The Taj Mahal of Cottage Bunks

I could get used to river hopping.

Friday found me at my parents' house, where Spring was busting out all over, from the pink hyacinths (Mom asked me to cut a couple so she could enjoy their heavenly fragrance inside) blooming near the driveway to the weeping willow covered in the lightest of green leaves just beginning to unfurl.

The back 40 leading to the dock was still super-saturated from last week's Nor'easter, but I didn't let that stop me from traipsing through it to go down to the river, where the beach was littered with shells and the air smelled especially briny.

Back at the house, Dad surprised me by sharing that my friend, a member of the local sheriff's department, had stopped by for a chat the other day. Dad was incredulous that despite four (five?) years of friendship, I'd never let slip that I have five sisters. I explained that his wife not only knew how many sisters I had but had heard stories galore about some of my trials and tribulations with them.

Seems the two of them had bonded, both being men's men with the kind of softer side that allows them to openly worship the loves of their lives. They apparently hit it off so well that I think we all know there will be future chats between them.

And just for the record, it's not as if my friend had just randomly shown up at my parents' house, either.

He'd been checking on a security system alarm across the street caused by a window blown in by that same Nor'easter and figured as long as he was in the neighborhood, why not finally meet the man who'd produced me? He'd certainly heard enough stories about him and Mom and it's not like I hadn't told him where they lived. In fact, just the other day, he'd sent me a photo of a flooding in a yard very near my parents' house and I'd forwarded it to my folks.

By mid-afternoon, I was bidding my parents farewell because I had an interview to do with - wait for it - my sheriff friend. When I'd called to set up the chat, his beautiful wife had gotten on the phone and insisted if I was coming that I stay the night at their cottage. Actually, she wanted me for the entire weekend, but I had plans Saturday.

For the record, the sole time I have not spent the night with these friends was the night of our first meeting and then only because I hadn't known what a perfect place I was walking into. Since then, I return regularly to soak up their happily-ever-after vibe and partake of their stellar Corrotoman River views. They're the ones who introduced me to sailing.

So I left the Rappahannock River and my parents behind to work (not that interviewing a friend is work, not really), dine and spend the night with the happy couple. It was notable mainly because it was my first winter visit so I wasn't going to be able to sleep in my usual spot, the screened in porch on the guest house. That's okay, I was ready for a new experience.

Settling into comfortable chairs for the interview, we journeyed back through his life - the MCV blood bank in the '70s, his carrot cake-making days in the Fan, his absolute luck in marrying the woman of his dreams - as I teased out the information I needed for my article and got the scoop on so much of what I hadn't known about him before.

More than a few times, we found ourselves completely distracted by a sailboat out on the water on a chilly day. It originally caught our attention because it was heeling so far over we were convinced it was going to capsize. Only when it changed direction could we see its sails only partly unrolled and understand that it was following a wind pocket unusually far in.

I didn't wish I was on it - too chilly - but it made for some spectacular viewing from our cozy perch.

"That's the most we've ever talked!" he, an introvert, observed. I didn't point out that actually, it was just the most he'd ever talked with me. A shame because he's a great conversationalist, funny and with a near perfect memory.

It wasn't long after we finished the interview that my girlfriend got in from work and the full-on fun could begin. Our first topic was an agreement: I will no longer be just a winter friend and am expected to visit year round from here on out. Can do.

First she poured us wine, then we settled down to catch up after  six months. So much to talk about in both our lives. Turns out we've both had a sharp turn for the better with people very close to us.

But since woman cannot live on wine and girltalk alone, her husband eventually rounded us up and drove us to The Corner, notable because the last time she and I went there, in bathing suits and still damp from the pool, the owner expressed interest in getting to know me better.

When we pulled up, it was clear the place was rockin' on a Friday night, with cars everywhere and a crew of smokers on the front porch. Inside, two birthday parties kept the jukebox fed and a continuing stream of new arrivals incoming.

We scored a table in the center of the madness and an adorable young server my friends knew by name (likewise, she knew their beer orders without asking) took our food order while chaos swirled around her. When she brought my wine, she asked, "So who are you?" without a trace of hesitation.

Best she learn my name and order if I'm going to be a year round regular.

The very first time I'd gone to The Corner had been for an interview with a guitar-maker and he'd told me that his wife said the crabcake was the best in the state and I hadn't ordered it (the cheeseburger had been calling my name). Tonight I rectified that and I'd have to say that the woman I never met (and who since left him, a fact I know only because he asked me to dinner as  result) knew her crabcakes.

Once back at the cottage, it was blowtorch time because my hosts had made creme brulee using Matt Lauer's recipe and, I think, because the man of the house likes desserts that involved open flames. You have to love friends who make dessert because they know you're coming.

My girlfriend teased me about how whenever I blog about their cottage, I get effusive. "You made our outdoor shower sound like the Taj Mahal of showers!" she joked and I reminded her that it is extraordinary. It's just a shame that it's March and I can't use it.

For the first time ever, I slept in the bunk room, a slender room fashioned out of a former bathroom with a nautical theme and two single beds mounted on the wall. I saw no reason to climb the ladder to the top, instead burrowing into the lower bed and sleeping like I was on a boat.

In a related note, my host had suggested that one of these times I sleep on the sailboat, so it looks like I've got another first time experience to look forward to.

Who am I? A woman with fabulous friends and a happier outlook than I've had in months. Only now we know I can hold my own at The Corner.

Music and Passion, Always the Fashion

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. ~ Kipling

So call me a word junkie, but the most curious kind of junkie.

Question: In a post-fact world, when we read words telling us that Barry Manilow is gay - by the way, something we've known since the 70s  - are we to presume this is but another example of alternative truth and he really isn't gay? Has it come to that?

Or are they merely distractionary words meant to keep us from noticing something far more dire? Because Barry deserves better, if only for his chutzpah.

I clearly remember hearing a Casey Kasem Top 40 show where he told a story about Barry, Springsteen and Billy Joel having a conversation at a dive venue when they were just starting out and Barry insisted he'd be bigger than either one of them.

I'm inclined to think he was mistaken, but that's just me. Still, looks like he made it.

And speaking of words, I got a slew of them from my Dad yesterday when I showed up to help Mom with a few things only to discover she'd broken a temporary crown and was headed off to the dentist, leaving Dad and I to take care of her "honey-do" list. As if.

I mean, we moved a desk and rearranged the computer's wiring, but along the way he told me about why he'd given up cigarettes in 1991, a story I'd never heard. Hell, I don't recall he was still smoking as late as the '90s.

I should have known there'd been competition involved given my Dad's athletic nature. He told me how we were at the engagement party for Sister #6 when Sister #3 threw down the gauntlet, saying she could go longer without a beer than he could without a cig.

Three weeks later, she was drinking again while 26 years later, he still doesn't smoke. How had I never heard this chestnut before?

While we were planting moonflowers on the screened porch, apropos of nothing, he said, "You know, it's an extraordinary string of circumstances that led to me even meeting your mother. I was in the army and the first time I was supposed to ship out to Europe, I was sick. The second time I was supposed to go to the South Seas, but I had a sports injury. Finally, they gave me a choice of Fort Lee or Fort McNair and I sure wasn't southern enough to want to go to Petersburg." So he went to D.C. and somehow met Mom.

Those words would never have come out of him if Mom had been there.

But that was yesterday. Today's words came courtesy of Poetry Month and a reading at University of Richmond, where I arrived a tad late (that labyrinthine campus) and while there were no multiple seats together, singletons can almost always find a lone chair.

Reading first was lanky and bespectacled Peter LaBerge coming across more like a theater student than a burgeoning poet with his animated reading and ease in talking to the room, looking up between each line of verse as if to re-engage us or perhaps check who was looking at their screens.

His elegiac poetry concerned the difficulties of growing up gay in suburban Ohio and several pieces were devoted to gay people who'd been senselessly attacked outside Target or in Texas simply because of their sexuality (too soon to make a crack about that being a factor in Barry's decision to hold off...discuss?).

Admitting he wrote a lot of dark poems, he went for lighter, reading one inspired by a man who wore high heels on "America's Next Top Model" and took guff from another contestant who had a problem with it. Peter could not only relate, but, said, "There was a poem there."

And there was but honestly, it was very dark, too.

"Thank you all for using your time to come here on a Wednesday night," he said earnestly from the lectern. "It is a good use of your time, though."

Chen Chen read next and his book was for sale tonight even though it doesn't technically come out until next Tuesday, so we were told to keep our mouths shut about that. He used humor and personal experience to write poetry about leaving China as a 3-year old and now not knowing whether his memories are real or imagined.

In "First Light" he wondered, "What is it to not remember your life?" He recalled his Mom telling him he'd have to be three times better than the white kids to be taken seriously, a surefire way to make a kid wish he wasn't Chinese. That and the frustration of being interchangeable in the eyes of white people.

He spoke of Paris and how it's impossible to be angry in Paris. Mad? Yes. Sad? Sure, but angry? Not in Paris, he asserted. I don't recall feeling angry in Paris last summer, so I think he's right on this one.

But mainly it was the underpinnings of a humorous observer of the universe that set his poetry apart.

Tarfia Faizullah, whom I'd heard read her challenging poems (about the lives of Bangladeshi women, about coming up in an Anglican school) as far back as 2010, was third and had a bit more gravitas then her predecessors.

Interestingly, she began by telling us that her dark focus had softened over the past few years, to the point that she added the word "illuminated" to her new book title in hopes of alerting readers to a shift in outlook. Some of her work dealt with being a brown-skinned woman and the assumptions that go along with that.

Eventually she pointed out her grad school professor, the poet David Wojahn, sitting in the second row, a fact that was making her nervous despite now living in Michigan, hanging around with fiction writers and long out of grad school. I can't imagine why when he was practically beaming with pride as she read a poem about water that had been inspired by signs pointing toward the city of Flint.

And while I wasn't beaming, my soul was most definitely feeling bathed in a calm I hadn't possessed when I walked in. It had been too long since I closed my eyes and let someone read poetry to me.

