My mother had a way of inventing traditions. “It’s Lizzie’s birthday!” she’d proclaim periodically and everyone in the family would don a party hat and sing happy birthday to one of our English Springer Spaniels. The announcement of the dog’s birth and subsequent celebration of it could occur at any time – on April 5, say, or December 12. It could happen twice a year or once every few years. But however haphazard, it became a tradition.
Every so often, we’d gather in the living room; my father on the bongo drums someone had given him for a birthday present, my sister on her recorder, me banging the big copper-bottomed soup pot with a wooden spoon, and my mother on piano, playing from our “American Folk Songs For Piano” songbook. “Love oh love oh careless love,” she’d sing, entirely off-key, “Love oh love oh careless love, love oh love oh careless love, see what love has done to me.”
At some point during college, probably while I sat drunk moribund
glued to a booth in a club birthed by a pomade-slick headed
Philadelphian, a forgettable hip-hop jam shivering my sternum, at some
point I realized this is not the best arena to showcase whatever it is
I have to offer women. Now, a couple of years later and back in Los
Angeles, those clubs and plenty of overcrowded, overloud bars in my
rear-view mirror, the thesis hasn’t changed. I have friends1 who,
god-bless them, don’t require that (trivial) intermediary step of
exchanging coherent words in between seeing a girl and kissing her.
Some sort of atavistic ceremony played out to the new Kanye. I don’t
know. Maybe I should let more chest hair peek out of my button-down
shirts. 
Two years ago I fell madly in love with a fella named Bentley. His
piercing emerald green eyes and perfect shade of thick brown hair melted
my heart those first few moments we met. He makes me laugh everyday,
loves to travel, swim in the ocean with me and he'll go anywhere on a
whim. My perfect day is to stay home, lying on the sofa
with him, cooking him three perfect meals a day. We share a pillow at
night and sometimes I find myself staring at him while he sleeps.
An age-old motto employed by wise women everywhere when their
60-something husbands return from the work wars to create projects from
their home office.
Bettie One sang like a bird and dressed like a pirate and sent my
libido into overdrive. She was an intoxicating beauty with a multitude
of talent. But she didn’t have a talent for food presentation.