A great wall, a great find

For years I have ignored the other half of the large strip shopping mall which houses my thrift superstore, but I wandered over there recently and discovered an Asian supermarket called Great Wall.  It had the potatoes and yams and broccoli I buy at 2/3 to half the price I generally pay, and other things I didn't know about, like Japanese yams, and things I wouldn't know how to cook, like many bins of root vegetables.  Bottles of fish and other sweet or tangy sauces were cheaper too.

Best of all was the fish department, which was like being down at the docks after the boats arrive.  Sea scallops were 9.99, whereas they're generally 12-14.99 where I shop.  I love the much smaller bay scallops, and they were 4.99!  I bought 3/4 lb.

I cooked them up over high heat at the stove using my iron skillet which already had 2 or 3 days worth of oils in it from cooking up a package of raw bratwurst sausages I found in my supermarket's clearance section.  I added some more olive oil with grape seed, threw in a dash or of water spice powder was at hand, jerk chicken and fish, Montreal chicken and pepper and salt.  After 2-3 minutes I poured in a generous dollop of the wine I was sipping, then thickened it by pouring in some Panako seasoned seafood bread crumbs, stirred the mess around and reduced the flame to medium and 2-3 minutes later I had a tasty plateful of scallops, green beans and half a Japanese yam.

There's little time-consuming work and no recipe-reading for cooking in my house.  This meal took about four minutes of work at the stove or counter to put on the table, I put the washed yam in the oven at 350 earlier and the canned green beans in the micro at the 3-minure mark.  All my cooking is based upon my experiences as a young man between semesters for four years working during summers at a busy Nantucket seafood restaurant as a dishwasher then fry cook then broiler man, and in a fancy Aspen restaurant under Austrian owners/operators during winters as a salad tosser then breakfast cook then nighttime saute-chef, and I cook by time and temperature, and sight and touch (with a fork of course).

Hey Danny

Later this month my youngest child, Danny, will have a birthday.  He'll be entering his fourth decade, certainly a fully mature adult now in terms of physical and brain development, although psychologically he might be far short of that as a result of the stunting mental debility his mother forced upon him and his two older brothers when all three were tender minors during the long divorce, when she and her two family-wrecking divorce lawyers thrust these three children smack into the middle of the litigation maelstorm by filing an "unconscionable" subsidiary lawsuit in their names, later labeled a "harassment petition" by the court when it sanctioned her and threw it out.  (A good linebacker and an excellent fullback, he claimed during the divorce that I "crushed [his] spirit" because I didn't celebrate a TD he scored well enough and so he would never play football again; do you think those were his words, or the phrasing of his mother's and his oldest brother's counselor, the deeply conflicted and court-barred Meg Sullivan, LCSW?)

This is termed Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), the overbearing of a not-fully-developed childish mind via emotional pressure applied to minors to induce them to reject permanently the other parent by a short-sighted needy parent, often as in this case with the help of a large coterie of so-called professionals who engage in quackery and hang out at the courthouse seeking paid work.  It is often termed child abuse, and it is alive and well, though largely hidden, in the American domestic law system perpetrated by the governing rubric of "best interests of the child" in our "mother knows best" biased courts wherein the woman's word is always taken at face value and the man's word is always suspect until finally, as in my case after years of litigation costing me a quarter million dollars (I couldn't get out of the endless litigation), the woman badly overplays her hand and gets sanctioned or assessed costs.  (We generally had fun on our court-ordered visitation but then I would be accused of bringing him home on time but "too tired" to finish his homework, or doing what I wanted to do instead of what they wanted to do, or letting him burn off a sparkler while supervised in the driveway on July 4th when didn't I know that months earlier he'd had a pyromaniac incident in an Arlington park with a friend?--No, because his mother never told me--and we'd be off on another expensive, time-consuming round of hearings over whether I was a properly fit parent; eventually I ran out of money, the children stopped coming in violation of the court visitation order, and that was that.)

I haven't laid eyes on Danny in a decade and a half, nor heard from him since the summer he was eighteen, when he sent me a letter (which endearingly or sneeringly, depending upon your point of view, began with "Dear Peter") asking me to provide for full payment of his college tuition and fees, which I did.  I haven't heard from him or his two older brothers since, I don't even know for certain if he graduated although I know that eight semesters of college were paid for by the funds I provided; I certainly wasn't invited to his graduation, or his wedding which I heard about long afterwards from a  person in town who I ran into.  (Such a lovely couple, I'm sure it was a lovely wedding, welcome to the family, Laura, I wish you two long and happy lives, and congratulations on your many notable job advancements.)