Coming back through the Fan, I stopped at Garnett's for a farmer's salad enjoyed at the counter directly in front of the open Dutch door, and every now and then, I could feel or smell a hint of Spring flowery breeze wafting in.

Since the soundtrack was right up my alley - guitar-driven indie rock, so New Pornographers, Wild Nothing, Real Estate - I didn't much need other amusements, so the two guys on a first date behind me were icing on the cake as they politely asked each other questions, each one proving a little more just how little they had in common.

Let me put it this way: the got separate checks.

Doing far better at connecting was the blond couple at the end of the counter - his stool swiveled toward hers, her hand on his arm to make a point - except that I found it a little weird that they both had on light blue and white gingham shirts.

When I asked the server who cut my slice of Almond Joy cake if she thought their matching attire was intentional, she said no. Seems that one day three Garnett's employees, including herself, had come to work in burgundy pants and blue denim shirts with no coordination whatsoever.

Randomness apparently happens. Hello, my life.

The two older woman at a table at the other end gabbed non-stop as if sharing state secrets, the only one of which I heard in its entirety was, "That's because the restaurant owner's mother was into horses." I only wish I understood whatever point that answer addressed.

Chances are there's a poem in it.

Take the High Road

I don't care how old parents get, it seems like they never lose their omnipotence.

Driving to the Northern Neck this morning, I'm listening to Cults' "Static" album, a 2013 gem that fuses their '60s-esque pop sound with '80s-era gloom and malaise, an exquisite combo when used to convey lyrics alluding to the couple's romantic breakup. The sky is gunmetal gray and the angular music mirrors it.

Just about the time I hit downtown historic Tappahannock, the sky begins pouring snow - big, fat flakes of snow that are soon obliterating and blurring sight lines. As I ease onto the bridge, I also ease into full-on whiteout conditions.

Instead of 45 mph, everyone is crawling over the bridge at 25. On the other side, a couple of 18-wheelers have pulled to the shoulder of the road, unwilling to attempt any more driving until the blizzard passes.

And hyperbolic as that sounds, this really feels like a snowstorm with intent.

Just as I'm cresting the hill near Warsaw in the blowing snow, I look to the left and to my complete surprise, there's blue sky and puffy cumulus clouds off in the distance. It's like being at the beach and spotting a black thunderstorm raining down on a deserted beach a half mile away while your part of the beach is bone dry and sunny.

By the time I turn on to Route 3, the blizzard suddenly becomes no more than snow flurries and as I continue toward my parents' house, back-lit snow flurries. It's magical and totally weird at the same time. With less than five miles to Mom and Dad's, the sky is completely clear and the roads are dry and they remain that way all the way to their house.

It's almost like I dreamed the whole blizzard, but at least it'll be a great story to share. My Dad, especially, loves a good weather yarn, so I'm all but busting at the seams when I arrive to share how my road trip became a weather adventure.

I go for full drama by walking in and announcing that I'd have been there far earlier, but the blizzard slowed traffic to a crawl.

My Dad, sitting in his big, black leather chair and consumed with the Washington Post crossword puzzle until I'd arrived, looks up, pushes his reading glasses up on his head and sweetly asks, "Oh, the blizzard in Tappahannock?"

If I were a kid, I'd have asked how he knew so much and he'd have responded, "Years of experience," but I'm an adult so I asked how he knew that and he said, "A warning just scrolled across the bottom of the TV."

What ho, I'd driven through a storm worthy of TV-level warnings? I may not have gotten the satisfaction of initially informing them about the blizzard, but at the very least I was able to provide anecdotal evidence.

Later while we were sitting in the breakfast room eating lunch, a mini-blizzard began a show in the three windows around us, much to their amazement and not at all to mine. In no time at all, the sun appeared from the south and the snowflakes grew lighter, then big again and then disappeared entirely.

After lunch and helping Mom sort through half-full, crusty paint cans dating back to the '90s, I do the only logical thing I could think of on a two-blizzard day.

I go out into the yard and cut every daffodil and jonquil I can find - probably close to 3 dozen - to bring inside, put in a ceramic vase and leave on the breakfast table for them as snow souvenirs.

Seems like a really bad time to start cutting EPA funding by 24%, but maybe that's just me.

Living for Right Now

We're having a heatwave, despite the calendar still reading February.

I'm not saying that because the mercury hit 74 degrees, but because today was the first day that my lipsticks should have spent the day in the refrigerator like it was June, a fact a girl only discovers once she's getting ready to go out and finds them softer than ideal.

Now that I think about it, they may have warmed up driving back from the Northern Neck - where I'd gone today to visit my parents - with the windows mostly down.

I'd gotten a late start coming back because Mom and I decided to walk down to the dock, past the two weeping willow trees she tells me have just burst into leaf the past two days and wound up sprawled in an Adirondack loveseat discussing life.

And death, as it turns out. An article in today's Washington Post "Heart to Heart: The Conversation You Least Want to Have with your Aging Parents May Be the Most Important" was the starting point, but like so many conversations with my folks, there was a fair amount of laughter, too.

When I mention how hard it would be for Dad if she should die first, she waves off the problem, saying with a smile, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. He won't last long once I go!"

I'm not sure if she means this because he's never had to fix his own food (at 8, I once found him crawling around the kitchen floor looking for where she kept the cold cereal and had to show him which cabinet) or because he'll wither away from a broken heart.

Telling her I'd just seen "In the Heat of the Night" at the Byrd for the first time last night, we dished about her memories of the award-winning film's impact at the time and about what a handsome man Sidney Poitier had been.

A tangent from there about how I've never seen "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" had her telling me about Spencer Tracy's speech in that film about how, despite his age, he remembers with absolute clarity his feelings for his wife when they first met and fell in love and how true love endures through the years.

"He was really talking about the love of his life, Katherine Hepburn," Mom tells me with absolute certainty, although certainly with the wisdom of her own experience as well. How she recalls this particular scene after not seeing the movie in decades is beyond me, but now I'm determined to see it myself, knowing that Hepburn and Tracy were long-time lovers.

The levity returns later on the walk back to the house. Surveying the two sheds full of Dad's crap and the crumbling grape arbor, she says, "I already told him when he looks down from heaven, none of this mess will be here!"

How often do you get to have an end of life discussion and get film recommendations in the same afternoon, much less riverside with waves lapping at the sand?

Once back in the city with my half-melted lipsticks, I managed to apply them before strolling over to Graffiato to meet a friend pre-theater.

Arriving first, the bartender welcomed me back and re-introduced himself, amazing me since we'd met the first week of January when he'd obligingly served a brown liquor-drinking friend while discussing distillation methods and then completely forgotten to take my drink order. For 15 minutes.

The good news is, being ignored guarantees you'll be remembered on your next visit.

With a nod to my birthplace and an appreciation for housemade ginger beer, I was drinking a variation on the DC Mule out of a copper cup when my friend came rushing in, Christmas present in hand. Once she got a pretty, pink Paloma, it was a race to catch up with each other's lives in 35 minutes so we could make a curtain.

What always happens when we try this is that I'll ask her what's been going on in her life and she'll rush through a few highlights and then insist on hearing my goings-on. Tonight, she was particularly fond of the symmetry of the trip to Cuba story, but saved plenty of enthusiasm for the good stuff and an Italian sausage pizzeta.

We didn't shut up until we headed across the street to the November Theater for Cadence Theatre's production of "Violet," another in the Acts of Faith series.

Although I was already happy being with a long-time friend I don't get to see nearly enough of, I got more fortunate still right off the bat by winning two tickets to Cadence's next production by having my seat number drawn from a bucket.

I'm lucky
I can walk under ladders
Yes, I'm so lucky
That I'm as lucky as me

I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a Cadence production and tonight kept that streak alive with a play that managed to marry high spirited musical numbers channeling gospel and country overtones (and the crack five piece band right onstage with the actors) with a poignant story about a disfigured girl looking for more conventional beauty and a big dose of self acceptance.

That it was set in the deep south in the 1964 during the Civil Rights movement only continued the thread of so many of my outings lately. That I'd gone from watching handsome Sidney Poitier last night to almost-as-handsome Josh Marin tonight was no sacrifice at all

First you choose your road and then you take it.

As an entry in the Acts of Faith Festival, Violet's story about who chooses to love her and whether they do it for who she really is or not provided the real meat of the play and enough to justify a post-theater discussion at Quirk afterward.

The bar at Maple + Pine was full, more than a few tables held diners and staff whisked new guests and luggage to the elevator as we grabbed a bar table and settled in to dissect what we'd seen over Prosecco and chocolate pecan pie.

"Please indulge!" said the server who dropped off the goodies.

In the dessert? In a soundtrack that included Tame Impala and The XX? In the bustling scene as the bar emptied and filled back up again?

All of that and more. Mostly, we indulged in conversation about the challenges of choosing your road and allowing yourself to take the right detour if it presents itself.

Hint: it doesn't always go through Cuba.

Dixie is Dead and Trump is Terrifying

I've been violated.

At least that's how I felt when I was greeted by alarmist messages from my bank alerting me that someone was using my debit card all over New York City yesterday.

Not what I was expecting upon returning home from a pleasant day on the Northern Neck with my parents.

It was all the more abrupt because spending the day with them is akin to stepping through a magic looking glass to a different world. At least all the clocks in the house now read correctly, something that's not the case during the months of daylight saving time when they refuse to change their clocks (on principle, naturally).

Probably because it was a chilly 42 degrees when I drove through Tappahannock, our activities centered around the cozy: Mom wanted to put heavier comforters on some of the beds and Dad wanted help ordering new L.L. Bean flannel sheets (Mariner's blue, queen size) after spying a tiny hole in a sheet on their bed.

It was while I was on the big sleeping porch - especially inviting because of the morning sunlight streaming through the walls of windows - in search of their favorite white blanket that I spotted a stack of my parents' records from the '50s right on up through the '80s and dropped everything to investigate.

