Goodbye, Max

Max is my granddog. Max must be 14 years old, maybe 15. I don’t remember exactly when Brian called me to tell me he was going to get a dog, but it was around the time he became Artistic Director at American Blues Theatre in Chicago in 1997. Brian and his first wife had divorced, and he was living alone. Brian missed having a dog, but he worked long hours some days, and couldn’t afford to hire a regular pet care giver. Once settled in at ABT, he could take a dog with him to work. So he went to the Humane Society and after a couple of visits, Brian met Max, a chow/Australian shepherd mix about a year old. To be truthful, I hadn’t really taken to the two dogs Brian and his first wife had; there was nothing wrong with them, but I’m finicky about dogs. Sometimes it’s the smell, sometimes it’s the look, or it could be that they slobber, or something I can’t explain. But when Brian described Max to me, I knew I’d like him. When I met him several months later, I knew the minute I saw him, at the theatre, behind a half-door, as he ran to meet me and stood with two hind legs on the floor and two paws on the top of the half-door, that I‘d already fallen in love with Max. He was just the right size--not too big, not too small. He looked the way a dog should look, with bright dark eyes and a pointy-ish nose, like a German Shepherd or Siberian Husky. He didn’t smell, he didn’t slobber, he just looked at me and knew who I was. Brian said, “Of course he knows you. I’ve told him all about you and that you were coming to town today. He knew it was you.”

Whenever I’d visit Chicago, Max would meet me at the door with his tug rope toy. You know, the rope knotted at both ends, and the dog pulls one end and you pull the other. [Turns out, Max met just about everyone at the door with the tug rope; it wasn’t just me.] I’d take Max for walks when I visited, giving Brian a bit of a break, and Max showed me all about the neighborhood Brian lived in. I learned the places where other dogs lived, and the good-smelling trees, and the best places for a dog to go. I loved it.

Brian drove with Max to San Jose in ‘98 to celebrate his (Brian’s) grandfather’s 90th birthday, with stops in Colorado to visit a theatre friend, and in Oklahoma to visit his father. Max’s first trip to the ocean was delightful, and he managed to get a good romp on the beach and dug a few holes almost to China before a disembodied voice told us to leash the dog. Well, we’d had our fun; time to go back home.

When Brian met his wife Gloria, their love of dogs was just one of the many things they had in common. Not just both of them liking dogs, but what their respective dogs had meant to them at difficult times in their lives. When Glo’s dog Buddy and Max met, they got along from the beginning, and were great friends until Buddy died in 2007. When Brian and Glo brought Beau, a beautiful Sheltie, home a few months later, Max accepted him as if he’d known him forever.

The last couple of years have been difficult for Max. At his human age of almost 100, Max has been slowing down. He had surgery for a leg problem. Going up the stairs to Brian and Glo’s bedroom has become so difficult for him that Brian has had to make a sling to support Max, particularly as he descends the stairs. Brian told me today the same leg problem is now affecting Max’s other hind leg.

“It’s time to let Max go”, Brian said yesterday, and I could tell he was choking up. Hey, I was choking up! They know a vet who will come to the dog’s house, to lessen the trauma for dog and parents. Tonight, by 5:00 pm my time, Max will be gone.

I needed to write this now, because tonight I will be too sad. I love Max, and I wish I’d been able to hold him and tell him myself. But Brian will tell him and Max will know. There’s no doubt in my mind.

Goodbye, Max, my first real granddog, my friend. Thank God Brian had you for the last 13 years. We shall all miss you.

Being a Veteran

For two years 1979-1981 I worked as a “staffing specialist” at a major hospital in Buffalo. My job was to make sure all of the nursing units had adequate staffing on their unit, and if they didn’t, I had to assign a “float” nurse and/or aide to that unit. Over the two years, I got to know all of the “floats” and most of the nurses, and I loved it. One of the float aides and a couple of the nurses were in the U.S. Army Reserves; I don’t remember whether or not they’d been active soldiers, but their serving as “weekend warriors” added to their income and they had paid leave while doing their annual 2-week active duty training.