I have always made myself available to these three boys, and now the time is at hand to bow to the sad permanency of the horrible infliction of the scourge of PAS upon my three sons by, in my opinion, their covert-narcistic mother; once Jimmy, Johnny and Danny become Jim, John and Dan after this month, since they will all be over thirty by then.  Danny, (and Jim, John and Laura), for the last time I will be at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover (Arlington, VA) at noon for lunch on your birthday, please come join me.  (Jim Lightboune's not your dad, I am.)

Penultimate attempt to reconnect with my adult sons

It snowed some today, but I made it easily enough to the Italian Store in Westover to have lunch at noon on the birthday of my 30-something oldest son hoping that he would finally drop by (he lives locally), to try to re-establish familial relations with his father after over a decade of radio silence from him towards all Lambertons stemming from his induced feelings of hurt over the nuclear divorce his, in my opinion, covert-narcistic mother launched against me in 2001.  He loves his mother so, and he so had his adolescent will overborne during the divorce by his mother's coterie of "professionals" from their perch hanging out at the courthouse seeking paid work.  I'm so sorry for him, and the family-wrecking litigation launched secretly by his mother only finally ended when she was assessed $50K in sanctions and costs years later by the court for filing a "harassment petition" and an "unjustified" appeal.  I guess he is still, in an excellent example of Trumpian rejecters of reality and facts, pissed as hell.

He didn't show of course, but it was a snowbound adventure that was entirely familiar to me.  At the Italian Store in Westover, I swapped stories of snowy traffic rescues of inept or reckless drivers with two Virginia State Troopers who were taking a brief break from trying to manage the chaos outside on the nearby slick interstate (I was a Colorado State Trooper for many years).  The norms of human decency were on exhibit in the store, first responders taking a much-needed short break in their duty to safeguard the community, employees who labored to get there despite the weather so they could serve the community, servers who produced the best product for their clients who had made it there, and in my most poignant vignette, watching as a homeless person sitting at a table outside in the cold was served a complementary cup of hot coca or coffee by a store employee.

I hung out for long minutes by the pizza station hoping to see, or be greeted by, a family member (I have three estranged sons) but after awhile I went to the hoagie station and ordered a 12-inch Italian sub that was way too large to eat alone.  It was filled with meats and cold cuts, delicious and too much to eat.  I sat by the door enjoying it, where I could watch persons entering and leaving to see if I recognized anyone, but nobody familiar came by.

So I left, ruing in a bittersweet way the life I could have had but for this somewhat pretty, in my opinion covert-narcissist who I got swept up with as a young man, when she was playing me against her then-current fiancee.  I love my three estranged sons, but they are immutably aligned to her because she so worked them psychologically (she had them 79% of the time) during the years-long divorce she spawned.  My youngest son will turn 30 soon, and I will thereupon not further assiduously work to make myself available for these boys (now men) henceforth, a victory for the mother-knows-best bias of Western courts which culminates often in PAS (research Parental Alienation Syndrome, it should curdle your hairs).

     

Presidents Day 2019

Yesterday being a holiday, I went at noon to the Lost Dog Cafe to dine, as is my custom.  I ordered the spinach bacon feta pie, which also contained mozzarella cheese and basil.

As usual, my companion the Empty Chair silently took in everything I had to say, displaying in its structure an inherent strength within.  This contemplation on my part led me to wonder about the strength of character of adults who casually break blood bonds and human norms of decency in rejecting an entire family line and casting aside the full dictate of the 5th Commandment.

The pizza was delicious and there was more than enough to accommodate anyone who might happen by.  No one did, so leaving behind a part of my meal as a good-luck omen for the next time, I left.

My oldest son, who is in his thirties, has a birthday next, and I think I'll try something different on that day.  At noon on that day I'll be in the bustling Italian Store across the street and up the block from the Lost Dog, ordering its New York style pizza to consume at one of the booths or counters inside the store.

Perhaps one or more of my estranged sons, or the one daughter-in-law I know about (I've never met her), will display common human kindness and join me.  After that my youngest son has a birthday, wherein he will enter his thirties, and after more than a decade spent always being available for them, I'll stop trying to hold the door open for them to overcome their adolescent-induced anger at me from the divorce, abetted mightily by their mother's manipulation of them at the time and since then.

Last holiday chance

It's President's Day federal holiday today, so at noon I'll be taking lunch at The Lost Dog Cafe in Westover as is my wont on holidays and birthdays in the hopes that St. Nick will soon be there.  Of course I mean my three sons JJ&D, not Chris Kringle, who haven't communicated with me or any family member on my side since before the divorce wars were finally final last decade when my legacy and estate became a dried-out husk after years of litigation which included the three of them suing me as tender minors under the directions of their mother--an anti-public policy reprehensible stance which got "their" case, labelled a "harassment petition" by the judge and "unjustified" by the appellant court, tossed and she was assessed almost $50,000 in sanctions and costs.