Finally having a turntable, receiver and Bose speakers - all used, mind you - changes what gets my attention these days.

Spotting me from the other end of the corridor that leads to the porch, Dad called out to his heathen daughter, chuckling, "What are you doing on your knees, praying?" As if.

Many of the albums I flipped through brought back immediate musical memories - some good, some painful - of hearing them played in the house where I grew up. My parents were deep into Neil Diamond, so there were at least ten of his records, along with a handful of Moody Blues and more late '50s instrumental music than I remembered.

Where I was most surprised was with his array of disco and R & B vinyl: Quincy Jones' 1972 double disco album "Ndeda," Larry Graham's "One in a Million You" from '80 (complete with TMI, as in, "You can write to Larry at P.O. Box 46035, LA, CA 90046) and a really early George Benson record called "Shape of Things to Come" from 1968.

Then there was the piece de resistance.

My father, a man who was nothing if not au courant as Dads went back then (hair past his collar, magnificent mutton chops), had a copy of Van McCoy's "The Hustle," I kid you not. I have no memory of this fact, but I was impressed enough to take the album, along with a dozen others.

When he sees that I've snatched up "The In Crowd" by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, recorded at D.C.'s Bohemian Caverns, he makes sure I know that, "I was into Ramsey Lewis way before they made it big with that album."

You see how cool he was?

By the time I left them mid-afternoon, the mercury had only risen four degrees, making me glad to get back to my more densely populated neighborhood and the attendant shared heat (not that my parents' house isn't kept at hothouse temperatures that have even a cold-blooded person like me shedding layers), even if I was met with the news of fraud and the ensuing inconveniences resulting from it.

Luckily, Mac and Secretly Y'All awaited me a few short blocks away at Gallery 5.

Tonight's theme was "Headlines," ("No, Joe Morrissey is not in the building," our host quipped) so we heard from a slew of local journalists riffing on the subject.

Harry brought props and shared how an article on the infamous Dirtwoman had inspired him to become a journalist, but only after his high school guidance counselor had advised him that, "There's a cheap journalism school up the street." That would be VCU.

The Library of Virginia's Errol brought us up to speed on Richmond's fighting editor and Jackson Ward resident, John Mitchell, with a tangent about a newsman friend working in Danville who got fired for the headline, "Dixie is Dead, Elvis is Dead and Danville is Dying."  Hilarious.

Katy's story of investigating an unreported woman's death was positively heartbreaking while Chris' story of Mayor Wilder trying to rearrange City Hall after midnight involved sheriffs, a lot of PBR, illegal Vespa Stella parking and, tangentially, the headline that had first inspired him to take up journalism: "Preacher Dies in Flaming Mobile Pulpit."

Where tonight's Secretly Y'All differed from so many of the ones I've attended over the years was that it took place in a post-2016 election world, which, as we're all still trying to grasp, feels like a horrific new world order.

Brad offered up a report on being LGBTQ in Trump's America, a terrifying proposition, to be sure, that included learning about the numbers of LGBTQ people who bought guns, both after Obama's election (talk about misguided) and Trump's so-called election. A pink camo assault weapon and Colonial Shooting Academy both figured prominantly into his story.

But the undisputed highlight of listening to tonight's storytellers was when the RTD's Michael Paul Williams took the stage, intent on making us see that the most important stories are ahead of us.

"We need a lot of anger now," he said passionately. "They're trying to push out information as the new normal and that's not right." Amen, brother.

We listened as he told a tale of two of his stories, one that helped the Armstrong choir raise $20,000 to go to a competition in NYC and another where he wanted to shadow three students - Hispanic, black and white - enrolled in Richmond Public Schools and chronicle their experiences and results, a story that died before it saw light because of lawyers and a necessity for endless releases.

But his real point in being there tonight was to use his self-professed "old guy" status to motivate the crowded room to action.

"Be subversive going forward in this new day. I'm pissed off and terrified. We should all be pissed off and terrified at this. We need to protest! I don't want a white supremacist a few steps from the Oval Office."

His was a very emotional call to arms not to go gently into this terrifying new Trump night and it moved me in a way Secretly Y'All doesn't usually. This wasn't about a person's personal anecdote, this was an entreaty not to stay silent about things that matter.

It's no secret, ya'll, we're being violated. Anger and action must follow.

For CW, Wherever You May Be

Tuesdays are "ethnic" nights for my meat and potato parents.

I learned about this quaint custom only because I've gone out to the Northern Neck to visit them so often on Tuesdays.

And while you'd think that meant that my Mom gets wildly creative making dinner, it usually boils down to tacos or spaghetti, occasionally frozen Chinese food. Always on Tuesday.

So my jaw dropped a little today when I get there and, for the sake of conversation, inquire what's up for ethnic night. I'm amazed when Mom says they might not bother tonight because she made a frittata for dinner last night.

First off, this is front page news since I had no clue she even knew what a frittata was, much less made them, since she's long been firmly in the cream of mushroom canned soup casserole camp.

My Dad, shambling in from the family room and overhearing this discussion, joins in. "Yes and there was some left over, so she promised I could have it for breakfast this morning. Imagine my disappointment when I sat down to a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast!"

From the other side of the kitchen, Mom shrugs and says, "I forgot." To her, it's no big deal but not to Dad, who'd apparently had sweet dreams of more frittata, only to have them dashed.

A modern woman might have told him to get up and warm up the leftover fritatta if he wanted it so badly, but that's not how my parents' marriage works.

My reason for visiting today was that Mom wanted to clean out several closets and requested my assistance doing it, knowing how much pleasure it gives me to get rid of stuff and they've got six decades of accumulation.

One of the jobs involved cleaning out the six drawers - crammed with spools of thread (dry-rotted?), grosgrain and satin ribbons, elastic and dozens of buttons - of my Richmond grandmother's wooden treadle sewing machine. To put that in perspective, Grandma's been dead since 1984 and my Mom doesn't sew and we were just now getting around to cleaning out those drawers.

Once those chores were finished and I loaded up my car with donations for Diversity Thrift, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and take a short walk before I left.

Heading down what's known as the "crab road" because it ends where a crab-processing shack once sat and is now home to million dollar condos, I was happy just to be outside and stretching my legs. It's not a particularly long road, but it is right along the river, meaning every breath is a deliciously salty one, especially on a breezy day like today.

Out of the corner of my eye I see something moving on the porch of a raised house, unsure at first what it is, but finally realizing it's a hand behind a window. Whose hand, I have no idea, but everyone waves at everyone down here, so I wave back and keep going.

Walking back toward the house, I spot a guy in his front yard and say hello.

"Who are you?" he asks enthusiastically, extending his hand for a shake. "I'm Alan." Here's the thing: I met Alan a couple of months ago when I'd gone out for a walk after Mom and I had finished some baking, so we'd already talked. I know he lives in Richmond and bought this place five years ago. Hell, I even know his walking route.

So I razz him about not recognizing me and he points at my head. "Your hair's different," he insists, trying to save face since now he clearly does recall our last chat and wants to pick up where we left off.

Twenty minutes later, I know which neighbors had burst pipes, how far up the water came after the snow storm surge and why it's better to do a hip replacement from the front rather than the back. Apparently it was Alan waving at me from inside his house earlier.

When we finally say so long and I turn to go, he takes one last shot, gruffly saying "Your hair's different!" to my back.

Oddly enough, I flash back immediately to 5th grade. I was walking the two blocks home from elementary school and Scott Rudiger, a boy in my class, was walking behind me, talking to my back. When I didn't respond, he threw some broken glass from the sidewalk at the back of my feet, confusing the hell out of me and making me walk faster.

When I got home, I asked my Mom why a boy would throw bits of glass at my feet. "Because he likes you," she said with authority and a few months later, Scott's best friend confirmed it.

Alan likes me, or at least talking to me.

And, just so the curiosity doesn't kill you, Mom and Dad decided to have spaghetti and meatballs for tonight's ethnic night. Fingers crossed, Dad'll get that frittata for breakfast.

What Lovely Fervor

A good daughter cooks and bakes for her mother and answers her father's questions before going out to play.

"What band sang 'Highway to Hell'?" he asks from the family room. AC/DC, I tell him

"Who was the 'Originator'?" When I say Bo Diddly, he fills in the crossword blanks with a satisfied smile. "Ah, yes!"

At this point, Mom gets involved. "If you need any more assistance, you'd better ask her now before she goes because I can't be of any help to you on this stuff."

I assume that she means she doesn't know anything about music history. "I blocked out that whole rock and roll period!" she says with disdain, although the truth is she's been to multiple Neil Diamond concerts and some of her favorite songs are by Stevie Wonder.

It's all rock at this point, Mom.

Today's road trip to the Northern Neck had been motivated by Mom's bridge luncheon tomorrow, so I'd spent my time helping make chicken noodle soup, chicken salad and a Viennese torte, all of which took a solid three hours and endless conversation.

Answering Dad's questions takes seconds, and that includes him asking me about my love life.

As parents go, mine are pretty cool.

After driving back through a series of rain squalls, I consider my evening's options and decide that Quill Theater's historic play reading series wins out because it's "Luminous One: An Evening with Ethel Barrymore" and I know nothing about the woman besides that she's a distant relation to Drew.

It doesn't hurt that it's being presented at the Branch House and while I've already seen the new exhibit, I certainly don't mind seeing it again. To my amazement, I overhear a woman say she's lived in Richmond for 17 years and never been in the building.

"What is this place?" she inquires of her clueless friend. Tragic.

I, on the other hand, am enchanted to find the heavy leaded windows are open on this unusually balmy, wet November evening, allowing the moist air inside. This fact alone makes the evening special.

The one-woman show, ably written and directed by Melissa Rayford and starring the reliably impressive Melissa Johnston-Price is set in Richmond and kicks off with its premise.

"I've been asked to write a memoir. Horrors!" Ethel exclaims, standing next to a typewriter. From there, she reminisces about some of what's happened in her life, never writing a word.

