Last week Jackie and I stayed at Carrie's house to watch Grey and Jack while she, James and the girls took a trip to Disney World. Before she left, Carrie told Jackie that she had the first season of Downton Abbey downloaded on her computer along with season 2 on DVD's. That's how I got sucked in.
I'll admit I'm not a stranger to the going ons of the upper crust. My father told me when I was young that he grew up very poor. "Our butler was poor. The upstairs maid was poor. The downstairs maid was poor. The cook was poor. Even the horsemen were poor." "Dad" says I, "you lived on a busy street in St. Louis growing up. I don't think you had horses." "That's because, son, we were too poor."
Bill often liked to tell stories after dinner about how he met our mother. "We were in the midst of darkest Africa . . ." was how the typical adventure would begin. When I had a family of my own I wanted to continue the tradition and regale my offspring with exciting tales of finding my true love, their gorgeous but often in peril future mother.
After beginning to explain how I was in a hot air balloon over Victoria Falls, looked down and saw a beautiful young lady, tied to a pole and about to be cooked in a large cauldron of boiling water and then eaten by a tribe of pygmys equipped with poisonous blow darts, my oldest daughter Ceci puts her hands over her ears and tells me to stop. "That's not how you met mom. You met on a ski trip!" "Well yes, in darkest Africa" I assured her. "No, it was in Canada. There are no pygmys in Canada." Sensing that she probably had me there I waited for another day, like when Ceci was staying with friends.
But what goes around comes around. Ceci's oldest daughter Ellie is very bright but has never lived in an imaginary world. When Ellie was little Ceci was so excited to give her a little kitchen set. Ellie opens the door of the wooden refrigerator, looks in and says, "Hmmm." Then she rubs her hand over the painted on burners of the stove, turns the cute little red knobs and again says, "Hmmm." Checking under the little plastic sink to see if anything is connected to anything, she rolls her eyes. Ellie never played with that set. Her younger sisters later on were thrilled with it, but not Ellie.
One time after Piper was born and Ceci was feeding Pipes a bottle she asked Ellie if she wanted to feed her doll a bottle. "Mom, it's just a big hunk of plastic. It does not need a bottle." One day Grandma Roberts gave Ellie an Easy Bake oven. Ellie examines it carefully and then remarks, "A light bulb?" But Ellie loved that little oven because it could really cook something eatable. Now as a 5th grader she looks up recipes on line for stuff I cannot pronounce, gives her mom a shopping list, and makes them. And best for me, anytime she knows I will be coming over she fixes up a delicious batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Just like on Downton Abbey, life sometimes has a funny way of switching things up. We use to live in "the big house" but now we live upstairs and downstairs and watch over the lady of the house who lives on the main floor. Only our eldest daughter married a proper Englishman, and he's not all that proper (although I did spot him with a tie one day). Two girls went orange and married Dutch and our youngest married Young, a guy with fiery red hair. Come the revolution we've got contacts. Our son went Ukrainan for a mate. I'm pretty sure her ancestors live somewhere east of the Netherlands. They got engaged at the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago so that should give him a good starting point for keeping up the family tradition that tells how he met his true love.
Or as Becky likes to quote - "Wov, true wov."
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