Where the Truth is Always Told

I like to think of this blog as a place where the truth is always told, but that's not what this post is about.

Besides, it probably isn't true anyhow.

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A long time ago, before my wife was my wife, we were driving in her old PT Cruiser up to Plattsburgh, New York, where she had done a bit of her growing up, once upon a time. Back in the dark ages of 2004 or thereabouts, there were no Sirius Satellite Radios or iPods (at least, not for us there weren't) and so we did what people have been doing for decades when their cars meander into unfamiliar interstates-- we fiddled with the radio dial until something agreeable came on. We were hoping for the local NPR affiliate, because we're Jewish and educated and white and all, and we might have found it, I'm not exactly sure. It was 90 point somethingorother, but it was the lovely, friendly baritone voice that stopped my finger on the dial. He was singing a charming tune, a sweet song, a song about what it is to love someone unwaveringly, through the years. The song was called "The Thing that Makes You Beautiful," and the warm, rich voice that sang it through the plain-Jane speakers of that PT Cruiser was Michael Cooney.

It asks a simple, sweet, honest question of a love:

"Won't you let me be your mirror,
Where the truth is always told?"

And, really, isn't that what we all want from the one we love?

I made sure to remember Cooney's name when it was announced by the probably plaid-shirt-wearing DJ, or maybe the future Mrs. Apron wrote it down on a scratch piece of paper. I don't remember but, either way, it stuck. When we got home from our trip to the NY Hinterlands, I went to Cooney's website and ordered the CD, "Together Again" which featured the song that swept us up in schmoopiness. Because Cooney's website was as quaint as he is, you had to send in your orders via mail and pay by check. I included a note about how my wife and I found his song by accident, and how we basically found each other by accident, too.

Cooney sent me the CD, and a very sweet, handwritten note that I probably still have in a tin cigar box where I keep all very sweet, handwritten notes that people send me, for whatever probably misguided reason. As October, 2006 approached, Mrs. Apron and I planned for our first dance to be "The Thing that Makes You Beautiful."

"The Irish trio can take a break for our first dance-- it'll be awkward for them, but I don't care," I said to her. She agreed.

Of course, because I'm a tremendous ballcock, I had lost the CD, and, with the wedding date fast approaching, we were without our first song.

So, I sent another note, and another check, to Cooney. This time the note was a longer one, full of self-deprecating remarks about my ballcockness, and I also briefly shared with him the story about my wife's brain surgery, as I learned in the liner notes of the CD I'd lost that Cooney was in a head-on car crash at the hands of a drunk driver and had himself undergone two craniotomies. Thus, the title of his CD, "Together Again" finally made sense. He was, at last, put back together again.

Cooney, very quickly, mailed back another copy of "Together Again," another nice note wishing Mrs. Apron and I all the best. He also mailed my check back.

Since we married, I have done my best to be Mrs. Apron's mirror, where the truth is always told. It isn't easy, because sometimes you don't want to hear the truth, even from your mirror. Especially from your mirror. And sometimes even a mirror shrinks from its responsibilities in favor of a quiet, taciturn night, or even out-and-out cowardice. But a mirror tries to discharge its duties, its sworn, avowed duties, in fact, as any promise made on a wedding day is sacrosanct.

Sometimes, being a mirror to Mrs. Apron is as hard as dissecting a particularly painful therapy session with her, after the dust settles, and the tears come. Sometimes it is as hard as sorting through the mess and detritus that is her family, and mine. Sometimes it is as easy as telling her she has a huge smudge of chocolate on the left side of her face, left numb after her own brush with neurosurgery.

Of course, that's not really that easy either.

Thank You For Four Beautiful Years

Every now and then, I get to be a total mush-pot.



You don't mind, do you? See, it's my blog and I feel kind of entitled sometimes.



Mrs. Apron and I were married four years ago today, under a chuppah dappled with sunflowers, on a sun-drenched October the 22nd on a lovely little hilltop with friends and family, and Gilbert & Sullivan, and a celtic fiddle, guitar, and mandolin trio. There were personal vows, scrawled in pencil on scratch paper, written only hours before, at around one o'clock in the morning while we waited for a tow-truck that never came, to tow away an inert 1966 Volkswagen Beetle that was to be, but never was, our getaway car.