She talks about her grandmother who "experimented with marriage" (haven't we all?), her memories of going to the Jefferson for the wedding of Charles Dana Gibson and Irene Langhorne, saying, "By the time she married, she'd had 60 proposals," and dancing on the Jefferson's rooftop garden the night before.

And, like my Dad, Ethel's father kept his word count to strictly what was necessary. When she cabled that she was getting married ("I was constantly trying to let myself get married and it never worked"), he responded with, "Congratulations. Love, Father."

When she broke the engagement and cabled her father the change in events, he responded, "Congratulations. Love, Father."

Turns out Ethel's life involved Winston Churchill, Henry James, the Duke of Manchester, Teddy Roosevelt and Spencer Tracy while wearing black, white and gray clothing because they were cheapest.

Apparently the Barrymores are known for two things: mismanaging money and drinking excessively.

In a particularly telling moment, Ethel complained about the current generation expecting art to be an instantaneous pleasure. As if. Or, as Ethel put it, "If you don't like it, you need to figure out why!"

When the reading ended, we broke for a dessert buffet and mingling. In the course of commiserating about the evils of Verizon, I manged to devour four little sweeties, as my Scottish friend would say, followed by chatting with a handsome stranger.

My mother and her sweet tooth would be proud.

A panel discussion followed, where we gleaned obscure tidbits such as the fact that if Drew Barrymore's children become actors, they'll represent 300 years of Barrymores in the profession. And how Ethel's hair was imitated just like Jennifer Aniston's was a century later. That the Barrymores gave each other red apples on opening night.

Yet another fine Ethel-ism: "You grow up the day you have your first laugh...at yourself."

The logical place to end my evening was celebrating the third Thursday of November, also known as the day Beaujolais Nouveau is released and as good an excuse as any to visit Amour, enjoy some young wines and sample Beaujolais Nouveau sorbet (while patting myself on the back for missing last night's guests).

Not only is this years' Georges du Boeuf Beaujolais Noveau far better than the usual bubblegum-flavored sipper, but one of last year's Noveaus has aged amazingly well and how often does that happen?

My favorite French teacher and part-time model tries to convince me to consider modeling in local fashion shows and I wonder how I would like being looked at for wearing clothes not my own. The entire bar discusses the difference in "cruise people" and "boat people."

In the strictest sense, I qualify for neither. On the other hand, I've been proposed to eight times, I've experimented with marriage and I've laughed at myself for as long as I can remember.

And you know what I'd hear from the Northern Neck about that?

Congratulations. Love, Dad.

Have Cassette Clock Radio, Will Travel

An overnight visit pleases my Mom no end.

She says it's because my Dad gets up so early and that's when he's most productive. Since I'm often going there to help with assorted chores, we can get an earlier start than if I arrive mid-morning. And maybe that's true but I think she also just likes having any of her daughters around to cook for and fuss over.

When I arrived after my dinner at Merroir, my parents' village wasn't just sleepy, it looked closed down tight except for their house. Getting out of the car, I was greeted by a salty breeze and the sound of the river lapping at the shore. I walked down to the dock before going inside just because I could.

Coming in via the big screened porch, I couldn't help but notice that my father had rearranged the porch furniture. Again. He's always been a re-arranger and as far back as elementary school, I have memories of him rearranging our bedrooms and the living room on a regular basis.

Complimenting him on the new arrangement, I admitted that I hadn't thought any new permutations were possible. "But of course!" he came back, one eye on the Nationals game and the other on finishing up a crossword puzzle.

But of course. Some fathers have hobbies, mine arranges furniture.

When he heard I'd just come from Merroir, his first question was about what kinds of oysters I'd had, pleased to hear I'd been downing Old Saltes. I am his daughter in that way.

After a practically silent night (so unlike the cacophony of city sleeping) with a steady breeze blowing through the window off the river, I joined my parents at the breakfast table just as they were finishing up. Knowing Dad was eager to get busy, I downed a quick breakfast of biscuits, bacon and Grape Nuts so we could.

There's never any way of knowing what a day holds when I go out there to help. Today we began in the bedroom on the third floor, a room with a magnificent view of the Rappahannock, hanging curtains. I gathered up loads of stuff they were ready to let go of and put it in my car bound for the thrift store.

While loading my car, I noticed two rabbits munching greens in the yard. Upstairs a bit later, Dad spotted something through the window and said, "Look at the wingspan of that raptor!" It was swooping directly over the yard where the bunnies had been. Goodbye, Thumper.

It was only morning and already hot and humid, so when my Mom came down dressed in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, I looked at her like she was crazy, asking why she wasn't wearing shorts. "Not with this scar on my leg!" she said dismissively, referring to the knee replacement surgery she had last summer.

There was no talking her into changing, so I let it go. Later, Dad and I were discussing his frustration with her modesty about the scar. "I could understand if we were going into town, but around here? It's just like the way she insists on wearing something to bed when there's someone else in the house, like last night." Oops, it had been a warm night and I hadn't bothered with that nicety.

"Now, me, I've slept nude since I left the army and I make no concessions for guests," he says, over-sharing as he's known to do.

Me, too, I remind him, causing him to nod approvingly. "As it should be." What, all fathers and daughters don't bond over commando sleeping habits?

Over the course of the day, we worked on two of the porches, the little one off their bedroom and the big sleeping porch, doing a thorough cleaning for the season while I nudged them to get rid of stuff they no longer use.

Sometimes that works in my favor, like when we uncovered four radios of various types on the big porch and I immediately called dibs on the cassette player clock radio, which had to be circa late '70s. I didn't recall that cassette clock radios had even existed. Now I have one.

Ditto the traveling bar we unearthed on their little porch. The case had been lovingly swathed in duct tape, no doubt to hold it together over the decades (Dad, matter-of-factly: "Oh, yes, I've recovered this several times") but inside it was as pristine as could be. All the components - four metal glasses, shot glass, wine opener, bottle opener and, yes, serving tray were nestled in their elastic holders inside.

The only surprise was a half-burnt red candle in the case and when I picked it up and looked at him inquisitively, he nodded and grinned. Apparently sometimes when you're using you travel bar, you need a little mood lighting. Leave it to my Dad.

For the first time in years, I saw my parents' record collection leaning up against two walls on the porch. Not sure what surprised me more, Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart, or less, Neil Diamond and Herb Alpert.

After lunch we sat enjoying the breeze on the rearranged porch and they told me the latest on the locals. A little gray house had burned down and they'd never even heard the fire trucks. A neighbor had fallen down the steps, hit her head on a safe and died the next day. My Mom, ever the worrier, took this as indication that my father should move the bricks near their porch steps in case he fell and hit his head on them.

My father, never an alarmist, declined to move the bricks and we changed topics. Mom said several of my sisters have been trying to convince them to move to Maryland, where all five of them live. This was news to me.

"If we did move, and we probably won't, we would still want to be on the water," Mom said, surprising me. They don't go down to the dock or beach anymore but she insists they still feel the connection to the river and its calming effects after 30 years there. And they're not leaving that.

Mom wanted me to go upstairs with her so she could try on a new dress she needed hemmed. While we were up there, she pulled out a typewritten sheet and told me she'd come across it today and that she'd never shown it to any of her daughters.

"Since you're the writer, I want you to read it," she said. With no clue what it might be, I began reading something she'd written when she was 45, two months after her mother had died. She'd called it, "Nobody Told Me" and it was about adjusting to life once you're no longer someone's daughter. About losing part of how you define yourself.

It was incredibly moving and completely unlike anything I'd ever known her to write or say, like getting a glance inside her head when I would have been too young to imagine what she was going through. It was a "wow" moment of a perfectly lovely day.

We accomplished more - I hemmed the dress, helped Dad mount the goldfinch feeder over the lilies whose perfume scented our time on the porch, framed the wedding photo of my handsome grandparents - before winding down the day, what else, chatting on the porch again. We're talking people, that's for sure.

And by "we," I mean me and the two people I'm daughter to. Nobody told me I'd won the jackpot by springing from the loins of such shamelessly eccentric and happy people.

But of course I did.

Hemming and He-hawing

A good daughter goes to visit her parents for myriad reasons - to help out around the house, to hear how their lives are going, to enjoy meals and conversation with them.

I go to laugh.

Let me set the scene for you: Within minutes of walking in the door, I am up on a step stool removing curtains from the three windows in the breakfast room. The intent is to cut off most of the fabric and make valances out of them. I have come to hem.

The only logical place to cut these large pieces of fabric is the kitchen floor, so I'm down there measuring and marking so I can cut while Mom sits at a chair at the breakfast table watching me. I reach for the scissors to start cutting.

"Do you think you'll ever get married again?" she asks apropos of nothing.

I look up at her, confused. "I don't know, Mom. Why?"

Without missing a beat, she replies, "I'd like to think you'll be taken care of before I shuffle off this mortal coil."

The laughter erupts out of me sometime around "shuffle" and is in full force by the time she gets to "coil." I drop the tape measure I'm laughing so hard. She begins laughing, too.

Dropping the scissors, I lean against the nearest cabinet, telling her that I want to savor this moment when I was sitting on the kitchen floor cutting curtains and she brings up her concerns about me being a spinster. All, I might add, within 15 minutes of my arrival.

Now she's laughing so hard tears are running down her cheeks while I'm bent over double with laughter.

Dad walks in the swinging door from the dining room, peering down at the two of us lost in a laugh attack. "What's afoot here?" he wants to know.

When I sputter out how Mom can't shuffle off her mortal coil because I'm still single, he raises an eyebrow and reminds me, "Your mother is very funny." Then he leaves for the family room and his chair, Post crossword puzzle in hand.

My mother isn't just funny, she's hilarious. An hour and a half is nothing to drive for that kind of shared laughter.

Best Mom ever.

The Swayziest Christmas of Them All

Sometimes you make sacrifices for the right people.

