More About The Green Dress

I am still trying to figure out exactly when Siss wheedled the green dress out of me, and I just know that I have gotten it all wrong. Time has seemed to compress in the almost-ten-years that I have lived in Houston, and I have molded it into a little ball that I can throw out in conversation as a neat package. Actually, it hasn't been like that at all.

When I think about all this time in a non-anecdotal way, there are events that stand out like blazes on trees to mark my way in time. Cella died in June and I came here in August, leaving Scranton directly from her memorial service. That first academic year, August-May, Siss came along with me and ten of my students to the American College Dance Festival, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin. Siss came as our "nurse", so she got a free ride. She watched me teach some master classes, and we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden. This was in March.

I saw Siss again the next November, which would have been my second academic year here. She came for Thanksgiving, which I had prepared to cook for us both. Naturally, Mr. Stupid-and-Cheap had provided me with a wreck of a refrigerator, which died just in time to spoil all the food for my big dinner. This is why Siss and I ended up at Kim Son, my neighborhood Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant, for dinner. I had house soup, a duck salad, and several glasses of appalling red wine. Who cared? We had the good stuff back at my place, a mere two blocks away. It was a good Thanksgiving Day.

Also on that weekend, Siss and I went to the Butterfly Garden at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We took photographs there, among the fluttering wings, and I have not thought of those photographs until now. Perhaps I should dig around for them and post one....if they really do exist.

Here is the other thing I remember about that weekend....or was it the Spring Break weekend? Siss was shocked that I did not own a television, so she took me out and bought me this little, 13-inch TV/VCR combo that I subsequently used only too look at movies and dance videos from performances. I had this little TV/VCR until just two Christmases ago when Sig bought me a large-screen TV and a satellite subscription. I still use it mainly to watch movies. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

That was also the year that Jack, my father, died at Christmas and I missed the funeral because I was snowed in by a blizzard in Flagstaff, Arizona....another story entirely.

In the middle of the third year, Siss suggested that we get together and visit Scranton in order to look at our parents' grave. Yes, they were buried in the same grave, although they had been divorced since I was fourteen. And, how do you get two people into the same grave, you ask? Cella was a Lutheran and Jack was a Catholic. Cella wanted cremation and Jack wanted a big Irish wake. Cella and Jack wanted to be buried together. Therefore, when Cella died, her ashes were stored at the mortuary in their little cherry wood box until Jack died. Then, the box was slipped into his coffin with his hand resting on it, probably in an effort to keep her quiet for eternity. No one said a word about this arrangement, because the church charged an "extra body fee" for more than one person in a grave. Ghoulish.

So, during the third academic year, Siss and I went to Scranton, visited the grave, and....I got my navel pierced. These things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is just a dearth of things to do in Scranton. We probably went to Brenda's, too, because we never go to Scranton without sampling the Italian fare and potent Manhattans at Bistocchi's.

A year later, at the end of my fourth academic year, I met Sig. Sig never even knew about the green dress until I asked for it back. I asked for it back when I was going on sabbatical. You can't get a sabbatical until you have been at the college for seven years.

What does this all mean? I mean, what is the point? The point is that Siss had possession of my green dress without writing a word for much longer than I had thought. It was on the grave-visiting, navel-piercing trip that she asked to borrow the dress; and it was after my seventh academic year that I finally asked for it back.

Having thought in terms of "academic years" for far too long, I have decided that I am finished with higher education forever. Dancing for grades never made a whole lot of sense anyway.

I did get the time line settled.