More Q & A’s from Hannah McCrane & Tammy Armstrong

I received several more questions from Hannah McCrane, and a single one from Tammy Armstrong in Canada which requires a short answer, so I’ll include it here. (I don’t want anyone waiting for answers, if I can help it!)

 

Tammy asks, “Since we are in the holiday season, do you have any traditions?” 

 

These days, not really. Christmas is for kids and since I don’t have any, I don’t celebrate it much.

 

When we were kids, we waited until Christmas morning to open presents (because they never arrived until Santa delivered them overnight). The night before, we hung stockings, wrote notes to Santa and left him some of Mom’s homemade ginger snap cookies and milk.

 

Since becoming an adult, I usually open my gifts on Christmas Eve.  And for the past seven years or so years (up until this year of COVID) I always gathered with my nearest and dearest friends (Lisa Twining and Edward Smith) after opening gifts on my sister’s side of the duplex to play board games while Lisa cooked a fabulous ham or turkey dinner. (I’m no cook, so I’m the chief plate and bottle washer during holidays.)

 

Alas, this year, we will be staying home so we can gather next year with COVID vaccines aboard.  It will be a VERY SPECIAL HOLIDAY SEASON after this one of sad separation, for sure. Never again will we take being together during holiday feasts as much for granted as we always did in the past.

 

Hannah McCrane peppered me with additional intriguing questions:

 

Favorite color?  Toss up between robin’s egg blue and yellow, probably. (Yellow is the rarest color in nature.) I also love aquamarine, though.

 

Favorite food? Hmmm…  probably porcupine meatballs (spiced hamburger meatballs embedded with white rice and mixed with tomato sauce) and mashed potatoes, the way my mom used to make them. That’s what I request as a birthday meal every year when my sister Jackie asks me what I want. I also love Swedish pancakes the way mom used to make them. Jackie makes them occasionally and I get some when she does.

 

Favorite book? This is an impossible question to answer by way of a single title. I’ve read too many books to have an absolute favorite. Among the top contenders are “anything by Mark Twain,”  a number of books I read as a kid (Black Beauty, Bambi, Big Red, Flicka, Where the Red Fern Grows, and A Wrinkle in Time), and oh, just so many more now that I’m an adult. (One that stands out is Conundrum by Jan Morris, which I read as a teen or young adult and felt such kinship with; it’s about a transgender AMAB individual– Assigned Male at Birth — in the era when transgenderism seemed rare as hen’s teeth.)

 

Frankly, I always think the next book I read I read will be my favorite, or I wouldn’t even choose it.

 

Favorite movie? Another impossible question. Among my favorites are Les Mis (Hugh Jackman), The Music Man (Robert Preston), Bobby (a semi-fictional account about the final days of Bobby Kennedy’s run for the Presidency, which ended in his assassination in Los Angeles. I loved Bobby and there are several scenes in this movie where he’s on screen speaking about issues that remain close to my heart to this day, so it’s poignant to see him again and to sadly remember how much different things could have been had he become President. Alas, alas…), and Amazing Grace, about William Wilberforce’s decades’-long struggle to end the slave trade in England.

 

I have all of the above movies on DVD because I love them so much.  I also enjoy the musical Tom Sawyer (with Johnnie Whitaker and Jodie Foster as Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher) from time to time…

 

Favorite song? The Impossible Dream, For Once in my Life, and I Gotta Be Me***, for very personal reasons.

The first and last were my high school graduation theme songs (Class of 69) and I did my best to help choose them because they resonated with me so. The middle one because of the interaction DeForest Kelley and I had in his car when I was driving him back to the hospital and the song came on.

 

If you don’t know that story, let me grab the excerpt from DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor and put it here (alas, it appears that this anecdote didn’t make it into the updated version titled DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal:  A Harvest of memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best, which was a HUGE oversight!!! At least, I can’t find it by searching for it using the Find command–GROAN!!!):

 

As we were driving back toward the hospital, De mentioned how emotionally satisfying and significant hand-holding was to him. I told him I liked it, too – that it nearly always made me want to cry.

Then I recounted that I would occasionally reach over and take my Dad’s hand in the car when we drove places and then tell him I loved him. Then I confessed, “I have felt very much like doing that with you a few times, when we’ve been en route to some place or other, but then I thought twice about it, because you’re a married man, NOT my Dad, and I thought it might be misinterpreted.”

De said, “Oh, don’t worry about that, at all. It’s all right.”

 

As we were approaching the hospital, the song FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, hauntingly rendered by Robert Goulet, came on the radio. I was LIVING every word of it, silently, very near tears, thinking about how caring for De these past weeks had been my opportunity to pay him back for all the times he had been there for me.

The lyrics hit me hard. I had no idea they were affecting De as well.

As I was steering the Lexus to the hospital entrance and braking to a stop, the final line (“I have someone who needs me”) rang out.

 

De reached over, patted my hand sincerely and said, “I need you, dear girl.”

Tears flooded my eyes and I cried out, “Oh, God, De!”

 

I exited the door, walked to the trunk, lifted the wheelchair out, unfolded it, and then pushed it to the passenger’s side of the car.

As I lifted De out of the car, I sniffled, “You have perfect timing, Mr. Kelley!” We were both in tears.

 

He said, “You’re terrific.”

I responded immediately, “You’re pretty damned terrific yourself, you know!”

We cried all the way to Carolyn’s room.

 

Hannah’s final question (for now) was, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?”

 

My first thought was invisibility or the ability to hear other people’s thoughts, but my amygdala sent me a red alert immediately warning me I would very likely hear stuff about myself that I would prefer NOT to, especially from far-right family members. (There’s a quote I try to live by: “Other people’s opinion of me is none of my business.”) Even though I’d likely hear some  unexpected good stuff about myself, too, from unexpected people, I know I’d zero in on the negative stuff and get upset or depressed and want to explain myself.  So, those super powers would definitely be  double-edged swords.

 

This means I have to pick something else, something with less potentially detrimental effects. I’d have a tough time choosing between force fields, flight, and teleportation, but flight and teleportation are sorta similar. Flight would be more exhilarating, though. I frequently dream that I’m flying, and it feels fabulous! (But flying through snow storms throat-parching, eye-drying deserts would be no fun at all, so teleportation would work best there.)

 

Why?  I think the reasoning is self-explanatory. I’d choose force fields for self-protection and to help protect others. I’d choose flight/teleportation because the idea of quick travel and exhilarating viewpoints excites and intrigues me.

 

The power to deprogram cultists would be high on my list, too, since they’re so dangerous to the world.

 

There are upsides and downsides to every superpower.  (Even superpower nations!)

 

Hey, these were FUN!  I hope I get some more questions to answer!!!

 

FIRE AWAY!!!

 

*** P.S.  Just so you know, I usually adapt the lyrics of I GOTTA BE ME to “I gotta be me, un-for-tu-nate-ly, the dream that I see makes me what I am.”