Among those I made this weekend were sawing off the sappy base of my parents' Christmas tree until my arm went numb. Twenty eight trips up and down three flights of stairs to dig out obscure holiday decorations from the storage floor, where dust mites are outnumbered only by the minutiae of a half century of marriage.

My parents had asked me to come down yesterday and help them get ready for Christmas, yet by early evening, they were suggesting I spend the night in order to provide more assistance today.

Putting aside plans to watch the boat parade of lights, catch "Holiday Inn" at Movieland, see musicologist Christopher King deejay gospel at Steady Sounds and attend a friend's Christmas party, I stayed.

If I can't be a good daughter at the holidays, then when?

After my final effort of the weekend - making a pound cake - I made a beeline for the great outdoors, determined to enjoy a riverside walk in the 60-degree late afternoon sunshine, returning to the house lomg enough to remove the cake from the oven and kiss my parents goodbye.

Much as I love them, I was more than ready for some outside contact beyond the man who'd greeted Dad and me at the dump this morning.

I needed Movie Club.

Tonight's installment was looking to be just the holiday boost I craved: "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." You better believe I was cleaned up, dressed for the city and walking over to Strange Matter within an hour of getting home from the country.

My parents would never understand.

I walked into the venue I've been to so many times to find a row of recliners lined up in front of a screen set on the stage. Behind them were small tables and chairs for a cafe-like cinebistro setting. I was right where I needed to be..

Ordering a bowl of vegan chili with Twin Oaks "chorizo", the only answer the bartender needed from me was whether I wanted real cheese or vegan cheese. Excuse me, but if it's vegan it technically isn't cheese (just like those vile individually wrapped American cheese food product slices, which are made with vegetable oil and no actual dairy. Blech!), although some would say I'm arguing semantics here.

Drink in hand, I found myself a table and chair directly behind the recliners and waited for the movie to begin. When my chili was delivered, I found it jalapeno-spicy and chock full of beans. Considering the massive cheeseburgers Mom had made for dinner last night, I could forego meat tonight.

While "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" had been made in 1964, the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" version had been made in 1991, meaning we were going to get cultural references from two entirely different periods. I was in heaven.

Host Andrew warned us that the original movie has consistently been listed as one of the 100 worst of all time and it didn't take long to see why.

For starters, they obviously didn't have budget for so much as a copy editor since the credits read "custume designer" not "costume." Yeesh. There was also a credit for "Martian furniture."  Somebody's mother must have been very proud.

And, given that it was 1964, Santa still smoked  a pipe. I guess he hadn't seen the surgeon general's warning yet. And speaking of, his elves all liked like miniature C. Everett Koops (for those who remmeber who he was).

I was glad we were seeing the MST version because all the best lines came from the exiled spaceman and his robots. "You know, elf tastes just like chicken." When a Martian asks what Christmas is, the MST robot says, "A Christian holiday ruined by commercialism." Bingo.

On the other hand, it didn't take long for me to begin wondering how many people in the room were getting the 1991 references.

Walking into the Martian spaceship control room, a cliched '60s idea of a high tech center with reel to reel tape machines lining the walls, the MST robot says, "But first a tour of Paisley Park." I laughed out loud at the Prince reference, but no one else did.

Ditto allusions to the book "Alive," the movie "Ice Station Zebra" and actor Larry Storch. References to Jimmy Durante and McGyver. Or when the robot sang in a whiny voice, "Old man, take a look at your elf, I'm a lot like you are."

I'm just saying that I seriously doubt many people in the room knew that the "whipped cream and other delights" reference was the name of an iconic Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass album. Or what "The Long Goodbye" was.

Some humor is timeless, though, such as, "And now for your enjoyment, some suggestive scenes of jets refueling."

There was no forgetting that the original film was from the '60s and had a finite budget because of things like an actor in a polar bear costume, the headpiece clearly separate from the body or a robot that looked like a tin foil box with a coffee can on top.

When Santa said, "Falderal and fiddle dee dee," the robots chided him, saying, "Language, Santa, language!" Hysterical.

For those who don't know, the premise of the movie is that the Martian children are quiet, remote and very unhappy because they are fed information but never allowed to be children with freedom. Once the Martians kidnap two earth children who tell them where to find Santa, they nab him too. Then they're all taken to Mars, where the fat man makes everybody laugh because he's such a jolly fellow.

"It's the little signs of drug abuse," one of the MST robots observes about the corny laughter.

Patrick Swayze and the movie "Roadhouse" were a recurring theme throughout the commentary, probably because the movie was barely two years old at that point. Lines from it were repeatedly quoted and worked into the Martian story to hilarious results. You know, "my way or the highway" and "You're gonna be my regular Saturday night thing, baby" kind of stuff.

In Santa's Martian workshop, he had a machine instead of elves to help him make toys. When a load of baseball bats came out, the robot quipped, "Okay, those are marked for the L.A.P.D." Some black humor still resonates.

Eventually, the earth children get homesick, and the mother Martian explains to others that the kids miss their friends and family. "And Nintendo and sugar," an MST robot cracks.

By the time the movie ended with a singalong, I was pretty clear on why it had been so firmly entrenched in the worst of lists for 50 years. Which is not to say it hadn't been great fun, a real time capsule of two completely different eras. One of the robots even sang a violent Christmas carol about "Road House" to close out the MST part of the movie.

What's also notable is that Movie Club doesn't make a habit of showing perfectly awful movies. This had been a holiday selection (yet, in part chosen for its awfulness) while next month's will be something far superior, namely "Raising Arizona." I'll be there.

The funny part was that after the last of the trivia questions and prizes handed out after Santa conquered the Martians, host Andrew announced that, "Inspired by tonight, we're planning to show "Road House" in the future."

I. Can. Not. Wait.

We're talking about a film with the line, "That gal's got entirely too many brains to have an ass like that." It'll be a night of '80s splendor, I feel sure of it.

Should Mom and Dad ask me to stay over that night, I'm afraid their needs will have to be sacrificed on the altar of Patrick Swayze.

Oh, yea, Movie Club's gonna be my monthly Sunday night thing, baby.

Rev It Up

Make fun of my optimism all you want, but the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.

And speaking of such, after a tree fell on my parents' Northern Neck house back in May, they were relocated to a neighbor's cottage for six months while massive repairs took place. The differences were huge for them: a far smaller (in fact, one story) house, no dishwasher or DVD player, limited access to their belongings. A lot of adjustment for two 80-somethings.

Now after six months of workmen toiling non-stop, they are days away from finally moving back into their repaired home. And how does my Mom feel about the half year of inconvenience and missing the comforts of home?

"That tree was the best thing that ever happened to us!" she told me cheerily when I went down today to help with some of the move-in effort.

What she means is that they would never have put on a $30,000 roof or ordered new living room furniture or had all the floors refinished or gotten new ceilings in three rooms or replaced chandeliers or had a stately column added to the front room or...any of it. Not these children of the Depression.

The challenge is that while all that work was being completed, the contents of their house were stuffed into three rooms which now need to be restored to order. In a three-story house, that's a hell of a lot of work.

So I drove down bright and early (there are few people for whom I will get up at 7:30 a.m.) to "help with the kitchen" as she put it, but we actually did very little in that room. Her first priority was the pantry/laundry room because that's what was important to her. From there, we went upstairs to hang curtains in the library and bathroom.

As we're working, she's telling me that she saw a brown fox sunbathing in the yard last week, behavior she thought odd for a fox. She pointed out white swans on the creek behind the cottage, something they'd never seen in their 30 years of living down there. She admits that will miss the view of the creek behind the cottage.

After lunch, we headed back upstairs to the big sun porch where all my father's clothes had been thrown into large plastic bags when the furniture had been moved out, Now it was time to sort through and place stuff back in the drawers.

Here's where my Dad and I are complete opposites. He keeps everything and by everything, I mean he had tube socks from the '80s in those bags. And not only that, but he had over 100 pairs of socks - stretched out at the top, with holes in them, missing a mate, every color and thickness. The man never threw a sock away.

He had  - I kid you not - a pair of socks with duct tape over a hole in the toe. I laughed so hard I fell off the bench I was sitting on. Duct tape! And he'd put them back in the sock drawer, duct tape and all.

But I'm pleased to say that by the time I finished with him, he had exactly one drawer of socks, separated by dividers into athletic, dress and polar vortex varieties. It was very satisfying for both of us.

Then we worked through T-shirts, my Mom and I vetoing any with obvious holes, ratty necklines or of the sleazy '70s fishnet variety (oh, yes, he had three of those). Ditto with sweaters.

There were even several dozen handkerchiefs from back in the day when men used them (he now prefers paper towels, claiming tissues aren't up to the task), but we whittled that collection down to just the two that were still white.

By the time we finished, there were two bags of discards and four to go to Goodwill, meaning some poor woman will have to put up with a man wearing those fishnet shirts. Good luck with that, honey.

While we were out on the sun porch, I took a photograph down off the wall, one that I had years ago put my name on to claim it. That's my Mom's idea since there are six of us daughters; if there's something you'd like to have, put your name on it for possible future distribution.

It's not a perfect system. My youngest sister is said to have crawled under the house and put her name on the foundation. But this photograph is something I've coveted for as long as I can remember.

In it, my parents sit astride a motorbike in Bermuda. They were there in 1980 for their 25th wedding anniversary. Both have on short shorts and helmets (straps not fastened) and my Mom is wearing the cutest platform shoes and smiling widely.

You don't know my Mom, so you can't understand how unlikely this scenario is. First of all, she's on a motorbike. Secondly she's on a motorbike in platform shoes. The most cautious woman on the planet, a woman who worries about absolutely everything and nothing, had  - at the age of 47, mind you - decided that she was going to ride a motorbike in platform shoes.

The woman had had six daughters by then and her legs were still flawless. It is from these loins that I sprang.

So after a long day of cleaning windows, stocking the pantry, restoring things to shelves and sorting through my Dad's history as told by his wardrobe, I had the ultimate souvenir of my fabulous parents.