Herbie didn't ride again.



One of our vows was to wait for tow-trucks together. One was to save the last rye chip in the Chex Mix bag for the other. One was to hold hands when we're scared. Truthfully, I don't remember the rest, but I suspect we're making good on our promises to each other most of the time.



And, when we don't, we're pretty good at mending the cracks that inevitably show up in the plaster.



I remember back when Mrs. Apron and I were dating. She lives in Pittsburgh and I lived just outside of Philadelphia. I remember the 311 mile drives to and fro, all along I-76. I remember the billboards about Christ and Gettysburg. I remember splitting my urethra while urinating at the rest stop in Chambersburg, sending streams of pee straight down onto my brand-new trousers. Trousers which I promptly threw in the trash can in favor of corduroys, the only other pants that I'd packed-- oh, and it was around 88 degrees. I remember our first dates, I remember birthdays and field trips, G&S parodies and cuddling together on the couch to watch "E. R.," (an early mutual favorite that we later fell out of love with, you know, after the second helicopter crash), or "COPS" (my influence) or "Project Runway" (her influence) with hot Irish Breakfast tea and home-made lemon bread.



I also remember disagreements and challenges and fumbles and tears-- the brain surgery and the miscarriage, but those are meant to be remembered, just like the laughter and the fun. It's life-- what can you do? Life's like that when you have a partner. Well, it's like that when you don't, too, but I'm glad I've got mine. Sometimes I say, "I don't know who I was before my wife," but that's really not true. I do. It's just that sometimes I'd rather not remember that guy.



He wasn't all that.



The schedule's been a tad crowded these last few months-- with both of us leaving and starting jobs, and facing the challenges of DIY kitchen remodeling and me working swing shift every other weekend, well, life's been different around here. And, in many ways, the same. I'm still just as excited as the dogs when she comes home. And I think that's as good a sign as any. I don't make loud, inappropriate noises or pee on the rug, though. We'll save those types of shenanigans for our fortieth anniversary, I think.



Thank you for holding my hand, Bobber. I used to get scared a lot more than I do these days.

My First Barn Dance

I attended my first barn dance on Saturday night. It was the event held prior to my friend Sara's wedding. Those of you who are hardcore My Masonic Apron readers might remember Sara-- I talked about her on my second ever post on this blog, which amnesiacs and the un-hardcore can read all about here.

While the wedding was beautiful and sweet, the barn dance could have gone better for us. My wife showed up in an Anthropologie dress, I showed up in a wool sport coat, shirt, tie, courderoy pants and a silver pocketwatch chain. I realized I would probably be the only person there with a pocketwatch, but I thought, as this was part of a wedding celebration, people might be wearing ties. They weren't. Not even those western bolo ties preferred by used car dealers and Kentucky-fried mayors.

Held as this event was in rural Vermont, I should have expected that our attire would be considered overdone, but not extra-tasty-crispy. It was okay, nobody made us feel out-of-place or ashamed, not even the manish-looking, probably autistic young woman in filthy jeans and a repair-shop sweatshirt who kept fondling our dog throughout the party. Oh, yes-- Finley was there as an invited canine guest. He cowered under the table and chewed vigorously on a goat bone.

Yes, there was shish-ka-goat.

Now that I have experienced my first barn dance, I feel like I should impart some of my accrued wisdom to you, in case you happen to be invited to one and you don't know what to wear or how to act. It is my hope that, if some lost Googler out there types in the boolean phrases "barn dance" and "etiquette" they'll be directed here first. So now, without further ado, y'all, My Masonic Apron presents:

So, It's Your First Barn Dance

1.) Leave the Anthropologie clothes and sport coats at home.

Trust me, you will be much happier and much more comfortable in a pair of Carharts and a blue denim work shirt. Boots are preferable to shoes, with or without slatherings of animal feces.

2.) If you see a cooler, do NOT open it.

It may not contain cans of soda like you think. It may contain a half-eviscerated goat carcass.

3.) If something is pleasing to you, do NOT clap.

At a barn dance, if a "speech" is made or if you like the band, screaming and howling is the preferred method of approbation. Clapping is a sure-fire way to instantly feel gay.

4.) Gender is NOT to be assumed.

