Deviled eggs and kindness abounds
Things your 4-year-old will say to you in all seriousness: Pretend you’re a human.
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Gargantubaby’s favorite thing to do is run away from waves. On a recent afternoon in Moss Beach, he made the following shrieking announcements running up the shore:
I hope I don’t die!
It’s time for us to really die!
Dammit!
Darn it!
Cowards never win!
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Gargantubaby is obsessed with these scratch-off art pads, which I also love because although they leave a fine black dust everywhere, 1. they're not a screen, 2. they keep him occupied for a while, 3. they’re not plastic, 4. they’re aesthetically pleasing and I like scratching them, too.
We’re working on a drawing “together,” which means he tells me what to scratch and I scratch it. I scratch a cartoon alligator "clean," the way he asks me to. He looks over my shoulder, then says politely, "Can I make an adjustment?"
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I take GB to Oakland for the weekend because COVID exposure/keeping the kids separate until everyone tests negative/I have a high credit limit so occasionally we can do things like this. It’s a magical three days wherein I take him to all my old haunts, including Mountain View Cemetery at the end of Piedmont Avenue.
“See this park?” I drive him past the mausoleums and tombstones. “This is a cemetery.”
“Aw!” he says. “People died!”
“Well, everybody dies. Dying is a part of life.”
“No!” he cries. “Dying is just a part of dying!”
*
Saturday, February 19, 2022, was a perfect day.
GB and I woke up late. I made a new recipe, pumpkin pancakes, that were easy and turned out fantastic. In the cool morning air, we carried books and art supplies through the magical fairyland that has become our back yard, with the plum and apple trees blossoming pink and white, the crocosmia flaming orange, and their copious leaves fanning bright green higher than our heads. I drank my tea and we snuggled, barefoot, in our sleeping bags and read stories.
My friend Lindsey had texted me the night before to invite us to the beach, and lo and behold we had NO PLANS, so after finishing my tea I packed us a picnic lunch and a few beach toys, and GB and I set off for Ocean Beach to MEET FRIENDS IS THIS POST-PANDEMIC OR WHAT. GB and I parked near Judah and walked all the way to the Beach Chalet, then hung a left onto the sand.
We found our friends, including the perennially sunny 3-year-old Hazel, who is ALMOST cuter than GB (ALMOST). We exclaimed about how long it had been. Caught up. Pet the dog. Drank a beer. Ate sandy carrots. At the end, Hazel fell over in the waves, so we sent her home in GB’s Spiderman T-shirt and teal-and-blue-striped leggings.
After they left, I realized we had nowhere to be. SJ had two back-to-back gardening gigs that would stretch into the evening. Nobody had to pee. The weather was perfect. So we stayed longer. GB pretended he was a dog and scooped sand through his legs. We tossed a ball.
Eventually, we wandered back to the car. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to cook dinner or clean anything. I had a hankering for posole. I found a restaurant in the mission called Gallardo’s that said it had posole. We drove back across town. Parked. Walked.
Sign in the window: CASH ONLY.
I never have cash. Never! A waitress came outside into the bluing air, and I asked if the sign meant they maybe took debit cards? No cards, and the ATM machine inside was broken. This was at 18th and Capp, where there aren’t many businesses, and no ATMS in sight. Two women wearing black aprons tottered through the door of the restaurant carrying a clean, ten-gallon pot.
“You can pay us back tomorrow,” the waitress said.
“WHAT NO,” I said, because THIS IS AMERICA AND THIS IS A BUSINESS. I was extremely confused by her offer.
“He’s done this before,” she said, gesturing inside the restaurant. “We’re open tomorrow.”
Still confused, but assured I could come back and pay later, I followed her inside.
The posole came, with a plate of cut limes, white onion and cilantro. It was fucking delicious, and huge. GB’s bean-and-cheese burrito came, with a plate of tostadas, sour cream and cut radishes. It was fucking delicious, and huge. Latino families still wearing their coats sat around two other tables in the long dining room. An 11-year-old at the next table smiled at us, a lot. She had the same kind of hat GB wore, this adorable trend I can’t get enough of. She and GB popped ears at each other.
After the meal, I approached the counter to see how we would arrange payment. I assumed I would give the restaurant my information from my driver’s license and maybe leave something as collateral. The waitress waved me toward the only man standing behind the counter, a trim, middle-aged guy with thick salt-and-pepper hair and a thick salt-and-pepper mustache.
