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Message-ID: <40134asstr$1041113402@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: anon584c@nyx.net (Uther Pendragon)
Reply-To: anon584c@nyx.net
Subject: {ASSM} rp "Forget All That 11" {Pendragon} (MF rom wl lac) [11/12]
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 17:10:02 -0500
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IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to 
read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do 
something else.

    This material is Copyright, 1997, by Uther Pendragon.  All 
rights reserved.  I specifically grant the right of downloading 
and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long 
as this notice is included.  Reposting requires previous 
permission.

    If you have any comments or requests, please E-mail them to 
me at anon584c@nyx.net.  

     If you save erotic stories, and you prefer that other 
household members not be exposed to them, I recommend that you 
use a file zipped with the PKZip option -spassword.  (Where the 
password that you choose would, presumably, not be "password.")  
This still leaves the titles of the files and the fact that they 
are encrypted open to anybody.

    All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as 
public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination 
and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly 
coincidental.


                         FORGET ALL THAT
                       by  Uther Pendragon
                        anon584c@nyx.net



Part Eleven:
Continued from Part Ten.

I clutched my robe around me as I dashed across the hall to 
the bathroom.  Somehow I had lost the sash.  Mostly I put on a 
nightgown before leaving the room when I am visiting the Senior 
Brennans and put on a robe over that.  (Bob is horrified at the 
idea of my actually wearing a nightgown to bed.  By this time, 
I'm not used to it either.  My nightgowns and Bob's pajamas last 
a long time.)  This morning I was in a hurry.  Bladder empty, I 
decided that I might as well shower at that time.  The Kitten 
hadn't awakened before me, which gave me a nice long time before 
she decided that she was famished.

Bob had put on his pajamas by the time I returned.  The 
Kitten was on his shoulder getting a few more minutes of sleep.  
"There are now two diapers in the wastebasket above the paper," 
he said.

"Oh, do you remember changing her?"

"Just now.  Do you?"

"Not in the least."  This is a minor mystery.  We know that 
The Kitten wakes in the middle of the night and demands a meal.  
We know that I feed her, and that one of us changes her.  
Sometimes we remember doing that, and who did the change.  More 
often, neither of us remembers it.  Occasionally, we check to 
make sure that it actually happens; it does.  Changing a baby is 
a rather complex action to do in your sleep.  Oh well.

"I like your outfit," Bob said, "but The Kitten will too."  
I can't go topless around my daughter, not because she is a prude 
at the tender age of seven months, but because she wants to suck 
on my breast any time she sees it.  This may be typical of 
breast-fed babies, but it just might be hereditary.

"That's all right, we're almost on schedule.  Have you seen 
the sash to my robe?"

"It's over on the bookcase where I threw it."  Bob pointed, 
which was helpful since the walls of the room were mostly low 
bookcases.  I slipped it back through the loops and hunted up 
clean clothes.  By the time The Kitten had reconciled herself to 
a new day's beginning, I was dressed below the waist.  I nursed 
The Kitten while Bob watched with his patented combination of 
beam and leer.  Which finally reminded me of why Bob would be 
throwing around the sash to my robe.

"Did my father really say he was proud to be compared to 
me?" he asked.

"Bob, you should have seen his face.  Pure ecstasy.  He 
looked like you did the first time The Kitten clenched your 
finger."

"You still should have approached us as adults."

"Somehow the concept didn't leap to mind," I said.  Then I 
ignored him to coo to my daughter and tell her that "Les hommes 
sont fous."  "Prends garde aux," I told her, "...  hommes 
empoisenne ...  du testosterone."  It's probably the same in 
French; it's that sort of word.  Bob wandered off to shower and 
breakfast.

"I think I'll run a wash load today," he said when he came 
back.  We didn't pack enough for two weeks, and this was about 
the midpoint of our visit.  "Is The Kitten done?"  I handed her 
over.  "Voyons ton grand-pere!"  I went downstairs moments later.  
I could have carried The Kitten, but it was better that his 
father get this treat from Bob.

