Hippy Hippy Shake

"Mnhnhm, zo?" said my father into the phone, from three thousand miles away. That's code for, "Hello, this is your father calling."

It's funny; Kay does that, too, when she calls me. I'll pick up the phone and say, "Hello?" and she'll go, "Mmnhmn." She's been doing it since we were ten, and now that she lives in Bermuda, we almost never talk on the phone, but when we do, that's how she greets me. And it's OK, because she's my BFF.

It's OK with my Daddy, too.

So it wasn't his manner of greeting that alarmed me, but the fact that he called me at all. My father is one of those people for whom the phone is the vehicle for delivering only very bad, or very good, news. Your cousin in Germany had a baby would, in my father's priorities, warrant a mention next time he saw me, but would not warrant a phone call.

I tried to sound non-chalant. "How's my car?" I asked.

"Oh, vell, it's running good. I drove it the other day."

"Ah ha. That's good. So you're not calling to tell me anything happened to it, then?"

"No, no. I'm going into the hospital tomorrow morning at 7:00, for a hip replacement surgery."

I've been told more than once in my life, by people who know me well and some who know me hardly at all, that I'm not very good at small talk.

I come by it honestly.

Sympathy for the Devil

I know, I know. What's puzzling you is the nature of my game. Where's the story you promised us about meeting Jack's father, is what you're asking, isn't it, Gentle Reader?

I don't like to blog about blogging, nor do I typically write about why I'm not writing, for the same reasons that I don't write about what I had for breakfast, which is, I can't imagine that you'd be interested.

I'm making this exception because I don't want you to think that I've forgotten about you. I haven't.

What's going on is that it's the end of the semester, and my head feels like it's about to explode. Most of the time I love my students, but right now I loathe all 127 of them for handing in their end-of-term projects because it means I have to grade them!

When it's all over, and I've survived, I promise to deliver not only the story about Jack's father (And what a swell, swell man he is, by the way. Too bad he's already married.), but also to catch you up on Sparky's move to San Jose. I might even tell you who I sent flowers to today, Mother's Day.

Postmodern Sass's mother is gone, but not forgotten. Here, Sass tells her mother about her decision to move to California, then, a few weeks after the move, her mother shows up to haunt her.

In an octopus's garden, in the shade

It was my Daddy's birthday the other day, and so I called him, and the Wife answered the phone and told me, "He's taking a squirrel out."

"Taking a squirrel out?" I asked. "You mean, like, on a date, or with a shovel?"

"You're so funny!"

Yes, I know, but that hardly answers the question, woman.

My father's garden is an intricate web of flowers and vegetables; fruit trees and evergreen shrubs; bird feeders and waterers and houses; golf balled terrariums; assorted planks and hubcaps; and complex irrigation systems.




There are hidden traps for some animals, sanctuaries for others, and his reasons for granting asylum to chipmunks while having no compunctions about mercilessly ending the lives of moles are perfectly logical, at least to him.

He hand-picks, then crushes, the beetles that eat his grape leaves.



But there's a mourning dove that comes when he calls, and eats out of his hand.


(If you can't see the dove, click on the picture to make it larger.)

I have witnessed my father hurl baby birds against a tree trunk, and I went rabbit hunting with him once. Just once. He can be cruel, but sometimes cruelty is necessary. Like when I shot, but only wounded, that rabbit, and he made me track it and kill it.

I wasn't sure what his position on squirrels was, so I called back half an hour later to ask, and he explained: "I set traps for them in the garden. They go into the box to get the nuts, then VAM!, the door slams behind them."

"And then you take them away somewhere?"

"Vell, yes, about two kilometres avay, there's a nice woods where they can live. They dig up my bulbs."

"Don't they have babies this time of year, though? You shouldn't take them away from their babies."