I only hope optimism wears as well on me as it has on them.

Pink Roses and Moose Meatloaf

I didn't know it at the time, but the deer was a sign.

Since I had an interview to do on the Northern Neck mid-afternoon, I invited myself to my parents' temporary cottage for lunch beforehand.

Driving up the winding road toward the Moose Lodge in Litwalton where the three-legged dog used to live, I crested a hill and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a deer. And a deer with a lot of attitude; she was staring at me as if I were the one on her territory.

It wasn't like she was caught in headlights because it was broad daylight, sunny and blue skies.

I slowed, eventually stopping and we faced each other down for a few seconds before she deigned to slowly cross the road and scamper off into the woods.

After eating lunch, my Dad took me down to their real house, still in the throes of being reconstructed after a tree fell into it in May. Proudly, he showed off new ceilings, a column that's been added to the living room to support the library floor upstairs and the new windows and sills that replaced the ones damaged by the tree.

Moving from the kitchen to the family room, we were startled when the master carpenter who's acting as foreman appeared out of nowhere to greet us. As my Dad introduced me, I heard the hesitation when he said, "This is my...daughter," tactfully leaving out the "oldest" adjective.

Richard and I shook hands and he told me what a great guy my Dad was and what a great house it was, asking if it was where I'd been born. No, I explained, my parents had raised me and my six sisters in a house a third the size and only moved to bigger digs once we all left home. My Dad rolled his eyes.

But Richard chuckled and proceeded to one up me, saying that he'd been raised in Maine in a house that only had plumbing to the kitchen sink. In order to use the bathroom, you had to go outside - even in the snow - to his Dad's workshop boiler room. Okay, that topped my childhood woe by a mile.

Before I left, I picked a big pink rose blooming just off the screened porch to take back to Mom and Richard observed, "That's a New Dawn rose, an old heirloom variety before they bred all the scent out of them. It's beautiful."

I guess there's lots of time to read garden catalogs when you grow up in Maine.

After saying so long to the parentals, I headed on to my interview of a boisterous college professor who talked to me about baseball, come heres and come back heres.

Work over for the day, I decided a glass of wine was in order and only had to drive a mile and a half to Good Luck cellars. There was only one SUV in the parking lot, but walking up the wide front steps to the tasting room, I spotted a trio enjoying their wine at a table on the porch.

Nice day for a glass outside, I commented. "Go get a bottle and join us!" one of them called out.

Inside, I got a glass of Rip Rap Rose and as he poured it, the winery guy told me I should go join the gents outside. "They came here to hunt deer with bows but the owners aren't here to give permission, so they're having some wine. They'd probably enjoys some female company."

Ah, so that accounted for their attire. I'd given them such a quick glance, I'd assumed they were military but apparently they were in camouflage to hunt.

Outside, the three men drinking Cabernet Sauvignon welcomed me to their table and told me what I already knew: that their hopes of afternoon hunting had been dashed. Assuring them that they looked very huntsmen like anyway, one informed me he was really a potter. The stoneware wine coolers inside were his, in fact.

Another of the guys was retired military, originally from Brooklyn. He prides himself on answering people who inquire if he's from NYC, "No, I'm from Brooklyn. That's different."

The third guy was a scientist eager to discuss Wallop's Island and how close to it they'd hunted.

As we sat there for the next hour chatting, I found out they've been hunting a lot of places together annually for decades. Like Jefferson Vineyards in Charlottesville, which they've hunted for 30 years. They've only hunted Good Luck a couple of years by comparison.

Then there's their annual trip to Maine to hunt moose which the scientist had missed this year because of a wedding in Italy, where, he said, they had a ten-course meal that included everything that swam, flew or crawled through Tuscany. My kind of meal.

The potter showed me a brochure about his studio and another about the upcoming "Made in Matthews" open studio tour next month, the other two razzing him for doing business.

I have to say, for strangers and hunters, they were smart and funny guys and at one point, one said, "At least now you'll know that not all hunters are rednecks."

When I asked what their first concerts were, the potter was hesitant to share and the others assumed it was because he'd be embarrassed. Brooklyn's first had been Murray the K and the Shirelles in Brooklyn back in the '50s.

The scientist's had been Bob Zimmerman in '63, the kind of show a music lover could keep bragging rights on for a lifetime. The potters's first had been the Kingston trio in '65.

As the sun continued to sink lower over the vineyards, the guys agreed that hunting wasn't going to happen today and finished their bottle of wine.

"Oh, well, I've got venison chili in the refrigerator," the scientist consoled himself. "I'm going home to have moose meatloaf from the freezer,"  Brooklyn said. I thanked them for the conversation and as they got up to leave, the potter said, "Just one more thing. Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes."

Boring brown, but I probably didn't need them anymore at that point in the day anyway.

After they left, I finished up my Rose alone watching the winery hounds chase each other around in the nearest vineyard. The guy inside told me about an upcoming oyster crawl and sent me on my way.

Then it was back across the river where the sun laid out a shimmering streak of gold connecting it to the water under the bridge with just a couple of smaller fishing boats moving through it.

What have we gleaned today? I can't seem to have a bad day on the northern neck. And not everyone who hunts is a redneck.

What are we wondering? What moose meatloaf tastes like.

Of Zephyrs and Chocks

Love in dishevelment, or, another visit to the northern neck to see Mom and Dad.

Three months after a tree taller than their house came down in a storm, eating a hole in the third floor roof and dispensing with other windows and siding, they are still in a much smaller cottage a quarter of a mile away.

Their house's renovations have finally begun, but with at least a couple of months of work ahead, they're in for more adjustment to the pleasures of smaller digs.

My Dad is okay with piles and a certain amount of visual disorder (says he knows which pile everything is in) while Mom prefers stuff to be out of sight.

As we set the table for lunch today, she telling him to get his debris off the table, he suggested she embrace more dishevelment in their lives.

She made a face and he defended himself, saying he'd read a book called "Love in Dishevelment" (no doubt a '50s pulp mystery) and some of it could be applied to life.

What he was trying to say was that it wasn't realistic for her to think he's going to abandon dishevelment. She tried using me as a witness, claiming I'd have no part in dishevelment. I pleaded the fifth.

Yes, these are the conversations I have with my parents.

In other news, I conquered the Merry Point!

After multiple past attempts to ride the Merry Point ferry, today was my lucky day to ride the two-car, six person cable ferry.

Show up at the end of Ottoman Ferry Road and the ferry will take you across the Corrotoman river - where I'd seen dolphins two weeks ago (none today) - in the blink of an eye.

It was on the other side upon arrival, so I waded into the river (very warm and very clear) and watched the ferry chug back over, reaching down to feel the cable vibrate as it approached.

Then it was my turn.

A car followed me on and, just like that, we were at limit. Ignoring a sign back on land suggesting ferry patrons stay in their cars, I got out.

What, the captain (the man who put chocks behind my tires) is going to make me walk the plank if I don't?

It was the kind of afternoon as sunny and clear as they seemed when you were at recess in third grade, a glorious day to be on a ferry even for a short time.

But that was long after lunch and hours spent on the front porch ogling nature with the people who spawned me.

A brilliant electric blue bug looked fake, a hummingbird showed up only to find the feeder empty (refilled it) and my Dad commented, "Ah, a lovely zephyr," (knew that it was wind, didn't know westerly) when it got breezy.

We took a field trip to the front yard to admire and discuss the two positively artistic lightening rods on the roof of this cottage they're staying in, all glass balls and sunburst-like toppers.

A practical necessity rendered to please the eye.

My parents suggested I go look at the cabin, a tiny place on the property where the owner stays when he doesn't have guests that warrant using the cottage (the one my parents are borrowing).

It was a place for one person, preferably a short one: low, 6' ceiling, pre-1940 Westinghouse refrigerator (shorter than me), one main room and a bedroom.

And if that person were me, I would revel in all the windows (the kind that open toward you, not up the wall) and a screened porch with a swing, a picnic table and a view of the creek shaded by a tree I couldn't hug half of.

A good place to write a textbook, apparently (owner just finished one), but also one with two boats in the yard and plenty of places to do nothing. But small, very compact.

Some might see it as a breeding ground for dishevelment.

As my Dad is sitting there at the table watching my Mom and me prepare lunch, set the table and bustle about, he acknowledges his lazy demeanor but tries to make a case for it being situational.

"People worry if your mother dies before I do that I'll starve to death," he begins his tangent. Hard to say where it might go. "I may grieve to death, but I'll certainly be able to feed myself."

And that, I'm pretty sure, is love in dishevelment. Hell of a role model.

Art of the Short Trip

You can learn a lot about a man by living in his house for the weekend. Especially when he's not there.

The only thing I knew about him was that he taught English at VCU and even if I didn't arrive with that tidbit of information, it wouldn't have been tough to glean.

Books were everywhere and not trashy novels or current fads, but titles such as "American Traditions in Literature," "Art of the Short Story" and more books on the subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald than I'd seen in one place. Robert Penn Warren. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Lots of Hemingway, too, including a fabulous coffee table book called "Picturing Hemingway," filled with a lifetime worth of pictures of Papa and his many wives. There was even a VCU connection with several of (professor of creative writing) Tom DeHaven's novels.

A lot of good reading was on those shelves.

And the house! Actually, it was more of a cottage, situated about 12' off Ivy Creek, and about as charming as it could be despite a completely non-descript exterior.

Lots of windows looking out on the water, a wide open floor plans encompassing kitchen, dining and living space. No telephone, no TV. Best of all, a wide front porch with a swing, a rocking chair and a couple of big wicker chairs surrounded by thick bushes for privacy.

Upstairs where I slept was a low-slung room as wide as the house with six windows, including one looking out over the creek, which I immediately opened. Low bookshelves, a couple of papasan chairs and tables, a bed on the floor and that was about it. No more was required.

Why, you wonder, was I in a strange man's house, albeit that of a man I probably would enjoy talking to?