Dinner was already in preparation when I reached the 
kitchen.  Kathleen handed me my breakfast plate and I took it 
into the dining room.  Katherine stopped her story when I 
returned.  "Does two o'clock seem good enough, dear?" she asked.

I thought.  "That should be fine.  If I foist The Kitten off 
with a meal from a jar, she'll probably be hungry well before 
one.  Two would be almost perfectly safe."

"Or would two-thirty be safer?"

"That would be more likely.  The only danger would be that 
I'd have to leave the table a little early."

"Two-thirty it is, dear.  We'll have Bob bring down the 
rocker; you won't have to leave the room.  Or would you rather 
talk to The Kitten than listen to us.  I know that I would."

"The Kitten is getting a little less French this trip than 
we're used to, but she's getting much more English.  I have her 
most of the time at home, so don't worry about that.  The thing 
is, we spilled something on the rocker and it didn't quite come 
out."  If "coming out" is how you describe cleaning a spill off 
varnished wood.

"Nothing which hasn't been spilled on it before, dear.  
Don't worry.  After a while, the stain darkens and pretends it's 
part of the pattern of the wood."  If only she knew.  Then I 
thought.

She kept that rocking chair in her bedroom, their bedroom.  
They moved it back and forth for us every visit, but it stayed in 
their room fifty weeks a year.  Bob and Kathleen had been nursed 
in that rocker, but not recently.  Katherine spent very little 
waking time in that room.  Maybe the Senior Brennans used the 
rocker for the same purposes that Bob and I did.  Katherine was 
looking at me.  "Nothing which hasn't been spilled on it before, 
dear."

This proved nothing, but it did give me a more attractive 
vision of my life when I get to my fifties than the discussion 
around the table the night before had given me of my life in my 
sixties.

"Do you think that I could bathe The Kitten once the 
turkey's in?" I asked.

"There will be space for you, dear.  Whether you can wrest 
her from the hands of her grandfather is another question.  Are 
you available to peel potatoes?"  I was, and she set me up across 
from Kathleen.

Katherine started a story of her great-great-aunt Hazel and 
her wonderful recipes.  "And, you know dear, when the family had 
almost gone to court over who would inherit her set of recipe 
cards, almost all of it came down to 'a pinch of cinnamon,' or 
whatever, or -- even worse -- 'season to taste.'  That was before 
the age of Xerox, dear.  One person got that sort of 
information."  Kathleen and I sat with enthralled minds and busy 
hands as that story led to another, then we looked at each other.  
I don't know who had the idea first, but we both had it before 
Katherine came to a stopping place.  "Is Bob still opposed to 
sweet potatoes dear?"

"He still is, and my mother foisted a double helping onto 
him yesterday.  But we have a question."

"Would you mind terribly," asked Kathleen, "if we taped 
you?"

"I think that you shouldn't have done that to your father, 
dear, whatever your motives.  I don't know how I would have felt 
if you had done it to me."

"No," I said.  "We mean out in the open.  We want tapes of 
these stories.  Who cares about the company politics of Ward 
Tech?  We want to have The Kitten's grandchildren hear about 
great-great-aunt Hazel."

"It seems lots of people are interested in company politics, 
dear.  Whether you think they should be or not."

"By the time that it would be safe to publish those 
stories," I said, "no-one will care about them.  That's what 
would make it safe.  Look, we aren't asking you to invest in the 
publication of some book.  We are asking you to let us turn on a 
tape-recorder while you tell those stories.  *We* are 
interested.  Whether anyone else would be isn't relevant.  When 
is The Kitten going to hear this treasure trove?"

"Why sitting in the kitchen, dear, and peeling potatoes.  Do 
you think that I was involved in the struggle over great-great-
aunt Hazel's recipes?"

"Are you prepared to come to Michigan to tell her these 
stories?" I asked.  "Anyway, stories are muddled and lost."

"Dear," Katherine said, "if it will make you two happier, we 
can make the tape.  But I think that it would make the kitchen a 
duller place for your next visit."

"Oh mother!"  Kathleen said.  "You have lots of stories that 
I've heard dozens of times.  I still enjoy them."