"No, no, not now, in May. Right now they're... vat do you call it; they're starting only to make babies." He laughs to himself — ho-ho! — then tells me how, exactly, they are doing this. "The female runs up and down the trees, I vatched them just this morning, and seven males are chasing her. Und she runs and runs, up and down — it's so funny to vatch. Vichever vun lasts the longest, gets to catch her."

It is in exactly this manner that, many years ago, I learned about the birds and the bees. Through squirrels, and the tetras in our fish tank.

I told my father about the racoons: "I had neighbours, when I lived in High Park, who did that with racoons, trapped them, then took them into the park to let them go. There are so many racoons in that neighbourhood, because of all the big, old, trees. I never saw the point, you might as well vacuum the beach for all the good it will do, taking them out in onesies and twosies."

"Ja, racoons are a pain in the neck. I vould just kill them."

"In Toronto, you're not allowed to do that. Did I tell you about the skunk that was living in my building last summer?"

"No..."

"It was becoming quite a nuisance. It lived in the bushes at the front of the building, and every day at dusk it would start wandering around, and people were, naturally, concerned about it, especially the people who have dogs. So our property manager called animal control, and was told that they could send someone to trap it, but we couldn't kill it, and if it was trapped, it had to be released within one kilometre."

"Nah. That's just stupid."

"Of course it is, especially when you're talking about downtown Toronto."

My father was quiet for a minute, and then he said, "Vell, the lake is within one kilometre, isn't it?"


Next, Postmodern Sass gets a phone call from her crazy neighbour, Nadine.

Basket Case

It was when my cousin Cinderella was in T'ranna the week of Mother's Day, and spent a night at my place, helping me paint my bathroom, that we had the conversation about baskets:

"Your mother doesn't know it yet, but she's getting all my baskets," I told Cinderella, indicating the large blue floor basket in the corner of my livingroom. It was filled with, you guessed it, baskets. Smaller ones; about a dozen. "I figure, if she doesn't want them, your dad can always use them to start a fire in the fire pit."

My Uncle D. always needs fire starter material, especially in the summer, when they barbeque almost every night.

"That's true," said Cinderellla, "and you're probably right, she won't want them."

"I don't know why I have so many baskets," I continued, "I mean, I know for a fact I've never actually bought a basket. Have you?"

"No! I know what you mean, though," Cinderella added. "Where do they come from?"

"And it's not bad enough that they just arrive from nowhere, but that they keep increasing in number. I'm convinced they multiply on their own."

"You put them in the back of your closet, and try to ignore them, and the next time you look, there are new ones."

"You too?"

"Everyone. But you know..." Cinderella was really thinking about it now. "Last week I had some people over for dinner, and I remember thinking, I wish I had a basket to put these rolls in."

"You probably did."

"I probably did! But I didn't think I did at the time. You know what I mean?"

"That's the thing about baskets. You get them from people, usually with stuff in them. And when the stuff is gone, you're left with the basket..."

"And you think to yourself, well, this is a nice basket, it'll come in handy some day."

"Like, for example, when you have dinner company and a nice basket of rolls is in order," I pointed out.

"Right. So you keep it. I mean, you can't throw it in the garbage — it's a perfectly good basket!"

"But here's the problem..."

"I know..."

"When you do have an occasion that calls for a basket, you completely forget that you have them."

"Exactly."

"Which is why your mother is getting them."

"You know, though, that as soon as you give them away you'll need one, right?"

"I know."

In the next story, Postmodern Sass learns that her best friend Kay will be, will be, coming to visit her in California.

We Are Family

Lately, I've been dropping in to visit my mother-in-law once or twice a week, for a couple of reasons. First, because she called me a couple of months ago and told me where to find her. I hadn't known for two years, and the number I'd known for almost twenty had been disconnected.

You see, X gave strict orders to his friends and family not to fraternize with me. The friends listened, sadly. His sister and mother have opined, to me if not to him, that it's none of his business who they speak to. And all three of us agree that family is family, and family does not necessarily require a seven alleal DNA match.

Second, because I've got to clear my bathtub of the boxes full of X's stuff.

