LOVE-HATE

Have you ever seen the movie Night of the Hunter starring Robert Mitchum? It is a creepy film-noirish classic about a wacked-out preacher. He has love-hate tattooed on his fists. Eventually this look was replicated by rappers, rockers and punks everywhere. Anyway, when I was little our Nana made the best apple cake. It was this awesome apple pie-like concoction that was kept in her pantry in a large deep cookie pan. The apples were not too sweet with just enough cinnamon. The crust was perfect: chewy not too flaky. It was perhaps my favorite thing in the world as a child. I used to say "I love Nana's apple cake." My dad, always the pragmatist, soon put a stop to that. He would answer "You obviously like Nana's apple cake a lot but you can't love an inanimate object. Love and hate are very strong words that are reserved for people." I quickly replaced love with 'strongly like', 'adore', 'admire', etc when speaking of food, clothing and carnival rides at Fairy Land. We grew up in a household where we freely said that we loved each other. We still say it today. My nieces say it before they hang up the phone and I'll teach it to my kids. But then there's the hate issue.

Today I looked at the front page of the newspaper as I bought my croissant and bananas at Jo's. I saw that Bush had vetoed the embryonic stem cell research bill. I felt the H-word rising in my throat. I will freely say that I think he's an idiot. He is perhaps the worst president in the recent history of this country. He has no vision of the big picture and runs amok with his sniveling, snide, snorting remarks to his "folks" out there who still will listen to him. Aside: Is there anyone out there that still supports him? Because if there is, I would be interested in hearing - in a sane logical conversation - why! I bite my tongue when I hear his name - oh, how I want to use the H-word. I don't want my kids to grow up using it where people are concerned. They are free to hate homework, brussel sprouts and prune juice but we'll have to employ 'loathe', 'strongly dislike' and 'abhor' when it comes to people. It takes way too much energy to hate and so I'll end this by saying that I detest George Bush with a passion. AND, I'd like to see what he would do if Barbara SR and her big ole' pearls came down with Alzheimer's or dear daddy George developed Parkinson's. Or how about HIS precious twins? Would he start singing Nancy Reagan's tune if one of the girl's went blind or perhaps lost a limb or became paralyzed? Hmmmm.