Crossword Reminiscing

My mom, with my sister and me.  I'm the older sister.  Circa 1968.

My mom and Jeff are sitting on the patio, working a crossword together.  It's nearly 8 pm, and finally, the incredibly still day is cooling.  We ordinarily get a breeze over the back fence, even on days when everybody else is roasting, but not tonight.  Even so, it's comfortable.

I absent-mindedly follow along with their puzzle-solving.  I am a right-brain thinker, but also am a slight dyslexic, and learned at the age of 31, in college, that I have a visual processing deficiency that hindered my furthering my stellar GPA in my Junior year at UC Davis.  Not that that has really any bearing on my life now, other than, I really suck at crossword puzzles.

As they joke and make silly guesses, these closet crossword experts work the New York Times puzzle in pen.  My mom is my language and etymology guru.  She studied Latin in college, and as we grew up, she would use our own questions to help us learn.

Little me:  "Mummy, why are dogs called 'canines'?"

My mom:  "Well, in Latin, the word for dog is 'canis,' and when we add the suffix 'ine' to a word, it means "like.  So you can see, our word canine really means 'dog-like.'

I once received a post card from my Mum sent while in Italy.  In Rome, so much is still Latin.  These tile floors grace the entrances of many ancient residences, and, mean "Beware of Dog."  Cave (really Caue, the Latin word for "Caution") and Canem -- or dog!

This crossword-doing is a fairly frequent ritual, and one that makes me happy.  As they chatter away, sometimes clues arise relating to engineering, math, horses, chemistry, physics, or other things they expect me to be able to answer as their expert, and I sometimes can help them, and sometimes not.  But, I love being drawn in for a moment, and always hope that they will be momentarily impressed.


Ironically, the things I do often help them with are not what they expect.  I have come to understand that they do what many people do with me: they pigeon-hole me; assign me roles they believe characterize me.  I know that knowing this -- or believing it--helps me let go of the frustration that comes with feeling assigned a role or a label.  And, certainly, this little game is fun.

When I became an engineer, I discovered that once the world knew I was an engineer, I was never described as anything else.  Nobody knew that, long before I was an engineer, I was a historian and expert in vintage saddles; that I wrote (but never published) many short stories; that I was not a bad small-scale sculptor; that I was an highly skilled stunt kite flyer....

Me, Nico, with one of my stunt kites, a 4-line "Revolution."  Taken at Solano College.

But, I digress.  Here, on our patio, I can fade into the twilight of the day and enjoy the discussion of crossword puzzles, as clues seep into the back of my brain, and take my mind for a stroll.  Here, I am just Nico, lover of dogs; Nico, singer of Dolly Parton's '9 to 5' (when I am all alone); Nico, who misses her horse-riding days.

As they chat, I hear discussions about old colloquialisms, things my funny and smart grandfather used to say.  I have meandered getting to this, I know.  My grandfather, who I called Pabah, but who was named Royce, always made me laugh.  He had many delicious stories of his life, and shared them freely.  They say storytelling is inherited.  I think it might skip a generation though.  Pabah was a hillarous story teller.  My mom makes valliant efforts, but often interupts herself and gets off track.  My sister and my father are excellent storytellers.

Pabah and I used to tell each other silly jokes, and keep ourselves laughing.  But I think the most fun thing we shared was the stories about things they used to say.  He would use a term like, 'the cat's meow' and then I would laugh and he would explain where it started, or when, and what he'd been doing in his life when that saying was prevalent.

Of course, my beloved Pabah is long ago departed.  On these evenings, though, he is so sweetly close to me, and really, I think, to Mum as well, because his silly, generous, sense of humor was absolutely instilled in her, too.  Sometimes, she will be sorting through a clue and she'll look sideways at me, and say "Pabah always used to say that," and we both laugh, and suddenly lapse into a silent reminiscence.

The most memorable joke Pabah ever told me, was one I always felt like a traitor re-telling, because of my love of horses, and the fact that the joke is based on an old (possibly not inaccurate) bit of gossip from World War II.  It held that--because beef was impossible to get and was being excruciatingly rationed--many "hamburger joints" were secretly slipping in horse meat instead.  Being the devout lover and defender of horses that I am, this joke makes me feel just a twinge of guilt as I type:

A waitress at a WWII era New York diner was taking an order for a couple of fellas.  The first guy orders a hamburger and a Coca-Cola.  The second fella orders a cheeseburger and an iced tea.

The waitress walks to the window and pours the drinks, and hollers to the short order guy:  "Gallop two, put a saddle on one!"

A vintage photo of the crossword crew (and me, their sidekick).  Circa 2010.