I know, I know, I should just dump it in the lake. After all, it's not fifty feet away. But I just can't bring myself to be that much of a petty bitch. Petty, maybe. A bitch, sometimes. But a petty bitch, no.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass gets back to business. Later, Sass's friend Ace asks about X, and can't believe the answer.

Mama, ooooh, didn't mean to make you cry

Dear Mom,

Do you remember that little wooden bookshelf you bought at Birdcage Antiques on Highway 8 in Vineland when I was a little girl? The one I had in my room until we moved to the farm, and then you bought me that big teak wall unit, and you put the little oak bookcase in your den, remember?

And then when you left Daddy and I had to go clean all my stuff out of the house and take it to my own house, I took that bookshelf, and my Nancy Drew and Donna Parker books, and the beautiful hardcover set of all the Little Women books, and The Wizard of Oz and The Swiss Family Robinson and Black Beauty and all my German storybooks, and I've had them with me ever since.



Can you see the pile of Dr. Seuss books there on the bottom shelf? Do you recognize the one that's on top? That was always my favourite.

Well, Mom, I don't have the little oak bookshelf anymore. I sold it. I've been selling, throwing away, and giving away, a lot of things lately. "Simplifying my life," is what you told me when you did it, a few years back. And I thank you for that, because it only took me two months to clean out your house. It could have taken much longer, had it been necessary in the 1980s.

I'm not simplifying my life; I'm complicating it. I have some big news, and I hope you approve. I'm moving to California.

There: said it out loud.

I never had the chance to tell you that X left me; you died two weeks later. Just as well, I suppose; you never knew about the darkest days and how I thought the sun would never again shine.

Oh, Mom, I have to tell you about what happened the other day. There are these two little girls that live in my building, Aramia and Persephone. Aramia is four, and Persephone is two, and I gave them all my Dr. Seuss books, even Put Me In The Zoo.



(Can you see my new faucet in the background of that photo? I installed that myself, using most of the tools in the toolbox you gave me for a housewarming present when I moved into my first apartment.)

Oh, Mom, you should have seen how excited they were about those books. Little girls, too little to be able to read them yet, but they were as excited as if I'd given them... well, I don't know what it is that little kids these days want; I was afraid they might all be zooed out on computer games. But books, mom; books. They were thrilled. They said, "Mommy, mommy, can you read this one to us tonight?" And their mother — I don't even know her name — was so appreciative. She kept saying, "Are you sure you want to give them all away?"

Well, no, I wasn't sure. At least I hadn't been, until I saw how happy my books made those two little girls. And then I was sure.

I haven't decided what to do with my Nancy Drew books. For now, I'm keeping them. See, I love all my books, but, like a bad parent, I love some more than others. My criteria for getting rid of a book is this: it's not worth reading twice. Although I did give Cinderella my copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles) when she was here a couple of weeks ago. I've read that one about four times, but it's a paperback and she said she'd never read it. That book, I've read at least three times. I kept re-reading it because I was hoping it would end differently. That Angel wouldn't leave her.

Don't worry, I'm not getting rid of all my books. I'll be taking about 300 to California with me. Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, T.C. Boyle, Mona Simpson, Charles Bukowski, Jane Smiley, Mordecai Richeler, and Steinbeck, Maugham, and Fitzgerald.

You know what else? I still have a bunch of your old books from the 1960s: Island in the Sun, Up the Down Staircase, Please Don't Eat The Daisies, and a book by Bob Hope called I Owe Russia $1200. Did you ever actually read that one?



This one will make you laugh: Do you remember Artie the Smartie?



You taught me to love books, Mom. Oh, how I loved my Donna Parker books. So much so, that I've carried them with me through twelve moves and five cities. But today, I'm taking them to my friends' daughter, Ana. She's ten.