When square-dancing with children of indiscrimate age and gender, do not presume that the "lady swingin' to the left" is actually a lady-- it may just be a beautiful-looking, awkwardly-proportioned boy with mounds of angelic blond curls. To be certain you will not give offense, refer to all guests as "Hey!"

5.) Square-dancing is NOT for novices.

I don't know how one learns how to square-dance, but it isn't at a square-dance. And it especially isn't at a square-dance where the caller is a sixty-year-old drunk woman.

6.) There's always another party going on nearby.

Bored with the festivities inside the barn? Take a walk outside by the cornfield and you'll spot several other tertiary parties going on in full swing-- like the one inside the bed of the tan Chevy Silverado where two or three buds might be sitting in lawn chairs drinkin' cold ones and smokin' cee-gars. Someone might even be getting high inside the port-a-potty. And there's always a game of horse-shoes going on, which is especially engaging to watch because the participants are all very far gone.

7.) Expect the unexpected. Facial hair.

Steel yourself for the very real possibility that you might have to engage in conversation with a young man whose face bears Civil War-era sideburns and a walrus mustache. You may even encouter a gentleman with a beard that doesn't connect to either sideburns or mustache, it sort of just hangs there in liminal space, like a neutron star.

8.) Your hamburger has a name.

People in Vermont are very proud of the food that they grow, kill, cook and serve. Get to know a little bit about the animal which you are about to consume. It had a story, a personality and, yes, a name. So, learn a little-- it makes dining a much more personal experience.

9.) You will want to take the children home.

While most of the adults are dubious-looking at best, the children are beyond adorable, even the ones of indeterminate gender. But remember, you can't take them home with you-- their real parents need them to fetch beers from the fridge and goat bits from the cooler.

And, of course,

10.) It's your first barn dance, and you're going to look like an asshole.

Don't worry about that, though. There's always your second barn dance.

A Naked Marriage

My sister got married today.

She got married in judge's chambers, at approximately 4:00pm this afternoon. I was at home, having just walked the dog, and was in the process of trying to decide whether to take an online quiz about Poe, Melville and Dickinson, or masturbate. Today, the scholar in me won out. And I suppose it's better that I was engaged in an innocuous, studious act at the moment my sister was getting married-- better ju-ju and all that.

I never imagined that my sister would get married and I wouldn't be there. Then again, I never thought my sister would ever get married, and I certainly never thought that my sister would be eight-and-a-half months pregnant. My mother says that she saw it coming for years, but she also said that about September 11th. Well, perhaps I lack my mother's foresight/prognostication skills, but nevertheless, here we were, tonight, at 5:00pm, on the back deck of my sister's new in-laws, my sister as big as a zeppelin, celebrating a marriage that occurred with bewildering speed. I was informed that it was happening last Friday, and, Tuesday night-- kaboom.

My mother, my other sister, my wife and I were all there as my father made a semi-coherent speech that managed to embarrass just about every single person present. Being Israeli, it's remarkable what he gets away with. My side of the family all held glasses of champagne from which we all pretended to sip after the marathon toast was completed. From the moment we arrived, the groom's four-year-old son bombarded his father, my sister's new husband, with one question over and over again,

"Can I take off all my clothes now?"

After the photographs were taken, his request was granted and he careened through the evening's festivities in nothing but a pair of olive-drab colored Osh-Kosh underpants.

The boy wasn't the only one celebrating this naked marriage. My sister's now exceedingly ample breasts were positively valoomping out of her blouse. It was easily the most naked wedding celebration I'd ever attended, but then, I've never been to a wedding in New Orleans.

People we appropriate, by and large. There were certainly elephants in the room a-plenty, there was even a bichon that was the size of an elephant. This fucking thing looked like more of a basset hound than a bichon, and more of an ottoman than a dog. But, in spite of the elephants and the fetuses and the things left unsaid and the sidewards glances and the whispered side conversations and the groomly debates about what to call my father, things went pretty smoothly. The kid provided ample entertainment via streaking and beating the holy shit out of a starter child's drum set in the living room. As I watched him cavorting around in his underwear, enjoying himself the way four-year-olds can, barely aware that anything significant occurred today at 4pm that will change his life forever, I was seized with a palpable desire to be him, or at least his age. I wanted to run up and down the driveway in my Osh-Kosh underpants playing wall-ball with the kids next door, or giving my broken Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots to my grandfather for a quick repair. I wanted to not give a hoot in hell about what was going on with the adults in the room-- all the drama, all the tension, all the questions and the doubts and the bullshit because, as much as I like to say "I don't care" about what my sister does or how all the stupid things she does and the irrational, ill-advised choices she makes are inconsequential to me, well, that just isn't true.