Thus commenced Juan of Gallardo’s absolutely blocking me from paying. He wouldn’t confirm whether or not they were open the next day. He wouldn’t let me give him my information. He fist-bumped me repeatedly and said things such as, “You’ll come next time.”
I finally understood that this was happening: that someone who didn’t know me, at a restaurant I’d never been to, for no apparent reason knowingly cooked a meal for me and my son with no expectation of being paid for it.
How does one accept such kindness and generosity?
Here’s something odd: Only a few days before, I was standing in line in Walgreens, behind a woman and her teenage granddaughter. The granddaughter was holding a cardboard box of Pampers in each hand. The grandmother told her to put one box back because they couldn’t afford both. The granddaughter disappeared down an aisle.
“I’ve been there,” I said to the grandmother, which wasn’t true but still was the first thing out of my mouth. “Do you mind if I buy your diapers? They’re so expensive. They should be subsidized.”
The grandmother cried. She sent her granddaughter, whose mouth dropped open, back to get the second box. The granddaughter thanked me, and the grandmother said the diapers were for her grandbaby. She said, “God is good.” I said, “God is good,” and immediately thought, why am I saying that? Am I making it sound like I think I’m God because I can buy some diapers? When it was our turn, we approached the counter together, and the grandmother put one box on the counter. I told the checker I was paying for both.
I’m not religious AT ALL. But I’ll say that these two events circling so closely together gave me pause.
After our free dinner at GALLARDO’S AT 3248 18TH STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, GB and I went home and I didn’t drink any alcohol or get in any fights with anyone!
A perfect day.
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I’ve been telling GB about how much Black people built America, trying to explain how the labor was done by Black people but the economic benefits have been unequally distributed. As it turns out, this is a challenging — nay, impossible! — concept for a 4-year-old, and I have given him the mistaken impression that “Black people built everything.” Literally.
Numerous times, GB has asked me, apropros of nothing, “So, Black people made all of this?” He has asked me this in a taqueria. He has asked me this in the car. He has even asked me, “So, Black people made me?”
“GB!” I say. “I made you, and I’m white! What color are you?”
“White.”
Still. Does not compute.
The latest turn this has taken, to my absolute chagrin, is that when GB doesn’t like something in the world, he knows who to blame.
SJ and I take the kids to a new little beach/park thing in Dogpatch called Crane Cove. It’s fine. The beach is small and not sandy, but rather a wash of small rocks that are painful to walk on. GB and I leave SJ and his sister, T, eating potato chips in camping chairs and limp down to the shore. After we’ve properly frozen our toes in the bay, we begin the limp back. Which GB doesn’t like.
“Why did Black people make the beach so pointy?” he complains, and I am writing this from hell, where I went after I died.
Back at the chairs, his sister reports that the day before, when she and GB made slime in the kitchen, GB similarly complained to her, “Why did Black people make the Borax like that?”
Mostly these days, I sit at home waiting for the NAACP to take me away in an unmarked van.
*
I wake up in the morning next to my large child.
Remember how I said I had a bad day yesterday? I tell GB.
He nods.
I’m going to have a good day today.
Aww. He smiles and cuddles me. It’s because I'm right here, he says.
I snuggle him back. That is part of it, I say.
I hope you don't have any sit to do today.
Sit? I say. Then it dawns on me. He’s saying shit.
Yeah, he says again. I hope you don't have any sit to do today.
I love you, GB.
I love you, Mommy.
*
I go into the kids’ room to get GB for potty time. On the way to the bathroom, he tells me, We were listening to the Bruno song.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah. The whole fuckin’ thing.
*
Gargantubaby: I’m the stuffed animal man.
I love the shit out of some deviled eggs, but I’d never made them because I thought they were complicated. GUESS WHAT.
You need:
6 large eggs, hard-boiled
2 TB mayo
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. hot sauce
Kosher salt and pepper
Some pickled onions from the jar of pickled herring you bought at Whole Foods. Or sliced green onions, chives, parsley, dill, etc.
You need to:
Halve eggs lengthwise. Transfer yolks to small bowl and mash with mayo, lemon juice, mustard, hot sauce and a little salt and pepper. Slop into egg whites and smoosh a piece of pickled onion on top of each one.
Sprinkle paprika on that shit and let the farting begin!