Ah, divorce.  How can someone who formerly professed to love you and who bore your children turn on the other parent so underhandedly and work so viciously and long to diabolically murder the childhoods of your precious offspring by deliberately inserting them so intimately in the seemingly endless divorce litigation and its forever aftermath?

I hope to see one or more of the boys at lunch, or all of them plus Laura too, the only spouse I know about (stemming from a neighbor's vague comment plus a search on the good ol' Internet), because this is the last holiday I'm going to tilt at the windmill of possible rapprochement after a decade of dining with the empty chair.  This winter the last of the lads will turn thirty and after that I'll dispense with providing a set and customary place where on special days we can meet in a known public venue to start getting on with the first day of the rest of our lives.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a real and pernicious form of child abuse, Sharon Rogers Lightbourne.  Shame on anyone who even tangentially participates in it, including Victor, Meg, Bill, Joe and all the psychologists their mother took them to, both known and unknown to me, too numerous to list here.

Home again

I returned home from my little six-day trip to North Carolina last month on the day after my college friend and host Jimmy and I went to tour Southport, a seaside town near where his girlfriend lives on Oak Island and where Jimmy has contemplated moving to.  On the day I left I got up before dawn and made the 363 mile drive in good time, arriving back home early in the afternoon.

It was an eventful trip, despite the three days that involved travel, during which I saw my closest cousin, visited with my university buddy, and we toured three North Carolina towns looking for houses he might inquire about to buy.  We partook in local food, especially seafood, local beer, and paid our respects to a vanishing breed by attending the burial services of a World War II veteran.

My favorite parts among many were getting up early every day to take pictures of sunrise, touring seaports especially Oriental and Southport, relaxing in Jimmy's house on stilts on the water as darkness descended and the bustle of the day calmed down, and making calls to friends from college to start planning our 50th-year reunion of our arrival as teenage newbies at our college co-ed dorm.  The worst part of the trip was driving through the tunnel under Hampton Roads from Hampton to Newport News which was dark, narrow and long, and bothered me because its low light environment affected my vision so soon after my eye surgery of a few weeks before.

The trip stirred up memories of yore, for shore.  Seeing people again whom I have known for decades and who were such an integral part of my life in the past was good and, in one instance, cathartic.

A visit to the firehouse.

My friend Jimmy and I had a great time in  Southport, NC, where we went to to get a feel for the town and look at houses as we walked and drove around because Jimmy is looking to move to a livelier coastal town.  Because Jimmy was a volunteer fireman previously in his current town of Vandemere, upon arrival in town we presented ourselves at the firehouse, and were treated to a tour of the station by Red.

We saw all of its shiny fire engines.  The place even has a fireman's pole, but we couldn't slide down it because training is required before a person is authorized to use it.

We peeked in on the fire chief, and were shown the bunking quarters, the kitchen, dining area, recreational space and weight room.  Out back was a tall tower which was a training confined area with several flights of stairs (think of the hundreds of heroes clomping up the stairs of the WTC on the morning of 9/11/01 as everyone else fled down those stairs).

Afterwards we enjoyed touring charming Southport, a true tourist mecca, by foot and car.  While driving around gawking at the stately (but crumbling) restored southern houses there, I swear I fleetingly saw someone I thought I once knew on the sidewalk.  Small world.

A trip to a picturesque coastal town

Last month I took a trip to North Carolina to visit my college friend Jimmy for a few days, after visiting with my cousin overnight in southeast Virginia.  On the penultimate day of my trip, Jimmy and I went sightseeing in a picturesque seaport town on the North Carolina coast to see if Jimmy, who is considering moving to a more lively town than the one he currently lives in, would like to move there.

His girlfriend lives near there, and it is in that town where he presented her with a ring a year or so ago to represent the current state of their relationship.  Plus, he told me, there is a restaurant on the main drag in that town which has terrific loaded hotdogs for very cheap.

Disappointingly, the establishment was closed since it was a Monday.  I guess we should have checked the Internet about that, as many other places in town were also closed due to it being Monday, such as the restaurant on the water where he and his girlfriend went to have a drink to celebrate their relationship after he gave her a diamond ring at the local Episcopal church, which was also locked up tight when we went to visit.

So we spent the day walking about downtown residential streets to get a feel for the town after we perambulated its small business area and waterfront park.  Then we drove around town to look at houses one last time before we headed out to return to his house, since one of the bridges to nearby Oak Island, where his girlfriend lives (she was away taking care of her father's estate), was out due to hurricane Florence and we feared that driving there as we originally intended to would delay our return trip so much that it would cause us to get home long after sundown, since I was driving and my eyesight for driving after dark hasn't been tested satisfactorily yet after my spate of eye surgeries last year.