I do care.

I just wish that sometimes I had the excuse of being four-years-old. Or even Israeli.

I don't know how things are going to turn out for my sister, or her new husband, or her new step-son, or her soon-to-be-born child, but I care about how things will turn out. I expressed some concerns about what was happening to my mother on the phone and she said, "It will all work out."

"You mean that we're all going to die?"

"Jesus Christ," she said.

I can't help being morbid. I've always been that way. I've always obsessed about death, ever since I was old enough to know what it was, and probably before that. Tonight, my mother asked my sister's new husband how old the furniture dog was.

"Eleven," she answered, then remarking that the life-expectancy of a bichon was around 15 years.

"Oh, well don't think about it," my mother sagely advised, which I found very funny.

"Yeah," I said, "I never do."

And then I thought about what I'd said when I saw no reaction from my sister's new mother-in-law. She was meeting me for the very first time, didn't know me from Hell's bartender. Anyone who knows me would have cracked up at my saying I never thought about death, or they would have at least given me a knowing smile. It's funny how you can lie, stone-faced to people who don't know you, and they have no idea. One day, I hope that she gets to know me, to know all of us, better.

I hope a lot of things, for my sister, for her husband, for their kids. I hope it all works out, and not just in the end.

Hi, I'm White Trash

My telephone rang at 11:04pm last night, and, like any neurotic, Jewish worry-wart, it scared the shit out of me. Someone's dead. Or at least bleeding profusely. I had left my telephone upstairs on the bed and my wife and I were watching "Law & Order" downstairs because, now that we have cable, there isn't a moment when "Law & Order" isn't on. And, even though Elliot was shouting at tear-stained Hillary Duff about pictures of her grabbing a man's crotch on her "Face-Space," I distinctly heard the theme from Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen" blaring out from upstairs.

Tell me there's someone else in the universe with that ringtone.

I raced up the stairs to retrieve my phone and saw that I had just missed a call from my oldest sister. My oldest sister is a world-renowned hypochondriac. Having a younger brother who is an emergency medical technician only makes this condition worse. Every time I visit my parent's house for a quiet family dinner, she is there, in her assigned seat, waiting patiently to accost me with some ridiculous malady that I can diagnose and/or treat. When I enter the dining room, she promptly sticks a rash-covered limb or a misshapen mole or a prominent zit in my face. Most recently, I was greeted by her wide-open mouth displaying a uvula covered in dark blood.

So, naturally, I feared the worst.

Fortunately, this time, she wasn't lying on her kitchen floor in a pool of phlegm or urine. She was calling to gossip about our other sister.

"Did you know she was getting married?" my oldest sister blurted out on the phone.

Actually, I did know, but I had only found out that morning. It will be a civil ceremony, in judge's chambers, sometime during the week of August 10th-14th-- whenever the judge gets a break from mediating traffic court, I guess.

She's marrying the guy she's been seeing for about a year-and-a-half. They guy who impregnated her. The guy who already has a kid from a one-night stand in college. The guy with tattoos all over the parts of his body that the outside world can see. The guy who's a post-man and also a part-time employee at the pizza joint where he's worked since before he could drive a car. The guy who has a baby mama.

My sister is eight-and-a-half months pregnant with this guy's kid. The kid who will be my nephew. When she told me of the impending marriage to the unenthusiastic lothario, who apparently proposed to her while they were sitting on the couch watching TV, my response was,

"Oh. Okay."

I wanted "congratulations" to slip from my lips, but I didn't feel very congratulatory. Besides, the information was presented to me in a very ambivalent way, so that's kind of how I responded. Tone for tone.