Something else you taught me is to treat magazines the same way you treat books, but I'm going to have to stop that. See, I have ten years' worth of Harper's, and several boxes full of magazines such as Saturday Night, The Atlantic Monthly, The North American Review of Fiction, Writer's Digest, and Books in Canada. Because I used to write short stories. I got rid of all of them except the Harper's, and a New Yorker from February 15, 1993, which contains a short story called "Filthy With Things" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, one of my favourite authors. I'm afraid to read that story again, though.

All this cleaning and organizing has been making room on my bookshelf. This is my loyal companion, Pinky, Mom. You never met him, but you remember Mokie? He died last September.



Happy what would have been your 66th birthday, Mom. I miss you.


-Your daughter

Oh, Give Me A Home

"Where do the buffalo roam? I asked Duncan, the bartender at The Bow and Arrow pub on Yonge Street.

I was perusing the menu, waiting for my buddy Darp. This is his local, and sometimes we meet here, instead of at The Banknote. Especially when I need a favour of him, which I do today. So the least I can do is buy him a couple of pints.

I'm borrowing his digital camera, so I can take pictures of some furniture I want to sell, and shop them around the antique markets on Queen Street. Earlier this afternoon I'd stopped in at the Dufferin Mall, on my way back from picking up my car, to see whether I wanted to buy a digital camera for myself. Thing is, I have two real cameras, and no real desire to own a digital unless it's a 35mm Canon EOS body that I can use my lenses on, but I don't have $1,200 to spare, especially not today, because my car blew up on Spadina Avenue yesterday and I just paid $800 to have it fixed.

At least Hans always returns it detailed.

"You know, that's a good question," replied Duncan, "I think it comes from buffalo farms."

The Bow and Arrow pub is famous for its bison dishes—bison is buffalo, for those of you, Gentle Readers, who live in countries where they didn't roam—including the Woodsman Pizza, which I'm planning to order tonight; Bison Maple Chili, made with ground bison meat and maple syrup; and Bison Chili Nachos. Oh, and, all the burgers on the menu offer your choice of beef, chicken, vegetarian, or, you guessed it, bison.

So Duncan understood that what I was asking was, where do you get your bison meat. I've heard of ostrich farms in Ontario; I've even seen a couple on drives out in the country, but I've never seen buffalo roaming in a field. And the thing about buffalo is, they're big animals, and they need roaming and grazing land, just like cattle. Cows, I see all the time. Buffalo, not so much.

Chicken wings are also on the menu.

"You should call them 'bison wings,'" I suggest. "You know, instead of buffalo wings?"

Duncan likes that one, and pours me a Moosehead.

Buffalo wings are named after the city of Buffalo, not the large furry animal. They're battered, fried chicken wings served with a hot red sauce, and are common fare at bars across Canada these days, but when I first moved to Montreal, to go to university, I was routinely made fun of for being from Ontario, "Where they eat the garbage we throw out: chicken wings and potato skins." I grew up right near Buffalo, as I told you here.

My Oma used to make the best chicken wings. They weren't like Buffalo wings, though. She cut up the wings into the mini-drumstick part and the flat part—the teeny tiny tips went to the dog—and roll them in flour spiced with salt and pepper, and sometimes garlic; then line them up side by side like soldiers on a cookie sheet, and bake them at pizza degree heat.

I miss my Oma's cooking. She's 91 now, and hasn't been her old self for the last year. Her mental quickness is gone; she can't follow our conversations. Cinderella was shocked when she saw her last week. "I'd take the finger pointing criticism any day," she said, which is something, because Oma used to make Cinderella cry.

The furniture I want to sell, for which I'm borrowing Darp's digital camera, is an antique mahogany dresser that my Oma and Opa bought in the 1950s, when they first came to Canada, from an old lady on the Smiths' farm that died. It was in my aunts' bedroom when they were little girls; my mother had it in her bedroom when I was a little girl, and I've had it for the last fifteen years or so, since my daddy sold our farm.

