Monday, May 9, 2011.
Hippo, Birdies, Two Ewes. Lumpy Crabmeat.
Mary Leigh is nineteen today. Mary Ann is ashamed and astonished that she forgot her ritual of relating the story of ML's birth to her, starting with the false-alarm trip into town the day before, ending with the rushed return across the Causeway for the delivery a little after midnight. But that's how it always goes. ML's birthday always falls near Mother's Day, and Mother's Day trumps everything. Even motherhood.
I made a card for Mary Leigh that depicted on the front a hippopotamus, two songbirds in a tree, and two sheep. On the inside, it said, "Hippo, birdies, two ewes.--Dad." It was something I remembered from a card I saw about thirty years ago.
I showed it to Mary Ann. "I don't get it," she said.
"Hippo birdies two ewes, hippo birdies two ewes," I sang, to the tune of the song you sing before the candles are blown out.
She gave me a stone face. "We'll see if she thinks that's funny," Mary Ann said. "If she does, I'll be worried about her."
"Why?"
"Because it will mean that she picked up your family's stupid sense of humor."
I thought about relating my theory that being able to laugh at a lot of things is better than thinking only a few things are amusing. But humor is impossible to explain.
When Mary Leigh read the card, it took her a minute to get the joke. But she did get it, and she did laugh genuinely. That's my girl! I offered to take her wherever she wanted for dinner tonight, but she didn't feel well, and snuggled up on the sofa for most of her birthday. She felt better in the evening.
At physical therapy, I had to pick up the entire box of marbles with my foot. I have a feeling we're making time now (at $300 a visit) until the screw comes out on Memorial Day.
Lunch was a salad topped with a lot of beautiful lump crabmeat from a crab fisherman in Lafitte named Higgins. He gave it to Danny Millan, the manager of Le Foret, who passed it on to MA when they had lunch last week. Danny buys ads from MA, and every two months they meet over lunch to work out the evolving deal. He buys the crabmeat from Higgins, and goes dow to Lafitte several times a week to pick it up. It is beautiful, and I kept thinking that it ought to be eaten on its own. But I'm not usually the cook in my house.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