"Go get your tape, then."  Kathleen left.  I picked up 
another potato.

"You know, dear," Katherine said, "the real shame is the 
stories that are a bit too private to tell your children.  My 
great-grandmother came from Germany as the fiancee of a man in 
Minnesota.  Neither of them had seen the Atlantic before she 
started that journey, if I'm not mistaken.  They certainly hadn't 
seen one another.  I wonder what that wedding night was like.  
She wouldn't have minded my knowing, but it isn't a story that 
you tell in the kitchen to people who really know you.

"You'll either tell your daughter, 'A honeymoon in a tent is 
the worst idea that we ever had,' or you'll tell her, 'If you 
love the man, sharing a tent with him makes a marvelous 
honeymoon.'  You won't tell me either one, and I don't think you 
should.  And you won't tell *her* any details.  Her 
granddaughters, however, will hear only that you went hiking for 
you honeymoon, and wonder.  It's a pity that you can't tell 
them."

"Why can't I?"  I asked.  "Your great-grandmother may have 
lived in a verbal culture, but I use a word-processor on a daily 
basis.  I could print it up, and leave it with the instructions: 
'To be opened a century after my death,' or whatever.  What would 
you write about?"

"Well, I could hardly tell you, dear.  That's why we're 
talking about privacy.  And it wasn't entirely a verbal culture, 
you know; they had become engaged via letters.  I'll tell you 
what, though.  If you promise to write something about the 
rocking chair, I'll promise to write something about it, too."

"You type, don't you?  Uh!"  I felt so stupid.  "You send me 
those marvelous letters, of course you type."

"We need to get back to cooking," she said, "but I feel that 
I can't start another story until Kathleen gets back.  You know, 
dear, I can cook perfectly well in silence when I'm alone in the 
kitchen."

"You don't have to wait," I said.  "Tell me the one about 
when Kathleen was a baby and your husband came home from the 
trips.  Anything which she doesn't capture on tape, she can fill 
in from memory."

"Am I *that* bad, dear."

"Bad?"  I was genuinely shocked.  "She loves that story.  
It's as much a part of these sessions as 'King John' is of 
Christmas."

"Every bit of it is true, dear."

"I'm sure it is," I told her; and I am sure.  "I just wish 
that Bob had heard something similar."

"Am I really that transparent?" she asked.  But then I saw a 
motion in the doorway.

"Hurry," I told Kathleen.  "She won't talk until it is set 
up, and the dinner is on hold."

Soon the tape was running.  Katherine had the natural 
shyness that anyone develops when they are being recorded, but 
she was -- after all -- both a school-teacher and a Brennan.  She 
was used to talking.

As she got into the story, she went back to cooking, which 
made her less self-conscious.  Soon, she was running along as she 
had the year before.  "...  For the rest of the weekend, I got to 
hold her while I was feeding her, period.  I'd be talking to him 
and he'd turn his back, not because he'd stopped listening, dear, 
but so she could see what Mommy was doing.  Disconcerting all the 
same...."

 We peeled potatoes, cored apples, and occasionally checked 
to see if the tape had run out.  There was no reason to stop 
Katherine for the tape changes.  *All* the information would 
have been lost if the machine hadn't been running.

I fed the Kitten while this was going on, staying in the 
kitchen where she could hear Grandma Brennan recite the 
accumulated wisdom.  As for me, I want each individual's 
personal, uninterrupted, version of Bob's ultimate package.  But 
that could wait for next year.

We got the turkey in, and the rest of the meal at a holding 
stage, just before Bob walked in.  "I'm going to run two loads.  
I'll fill up the whites with sheets."

"That's kind of you, dear."

"Are there any other requests?"

"Thanks, Bob," said Kathleen, "but I don't think so."

"Wait ten minutes, won't you," I said.  "I'm about to bathe 
The Kitten, and I don't want to run out of hot.  Indeed, could 
you bring down the soap and shampoo?  I'll go pry her away from 
son grand-pere."

"My daughter doesn't want you rubbing sham-poo in her hair" 
Bob said.  "She wants to rub in real poo."  That is dangerously 
close to the truth.

