family

The King and I

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‘Getting my Blue Suede Shoes(On)’

Last week the one and only Elvis Aaron Presley, bless his heart (and swiveling hips) would have celebrated his 80th birthday. (Big pause to take that in).

Now you Young People out there may need a bit of Elvis Ed (which you can find right here). But before you Wikipedia yourselves senseless, let me just say that, in his day, Elvis could have out teened-frenzied that Bieber Boy with one pouty lip tied behind his back (now there’s an image). And here’s an image of each; you be the judge. But do notice how Elvis didn’t need to resort to tattoos to look, um, hot. And he never posed in his (or Calvin’s) underwear. Not that I know of, anyway.

So. This story happened Continue reading

The Year of the Snake

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Year of the Snake

 

Or, How The Child almost did not come to exist.

First, let me just say that, yes, I know that 2015 isn’t really the Year of the Snake. It’s the Year of the Sheep. Which doesn’t sound nearly as sassy. As a matter of fact, Chinese families everywhere have been working the calendar so that their babies’ births do not fall during the Year of the Sheep. (If you care, you can read why here, especially if you think I might be making this up.)

Well, anyway. It’s the 7th of January, and I know I really should have written this post last Wednesday, but it was New Year’s Eve and I was afraid everyone (but me and the Dude) would be out celebrating, so I posted that piece about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ instead. So sue me.

But back to me and snakes. Continue reading

Larry and the Nose Holes

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‘A college boy learns his lesson’

I must have 8-year-olds on the brain. Last week, I wrote about how The Child learned about the Birds and the Bees. Now I’m going to tell you about the time my Favorite Sister went to college — when she was only in Third Grade.

See, I love my brothers. All three of them. But, as the Oldest of the Henry Clan, and the Only Girl for ages and ages, I really wanted a little sister. And, when I finally got one — when I was nine, for heavens’ sakes — I wanted her around me pretty much all the time. I even had my parents put her crib in my room. (Which I imagine didn’t take too much arm-twisting. Before that, the crib was in their room.) Anyway, here she is, in all her infant glory:

Clinging to my prize, flanked by two out of three eventual bros

Clinging to my prize, flanked by two out of three eventual brothers

We’ll jump ahead for the purposes of this story. To when I left home to go to college. University of Missouri, that was. So I could go to Journalism School and become Brenda Starr. If you (undoubtedly) have no idea who that was, click here to find out. But first, Continue reading

Sex is like Santa

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‘Birds and Bees? Ho Ho Ho.’

Did someone spike the eggnog? Last week it was Incest. (See ‘The Incest Mug’ for details, but not just yet.) This week it’s Sex Ed. Fingers crossed everyone’s out of the house bolstering the economy, especially The Child. Because this post is about how You-Know-Who learned about You-Know-What.

The story begins innocently enough, with me walking said Child home from school. Third Grade, I believe. Which would make her about eight at the time.

So this adorable innocent girl holding my hand looks up at me through impossibly-long eyelashes and says: Continue reading

The Incest Mug

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‘Aha! So that explains it’

‘Incest’, eh? You might be thinking that’s a frisky topic for Lutheranliar. But I figure now is a perfect time to get this story out of my system, since almost everybody’s away from their computers doing their Christmas shopping. And all the other people not away from their computers are probably doing their Christmas shopping too.

So, hah. I’m thinking the chances of ruining my social standing and/or becoming shunned by polite society are fairly slim since nobody’s going to read it anyway. So, here’s the story.  Continue reading

De Kooning’s revenge

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‘My living room is green and gold.’

Who knew Willem de Kooning was such a merry prankster? He was known for his paintings, particularly his ‘Women’ series, but I certainly didn’t realize he had such a wicked sense of humor.

If you’re interested, you can read more about de Kooning here. And if you look here, you’ll see examples of his work (including a couple of pretty scary-looking ‘Women’) at a cool site called Artsy. But you might want to finish this post first. What happens is pretty funny.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that my father-in-law, Dad of the Dude, was a famous urologist. With even-more-famous guys as patients. Urologists’ patients are almost always guys. (The Dude himself is also a doctor, but an ophthalmologist, and deals with a whole other portion of the anatomy.) Anyway, the original Dr. Whitmore dealt almost exclusively with very famous, very grateful, guys.

