Texas Smackdown

            I had a great time in Texas.  My dad has made himself a very pleasant nest, baching it like a pro.  And while he says that the one thing that disturbs him is opening a closet and finding empty shelves, he’s pretty darn eager to jettison all the non-relevant stuff in the kitchen cupboards.  How is it that I was great at uncluttering him.  Actually, there wasn’t much to do; my efficient and energetic sister has already done all the hard stuff, and now the house is set up like a marvelous machine.

            It’s a beautiful thing.  And it will never happen in my house. (Sigh)

            So—turns out, my dad is pretty dang good and peaceful company.  Up to a point.

            The last morning I was there, we ran around doing errands.  The bank.  The grocery store.

            Dad was happily giving the grocery cashier a hard time, and I was defending her, and it was very funny for all involved.  The cashier, who seemed to like us pretty much after that, smiled and held out the receipt to me, saying, “Here you are, Mr. and Mrs. Downey.  Have a good day!!”

            That gave me pause.

            My dad is 86 flipping years old.  And now, here is Mr. Grandfather turning back to grin at the cashier, saying, “She’s not my wife.  I’m just keeping her.”

            Now, that was helpful.

            So on the way out I glare at him and say, “She either meant that I look a heck of a lot older than I think I do, or you look a heck of a lot younger than I think you do.”  Honestly – DO I LOOK THAT OLD?  He did point out that old guys sometimes marry much younger women.  And hey – I AM just about thirty years younger.  Not that, at this point, thirty years counts as “much younger.” 

            But what the heck?

            Next stop: Alterations by Rose.  She does pant hems for FOUR BUCKS.  I could double my wardrobe if I lived within driving distance.  Rose is an elegant Vietnamese lady who is about fifty and looks about thirty two.  She spent years and years doing factory sewing till she got good and bored with it.  At which point, her husband looked around to find her a good business opportunity of her own.  And he found it:  a laundromat, which they purchased and ran for a couple of years.

          Rose made it fun for herself by setting up an alteration service in one corner of the space.  But the area around the building went downhill, and Rose realized that they were going to have to replace all the machines before too long—a further investment of about $180K.   Besides, it was kind of damp in there, and not at all the kind of place that suited her.  So when the lease was up, she jumped on the opportunities that come with global financial crisis, found herself a neat little empty space in a nice part of town at a vastly reduced rate, and with the help of a very talented architect son, established the most elegant, classy, delightful shop ever: the afore named Alterations by Rose.

          She has a lovely ecru lobby with ecru couch and chairs, very Swedish in its clean simplicity, lovely ecru on ecru floral screens in the front window, very asian ditto, and two generous and secure dressing rooms.  It’s like a Beverly Hills boutique, right there in the middle of a nice little Texas strip mall.  And behind the counter, which floats in the middle of the long space, she allows you to see her neat and powerful machines, all lined up down the wall – but more wonderfully, we see all of her thread, big cones of it in all colors hung on hundreds of pegs, all organized by graduating hue—a rainbow wall of thread.

         Rose, herself, is dressed in a white and silver brocade vest and neat black slacks, and greets my father fondly and by name.  She is cheerful, lovely, hospitable and voluble.

          My father turns her attention to me.  “And this is my daughter,” he says.  Rose sucks in her breath. “I don’t believe that!” she says in her clipped Vietnamese accent.  “I don’t believe you can have a daughter like—“ and she indicates me with one elegant hand.

            Uh-huh.

            My father gleefully fills in the blanks: “You didn’t think I was ancient enough to have a daughter this old?”

            She looks horrified.  “No.  NO,” she says.  Then puts her hand on my arm and says to me: “What he said I said – I didn’t say that.”

            I am still not sure what she did say. 

            Now you know the power that has formed my character pretty much from birth.  For me, it was either dissolve into a mass of flustered-to-dissolved self-confidence at a very young age, barely surviving life—or develop an immunity to chutzpah and brazen my way through the slings and arrows.

           Or combine the two and become slightly schizoid.

           Guess which way I went?

           Once thing I’ve decided for certain: I am not going to be looking into any more mirrors any time soon.