Ginger. Gingerbread. Ginger Beer. I'm not a Ginger Girl.

As I sit here in the wake of another 80 hour work week--which is also attributing to my disdain as of late--and not having had a genuine day off in more than three months I battle writer's block and securities of social design.  Alone again . . . a tisket, a tasket that matters far more than it should, as most days I'm not home long enough to fully sleep to shake off the exhaustion.  Instead, between fits of sleeping and hustles to side streets and subways the snow begins to fall and the the air has chilled low enough to allow the truly ingenious--or cheap--to chill beer and other consumables in the open, frigid air.  I haven't resorted to that--as of yet--as my ginger beer is still in my refrigerator and every morsel of consumable food is packed and stored so that the city's real undesirables--roaches and fucking mice--can't make their way into it.

Yet, on those subways from western Queens, to eastern Queens, to the Queens/Brooklyn border, to east Brooklyn, to eastern Bronx, to western Bronx, to the Upper West Side, to Midtown, and to the Upper East Side I can now say--after years and years--I have ridden on every subway line this city has to offer a wearied and sometimes brave soul.  The bus lines . . . I have a few left to go, not that that is a trophy worth winning.  The cornucopia of life and lights along the routes still startles me after all this time, and this time of year--especially--I'm still left startled and wonderstruck when I turn a corner and see windows billowing with gingerbread villages and candied creations for the season.  And then . . . when the snows fall and the seasonal lights glitter I sometimes find myself giggling as I wonder if the city is its own gingerbread delight.

That brother of mine had a December birthday, and he loved his gingerbread.  I was never really a fan, I only wanted the red jellied dots from his birthday tree (which he typically gave me after he fawned over his bakery delight) and he would take that tree--piece by piece--and scarf it down over the course of two days with endless cups of Dad's coffee.  I still find particularly disgusting his penchant for dipping a chunk of gingerbread replete with frosting into a piping hot cup of black joe.  He'd slurp that shit up, take a swig of the brew, and auto-rinse-repeat.  

That's him in '82.  Very proud of his birthday cake . . . that's Dad's ashtray and Pall Mall reds . . . Man we sang for joy the day he switched to filters.  Six or so years ago, after the last heart attack, Pops finally quit the smokes for good.  That ashtray . . . it's in a cupboard in the house I think.  Maybe one day I'll put it out, bleach it out, and toss candies in it . . . or set up a fish pond as it is surely big enough.  A dog we had used to take his tail and "clean it out for Dad" about once a week.  That always went over like a fart in church.  

Waxing poetic about Andy's penchant for gingerbread aside, this year Starbucks is selling a gingerbread cafe kit.  As I stood in line to get a cup of coffee, when a local cafe wasn't in sight, and buy my splurge of a bag of Christmas brew I looked over and starred at the box.  Then, I had a flash of memory about fifteen years ago now when Starbucks first started selling gingerbread.  There was a mini, edible tree ornament.  I bought it for him, and you would have thought I handed him the moon the day I gave it to him . . . well, until he nearly broke a denture tooth trying to chomp down on it.  Much to his partner's and my disgust, he plopped that thing in a cup of coffee and then chomped away.  

The mini was meant as a joke, but as these things go . . . I had a real gingerbread house for him, and it was made with edible, soft cookies.  We sat at his table, on Schoolhouse Road, on the Maryland/Delaware border tossing crumbs to his dog Powder, staring out the window at the endless fields on three of four sides of the house, and Jimmy--his partner--and I stole little jellied candied.  I still loved the red ones.  Jimmy liked the green.  Andy still didn't care as long as he got all the frosting and the gingerbread.  Jimmy made a pot of "real coffee" as he told Andy there was no way in hell they were serving me the swill he brewed (more like, sludge).  We didn't get a picture that day, as--well--Andy smashed his face into it faster that we could say boo.  None-the-less, the metaphorical photo of the three of us and the dog sitting by the window, in the old farmhouse, serves as a better capture than anything I could have retained on paper and digital memory.  

As I wax on days gone by and memories of a brother more than a decade passed, avoidance serves me well as I sip a ginger beer with a shot of pomegranate liquor in it.  Like I said, I was never a gingerbread girl . . .   I smell Dad's Pall Malls in the distance, like a memory that hasn't faded.  On the Upper East Side last week, as I walked up Lex, there was a gingerbread display to my left and I swear the man in front of me was smoking a Pall Mall.  One of the endless street performers bellowed Rod Stewart's "Maggie," which stopped me in my tracks.  

What you can't see in that picture: my Mom hiding as Dad and Andy blared Rod Stewart.  He got parts of a train set two days later, for Christmas.  She hid all day as they set it up in the living room, blasting Rod Stewart, and all three of us bellowing "Maggie" at several points and me standing on the coffee table between my 5-8 Dad and my brother who would become 6+ feet tall.  He became a teenager that day.  I was six or so, and sat on that wooden coffee table "reading instructions" while Dad drank beer and Andy and I probably stole a few sips.  

Things my parents never knew, or chose to ignore, Andy dipped his gingerbread in beer that day.  Perhaps that's why I'm a ginger beer girl after-all.  

I still don't eat gingerbread, but I did stop and pick up a box of dots.  I picked out the red ones.  The rest I gave to someone along the subway route.