I don't know yet whether I'll be moving to California, but just the possibility has gotten me doing a spring cleaning to end all spring cleaning. I no longer need the Habs photo in my bathroom, and I don't know why I ever needed 57 coffee mugs. I've already taken four boxes of dishes and miscellaneous junk to Goodwill, and tomorrow Liz, my postie, is picking up another four boxes to take to a women's shelter she works at.

And whether I go, or don't go, it's time for the dresser to go.



In the next story, Sass and Maria play sprachspiele.

California Dreamin' [part V]

Continued from part IV. To read this story from the beginning, go here.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
10:00 a.m., Chicago time
on board United 719 to San José

I can't help but notice that the thinnest person in the dozen first class seats is only 40 pounds overweight, and I wonder whether I can live in this country. They speak the same language, they dress the same, they drive the same cars. It's the mundane matters that differ: the lack of French on packaged goods; the way they talk too loudly in public; their money that all looks the same; their incessant flag waving, both literally and figuratively.

And then there's the fucking guns. How proud it makes them; how free it makes them feel, knowing that any one of them, any ordinary citizen, on a day that he's feeling particularly pissed off, or she's PMS-ing, has the god-given right, sanctioned by the government, to walk into a Wal-Mart and buy a gun. Of course they don't have the right to shoot up the nearest McDonald's, but when they do, the rest of the country still acts like they're shocked.

We—Canadians—just don't get that. Never will.

"So what are you going to do if they offer you the job?" asked Markus on Tuesday night as he and his wife Amy and I were having a couple of pints at Wrigley's Field in St. Catharines. "Would you move to California?"

"So fast your head'll be spinning like the Tasmanian Devil in my dust," I had replied.

"Good! 'Cause Amy and I will come visit you. We've never been to San Francisco."

"Well, I'd be in San José, not San Francisco," I told them, "But the city's not that far away." And then I sketched a map of the Bay Area on the brown paper tablecloth in our booth.

"Does Jack know you're coming?" blurted Amy.

Markus looked at his watch and exclaimed, "Great job! You managed to hold it back for an hour and a half!" Then, to me, he added, "She's been dying to ask you that since I told her you were coming here."

Amy and Markus had scrutinized Jack last summer, when he came for my birthday.

"He knows," I told her, and he does, "But I don't know whether I'll see him while I'm there."

That was the truth.

"In fact, I'm not even sure I want to," I added.

And that was a lie.

To be continued in part VI, but first, a brief stop in Hell.

To Sir, With Love

Yesterday was my daddy's birthday, and so I dropped by his house—which is around the corner, in country terms, from the university where I teach—to bring him a present.

Usually what I bring is a sixpack of Warsteiner, a jar of pickled herring, a small loaf of vollkornbrot, and a couple of Ritter Sport chocolate bars. The chocolate bars are for him, for later; the rest is for us to have a picnic either in his backyard, if the weather is mild, or in the dining room if it's not. Either way the subject of conversation is always his garden, and his plans for it. By the end of March my father is so anxious for winter to be over so he can start working in the garden, you can actually feel it in his conversation.

This year, instead of beer and chocolate, what I gave him was a marketing textbook with his name on the cover.

As I stepped out of my car my father stepped out of his garage, motioning me to come. He was talking on the cordless phone to one of his sisters in Germany. "Der Vater ist mit siebzig gestorben. Vielleicht lebe ich ein par Jahre länger," he was saying.

I kissed him on the cheek and said, "Don't be silly. You're going to live to be a hundred, if for no other reason than so you won't have to give me your money." And then I chatted in German with one of my three Aunt Erikas; this one, my father's youngest sister in Schwabenland.

I can't stay long, I said, in German and then again in English. I have a class at 5:00. But I'll be back in a couple of weeks to get some tomato plants, just like last year.

"They're already starting to come up," said my father, "But don't take any until we're sure the snow won't come anymore."

In this part of Canada there is almost always one last snowstorm in early April. Just when you think it's safe to put away your boots and take off your winter tires, is exactly when it will happen. So I'll wait. I can be very patient when I need to be.

