of her classic asking the waiter for whatever it was that she felt like eating instead of LOOKING AT THE FUCKING MENU. This is a practice that absolutely drives me over the edge (although Brother J will say that my demand for a varied assortment of condiments is almost as bad) and by the end of dinner I just turned to Brother J and very slowly, carefully, as quietly as possible said: I need to leave RIGHT NOW. There is an unspoken understanding between siblings here that if these words are uttered it is imperative that it happen as soon as possible or I will inevitably set something on fire or make someone cry within minutes of not leaving right when I needed to. And god forbid that we both need to leave at the same time and there is no way out. Like the time we jointly made mom cry on Thanksgiving because we stupidly got into a religious conversation (I NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW) and she ended up staring at us in disbelief and sobbing over her deer cutlet in this weird-ass Italian restaurant in Iceland, as if she’d just found out that she’d given birth to two headless demons who liked to eat babies for fun.
But, I digress.
On the way home from dinner tonight, Nana and I got stuck in BUMPER TO BUMPER Atlanta godforsaken traffic so we had some much needed forced-upon-us alone time. Nana is unbelievably cool. She curses, she’s shy, she tells superior stories in a sweet Southern accent, she’s an amazing cook, she loves to read, and she doesn’t care that I’m liberal, don’t believe in Jesus, and hope to live in sin for the rest of my life. She gives the best advice of anyone I’ve ever met. It’s always a variation of Be kind, Be happy, and Don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about you.
I remember when I called to tell her that I was moving in with my first boyfriend, and mom and dad didn’t approve and what did she think:
Nana: Why do you care what I think? And who gives a shit what you’re mom and dad think, it’s not their life and they’re divorced. What do they know. Do what you want and be happy.
Tonight we sat in the truck in the parking lot that was Ga 400 and talked about the Hubble Space Telescope, Erskine Caldwell, what to do with photographs of old lovers, what we wanted for Christmas (She wants a trip to Myrtle Beach to see the Rockettes. I want to Be Kind, Be Happy, and Not give a shit what anyone else thinks about me.), Aspergers disease, the Cha-Cha, getting old, and how many times we’ve moved in our lives.
Usually when stuck in traffic, I will have the very strong impulse to stop my car, get out, open the hood of the car, stick my head under it, and let the hood slam shut. But tonight, the time flew by and I felt so thankful for holiday traffic jams.
