#73: "Homophones"

Pop quiz: how many of you remember your elementary language lessons well enough to know exactly what the title of this letter means? Maybe you're like me and you were a little confused because there are homophones, homonyms, and homographs and seriously elementary school was a really long time ago. Even though I mostly remembered which was which, I had to look it up.

I'm home from vacation alone for another 36 or so hours. I've been home since Tuesday night because of wonderful work things (heavy use of sarcasm there, folks), so at this point I'm kinda wishing the dog would just start talking back to me. To while away the hours I've completely switched the furniture in two of our bedrooms - our guest room has become our nursery, and vice versa. I've also put up a picture rail and placed on it four concert posters that we've had sitting in our basement since we moved in (we're about halfway through putting up the pictures we have.

These were things that Amy and I have talked about doing for some time. It won't be long before Ben needs his own crib, and while the nursery was perfectly sized for Fred alone it was woefully insufficient for two boys. Not that any house is really sufficient for two young kids with seemingly boundless energy, but you know what I mean.

While I was working on these household projects I thought about how, while growing up, my dad was not always so good with tasks like this. He always disparaged them - calling them "honey-do's" - and making them seem as if they were edicts handed down to him as lowly worker. Even when they were directly to his benefit they were still done begrudgingly.

It made me think about how glad I am that I actually enjoy doing projects like that. I moved all the furniture in those two rooms in one evening; about two and a half hours. I just got started and was on a roll and then suddenly, the only thing I hadn't moved was the crib (because it wouldn't fit through the door assembled). Even today - on the first summer Friday I've been home to enjoy - I got moving somewhat early and finished off the work because while I can certainly sit around, I can't do it for very long. 

But that term, "honey-do;" it reminded me of my grandmother. I know that seems strange because the whole gender role structure our society is still stuck in makes you think that those tasks are given by female to male, but I was actually thinking of the homophone here - honeydew melons.

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that tried so desperately to purchase and enjoy honeydew melons all year around as my grandmother did. This is the same woman that, with her husband, purchased a bar/dancehall so they could have a place to party every night and proceeded to drink it into the ground, as well as the same woman that had a bag of off-brand cheetos in her fridge dated 1993 when she died - in 2008. She never could seem to figure out that you just can't get good, ripe melon produce all year, but damn if she didn't try (as well as make us kids independently verify for her).

As crazy as she was, as infuriating as she could be, and as amazingly thoughtful as she was to everyone; I miss her often. I wish my kids could have been around to meet her. We had a lot of good laughs. We had a lot of terrible honeydew melon. I even spent many an hour at her house accomplishing "honey-do" projects for her, happily.