Then my father asked about Jack. Was he practicing his dancing. Would he be coming to visit again, and could we go dancing at the German club in Niagara Falls again, like we did last summer.

I said, we'll see, because I don't want my dad to think I'm any bigger of a loser than he already does, and than I already am. I didn't show him the picture that Amy took of me and Jack in front of the gorgeous purple wisteria bush on my aunt's patio.

And I didn't tell him about my new friend, the Hot Chef from the Junction, because when it's your father's 69th birthday a heart attack is not what you want to give him as a birthday gift.

* * *
In the next story, it's clear Postmodern Sass is procrastinating once again.

Only fools rush in

Life is all about new experiences, isn't it?

Last night it was line dancing. And then, this morning, the phone rang at 9:00 and it was my dad, which may sound unremarkable to you, Gentle Reader, but it is quite remarkable to me. See, my dad almost never calls me. Like me, he doesn't do good phone. Must be where I get it from.

He was calling to ask me about California.

"We didn't get much of a chance to talk last night," he began, "And Frances is wondering whether you are going to move to California."

Frances is The Wife. She's had me married and moving to California since I first told her about Jack a few weeks ago, and how he would be coming here on my birthday to take me dancing — with them. But now she's confused about California, the poor thing —

Can you feel the sarcasm dripping off the end of that sentence?

— because I had mentioned to my dad on the phone on Sunday afternoon how I had been in L.A. for two days last week, and how I thought he'd like the dress he bought me in Santa Monica, and that I'd be seeing him in a few hours and I'd tell him all about it then.

But then we went dancing, the four of us, at the German club in Niagara Falls, and when you're dancing there isn't that much time to talk.

It's kinda why I planned it that way. See, I wanted Jack to meet my father, and I wanted my father to meet Jack, but sitting in The Wife's living room staring across the coffee table at one another was not going to be the best way to do it. One needs a more conducive setting for these types of meetings. You know the type I mean. Ideally, the rules of engagement must allow for distraction, movement, even escape, if necessary.

It turns out there wasn't even the briefest of coffee table summits. As we pulled into my dad's driveway, his car door opened and he stepped out. Frances stayed put in the passenger seat. I couldn't tell if he had just been coming or going, or what.

"How long have you been sitting there waiting for us?" I asked.

"Vell, I thought we'd drive to the corner and wait there for you, so we could get going right away when you got here," he replied, and then he shook Jack's hand.

"Let's go, it starts at 7:00. It's just down Highway 20 into Niagara Falls. Follow me."

Enough formalities, for now.

In my car, Jack said to me, "You have his eyes," and then he chuckled, and added, "I like your dad's sense of humour."

They'd only shaken hands and said hello. What sense of humour?

"What he said about waiting for you at the corner."

"Um, Jack, he wasn't kidding about that."

My dad likes to be on time when he goes dancing.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a floorside table at German Village. It was early; the dance had just started, and there were only three couples on the floor. We got a drink and watched them for a couple of numbers.

Jack had a look on his face. A look that was hard to decipher, even for me, and I'm pretty darned good at it.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is this not what you were expecting?"

I work very hard to set Jack's expectations appropriately, especially for this weekend. I work even harder at setting my own. Because, see, so long as your expectations are set at the right level, you can never be disappointed.

"You know how you think you know stuff?" he said, "How you know what you're good at and you're good at what you know, and you think that's just great and just fine and is always going to work?"

"OK..." I said.

"And then you walk into a room of septagenarians who, without even being aware that they are doing it, put you soundly into your place."

Jack is a competent dancer, and had, I thought, nothing to worry about in this arena, but it's true that the couples, all of whom were of my dad's generation, were excellent dancers. Still, Jack isn't presented with many opportunities to be humble, nor I with opportunities to be better than him at something, so I was going to enjoy this.

