Someone Pass the Gas…

“I think he just pooted,” my sister said  of my little 8 month old nephew, laughing as she turned to me. “It’s a stinker!  You’ve been known to poot a few times yourself!”

“Oh, Andrew can blow all of us out of the room!!!” Dad said looking at me for my reaction and laughing uncontrollably. 

My sister, the hematologist and oncologist – the doctor of internal medicine that reverts back to a silly teenager when she comes home to be with my mother and father.

I laughed.

“What have you been feeding him?” I asked as my sister checked his diaper.

“It’s good to let a good one blow sometimes,” my dad chimed in, cavorting. 

My mother started to laugh hysterically as well.  It was all so much fun.  Who thought a little baby passing gas could be so much joy?

 

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Choices…

I had a hard choice yesterday at lunch.  To eat my New Year’s Day meal with Mrs. Florene and George or with Charlie and his wife.  Both Janice and Mrs. Florene were awesome cooks and both were having the traditional Southern pork loin, turnip greens, and black eyed peas that so set the tone for prosperity for the next year.  The turnip greens are said to represent money and the peas coins.  The more you eat, the more prosperous you would be in the coming year.

Dad called me around eleven.  I had just taken a two hour power nap.

“We’re headed to Charlie’s.  Are you coming?”

I had made my choice.  I was spending New Year’s Day with my black family.   I wanted the ease and comfort of being around Mrs. Florene and George and the small, not large, gathering it entailed to assuage my social anxieties.  Besides, Mrs. Florene cooks a tad bit better than Janice being a old traditional Southern soul food cook. 

“I am eating with George and Mrs. Florene,” I told dad carefully, hoping he wouldn’t give me a lecture about George.

He did.

“You know I don’t like him,” dad said over the phone.  “He’s a drunkard and who knows what else he is doing!”

“He’s my friend!!!”  I replied, adamantly.

“Well, be careful,” dad said with an air of true concern. “I don’t want you succumbing.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him casually.  “I could have had a drink a long time ago if I wanted one.”

Dad then told me not to eat too much worried about my bulimia – to disregard that old Southern myth about prosperity.   You see?  I am fine if I eat a sensible meal.   I won’t throw up.  But if I eat a lot, it triggers the bulimia something fierce.  The urge to purge is almost uncontrollable on an overly full stomach.

“Don’t forget to make room for your steak dinner tonight,” dad said in closing.

I said I would and bid him goodbye.  Soon, I was headed to my black family’s house to eat a good meal and to see what George had been up to New Year’s Eve.  It was a very good day.