January 2024
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@icloud.com
Bio Note: I was watching the Vikings game when I got a text from my granddaughter Lizzy, who was watching at her house. “Grandpa,” she wrote. “Who would you take with your first draft pick, Achilles or Hercules?” Sigh. I have a lot to answer for.

Lists
All day I make lists because hiding from the truth is what I’m good at. That and making drinks — for some reason, I am the drinks maven. Chocolate milk (the secret is to use a lot of syrup), cappuccino, ice coffee, gimlets, lemonade, even filtered water with orange slices. My granddaughter tells me I’m too thin and exercise too much. You don’t eat enough she says, so at lunch I eat four blueberry pancakes. She barely manages two. Glass houses, I say, and the pot calling the kettle. She takes a photo of me, posts it on FB with the caption Too Thin? An hour later she has 1200 likes. I eat a handful of almonds, she drinks a smoothie. We compare lists. Of her favorite 15 songs, I’ve heard of 2. Neither would make it into my top 1000. She looks at mine and can’t stop laughing. She takes another picture of me, but this time I’ve dozed off and you can see the huge bald spot on top of my head. We compare lists of our favorite meals. Hers is very tender beef stew, mashed potatoes and cooked carrots. I tell her 1956 wants its menu back. She reads my list, sticks her tongue out at most of my entries, but we agree on Cobb Salad. We walk around the small lake at the center of our neighborhood park. She tells me that she loves her Latin teacher, not loves loves, but loves. She conjugates the verb amare, dances ahead toward a small flock of geese nibbling bread between a row of willow trees.

Searching for Gold
My granddaughters don’t care about precious metals, but they love to hear about a goddess struggling deep beneath the earth. Sometimes it’s Artemis, sometimes Athena or Aphrodite. Never Hera. She comes to a door cut into the rock wall, pushes it open, and though it resists and creaks, her strength will not be denied. I ask what she sees on the other side, and they shout in unison “Nothing!” That sets us all laughing, and I say “Nothing will come of nothing.” I tell them nothing is the most powerful force in the universe, more dynamic than dark energy, mightier than dark matter. The goddess (maybe this time Inanna or Isis, or golden-haired Sif) gathers enough nothing to fill her magic bag, which swells or shrinks to fit whatever she wishes to carry. She starts back to the surface, following the underground river in reverse. “And who do you think she meets?” I ask. “Someone!” yells the younger, “No one!” yells the elder. Such materials I’m offered, endless possibilities to wind up in the same place - a modest palace on Mount Olympus with a feast of watermelon, cocoa, bread and chocolate, in a warm kitchen with homemade cake, pots bubbling on the stove.
©2024 Steve Klepetar
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