My dad is an excellent dancer. So is Frances, but she's pretty old — meow, I know, but she is ten years older than my dad — and I know my dad loves it when I'm around on the dance floor, because he can push and spin me around with a little more force.

He gave Jack some waltz pointers: "You should take smaller steps, like this," he said, getting up from the table to demonstrate. "That way you can turn faster. You go one-to-three right, one-two-three left, then again, straight backwards, then you turn and you spin her around like this," he said, gesturing with an invisible me.

The evening was half over. The band was on a break, recorded music was playing, and it was time for line dancing. I'd always been under the impression that line dancing was done wearing cowboy boots, and so I'd left mine at home on purpose. Turns out I was wrong about that.

People always tell me I'm a good dancer, and I always respond that all I do is follow. Without a good man to lead me, I'm nothing. But in line dancing you're on your own.

I watched the dance leader, a man of about sixty wearing black suspenders, lead a group of twenty or so people through a sixteen bar sequence of steps. Left, right, spin left, spin right, then four steps forward, turn, walk back, walk front, shuffle in a circle, then repeat.

I can do that, I thought. I take tap dancing; I catch on to combinations quickly.

So I did. And it was a hoot, if you'll pardon the country bumpkinism. I guess I didn't grow up in Beamsville for nothing.

Later that night, Jack would tell me what my father had said to him while they sat at the table watching me: "Look at my little girl. She's not too bad, is she?" From my father, for whom delivering a straightforward compliment would likely draw the wrath of a malevolent lightning bolt, that is high praise indeed.

It was nearly pumpkin time. Jack and I would have to drive back to Toronto that night, and it had been a long day, especially for him. He'd had the nickel tour of my homeland, one of those trips down nostalgia lane. We'd been stuck in traffic on the QEW, in my black on black car with no air conditioning. We'd spent the afternoon at my aunt and uncle's house with my cousins, the scrutineers. And now he was writing the D-SAT. The Dad aptitude test.

It's really me that was being tested. This was me in the place I came from, with the people I've known my whole life. Jack's never known this me before, and I wasn't sure how he'd like her. What might change, and whether that would be for the better or for the worse. My family... well I love them dearly, I really do, but being with a gaggle of them is like being with me to the power of four. They're a lot to handle for any guy.

Before we left the German club Jack and I danced to "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You." Nice and slow. When the song was over Jack spun me around once, then pulled me backwards into his arm and kissed the back of my neck, and it had never felt more like he meant it than it did right then. It was one of those moments, you know, when you just know.

Much later, on the patio at the Rivoli, Jack and I ended the evening with a quiet beer and a recap of the day's events. For any man, this would have been a long, hard day. For Jack, it was monumental.

"So, how many times were there today when you had to fight back the urge to flee to California?" I asked.

Though I said it in jest I wasn't joking. All that mattered, though, was that he had fought it back. He was still here.

"Quite a few," he replied. "But there were also moments when...everything was just perfect. I have so few of those moments, and when they're gone, they're gone, and I don't know how to get them back."

"Moments like what?"

"Like that day in the diner, before Sara's wedding. Remember, when I told you the story about the guy who asked for sauce at a Texas BBQ?"

I would tell you the story, Gentle Reader, but the humour lies in the way Jack imitates the Texans as he tells it, and the particular sound effects with which he embellishes it. You just had to be there.

Jack continued: "And you laughed. It was the way that you laughed that..." He paused. "I don't know how to describe it."

I smiled at Jack over my beer. Really, I was restraining myself from bursting out laughing. He's the smartest man I know, but there are times when the simplest of things elude him.

He saw that I was laughing at him. "What? What is it?" he demanded. He was truly puzzled, which only made me laugh all the more.

"I do," I said. "There's a word that describes exactly that. A very simple word."

* * *
Tomorrow it's Jack's last night in town, and Sass decides to leave him alone. Little does the Wife know — little does anyone know — that a year from now, Postmodern Sass will, indeed, be moving to California.