MJ – Onion Breath

It’s a beaten to death cliché but people still say – after they’ve gotten clean and/or sober – that they now get high on life. There are probably volumes of Rolling Stone magazine interviews on just that topic. The Betty Ford Clinic, the reality TV Celebrity Rehab, and VH1’s Behind the Music all profiteer on this premise as well. However, I need to add myself to that silly old cliché. I’ve stopped getting high and stopped drinking. I found that life isn’t any more easy or hard with or without foreign chemicals. If anything I can see a little better the things directly under my nose. Movies – especially the old ones on TCM or conceptual ones on IFC – are funnier and have much more irony and pretense. Saturday Night Live does get tedious and there’s less to enjoy on late night TV – despite having expanded cable – once you’ve gotten clean. No longer is there a need to sit in front of the tube every night while waiting to peak, come down, or recover. I was never the hippie “with his toes in his nose” but knew people who had to get checked into a hospital and cleaned up because of which. That only deterred me for a short amount of time.

This past weekend alone so many funny things happened that I would’ve been too hung over, too spent, or too out of my mind to find painfully funny. First, our dog was almost mounted by another dog at the park. While my husband put the hold on our beloved coon hound shepherd mix Bruiser this golden retriever with a borderline personality disorder was about to have his/her/it’s face taken off. That golden would be in a world of stitches and one of those lampshade collars if the other owner hadn’t come along screaming, “Nicky! No humpy-humpies! No humpy-humpies!”

After that I kissed Brian and Bruiser goodbye and drove up to a routine dentist’s appointment. While our dentist is quite competent and thorough he spares making the patient engage in mouth gaped open small talk. Instead, he gives interesting monologs while scraping the tarter and double checking the x-ray findings. We started going to him six months ago. Brian’s topics were how to cook corned beef and then last week’s was how fence posts were like teeth: they needed to be well planted in else they’ll get really wobbly and loose and fall out. When I first went he gave me a lovely soliloquy on the Red Sox during the Ted Williams years. I’m from Boston and listened intently as I always love hearing from the Red Sox and Celtics die hards and lifelong fans. The most recent lecture was on the importance of flossing, what tarter will eventually do to your teeth, and how easily gums can become tender and bleed.

I should mention that my dentist is also a biker. He looks like a more kindly, grandfatherly version of the grumpy father on “Orange County Chopper”. He and his dental staff all look like they ride. Under their dental smocks are Harley and Buell shirts. Give me a dental exam any day by the biker dentist who gives speeches while he drills and fills. I’ll take that over some grouchy, perfume wreaking hygienist in an uptight upper middle class suburban practice who spends her waking hours resentfully scraping the margarita salt and calamari out of the mouths of bratty private school kids.  Only to be followed by the even grumpier aged Republican dentist who just paid another tax bill and is ready to start putting his money into a Swiss bank account. I know that he’s grumpy because the scraping, fluoride rinse, and cavity filling were done in record time with little attention to the amount of nova cane being used.

After I left the biker dentist’s practice I drove up further north to my mother’s condo. My eccentric sister had moved back to greater Boston after twenty years in Hoboken, NJ. Apparently, two decades in the home town of Frank Sinatra have its drawbacks. I helped my sister move her remaining clothes and IKEA products from Mom’s living room to her new living arrangement in a Quaker pseudo-commune. Actually, they were all quite nice. Perhaps they’ll be taken in by my sister being so educated, that she has worked for major publishing houses in New York, and is a cancer survivor. She’s also writing a novel and a creative nonfiction piece at the moment. Perhaps the quiet, mindful living amongst the healthy eating, simple living Quakers will do her a world of good. My sister and I attended a Quaker meeting together in the summer of 1993. She and I found it to be a beautiful contrast to the busy Sunday morning event that is the Catholic mass. The Quaker meeting meant silence, no music, and no stained glass. Some people stood up and said what was on their minds. Others just sat in contemplation and became grounded. At the end everyone shook hands, and we all took turns introducing ourselves, where everyone was from, etc.

It was getting late Saturday afternoon. It had been a jam-packed day: our dog almost went on the counter offensive at the park, the kindly biker dentist recommended I get a spin brush to help push along those pesky coffee stains, and then there was helping my sister move in with the Quakers. And the Quakers, who were around offered to help us move her in, were eager to introduce themselves, asked us how we came to be with total sincerity, and invited me and Brian and Bruiser back for dinner some weekend. I thanked them all kindly and told them to take care of my baby sister despite her being several years older than me. While they were obviously vegetarian or very mindful about what foods they consumed I was grateful for none of them having conspicuous onion breath.