My intent was to visit my parents on the Northern Neck, but after a massive sycamore fell on their house three weeks ago, puncturing roof and windows, they had to find temporary digs until the months of repairs are completed.

Their house is large - three stories set on multiple acres- and while it's on the river and they have a dock, it's set back from the water itself.

Not so this clean-lined little cottage, where a breeze off the creek blew constantly though the windows and the water shone in the afternoon sun just outside.

It was like being on a weekend getaway at the river, not at all like being in my parents' lovely but far more formal house.

Even my parents had fallen hard for the charm of the place, not to mention its accessibility.

Because here's the thing: ten days after the tree fell, my Mom had had knee replacement surgery, a major event for someone of her age, much less someone who'd just been displaced from home.

But they seemed to have adjusted nicely and I'd chosen Father's Day weekend to visit to help care for her and make my Dad feel at least a little special on his day.

Arriving Saturday, I expected to spend a good part of my day making meals, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that neighbors were bringing over dinner, one of those small town courtesies extended when someone is just out of the hospital.

That meant that after I made lunch, my Mom laid down to ice her knee and take a nap, I was free to entertain myself.

Rooting around in the linen closet, I found an old red coverlet with tiny white flowers on it and took it out to drape over the porch swing, adding a few cushions for lounging.

Voila! Instant reading swing.

With my copy of "The Goldfinch" in hand, I allowed a good chunk of the afternoon to pass me by lost in the story before the neighbors showed up with a roasted chicken, its cavity full of pearl onions and celery, homemade bread, roasted squash and zucchini and potato salad.

Oh, and a homemade strawberry pie. My parents and I savored a lovely dinner chatting about everything and nothing, my Mom saying that food always tastes better when someone else makes it for you. Amen to that.

She mentioned how one of my brothers-in-law had commented the day before about how quiet it is around there.

For a city person like me, the quiet is so loud it's jarring. The only sounds are birds, insects and the very occasional tires on the road as someone drives by (and inevitably waves).

After dinner, I went for a walk, first to see their house, which looked badly injured in places.

Then, eager to see the sun set from as many different angles of the point as possible, I set out to walk every side road as daylight waned and the air got a bit cooler. Small boats still skimmed over the river but most of the sound was frogs beginning to croak.

We spent the evening like we used to on family vacations back when they took their six daughters to the beach every summer. Playing Yahtzee. Trading off crossword puzzles so everyone took a shot at finishing them. Eating ice cream.

I was awakened this morning (at an ungodly 7:45) by my mother calling up from downstairs, "Wake up, Karen! Time to get up!"

Turns out they'd been awake for hours and wanted breakfast. Stat.

Quickly, I made a coffee cake and put it in the oven and began frying bacon and sausage, the breeze from the creek already wafting in and mixing with the aroma of frying pig and, eventually, eggs and English muffins.

Dad opened my Father's Day card, chuckled and thanked me and put it on a table with those from my five sisters.

After I got Mom settled, I set out for a walk, heading down toward Norwood Baptist church (empty today because the shared minister only preaches the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month), past enormous drifts of blooming orange day lilies.

When I got back to the cottage, I suggested we all move the party to the front porch, sure Mom would enjoy a change of scenery.

A hummingbird flew up to the basket of purple petunias only to depart quickly when there was no feeder. By mid-afternoon, I'd gone to their house and retrieved one of their hummingbird feeders and affixed it to their temporary porch. My parents are inveterate bird watchers and I knew they'd missed the daily show of feathered visitors.

By mid-day, I rustled up a wicker table from the gazebo and with the one already on the porch, we had our lunch out there, watching a fat groundhog toddle around the yard across the road and a couple of bunnies taking their exercise.

Once it was Mom's rest time, I gravitated back to the swing and my book, occasionally looking up as a couple of tiny salt marsh sparrows industriously went about building a nest under the bush a few feet from where I sat.

After reading for nearly an hour, languor wrapped its warm arms around me and I set my book down and let myself sink into the pillows on the swing.

I recall waking up a time or two, always because of a bird song, but giving myself up to it and sliding back into sleep.

It worked out well, though, because when I went inside after finally waking up, Mom was just getting up, too. Perfect. No one would know just how indulgent I'd been.

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, working more crossword puzzles and eating peaches before I made dinner and started gathering up my belongings to leave.

My parents don't even know when the repairs on their house will begin, much less how long they'll take, but it looks like they'll be in the English professor's house at least through summer.

I foresee a lot of book reading on a strange man's porch swing. Maybe even some of his books.

From what I've surmised about him so far, I don't think he'll mind a bit.

Heron Trumps Hummingbird

There's much to do when the ladies are coming for bridge.

Of course I'm talking about them coming to play with my mother since my one sustained attempt at learning bridge back in the '90s at the behest of a male friend who insisted all smart women should know how (I'll note here that his wife did not), did not stay with me much beyond that decade.

But my parents, now that's a different story.

They come up in an age when  smart couples did play bridge regularly and I can remember her hosting bridge luncheon parties for female friends during the day and co-ed evenings of the same, except with drinking involved.

When she, a born and raised D.C. city girl, first moved to the northern neck, she told my father she had two requirements: home delivery of the Washington Post and women to play bridge with.

Done and done.

Most of her bridge games happen at the local women's club but she's also part of a smaller group who play in each other's houses once a month. Tomorrow is her turn to host.

Which meant she wanted me to come down and help her prepare while Dad worked in the yard.

Some of my "chores" were pure Spring pleasure, like getting the big screened porch in shape by whisking away webs, re-potting petunias and filling the hummingbird feeders that hang on the side of the porch, resulting in the tiny birds showing up within minutes.

Her face lit up when I suggested a flower arrangement for the table, so I went out to the yard, past some brilliant goldfinches in one of the birdbaths and gathered some lovely pink, lavender and white blooms - two colors of lilacs, camellias, the palest of cream jonquils, tulips, blooming rosemary, even some vibrant purple money plant- depositing them in an enormous vase that smelled heavenly.

When I told her about the colorful little birds I'd seen, she one-upped me by saying she'd seen a heron in the sycamore tree this morning with a just-caught fish in its beak and watched him swallow it still wriggling. She was a tad grossed out by eating live fish, but then she doesn't eat oysters, either.

She wanted me to make a dessert, so I sliced up a pound cake and frosted six layers with dark chocolate ganache before having the brilliant idea to gather some violets and make candied violets for the torte.

Can't say I've ever had, much less made, candied violets, but with Google, all things are possible and I soon found not only two methods to do it, but some history, including that they were very popular in the 19th century, showing up in country cafes, at afternoon teas and in candy shops.

Needless to say, I headed back out to collect an array of white, lavender and purple violets to candy.

While washing, drying, dipping and sugar-dusting the violets, I wondered aloud if my Mom's Irish grandmother might have ever candied violets.

My mother laughed, saying it was unlikely, given how practical my great-grandmother had been, but she told me she remembered one of her annual Spring cleaning customs.

She'd take down all her lace curtains and wash them in sugar water, drying them between pieces of wood studded with tiny nails to hold the curtains in place and keep them taut to dry.

The sugar acted like starch, she said, and kept them crisp for another year. Amazing the family history you learn while you're making edible flowers..

As for the violets, they turned out beautifully, each glittered with super-fine sugar crystals I'd made by crushing sugar with a rolling pin, and when I left they were laid out on a rack to dry until Mom puts them on or around the torte tomorrow.

Between that and the flower arrangement, it looks to be a lovely afternoon for smart women to be playing cards on the porch.

I told her to tell them she did it all herself.

I'm Gonna Do All the Things for You

It's time for my December dutiful daughter trip.

That means a couple of days on the northern neck helping my parents transform their house into a winter wonderland of their own making.

I made 22 trips up and down two flights of stairs to bring down box after box of wreaths, ornaments, decorations, lights and ephemera, the better to clutter up their house in seasonal mode.

Outside, I held the Christmas tree while my Dad sawed and chopped the bottom off and my Mom watched anxiously from the back porch, sure there would be a tragic accident with the axe.

She's the worrier, not me.

After six hours of decorating and wrapping gifts, with only one break to eat lunch and cut the last of the pink rosebuds still miraculously on the bush three weeks before Christmas, Dad and I made a break for it.

We had talked about going out to one of their favorite local places, the Oaks, for dinner but Mom didn't feel like getting cleaned up, so we compromised by ordering our food to go.

That meant Dad and I were going to head out to pick it up.

But because they live in the sticks, you never go out for solely one reason, so he decided to load up the truck (according to him, if you live in the country, one of your vehicles must be a truck) and we'd make a stop at the recycler before the restaurant.

So there we were in the late afternoon, tooling along back roads (my father will never take the direct route when a back road can be meandered) and talking about Virginia politics.

He told me to keep an eye out for deer as it got toward dusk.

By the time we'd dropped off the recycling, it was too late to take the branches he'd brought to the wood yard, a place I'd never even heard of but would have been curious to see.

But we'd finished our chores early, so he suggested taking the scenic route to the restaurant, until a better idea occurred to him.

"Or we could go and I'll have a beer and you can have some wine while we wait for the food."

The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.

There were a half dozen people at the bar when we got to the Oaks where the music was blaring and the owner's wife Nancy recognized Dad and greeted him like the regular he is.

According to the chalkboard, tonight's specials were blackened prime rib and coconut shrimp.

As we sipped our bevvies, the  Temptations were singing one of my favorite Motown classics, "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," and a couple of locals were talking about how you needed to allow extra time to get home in the evenings these days because of all the deer in the roads

Nancy came back and asked if she could tempt me with dessert (duh) and we added a magnificent slice of coconut cake to the order after I told her that I was the only one of my parents' six daughters who, like them, loves coconut cake.

Once the food came out, we walked outside with our dinner and Dad pointed out the new moon, insisting that I move around a stand of trees to better see it.

Starting back on yet another back road home, we hadn't gone two miles when a couple of deer appeared on the side of the road and Dad neatly swerved around them in his 27-year old truck.

