The end of January

Jack Deatherage

(2/2020) The only day I celebrate is New Year's Day and that is observed with a feast. The DW agreed to my initiating this tradition more than a decade ago. I think she hoped to stop the incessant grumbling and carping about my marginal participation in her clan's Christmas nonsense. Whyever, we generally have ten people come to dine on steamed shrimp, some variation of oxtail stew, a broccoli salad, roasted birds (sometimes a duckling and/or a chicken) homemade breads and egg noodles wherever they'll tuck in.

It's not unusual for the offspring- if he happens to be visiting from Florida -to cook up a corn chowder he's perfected over the years. DIL- Raiza, always makes her New Rican version of empanadas. And I've been known to add a few experiments: rice noodle lasagna, various cookies and cakes, and stews made with leftovers from Turkey Day and Xmas dinners I cook for the DW and myself.

The diverse guests, especially those new to the feast, sometimes feel the need to arrive with something other than their drinks, appetites and a willingness to participate in conversation. While I grumble to myself about alien foods being brought when I've spent months planning and gathering, and days baking and cooking for the feast, I get that others have their own traditions. Especially those who've not been inside the Deatherage madhouse and have no clue what I mean when I'm inviting them to a feast.

This New Year, as plates were filled and emptied, as table chatter waxed and waned, I sat pondering those who were missing from the feast. Luke and the Mad One were likely abed eight time zones to the east. Mom D and farmer friend Marty were off doing whatever is after this plane of existence. Such thoughts brought home those friends, relatives and acquaintances who had also died, all in the month of December. I'd have been more melancholic had I known January would also see people I know mercifully end their days in a nursing facility. Evidently the "passing season" runs longer than December.

It took the DW and me the better part of a week to finish the leftovers of the feast. The dogs probably ate as much of it as we did. I ate shrimp with broccoli, with pasta, with scrambled eggs and by themselves. While the DW struggled to consume leftover chowder and noodle soup, we both struggled to finish half a large peanut butter cheese cake a guest had brought. I began planning the 2021 feast.

Twelve pounds of steamed shrimp instead of eighteen. German crusty rolls instead of basic bread loaves, so more people can take bread home as they leave the table. Bourbon banana cake instead of cookies. An herb brine chicken to roast with a duckling- then strip the birds and add their meats to the double batch of yolk rich noodles I'll make. The oxtail will make a mushroom gravy instead of a stew.

The DW, the younger Jack and Raiza can do as they please, if they return in 2021. I need focus solely on quality rather than quantity to give myself a break in the mad dash to prepare so much in so short a time. And to cut back on the leftovers!

Mid January arrived to hacking, wheezing, blowing and being generally miserable. During that week I mostly napped between reading novels, studying online garden catalogs and compiling lists of seeds I'd eventually not buy. When I felt close to normal again, I wandered down to Emmitsburg Tattoo Company to talk to Don- pillar of the community and Rae- no longer an apprentice tattooer.

Whatever topic was in my head was blown away when Don turned to Rae and suggested she show me a design she'd recently finished.

The look of delight on the young woman's face sent a shiver of anticipation and apprehension through me. I thought of a mouse staring into the eyes of a rat snake as I envisioned my doom approaching- grinning ear to ear. In her outstretched hands was an iPad I knew was loaded with tattoo software. On the screen was an upright rat wearing traditional Japanese garb complete with a kasa- a straw hat shaped like a mushroom- blue koi swimming about a sash, rice paper scrolls tucked under an arm, a walking staff clutched in the opposite hand. A woven basket containing loaves of bread was slung on the rat's back. I know enough about the symbolism of tattoo designs to know when one has been drawn for me.

Rae's laughter and Don's chuckle snapped me back. I heard one of them say, "I can't believe it. We actually shut him up for a minute!"

"I told you, you won't escape my tattooing you!" Rae laughs with more delight and satisfaction than I'm comfortable with. "You where never going to get out of your promise to be my practice skin!"

During the minute or so that I was silent, thousands of memories tore through my mind, all of them little more than a year old- the length of her apprenticeship.

"Can I harass her during her apprenticeship?" I'd asked Don after having volunteered my hide to advance her skill.

"Sure." Don allowed. "Just don't upset her so badly that she quits."

What he neglected to tell me and I was too stupid to consider myself- though Rae would inform me, repeatedly- was she'd eventually get to pay back my teasing, mockery and laughter.

As Rae's skill progressed exponentially during the year of apprenticeship I began to tell her I'd escape her clutches because she'd be a tattooer before she got to practice on me! I sure as hell wasn't going to pay for a tattoo I didn't want to begin with! She argued I was to be her "old skin" to practice on.

Don merely smiled and said, "Don't fool yourself Jack. You will get tattooed if we have to drag you from your house and hold you down."

I think back to the evening, a little more than a year ago, when I volunteered to be practice skin. Why would I have done such a thing? Oh yeah, that damnable need to patronize an artist on the rare occasions my brain kicks that urge to the forefront.

Well, hell. Shortly after seeing the "Zen rat" I inquired about purchasing a topical nerve numbing product the shop sells, but both tattooers were adamant that I will experience a tattooing in its entirety. I suppose that makes sense. I've seen her sweep and mop the shop floor, watched her copy tattoo flash, tattoo herself and eventually begin to design her own flash.

Rae warned me again that tattooing hurts. "I won't be able to not hurt you. But, the degree to which I hurt you is completely up to you."

All joking and teasing aside, I'm anxious to see her work on old macaque hide.

"So when do you want to do this?"

"I can fit you in at 1 PM, January 31st. It's a Friday."

My day of doom- The end of January.