Three of us managed to bathe The Kitten with only a little 
more difficulty than it would have taken one.  Kathleen carried 
her away, while I washed out the sink.  We dressed in relays, one 
always in the kitchen.  I wore a skirt and my Christmas-gift 
shirt from Lands End.

Well into the meal, Katherine said, "Russ, you'll never know 
what the girls have been doing with me."

"Those two are as likely as not to be taping you."  Bob's 
father seemed in a remarkably dour mood considering the 
granddaughter time that he had received.

"Why, dear.  How did you guess?"

"What?!"

"And," Katherine continued, "we are going to put all the 
stories that I can remember on tape.  For The Kitten if nobody 
else.  Kathleen hasn't decided yet whether she'll have any 
daughters...."

"I've already decided against sons.  Look what happened when 
Mom had one."

"...  And Jeanette, after all, won't have enough time in my 
kitchen to learn them all to pass down to her daughter."

"Besides," I put in.  "I mostly talk to The Kitten in 
French, and some of these stories don't translate well."

"And, dear," Katherine said while I was still talking, "we 
thought that Jeanette and Kathleen could add their own stories to 
the cache, and later The Kitten and whoever.  Their stories, and 
stories from other families, and stories that they have heard 
from others."

"Ann told some marvelous stories," I said.  "Some you heard, 
Bob, and many you didn't."

"When," Bob asked, "did this oral history project change 
from the memories of one man to those of dozens of women?"

"Well," I pointed out, "there didn't seem to be a whole lot 
of enthusiasm on the part of the subject for that one.  And we 
have hours of recordings already for our project.  While the 
assets offered were those of the firm, it was my typing; I should 
get some vote.  Anyway, at this time we're pushing the idea of 
tape.  Transcription would be in the future."

"And it isn't dozens of women, dear," Katherine said.  
"Except for the ones that are filtered through my memories, there 
are only four or five.  And I doubt whether I know a story from 
more than ten women all told."

"The Kitten and whoever," I said, "(and doesn't Kathleen 
have original taste in children's names?) won't have 
*memories* to contribute for an awfully long time.  Anyway, 
that isn't the problem.

"We got talking about saving some memories that might hurt 
our contemporaries.  Those would be put in writing, not tapes.  
That could be kept for a century.  'My honeymoon on The 
Appalachian Trail, to be delivered to any of Catherine 
Angelique's granddaughters on their eighteenth birthday.'  And we 
didn't know how to handle that."

"You'd have to ask a real lawyer," Bob said.  "There is the 
so-called 'Law against perpetuities.'"

"Is that why the US doesn't issue consols?" his father 
asked.

"No sir," Bob responded.  "Different thing.  Same name.  A 
lawyer's 'perpetuity' is like the English entailed estates.  You 
can't leave money to be shared by The Kitten's grandchildren.  (I 
mean now.  You can wait until she has some.)  I'm sure that you 
*could* leave papers to be *publicly* available in one 
hundred years.  I'm sure that you could *not* leave property 
to be divided among people not yet born.  (I think that the limit 
on private trusts is one person's lifetime.  But don't quote me, 
I *didn't* go to law school, remember.)  Whether one can 
legally bind someone to keep papers secret for a century and then 
distribute them privately, I don't know.

"But that's legality.  If you left me some papers to be 
turned over to The Kitten, I might be able to open them with no 
legal penalty.  On the other hand, would I keep her respect after 
she found out that I had done so?"

"You might find," said Bob's father, "that having the 
respect of your child is an impossibility whatever your 
behavior."

"Well," I said.  "You have retained the respect of your 
children.  Bob is enough like you to make it a reasonable bet."

"I think, dear," Katherine said, "that the proper verb is 
'regained' with a 'g,' not 'retained.' Children go through a 
stage of rejecting everything before they reach a stage of 
selection."

"All the more reason," I said, "to behave in a fashion that 
would lead them to select respect.  Besides, I knew Bob from 
sixteen.  He never talked of his father with disdain.  Now, his 
father's generation...."

"I can remember," his father said, "some comments about 
never understanding him at all."