M.J. Gleason

February 1, 2010

Barb – Onion Breath

Onion breath, farting, belching, and body image: my daughter is blissfully unaware of these things.  She will happily pull up her shirt and show her protruding belly proudly, unless she’s wearing a dress; then you get to see who’s on her diaper, too.  She will also stand there, looking at us adorably while wearing a diaper that would stop a moose in its tracks.

She has no sense of personal space if you are eating something in front of her.  Apples are especially dangerous and sharing is mandatory.  When she is not happy with  management decisions such as bedtime, closing a pantry door, or carrots she will voicer her displeasure at small pteradactyl volume.  Our wild little creature is truly free and I am jealous.

All food, including yogurt, is finger food.  Some of it is even good for your skin, although I don’t think mac and cheese qualifies.  It must not only pass the smell test, it also has to be squishy.  Technical edibility is also up to interpretation.  I am beginning to understand what is meant by “stealth broccoli”.

There is an old joke that says we start out cold, wet and naked – then things get worse.  I would argue that these are the best days.  There are no jobs, no chores, no homework and all of her needs are met.  At sixteen months old, her burping is cute – mommy burping – not so much.

Greeting visitors naked isn’t dirty, it just means you’re not wearing clothes.  If I greeted visitors naked, I’d be clothed immediately and probably medicated. (Although we’d never see another Jehovah’s witness.)

I know she will need to learn manners, how to share, and what an “indoor voice” sounds like.  It’s up to me and her father to teach her these things.  One of the many minefields I’m dreading is what other people teach her.  She doesn’t need to know she is not perfect, her breasts are too small, her waist too big, or her jeans are the wrong brand.

I am trying to make these days of delicious freedom last.  As she grows up and acquires “restraints” I want her to remember what home means.  I want her to understand that a lot of her world from cereals to toys to clothes is all so much marketing that she and her friends are falling for (mommy not only ends her sentence with a preposition, she’s a dreamer, too!).

I am in no hurry for the days when her father and I will become embarrassments.  Our door will always be open to our perfect little girl, no matter what she smells like.

Dan Aronie

Dear all,

As you may have heard, Nancy’s son, Dan, passed away peacefully at home on January 29. Nancy and family have spent the past few days remembering Dan fondly, “laughing and crying,” writing, and being together. Donations in Dan’s memory may be sent to the You’ve Got a Friend Foundation, which had been set up to support Dan and others on Martha’s Vineyard.

You’ve got a Friend Foundation
PO Box 1317
West Tisbury MA 02575

Feel free to comment on this post with your thoughts, wishes, and memories – all messages will be delivered to the Aronies.

With love,

The WFTH crew

Rajka – Onion Breath

‘How can I write about such topic as “Onion Breath”?  If I did, I cannot imagine anybody who would want to read about it?  Can you?’

My mother would say:

“Go ahead, write about it.  You’ve written plenty of silly topics before.  “Onion Breath” is a good one for you.  Writing about it may help you find the answer to some of your questions.”

“Common, the topic is onion breath!  Not a metaphysical inquiry into the riddle of ‘how to peel an onion.’

“I know.  Stop procrastinating!  Start writing and the answers will come.”

“How?  From where?”

“Enough talking! Write!”

My mother is always right.  I want to write but doubt that my own writing can reveal the answers I need.  I am not happy.  How do I begin?  By talking to my mother who has been dead for thirty years?

“Onion breath”.

What can be simpler?  If you eat onions you are going to have “onion breath”.  I am talking about onion lovers whose peculiar pleasure of eating onions overpowers the hesitance of having to deal with after-taste and the mighty powerful onion breath.

I am one of those people.  I just love onions.  Like most of onion eaters I know that to satisfy my onion buds I will have to pay the price.  There is a slight paradox:  even the passionate onion lovers when met with intense “onion breath” of the others, find it repulsive.

My first encounter with onion breath is as clear in my memory today, as it was when it happened more than 50 years ago.

At the age of sixteen I was in the 6th grade in all-girls Gymnasium.  I had a crush on a very popular ballad singer, Dragan T.  When listening to him on the radio, my girlfriends and I were mesmerized by his beautiful lyrics and hypnotic voice that took us into the world of dreams.  His chestnut hair fell to his shoulders; deep dark brown eyes always had a slightly moist sad expression.  His body was that of a dancer.  When he moved around the stage I had to force myself not to scream like my girlfriends did.  They were so immature!

