banana bread

My daughter drops off  two children full of phlegm and mucous and I am Nurse Nanny today.  It's not fair that children get sick but that's just one more unfair thing on a very long list. I am the official dispenser of Tylenol be it oral suspension or under the tongue lozenge and as a child of the 60's I love drugs especially the pain-relieving kind, because that's what the 60's was all about, pain relief.   My kids received some really hard core anti-drug training during the 80's in their classrooms and I am sincerely thankful.  But probably because of that I spent half a sleepless night convincing my fifteen-year old son to take just one little pain pill following a surgical procedure to  repair a nasal fracture. The star of the high school basketball team, an egotistical monster all temper and immaturity, elbowed him in the nose during practice and that rotten kid never apologized, not even flowers.  I hate sports. Jim agreed to only half the pill and we slept.

The side mirror of my car has gone away due to an unfortunate meeting with a parked jeep on a narrow road and that car has spent the morning at a repair shop. We are waiting for the owner of the shop to drive my car here and then I will return him to his workplace.  Billy Pline, a friend of the cowboy's from the old neighborhood has this little shop on the ghetto side of town and he is the most gentle, petal soft fellow who ever rode a Harley.

 Billy's appearance is a bit alarming for genteel society but who wants to spend time with those people.  My car rounds the corner and  Adam yells, "Grandma, he looks like Santa Claus!  No wait, it is Santa Claus!"  Cameron hears this and starts wailing because she has an aversion to the man in red and who can blame her.  Billy pulls up and his long scraggly peppered hair is twisted and tangled with his even longer beard and he resembles a heroic Viking of yore, although kind of scrappy. His lively blue eyes are smiling and this is good because you can't find his mouth in that nest of hair. He is all of 350 pounds on a mighty short frame, a little gnome of a guy without the pointy hat,  but this is a lovable guy, a friendly teddy of a  bear, and Cameron needs to realize this about the world of men.  Sometimes the most homely are the most worthy.  I attempt to put her in the car seat but she is a shrieking stiff board and refuses to bend and wants nothing to do with this hairy intruder in her grandmother's car. The two of us finally settle into the front seat and her taut little body burrows into mine. It is a short trip to Billy's shop.
 Billy and I talk of many things, the singing birds that cluster in his pine tree every morning, his daughter's nursing career,  the 1926 car parts in the attic of the shop's garage.  His girlfriend is selling them on eBay and she is putting out suet for those birds. Cameron refuses to relinquish  her buried position and I can feel her warm breath on my neck. This was Billy's grandfather's shop and he charges us only for parts, never labor, and I pay him with a check and a loaf of banana bread.