The idea became quite attractive to me. Not only was I living on a shoestring, but since my marriage ended I’d worked in a profession in which I met mostly women. I was single, and didn’t have many opportunities to meet men. I also despaired of ever being able to travel, since I had no money. The three things bothering me the most had an answer! The Reserves! I had a soft spot for the Navy, so I called the U.S. Navy Recruiting Center in Buffalo, and they were perplexed at this woman who’d never been in the Armed Forces, but they were willing to talk with me. I had an interview, took a battery of tests, and they gave me numerous forms to fill out. I sent in all the required information and waited…and waited…and waited. Over a year later I called and somehow they’d misplaced everything, but eventually found the file so I didn’t have to do it all over again. I did have to go in and sign papers, and when I did, the Commanding Officer of the Security Group at the Reserve Center saw this young middle-aged woman signing up and became curious. He came over, told the soldier taking my information that I spoke fluent Russian (untrue!) and would be needed in the Security Group. So, once the F.B.I. ran a top secret security check on me, I was sworn in as a Seaman First Class of the U.S. Navy Reserve. I was issued a full set of appropriate uniforms, including combat boots, that arrived in a huge seabag a month or so later. That was in February 1983, and my enlistment was for 6 years.

In summer of 1984, my two-week active duty training sent me to a base in Scotland, where there’s a huge security facility to monitor activity in the North Sea. I was posted, not to the Security Group, but to the Public Affairs Office, where I answered the phone calls of local Scottish dignitaries who had questions about the upcoming Changing of the Guard on the base. And I had a weekend off in Edinburgh, where I attended the famous Edinburgh Tattoo and got most of my Christmas shopping done. So much for “training”.

There was a single man a few years younger than I in my Reserve unit, and we had a very nice relationship for several months, so all but one of my reasons for joining the Navy Reserves was fulfilled. In the early 80’s there were ‘hot spots’ around the world, and my sons at that time were at the right age. Brian had registered as a conscientious objector, but Scott would have been willing to enlist if there had been a need. I figured that if my kids were going to serve their country, I would too.

As it turned out, some time after I began a position with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, I had to work every weekend, and it became difficult to be absent from work even once a month for my weekend drills, so after 2 years of Active Reserve Status, I became part of the Standby Inactive Reserve. No drill, no pay, but if there was ever a general callup of the Armed Forces, I’d become an Active Reservist. I only hoped they wouldn’t expect me to speak Russian! I received my Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1989.

Every year at St. Mark’s on the Sunday before Veteran’s Day, there is a breakfast for all the Veterans. I went two years ago, made creamed chipped beef (S.O.S.), took in a couple of pictures of me in my summer uniform, but felt uneasy and didn’t attend the breakfast last year. Linda, the priest at St. Mark’s, asked me a week or so ago if I planned to bring S.O.S. for the breakfast again. I said no, and I wouldn’t attend. I told her I don’t feel like a veteran, I hardly did anything, I was inactive for 6 years, etc. She said “We need your S.O.S. at the breakfast, so please come.”

I did, and after the breakfast (not only S.O.S., but pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage), Linda’s sermon spoke of a person she’d talked to who didn’t consider himself a veteran because he was never in harm’s way, and she told him what was important. “You showed up.”, she said she told him. That’s all that’s necessary. You showed up, you signed up with the knowledge that you could be required to go where they send you. You showed up.

I am a veteran. I showed up—no matter my selfish reasons at the time. One of them wasn’t so selfish. If there was a problem that my country was involved in, especially if any of my children were involved, I wanted to do my part. So on this day, November 11, I am proud that I did my little bit to serve my country. I showed up.