My oldest sister, unfortunately, had found out about the impending nuptials from our 84-year-old great-aunt, who lives in Pompano Beach where she takes care of her 92-year-old husband who is suffering from Alzheimers and, consequently, tries to pick up married women in their twenties at the local country club and routinely walks around his condo in nothing but a t-shirt that doesn't cover his dong, as my parents observed when they spent a week there two months ago.

"Is your mom happy about the wedding?" my great-aunt asked my sister.

"Um, what wedding?" my sister asked.

"Oh."

Yeah. It's that kind of a thing.

In conversing with my pregnant middle sister, she also told me to "save the date" for a "beer and hoagie, hey, we got married and had a kid party." She also warned me not to make her beau's family feel "uncomfortable" by wearing a tie to said event. I wanted to ask her if I should not shower for a week or tug on my crotch incessantly at the party in order to make them feel more at home, but I didn't. I've done a lot of growing up since I was fifteen, and I know now that the cheap thrill of engaging my sister with smartass comments is short-lived and only causes familial turmoil.

"Oh. Okay," I said as I put the event into my Treo's calendar.

I don't know how this all happened to our family. Children out of wedlock, baby mama drama, white trash inlaws... it just doesn't seem real to me. But it is. The bulge underneath my sister's shirt tells me that it's very, very real. I know my mother wants my sister to be married before this baby's born, to legitimize the whole thing, but is what's happening here worth legitimizing? What if she doesn't love him?

"Well," my great-aunt opined to my eldest sister over the phone, "after the baby's born, they can just get divorced!"

Yeah. Good idea.

This I Vow

While the day of our wedding is etched in my brain in a thousand images, the actual ceremony went by pretty fast.

I remember the one, thick hair that was stuck on the rabbi's right eyeglass lens, and how I was dying to say something to him about it, or to stick my finger inside there and just pull it out myself.

I remember the bees that descended on us, attracted perhaps as much by the scent of the sunflowers that adorned our chuppah as they were by the sickly sweetness of the Manischewitz wine the rabbi held. As the bees came to rest on the rim of the cup, and on his hand, his hand trembled as he tried to shake them off, spilling wine on his suit and on his prayerbook which, incidentally, he tried to use to assassinate one of the bees, by closing it inside the holy book.

I remember the bees that got stuck inside my wife's veil, prompting many bee-in-your-bonnet jokes afterwards that we pretended were funny, because we're so good natured and we realize that even lame people who make embarrassing jokes and puns need to feel good about themselves sometimes too.

I remember our vows, because we wrote them together. We wrote them on little scraps of paper after sitting in my wife's PT Cruiser in a parking lot the night before our wedding, waiting for a tow truck that never came. The tow truck was supposed to come, they way tow trucks do. The tow truck was supposed to come take away a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, dressed in a Pearl White paint job, with red, white and blue stripes and a "53" on the doors, trunk and engine cover. We had *ahem* borrowed it from a VW dealership that was using it out front to draw in customers. This was the vehicle that, on October 22, 2006, was supposed to take me and my wife away from our wedding ceremony, onto our honeymoon, and into the rest of our lives together.

But it didn't.

It broke down twice on the night before our wedding, and we waited for the tow truck until 11pm. Or was it 11:30pm? Or 1am? Fortunately, I can't remember anymore. The point is, the motherfuckers never came, and we ditched the Beetle with a sign on it saying, "PLEASE DO NOT TOW" because, as our luck would have had it, a tow truck probably would have come at some point to take it away-- to an impound lot. Not a desired outcome.

Our vows were cute, they were individual, they were "of us." People complained that they couldn't really hear them, but we were outdoors, and, like I said, they were "of us" and they were for us, so whether people heard or not, well, it doesn't really matter. We promised to hold each other's hands when we get scared, and we've gotten scared since-- and we've done as we promised. We promised to save the last rye chip in the bag of Chex Mix for the other, and we've done that. We promised to wait together for tow trucks in the middle of the night-- ah, topical humor...

But there wasn't all that traditional muck about sickness and in health, richer or poorer, all that. But it's implied. I thought about that this weekend as I was behind my wife, rubbing her back and holding her hair back as she projectile vomited into toilets in Pennsylvania and onto lawns in Maryland. Marrying someone is when you know you love them. When you hug someone who stinks of vomitus, well, that's when you're sure.

Through sickness and health.

Check.