I don't know that I've ever cruised the countryside with my Dad in his truck before. What a distinct pleasure I've missed.

Back at the house, Mom had the Christmas music on and had set the table with (what else?) her holiday plates and we heaped the Oaks' home-style cooking on them.

It had been way too long since I'd had a good hamburger steak smothered in gravy and onions and finished with coconut cake.

Sometimes it's both delicious and delightful being the dutiful daughter.

Skivvies Optional

Today's road trip was steeped in nostalgia.

I hadn't been to the river to see my parents in a couple of months, and as the oldest (and the closest, distance-wise), I was overdue.

It was a picture-perfect day for the drive with the Rappahannock a silvery blue mirror when I crossed it about 10 a.m, not so much as a wisp of a breeze to be seen or felt.

Arriving at the house, my Dad was just about to depart for the barber shop In Kilmarnock, 30 minutes away.

Inquiring if I needed anything, I asked only for some good dirt from the boys at the shop and he set off, leaving us womenfolk alone.

I did some chores for Mom, mostly the kind of stuff I don't do at home.

Changing linens on all four beds from summer to fall (meaning lightweight flannel sheets). Baking a cake. Hemming a new skirt of hers. Laying some shelf paper in the pantry.

Being female, we chatted non-stop the whole time, with her asking about the goings-on in my love life ("I'm just glad you're happy") and telling me about a friend's husband (bitten by a crab and almost lost his arm).

During a tangent about ironing, something neither of us do much, she told me my #3 sister used to iron her hair as a teenager.

I didn't know that.

Odd as that procedure sounds, it's even more so when you know that all six of us have stick-straight hair.

On a related note, she gave me a 5 x 7 copy of a photograph of her and my Dad in bathing suits in Ocean City just after my #3 sister was born.

For lunch, she had a surprise.

When we were kids, we were the hot spot of the neighborhood because my Mom had a round grilled cheese maker and no one else did.

The pleasures of a round grilled cheese - that soft puffy center with the circle of buttery crust all around- were even extolled by my childhood best friend, Cindy Smith, who when given an assignment in school to write about a favorite thing, wrote about her best friend Karen's Mom's round grilled cheeses.

Of course, I didn't remember that story, but Mom did and shared it as she made our sandwiches on her brand-new round grilled cheese maker, recently acquired from Amazon after years without because sister #2 had "borrowed" it in the '90s and never returned it.

When Dad finally got back from the barber shop, it was with a story.

Seems the boys had been discussing the dearth of two-dollar bills in these parts in recent years when someone said he knew why they'd originally been so popular in the area.

Two bucks was what it cost a man at the Kilmarnock brothel, so they used to see a lot of the bills.

Not so much anymore.

When I went out to get the mail, the postal truck arrived and the woman handed me two packages.

Back on the porch, Dad opened one to find the coastal blue shorts he'd ordered from J. Crewe.

Mom insisted he try them on despite him insisting he's been the same size since the Clinton administration (a frequent reference point for my screaming liberal parents), and he barely stepped inside the house and dropped trou.

Returning to show us how well the shorts fit, he asked if I'd cut the tag inside off for him.

When I agreed, he dropped trou, this time right in front of Mom and me on the porch and handed me the shorts.

I gave her the look and she tells me laughingly that sometimes he goes out to raise the flag in the yard in his skivvies, much to her mortification but not to her surprise.

Sweet jesus. I may be eccentric as hell, but clearly I come by it honestly.

I only hope I'm as happy as these two when I'm their age.

A Road Trip into the Past

The things you don't know about your parents.

About five years ago, my five sisters and I found out that my Dad had been married before he met my Mom.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

And not just married, but had had two daughters.

Clearly he shoots only X chromosomes.

When this tidbit was revealed to my sisters and me, there was much hair-tearing and chest-pounding by the other five

Most of them were appalled to learn about my Dad's former life.

I just thought it was interesting that I suddenly had two half sisters. And after years of my Dad referring to me as #1 daughter, I now knew I was really his third.

And then today I unexpectedly got to meet one of them during a routine visit to my parents' house.

She walked into the room and looked at me wide-eyed, like she'd seen the second coming.

I introduced myself and she hugged me. Hard. She told me how excited she was to finally meet me.

Naturally,I looked at her for signs of similarity. After all,we have the same father so surely there would be some resemblance.

After all, my five sisters and I are all variations on a theme.

Not really. She's blond and blue-eyed liked my dad, where I'm brown eyed and haired like my Mom. She was very slender where my sisters and I are curvy.

She asked me a million questions about my life, where I lived and, most surprisingly, kept referencing my Richmond grandmother, the queen of the biscuits and the fried chicken.

It had never occurred to me that, of course, she would have known or heard about her father's mother.

I talked to her, trying to sense what we might have in common. First off, I discovered, we both live in Richmond.

Conversation and a walk ruled out commonalities in politics, lifestyle, temperament or just about everything.

Still, I had the pleasure of meeting a half-sister after a lifetime of not even knowing she existed.

Because goodness knows, five sisters wasn't enough and I needed one more.

Kidding.

The most striking part of the day was hearing (essentially) a stranger call my Dad "Dad," just like I do.

And I'm fine with that. My Dad taught me a love of books, writing and conversation.

He once referred to me as "a work of art born of love" and I realize how lucky I am to have been raised by a man like that.

Unlike my half sister.

She more than deserves to call him Dad. We both do.

Take a Deep Breath

Reasons to go to the Northern Neck on a spring day: the smells.

To watch a storm rolling across the Rappahannock River, changing the day from muggy and sunny to gunmetal-silver and blustery in a matter of moments. Changing the smell from the sweetness of flowers and bushes blooming to impending precipitation. I smelled it before I saw it. Afterwards, the smell of freshness.

To bring home armfuls of lilacs, my favorite flowers, and the ones that have always made me feel like anything is possible when I smell them. They perfume my apartment in the same way a Christmas tree does, except it's far more romantic. Driving back, their scent filled the car, much the way Car Mix #2's excessive volume did.

To be a good daughter, talk with my my parents and make them laugh (when they're not obsessing about me being mate-less). It's not so much about their smell, though; that hasn't changed since I've known them.

Timeless smells all, making for a most satisfying day.

Of Memories and Offerings

I set out to be a good daughter and ended up with a trip down memory lane, followed by another turn as the sacrificial offering.

No one but parents can provide those two experiences over the course of a mere twelve hours.

With the holiday season looming large, my parents had asked for my assistance in getting Christmas stuff down from the third floor of their over-sized waterfront Northern Neck house (it should be noted that they raised six daughters in a 1300-square foot suburban rancher and only moved to spacious digs once we were out of the house, but that's okay).

I spent the day schlepping box after box of stuff down two sets of steps so they can begin over-decorating their house.

What I hadn't expected was all the detritus of those years in suburbia to still be filling the top floor of this house.

I opened the shades up there for the gorgeous and panoramic views while we worked and suddenly light was shed on all kinds of long-forgotten reminders of childhood.

Like so many post-war houses, ours had been "improved" by adding a bar to the basement rec-room.

Much to my surprise, the adornments of that bar still live on in a room upstairs with a beautiful eyeful of the widest stretch of the Rappahannock River.

The gray knitted poodle cover made for a bottle of booze? It's up there.

The tilting stand that holds the 16" bottle of Galliano? Dusty, but present.

The bobble-head Redskin figure that all the teen-aged boyfriends commented on? Check.

But it wasn't just bar stuff they inexplicably kept.

By the time the cultural revolution had trickled down to suburbia, my mother was in her crafty phase.

Hanging upstairs was a colorful, framed needlepoint piece she'd done proclaiming, "God Bless Our Pad."

Maybe it was a preemptive thing since we weren't church-goers.

Still, really?

In any case, I stumbled across more forgotten family treasures than I had any need to, so I had to tease them unmercifully about hanging on to such crap.

My mom assures me that it's my dad who's the pack rat; she said she's even threatened to call the fire department for an inspection just to make him deal with it.

Apparently there are many ways to say I love you after decades together.

After that kind of day, it was good to know that we'd be heading out to dinner at the historic Lancaster Tavern, built in 1790.

I was a tad surprised to learn that it wouldn't be a family affair, though, because they'd invited a neighbor along to "even up the numbers."

That and I have no doubt that they're still seriously worried about me being an old maid.

The neighbor came over for drinks first and I shared with him some of the surprise finds I'd made today, much to my mother's mortification.

No doubt it was more than she wanted a neighbor to know, but considering I had a stranger to entertain, I was going with some recent material.

Anyway, he seemed to find it funny.

We were amazed to discover a nearly full restaurant at the Tavern considering it was a Monday night. I know Chef Adam Ginsberg has been getting some good press for his "traditional comfort foods in untraditional ways" but it made for a far more festive ambiance to be surrounded by a full house.

I had the grilled bone-in pork chop with buerre de pomme and traditional green beans, long-cooked with salt pork but not to the point of mushiness and with the unexpected addition of bits of red pepper.

Given the water's proximity and the season, tonight's special was rockfish with crab meat Hollandaise, ordered by the male contingent (and rated very highly).

The fish was cooked perfectly, exactly the way the fisherman would have wanted it done.

The formerly-crafty one had the hot crab dip (the fact is, they're still awash in crab here) and the soup du jour, a hearty beef noodle with peas.

It was almost a stew and bone-warming good, especially with the hot-out-of-the-oven crusty bread.

Despite my presumption that my parents had an agenda in inviting a fourth, the conversation flowed and we enjoyed a most entertaining evening.

I even got the offer of a tour of the 18th-century county jail and clerk's office just across the street, should I decide to offer myself up again to the company of my parents' neighbor.

I am a nerd for history, so you never know.

But as I reminded my parents before they went off to bed, I may be their love child and the reason they got (happily) married, but they're going to have to let the old maid thing go.

Chances are, I'll get it right sooner or later...and without any assistance.