Remembering Mom

Sunday, November 1 is All Saints Day, and at St. Mark’s and at all Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and many other Protestant churches, we remember and honor all those who have passed on from this Earthly life. Passed on into what we do not know, but I take comfort in the belief that this life isn’t all there is. I don’t pretend to know what’s coming; I’m pretty sure it doesn’t include St. Peter and pearly gates and angels with harps and halos. But I believe this conscious life is as much a phase as the gestation period we all spent in our mother’s womb.

Today I remember my mother, who died on October 29, 1961, 10 days after my 20th birthday and 24 days before what would have been her 50th birthday.

Beatrice Yardley Spicer Woodward was born November 22, 1911 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the only child of Myrtus Randolph Spicer and Gertrude Brown Dooley Spicer. She attended high school in Brooklyn, the Packer Collegiate Institute, and Mount Holyoke College. My mother was an educated woman in a time when few women attended college. She majored in English Literature and minored in French. One of her college friends had a friend who had a brother, Benjamin Weston Woodward II, and he married my lovely mother and fathered my brother Ben and myself.

I don’t know whether my Mom and Dad had a happy marriage. I assumed so, but then what children experience is their norm until they grow enough to know that each family is different from their own in a variety of ways. My mother was, as many women were in the 50’s, a stay-at-home Mom. She said it was her choice, not my father’s demands or expectations, because she wanted to be there when her children came home from school. And she was. Near the end of first grade, I fell off a seesaw and broke my arm. My seesaw partner was in the down position when the recess bell rang, and she jumped off while I was in the air. The break was not bad, but the nurse called my mother, who didn’t drive. Someone drove me home, and as soon as I saw my mother, I finally cried. The arm didn’t hurt, but I was afraid of what the “sling” was that I was told my arm would be “put in”.

Mom was always there when I got home from school, and I'd jabber away at what happened, who did what, what the teacher said and did. My mother was always there.

Once Mom had viral pneumonia and was in bed for several days. I don’t remember anyone being worried; she was simply sick. Mom had surgery for varicose veins. Mom had all of her teeth pulled a few years later, and they waited until the gums healed before they fitted for dentures. I got so used to the way she looked toothless that when she had the dentures put in, she looked like she had way too much in her mouth! But no matter what, Mom continued to smoke her Kools, at least two packs a day. She coughed, she had bad breath, and I hated that she smoked.

Mom was a voracious reader; my parents belonged to the Book-of-the-Month club, and she read periodicals and newspapers from cover to cover. Mom did the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzles every week while Sunday dinner was cooking—a roast beef, roast leg of lamb, pot roast, fried chicken. [In those days the Sunday Times puzzles were considerably more difficult than those now. I know, because I am still working my way through a book of 100 NY Times crosswords from years past, when Eugene Maleska and others were the editors. Will Shortz is a good editor, but the puzzles are easier. I can finish them now most every week, but if I’ve completed 5 of the 60 or so I’ve done in the book of 100, I’d be surprised.]

My mother and father were both political junkies, Mom even more than Dad, very right wing Republicans with a visceral hatred (it seemed to me) of Democrats in general and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in particular. Harry Truman fared just as badly, especially when he fired General Douglas MacArthur, who my parents thought sat on the right hand of God. Conversations around the dinner table, especially with dessert and coffee, centered on politics, and voices rose as Dad’s fist pounded the table. There was never any swearing in my familial home, save for “hell” and “damn”, and I heard plenty of those when the grownups discussed Democrats. The conservatism that my parents embraced cannot be compared to today’s conservatism. The religious right might have been conservatives then as well, but the issues were not at all religious in the 50’s and early 60’s.

My mother was home all day but we had a cleaning lady for years. Myrtle would hug me, smelling of furniture polish, when I told her I got an A on my spelling test, and she’d give me a nickel. Mom would eat lunch with Myrtle, but the meal was shared in the kitchen, not the dining room, where we always ate breakfast and dinner, and lunch on the weekends. Myrtle was a Negro. I think my Mom cared a lot for this woman who came weekly and cleaned our house and shared lunch.