One day I spotted an announcement in the square in front of our school:

“Dragan T.  Live Concert in the Old Town.  This Saturday only!”

My girlfriends and I were certain that come Saturday we should be in heaven.  We were.  Sitting in the third raw, on hard and uncomfortable bleaches, looking at his handsome face and his elegant body, I believed that he was the most wonderful man I would ever love.

Even now, so many years later, I get chills remembering how my Saturday in heaven turned into a moment of nauseating shock.

He was giving his autographs.  I, being more mature than others, waited for the most of the crowd to disburse.  Slowly, trying not to show my excitement, I approached him holding the program in front of me.  Dragan smiled, took my hands and pulled me closer:

“How about a kiss for good luck?”

I did not have a habit of fainting, but when he touched me I felt a tickle streaming down my body and my legs felt like they are about to fold under me.  I let him pull me up even closer and offered my lips.

The intense onion odor that came out of his mouth pushed my head back.  He relaxed his grip:

“What is the matter?  I thought you loved me.”

Yes, so did I! I did in my innocence but that ONION ODOR threw all my romantic fantasies flat on the ground.  With my insecure legs I walked all over them.  I knew that it was my dreams and my fantasies that were in love with Dragan.  That faithful kiss that did not take place because of “Onion Odor” was a wake-up call to  reality.

Kim – Onion Breath

Onion Breath reminds me of a simpler time. College years arriving at the family picnic on the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle. Summer days filled with laughter and promise. Delicious aromas from charcoal grills, thick juicy burgers, creamy potato salad, potato chips, and Coke. Not Diet Coke, but Real Coca Cola. All of this on an overflowing picnic table, before we worried about food poisoning or grilling induced carcinogens; before we worried about cholesterol or we suffered from acid reflux; before we thought about anything but family and fun, summer days spread out before us. Hamburgers smothered in savory fried onions, ketchup dripping out from beneath the roll, that first bite – pure heaven.

And later at night, after the sun set, after the toasted marshmallows, after the family headed back inside, taking flight on the cycle, toward a romantic destination, staying close, not thinking of onion breath, just enjoying the night between us.

Fast forward, when I find myself with little patience for body odors, including garlic or onion breath. Rarely enjoying a much-loved burger, and when I do, it’s low-fat beef, cooked without even the barest hint of pink, tasty enough, but certainly no match for those scrumptious burgers of yesterday, burgers sitting squarely on a white flour bun, onions fried in ample amount of olive oil, ketchup licked off fingers lacking the obligatory Purell.

Onion breath is symbolic to me; a sign of my younger self, one guided by sheer emotion and desire to please the senses. There’s no going back, but I wonder – is it possible to slow down enough, if only for a brief time, to savor and enjoy the day?

Terrie – Onion Breath

When I walked into Henry’s Drive-In, the smell of onions sizzling on the grill filled the brightly-lit room with the fragrance of a 50’s diner. Half of the people seated at the green formica tables were eating the famous Henry Burger, topped with grilled onions, mushrooms, and Henry’s famous barbecue sauce, made with brown sugar and apple cider vinegar.  There was lots of onion breath going around that place, and lots of satisfied grinning too.

While I was placing my order, you came from the back and leapt over the counter, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, a bow tie, and a white paper hat like a sailor’s.   With a full-lipped child’s mouth and soulful chocolate eyes, you looked like a 5-year old boy, so earnest and young.  I had never laid eyes on you before.

“Will you marry me?” you asked, and everyone in the place laughed.

“You don’t even know me,” I grinned back, “but gee, thanks!  I’m flattered.”  My friends and I took our food and left.

Six months later, I was walking across the campus of the junior college when you jogged past me.  Turning around, you ran backwards.  I didn’t remember you until you spoke.

“Will you marry me?” you asked, and I smiled back in recognition.  “You’re the guy from Henry’s!”

“Yes.  Will you marry me?” you repeated, and I had to laugh.  There was something so intense and sincere about you.  You reminded me of Oskie in The Summer of ’42.

“You don’t even know my name,” I said.  “But I’m running for Student Government, so come to the public forum!”  With a serious nod, you agreed and ran off towards the Student Center.

A few weeks later, I had my tonsils out.  When I awoke in my hospital room, there was a brown paper towel taped to the tray table across my bed.  On it, in a masculine scrawl, was this verse:

• Roses are red, tonsils are too.

• I hope you feel better, real real soon.

A single red rose lay on the tray.

When my mother arrived, I asked her who the flower and note were from.

