Month: December 2016

Let there be Lights

Every year at Casa Torres there is one tradition I least forward to.

That is putting up the Christmas lights about the house. I typically fine them as a tangled web which takes time to unwind and check. Then I’ll most awkwardly move about confined spaces with a bulky latter to reach the heights necessary to drape them. From start to finish the process is dusty, frustrating and tiring.

But Nic and the kids love their holiday lights. Who am I to deny them?

Besides, when they do come on line I’ll admit they pull me in closer to the Season’s spirit and that’s not bad.

Freaky Fractions

Fractions caused friction on our daily walk back from school. 
For some reason, I could NOT wrap my mind around how my youngest figured what went on the denominators place from the number of pie wedges on her little homework sheet. I lost her of course when I intimated that her teacher might be wrong. She curtly pointed out that her instructor went to college and taught for a living. I then called the kids’ mother-dearest for some parental back-up but the backstabber didn’t see it my way and sided with the children. 
Freakin’ fractions fried my brain and now I feel like the dumb kid in class again.

Dead Stop

My dad and I got on the 60 Freeway going east at about 5:00 pm one day. I was 16 and it was a driving lesson. Back then our family had an old Ford Econoline van and I was in charge of all it’s 5,000 pounds.
Traffic was light as I got on the road and I was having fun feeling the van taking speed as I pressed on the accelerator. I kept on looking down at the Speedometer, proudly conscious the effect of my pressing foot and how it then moved the needle. I was so mesmerized that I didn’t really see the red lights in front of me and the traffic that had begun to stall. Right under the 710 freeway my father yelled at me to stop and by luck I found THE brake. The van’s wheels screeched and I felt my dad’s hands at my chest.

When we were stopped he looked at me for a while and then we had to move on. I didn’t drive again for a while and I can’t say I blame him.

Lack of Silence

I remember the night when we marked the sign that told us if we should call it quits. We were at The Stinking Rose on La Cienega having dinner and across our booth we saw a somewhat-40 couple having a too quiet dinner. They hardly shared a glance and there was almost no chit-chat.
We agreed then that if we became like them then it was time to rethink things.

Years later the two of us were blabbing to each other at the Pho spot in Monrovia and for a moment I stopped and thought…hey we’re still ok!