Mom did laundry every Monday, and hung clothes on the line and put Dad’s trousers on pant stretchers. She ironed everything, and one of my visual memories is Mom standing at the ironing board, my brother sitting on the stove, and myself sitting on the kitchen table—the three of us talking about all manner of things while Dad puttered in his basement electronics retreat. My brother joined my mother and me maybe only once a week, often on a Saturday night, and both of us were so pleased—almost honored that he deigned to be with us.

Mom participated in, and perhaps chaired, the annual March of Dimes, which at that time was fighting polio. A neighbor on the street had a little boy with polio, and my mother, as many mothers in the late 40’s and early 50’s, had a terrible fear one of her children would contract polio. She was indefatigable in whatever effort she pursued. She joined a group called the Minute Women, and here is a Wikipedia introduction to that subject:

“The Minute Women of the U.S.A. was one of the largest of a number of militant anti-communist women's groups that were active during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such groups, which organized American suburban housewives into anti-communist study groups, political activism and letter-writing campaigns, were a bedrock of support for McCarthyism.

The primary concerns of the Minute Women and other similar groups were the exposure of communist subversion, the defense of constitutional limits, opposition to atheism, socialism and social welfare provisions such as the New Deal; and rejection of internationalism, particularly in the form of the United Nations. They campaigned to expose supposedly Communist individuals, focusing particularly on school and university administrators.”

Yes, this was my mother. She all but worshiped radio commentator Paul Harvey, and had her picture taken with him at a Minute Women convention in Cincinnati the year I was 11. That both my parents were proponents of Joseph McCarthy is a source of anguish for me, but hindsight is 20-20 and for my mother especially, the Communist threat was very real. How many times I’ve wished I’d had the opportunity to discuss politics with her as an adult!

My mother gave me mixed messages about being a woman. She told me that it was more important to educate my brother Ben than to educate me because I would get married and be taken care of. Ben had to be the breadwinner for a family. Yet I knew she greatly valued her education, and I remember her telling me how important it was for a woman to be educated for her children’s sake. I sensed that had she lived, she would have embraced Women’s Lib. After my grandparents, who lived with us for several years, passed away, my mother immersed herself in politics. We lived in a township in Western New York, and she was a committeewoman for the township. It was the equivalent of being on a city council, and she reveled in her new life with an energy we hadn’t seen in several years. Unfortunately, the damage to her physical health had been done.

My grandfather died in late 1954, which was a blow to both my mother and my grandmother. He had not been sick, and he and my mother had always been close. They would sit at the dinner table long after Grammie had retired to her crocheting (not very interested in politics was she), Dad had escaped to his basement retreat, and Ben and I had fled to our rooms for homework or relief from politics. My grandmother went downhill quickly, and by March ’55 was put in a nursing home. Since Mom didn’t drive, she took the bus to the nursing home downtown one day a week, and then on Sunday Dad or Ben or I drove her and picked her up. I believe that dealing with Grammie in the nursing home was the beginning of her long depression. When Ben left in ’57 to attend Cornell, Mom missed him terribly, and her depression deepened. Grammie finally gave up the ghost in late ’58. Mom was finally free! She was 47. Mom had hypertension and still she smoked at least two packs a day. She was thin, and she probably had emphysema. She coughed a lot and didn’t have a lot of physical energy.

Somewhere around my junior year in high school, I began to separate myself from my mother. I stopped telling her every single thing as I had for years. I also felt betrayed by her when I learned she had read a letter from my boyfriend (I had opened and read it and left it downstairs) and later I was awake when she came into my room one night and read part of my diary. The betrayal hurt me deeply. I confronted her with both of these incidents, and she admitted she was curious because I wasn’t talking with her as much as I used to.