"Well," I said, "that's entirely different.  When he told me 
that I didn't understand him, I told him that nobody in the world 
could possibly understand him."  Kathleen's loud agreement helped 
lighten the discussion.

"I suspect," said Bob, "that there are more intellects lofty 
enough to recognize my genius than you four might think."

"There," Katherine said, "could hardly be fewer."

"They would have to be experts in abnormal psychology," 
Kathleen said, "and nobody is doing work on anything *that* 
abnormal."

"The Kitten, at least, loves me."

"We all *love* you, dear," his mother told him.  "We were 
talking about understanding you."

"If she understood you," I pointed out, "she'd say 
'Decembre.'"

"She doesn't know what month it is," he said.  "*My* 
daughter can speak French, but *your* daughter doesn't know 
what month it is."  Now I ask you, which parent is more likely to 
help The Kitten's French, whether we are talking genes or 
environment?

"Tell me true, Kate," Bob's father said.  "How much of this 
is conspiracy?"

"Not on my part, dear.  But the girls sprang the original 
idea with suspicious speed and unanimity."

"It occurred to the two of us at once, sir," I said.  "It 
really did.  We were sitting there with Katherine's story pouring 
over us.  And we couldn't talk, but it occurred to us almost 
simultaneously.  *These* should be saved.

"Now let me delay speaking for the firm and even as a mother 
of my daughter later.  Because the idea occurred to me as 
Jeanette.  (Things don't always occur to you under all your hats, 
you know.)  My husband is a historian and thinks of the ages; I'm 
a mother and think of my child.

"The Kitten would be interested in hearing your voice, as 
Bob said.  We'd be more interested in having her hear it, 
assuming -- as your family seems morbidly to do -- that she won't 
hear it from your mouth.  But she'd be *fascinated* by 
Katherine's stories.  They are, as Katherine pointed out to us, 
mostly intended as compensation for staying in the kitchen and 
peeling potatoes.

"Transcription is another kettle of fish.  These stories 
should be transcribed someday.  (And I just switched hats.)  What 
you did around the dinner table is try to educate your kids.  
Those lectures would go down more smoothly for being transcribed.  
I couldn't speak for the firm without consultation, but it's 
possible that I might find some transcription time this year.  I 
mean this coming year.

"If I do, I'll only spend a little time.  For the oral 
history project, I listened and listened again.  Instead, I'll 
send you a rough draft, and *you* can put in the word that I 
missed."

"You got one thing wrong," Bob said, "these are stories.  
They just need a little understanding to (um) understand them.  
They just need a little grounding to understand them."

"Well," I said, "of the women in that kitchen, only I 
belonged in a kitchen.  Katherine has what?  an MAT?"  She 
nodded.  "And Kathleen has an MD.  They have both worlds.  I want 
my daughter to have both worlds.  Your daughter does, and who can 
swear that the stories around the table didn't help.  But I think 
that those stories, or at least the grounding, are best conveyed 
on paper."

"You know," said Bob's father, "That's the longest speech 
that I've heard from you since the wedding."  The Kitten cried in 
the other room.  It was a hungry cry.

"It's the longest speech that you'll hear from me for a 
while.  I'm being summoned."

Bob got up.  "Rocker?" he asked.

"Please," I said.  A moment later, the cry was stifled in 
the other room.  I stuffed my mouth and started unbuttoning my 
new shirt while I chewed.  A sensible woman would have eaten 
while she had the chance.  I managed to get in a slice of turkey 
and all the remains of my mashed potatoes (I love gravy, but I 
hate *cold* gravy) before Bob called from the other room.

"Coming," he said.


Concluded in Part Twelve.
FORGET ALL THAT
Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
1997/12/24
1999/12/30
2000/09/10
2002/12/28

This is the eleventh segment of the last story (so far) in a 
series of stories about the Brennans.

The next segment can be found in: 
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/fat_d.htm
Parts 10-12 

The first story in the series is:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan/forever.htm
"Forever" 


The directory to the entire series is:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/brennan.htm
Brennan Stories Directory 

The directory to all my stories can be found at:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/index.htm

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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