“Why, Mark Fregly, honey!” she replied, and looked surprised when I answered, “Who is Mark Fregly?”

“Well, I’ve never met him before, but he said he’s asked you to marry him several times!”  I smiled at the thought of your solemn face, the intent expression you had worn both times I had spoken to you.

When I arrived home from the hospital, you called and asked if you could come and visit me.   I said yes.  You arrived on a motorcycle, enchanted my mother, and took me for a ride, across the Bay Bridge and past the spot where the dolphins play. When we got back to my house, you faced me with an imploring look.

“Will you marry me?” you asked again.  Your face was serious, hopeful.

“Mark, we really don’t know each other,” I said gently, and you got down on one knee.

“You don’t understand,” you said solemnly.  “I want to share a life with you.  I want to make a home with you.  I want to give you Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and plants in the bathroom.”

I didn’t accept your proposal.  In fact, I only saw you one other time, because your father got a job in Bethesda and you moved away.  But Mark Fregly, wherever you are, I wanted to tell you how touching you were, how sweet your gaze, how charming your pledge of love. I have never forgotten you.

Recently, while soaking in my tub, with planters of ivy trailing down the stained glass window beside me, I thought of you.  I touched the vivid green leaves of my bathroom plant and mused.

“And I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, too,”  I said aloud, my voice echoing in the steamy room.

That night in bed, I curled myself around my husband’s strong back.

“You gave me the life Mark Fregly promised,” I told him.

“Who’s Mark Fregly?” he asked sleepily, and I smiled.

Denise – Onion Breath

I miss onion breath. I miss feeling the smooth slippery skin of an onion as it glides along my tongue. I even miss the sting in my eyes as the shell around the onion is peeled back and the layers are sliced.

Being Italian, I cook. A lot. And, being Italian, I eat. A lot. There are always a few things in Italian food, things like basil, garlic and onions. Most anything tastes better with the combination of these three sultry ingredients. I mean, does a pot of spaghetti really need anything thing else but some garlic, onions and a sweet gravy?

So, you must know how my aching heart broke when I realized that I was allergic to onions. Now unlike a nut allergy that blatantly rears it’s ugly head in the form of swelling and skin outbreaks, something like an onion allergy was much harder to detect. All I knew was that my stomach regularly looked like I was six months pregnant and it hurt to button my pants. Let me tell you how sexy I looked!

I assumed my bloating was related to stress. I assumed that maybe I wasn’t bloated but was actually gaining weight. I even for a hot minute assumed I might be pregnant. But you know what they say about assumptions…

After ruling out all the above, I began to believe it was my diet. I tried cutting back on bread, thinking that maybe it was gluten. I was constipated for a week. I tried cutting out milk and cheese thinking a lactose allergy. I saw no change and was crabby from my depriving myself (I loooovvveeee cheese). I even went so far as to try raw diets, thinking that maybe it was preservatives in my food. It was not.

Nothing seemed to be working.

Then, I had an epiphany. I have the INTERNET (insert twinkling music here)! I’m living in the digital age! I don’t need to guess anymore, I can just go online and get my facts (or at least something close to fact)!!

So, I sat down at my computer, Googled “causes of bloating” and discovered a mecca of information on my ailing problem. I clicked on the first reliable page I found and the number cause of bloating was (drum roll please) onions. I nearly cried.

It felt like I was losing an old friend, one who was moving to the middle of no where in Africa with no technology to call or e-mail or text and no address to even send something snail mail. Onions and I had a strong relationship, one built on mutual respect for the flavor of food. They were a staple in my cooking and the cause of my pain. They were both my hero and my villain.

But, as any person who has experienced stomach issues knows, you’ve sometimes got to break up with food. Even the most innocent of delicacies can be hazardous.

So now I stare at caramelized onions on sandwiches with utterly tragic longing. I sigh at the chunks of onions in a cheesy casserole, tasting the way the flavors compliment each other. I dream of the smell of onions sizzling on the stove in a pan of olive oil. But, through it all, I know I’d rather give up the tasty treat for the lack of bloat in my body. Putting a new twist on Kate Moss’s ridiculous line, “No food tastes as good as skinny feels.”