They were so grateful, in fact, that they often gave him gifts and/or did nice things for him. (There’s a cool example of Malcolm Forbes’ generosity in my story ‘They needed the eggs’) But back to Willem de Kooning.

You’ve probably guessed by now Continue reading

Happy Ho-Made Halloween

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‘A Simple Costume can do the trick. And get the treat.’

I blame it on The Headless Horseman. This was a Halloween costume I thought up, oh, when I was nearing the end of my trick-or-treating career. Like, when I was about 11. Appearing ‘headless’ involved poking the ends of my Mom’s yardstick through the sleeves of her ‘borrowed’ raincoat and balancing said yardstick on top of my covered-with-a-scarf head. The dangling ends of the sleeves were safety-pinned to a pair of Dad’s utility gloves, one of which was attached (somehow, the details are a bit fuzzy now) to a carved Jack-o-Lantern, so it looked like the Headless Horseman was carrying his head. I mean, if you were very young and impressionable or old and almost blind it looked like the Headless Horseman was carrying his head. But that was good enough for me.

You see, we Henrys were a family of Costume Makers. As opposed to Costume Buyers. I don’t think my parents were the type to buy, much less encase me, in a teensy infant Devil Onesie. But maybe they did, and I was just too little to know about it. If they did, Continue reading

Dad Eggs and Ham

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‘Sunday-Night Supper at the Henry House’

As some of you may know from my ubiquitous FaceBook presence, I recently spent a most glorious Family Fall Weekend with my brother Roger and his lovely wife Nobody-Doesn’t-Like-Jenn. It was my favorite kind of weekend because, basically, we really didn’t do much. Looked at slides of my nephew’s wedding. Hung out on the Porch of Ill Repute with glasses of wine. Played with the across-the-street neighbor’s baby. (Hi, Olivia! Hi, Olivia’s Mom Amanda!)

Oh, and being Henrys, we also ate a lot of food. Like Roger’s chili, which he makes in large vats then freezes into chili-sicles for emergency guests-are-here use. (He also bestows these as gifts to neighbors. Move near him, if you can.)  Roger also continues to make the Peterson Christmas-Eve Oyster Stew, but I’ll have to wait to eat it. And you’ll have to wait to hear about it.

You do get to hear about Dad Eggs, though. Dad Eggs is a dish my Dad (in photo above) concocted to Give Mom a Break on Sunday Nights. See, Sundays were the days we went to (Lutheran) Church, then stuck around after the service to eat pastries and watch Pastor Kahre smoke, then went home to the main meal of the day, usually a large roast of some kind. (Remind me to tell you about ‘heart meat’; trust me, it’s in no way similar to ‘eye of round’).

So, since Mom had gone to a lot of trouble (gravy! remember gravy?), and we were all still kind of full when suppertime rolled around, Dad would go into his act. Continue reading

That’s my Bob

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‘Your family is who you think your family is’

My Middle Younger Brother Roger is many things: filmmaker, banjo player, wind miller, and maker of the best chili on the planet. Who knew he was also a trailblazer? Yes, Roger was a member of a ‘blended family’ way before ‘blended’ was a term stuck on the front of ‘family’.

That’s Middle Younger Brother Roger standing behind the couch and behind Mom

See, back when Roger was just a tyke, my dad was transferred to Memphis for his job and our young family landed (somehow, I’m not sure how or why, I was only seven at the time) in a very large house near a university. To help pay the rent, my parents took in boarders — a couple of college guys, one named Bill Something-or-Other and another named Bob Sipowich. They lived upstairs, kept to themselves. Everything worked out fine. Except for the time we kids (there were three of us at this point) all came down with the measles over Christmas at my Gramma Peterson’s so we had to stay there till we got well and the boarders didn’t feed or water our parakeet Petey while we were away and he (gasp) died.

Anyway. That was traumatic. Just had to get it out.

That’s Roger, practicing Dad’s “Whoa-Back” move, at about the age of this story

Back to the story. Continue reading