These days I live in a bundled world of conflicting layers. On one layer there is just plain ol’, somewhat crazy me.
On another I work in a place where people whose faces regularly grace billboards and movie screens pass by me without the glitz and glam.
On another layer I have a whole piece of me back in Bakersfield where….when I go home on the weekends I see things like….my parent’s neighbor pulling a saddle out of the back of her hatchback and throwing it into the back of her truck. Or another neighbor, who regularly goes for shock therapy, stuffing a 12 inch long cigar into his scruffy face.
Another layer is where I live—a small impoverished corner pocket of an otherwise rigid and economically upscale suburb of Los Angeles.
My car is that tangled, beat up, wouldn’t-fit-in-anywhere piece that sort of helps me transcend the layers and offend the senses of all of them.
My grandmother, in her mid-nineties and still capable of tap-dancing to the theme song of “Friends” (she thinks they are a real group of people I should join down here in L.A.), is a sweet layer of my life and a conflicted web of bundled worlds herself.
This weekend while I was home for my dad’s birthday we sat around the table debating theology (um…so four out of six kids went to Seminary---Liam and I are the holdouts) and I sat stuffing meat into the angelic face of my animated ginger-headed nephew. As I did this I heard my grandmother jump into the conversation with her face puckered into a deep expression of concern:
“Now, what do you think of all the naked women on those church channels? Don’t you think they shouldn’t have it like that?”
My brother, as diplomatic as ever, took her concern and ran with it as if it wasn’t the funniest thing he’d heard all night. I, as undiplomatic as always, covered my face and tried to keep from falling off of my chair with suppressed laughter.
Pammy, I’m going to guess that WASN”T a church TV channel you were watching…..
But maybe it was. These layers in life can get pretty complex sometimes. Maybe naked women are on evangelical TV channels these days….You never really know…..
And then, my nephew, one of the best layers of all, jumps up on my brother’s lap, loses his pants, and turns his little diapered self around and announced through giggles:
“My pants falled off and I yaffed and yaffed!” (laughed—he can’t say his “L”’s)
And then this morning I heard one of the women I know on the radio discussing an upcoming album and how she chipped her tooth on a Corona bottle. I stared at my radio in confusion as I heard people describe her accomplishments.
Layers are good. But some are weirder than others.
On another I work in a place where people whose faces regularly grace billboards and movie screens pass by me without the glitz and glam.
On another layer I have a whole piece of me back in Bakersfield where….when I go home on the weekends I see things like….my parent’s neighbor pulling a saddle out of the back of her hatchback and throwing it into the back of her truck. Or another neighbor, who regularly goes for shock therapy, stuffing a 12 inch long cigar into his scruffy face.
Another layer is where I live—a small impoverished corner pocket of an otherwise rigid and economically upscale suburb of Los Angeles.
My car is that tangled, beat up, wouldn’t-fit-in-anywhere piece that sort of helps me transcend the layers and offend the senses of all of them.
My grandmother, in her mid-nineties and still capable of tap-dancing to the theme song of “Friends” (she thinks they are a real group of people I should join down here in L.A.), is a sweet layer of my life and a conflicted web of bundled worlds herself.
This weekend while I was home for my dad’s birthday we sat around the table debating theology (um…so four out of six kids went to Seminary---Liam and I are the holdouts) and I sat stuffing meat into the angelic face of my animated ginger-headed nephew. As I did this I heard my grandmother jump into the conversation with her face puckered into a deep expression of concern:
“Now, what do you think of all the naked women on those church channels? Don’t you think they shouldn’t have it like that?”
My brother, as diplomatic as ever, took her concern and ran with it as if it wasn’t the funniest thing he’d heard all night. I, as undiplomatic as always, covered my face and tried to keep from falling off of my chair with suppressed laughter.
Pammy, I’m going to guess that WASN”T a church TV channel you were watching…..
But maybe it was. These layers in life can get pretty complex sometimes. Maybe naked women are on evangelical TV channels these days….You never really know…..
And then, my nephew, one of the best layers of all, jumps up on my brother’s lap, loses his pants, and turns his little diapered self around and announced through giggles:
“My pants falled off and I yaffed and yaffed!” (laughed—he can’t say his “L”’s)
And then this morning I heard one of the women I know on the radio discussing an upcoming album and how she chipped her tooth on a Corona bottle. I stared at my radio in confusion as I heard people describe her accomplishments.
Layers are good. But some are weirder than others.
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