New Topic: ONION BREATH

Send pieces to writingfromtheheart@gmail.com

Happy New Year to all you beautiful souls!

xoxoox

Anne – The First Time

The Unicyclist, Walden Pond, and Me

In the woods, there is a paved fire road that licks straight up the west side of a steep hill.  It leads to a flat grassy meadow with views—-when the leaves are down, as they are now—-of the pond and in the distance a prison.  And a hospital.  The first time we met it was summer.  Five seasons ago.  I was doing hill repeats—running, running, running—up and down, up and down, up and down that silent beast of a hill.  He, wiggling back and forth upon his unicycle, on the curb of all places!  Arms flat out like the wings of a hawk, then abruptly pulled in by his sides.  Then out again.  Back and forth, strut and bobble.  Drunk with balance and proportion.  I know nothing about balance.  My appetites are large, consuming whatever it is I am after—-sometimes, if I’m not paying attention, consuming even myself.  We spoke that day, he and I, about focus and balance and breath.  I’ve seen him since, now and again.

I saw him today.  A chill 32 degree morning.  Ours, the only two cars in the lot.  I ran around the pond, watching the mist lift, like a sleepy child waking from still waters.  As I rounded the far end of the pond, I kept an eye out for the heron spotted just last week.  I remembered to be grateful (just a word?).  I trotted back to the base of the hill where still, he teetered.  Then headed onto the frosty trail and into the woods and after awhile came to the road that splices the wide blank field.  I saw three snakes on the road—-flat and squished.  I stopped and looked very closely:  each one black with yellow stripes.  I’ve seen so many snakes this year!—usually alive—-often quite large—even two rattlers that shook and shook.  None of the snakes today made me squirm or screech.  Has fear lifted out of me the way that the mist lifted out of the pond?  Silently, nearly mysteriously.  Or has the weight of all that has happened, merely snuffed even fear from my bones?

I returned to the hill but my cyclist was gone.  I wanted to tell him I was no longer afraid of snakes.  I wanted to tell him that I still no nothing about balance—-absolutely nothing.    I wanted to tell him that although I question everything, I still no nothing at all.  I used to think suffering was too big a word for ordinary people.

Anne O’Regan

11/18/09

Newton, MA

MJ – The First Time

The first time I saw him I didn’t know if I could let myself become that vulnerable again. How will he react to my friends? What will coming out to my father entail? Could he sense that its sometimes difficult for me to be inside my own skin? Would he know that behind my broad Irish smile was a life mirroring the Rolling Stones song “Paint It Black”? To top things off I had some suspicions that I was trying to rule out during our first date. The month earlier he responded to my on-line profile. We then spent the subsequent four weeks exchanging e-mails leading up to our talking over the phone. Talking over the phone more and more where I was starting to get distracted at work.

The reasons for not being sure if I could trust him were that I’d been burned by both men and women after a dishonest period of trying not to be totally gay. After some radical acceptance I was overcome by a sense of pureness. Not in any virgin sense but on these different moral and ethical levels. However, Brian knew some interesting things about me from the years – it turned out – we were both at the same college. I then spent our first date with me asking whom he remembered, whom his professors and academic adviser’s were, and where were some of his ‘haunts’ around campus. After Brian listed something in the vain of 45 people (students, faculty, administrators) I felt satisfied. My suspicions were triggered by the fact I used to be close to someone who has had a long battle with mental illness. After parting company with this person for my own sanity I was starting to wonder if Brian’s interest in my on-line profile and knowing all these facts about our college in the mid 1990s was all part of some sick joke by my mentally ill friend as if this were some bizarre form of retribution for that estrangement I’d mentioned. A month after our first date I asked Brian if he was interested in taking in taking things to the next level. And am glad ever since that he said yes. After Brian’s answer in the affirmative I said I had to make amends with him. During that first date – per it being so full of positive feelings for each other – part of my self doubt got projected by these bizarre questions. I told him who I thought was trying to get back at me and Brian burst out laughing and said that his friends had a few choice words for the mentally ill student.

Just short of six years I think about that first date. I was walking down Francis Street in Providence. It was the weekend before Christmas and the Providence Place Mall was bedlam. I got there early so I could get a good parking space. Brian was standing out in front of the restaurant in his brown leather jacket and looking his usual handsome, well groomed, and obviously from very good stock self. He was hiding a chuckle because he saw me take off my winter hat as I walked down the street and straightened out my hair in the reflective shop windows. That first time we laughed together. That first date we walked around the mall and made full of all the mid ’00s trends. And all the styles of clothing that we did agree upon. I’d never felt so close to someone so quickly before. Or was it Brian’s nice way about himself that let me trust myself so I could trust him. It was also his patience – rivaling only Job – while I worked through that its okay to be in a healthy, functional gay relationship. That having one was such a pipe dream and was non existent as far as I was concerned. Up until the morning I met Brian. If only I could wish these first times on the rest of the world.