I left home in early 1960, having graduated high school and dropped out of college after 3 months. I moved to Ithaca, where my boyfriend and brother were students at Cornell, and found a job at the University. After boyfriend left Cornell (without graduating) due to illness, we got married and lived in Buffalo, so we saw my parents regularly. The four of us played Bridge on into the night at times, and I saw my mother happy to have one child back in the fold. When my husband enlisted in the Army, I went back to my familial home because we couldn’t afford to keep up an apartment without his income. For three weeks in October, my mother and I began the process of finding one another again.

One of the friends I’d worked with in Ithaca was getting married on Saturday, October 28th that year, 1961, and I wanted to go. I came home from work on Friday, planning to pack and leave that evening. But Dad was cooking, not Mom, and he said she was sick and in bed. I found her in bed, smoking, having trouble finding her mouth with the cigarette. I should have been alarmed, but she said the doctor had been there (imagine—a doctor making house calls!) and I wasn’t to worry. But she said she’d appreciate it if I didn’t leave for Ithaca until Saturday morning. I, being a petulant, barely 20 year old, agreed, but wasn’t happy. Saturday when I got up, she wasn’t any better, but she said I should go, have a good time, Dad was there to watch over her.

I had a good stay with dear friends and enjoyed my friend’s wedding. Sunday, just before I left Ithaca at 6 p.m., I called and spoke to Dad, telling him I was leaving and to expect me around 9 or so. I asked after Mom, and he said she was better; she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom.

The drive was uneventful; I had done it several times. What I didn’t expect was that when I turned the corner into my street, there was a large black vehicle in front of my parents’ house. I recognized a hearse as I pulled into the driveway, and the look on my father’s face as I came in the door is one I will never forget. My mother was dead. I turned 20 on October 19th and on the 29th my mother was dead.

The older I get, the more I miss my mother. I miss her in retrospect—when I had my babies, when I was divorced the first time, when I married again, and when I divorced again. I miss her when I have big decisions to make. I miss her when I have so many questions I can’t ask her. What did she think and why about this or that? How could she believe this or that? What did she regret? What was she proud of? What had been her dreams?

Most of all, I recently realized that what I miss most of all is the knowing and feeling all my adult life that my mother loves me and that home is where my mother is. I have felt incomplete (and somewhat abandoned) for so many years. I don’t know how to be a mother to adult children. I do my best, which often isn’t good enough.

Mother, today I honor you, today I miss you so very much, and I credit you with so much of who I am. Thank you, and Mom, continue your peaceful rest. You deserve it.

This Year I Will Spend Less for Christmas

Every year I make a promise to myself. I will spend less for Christmas. I bet you can guess what I’ll say next. You’re right! I always spend too much for Christmas. I start early, finding something just right for, let’s say, my sister-in-law. Then I find something even better for sister-in-law, so I buy that too. So add to sis-in-law: son 1 and wife, son 2 and wife, grandson, brother, niece and husband, nephew and wife, best friend, five additional and different best friends, and unknown recipient at work. The years I go to one of the son’s home for Christmas I spend less for decorations, but then there’s the airfare! But it doesn’t seem fair to count the airfare as a gift to that son and his wife.

So this year I will spend less for Christmas. Period. Full stop. And here’s how, so if any of the aforementioned (you know who you are) are reading this, listen up. [Wait a minute—reading? listen? Isn’t that sort of like a mixed metaphor?] Anyway, I mustn’t get distracted. Pay attention. One gift for each person (and we’re not talking a Tiffany bracelet here, a new flat-screen TV [I think they all have one...I don't] or a new set of golf clubs. We’re talking simple, hopefully unusual, thoughtful little (in size as well as…well, it’s tacky, but you know…cost) gifts they’ll treasure. Then perhaps a small (same previous adjectives) for the house, or that they’ll both love/appreciate/use as well as treasure.

I really have been saying this mantra for years, especially to my children, who are now 46 and 44. They stopped believing me years ago; they usually laugh, snicker, or snort whenever I say “I will spend less for Christmas” this year. But guys, this time I MEAN IT!

You may wonder why I’m even thinking about this toward the end of October. The Christmas decorations are up in only some places. After Halloween they’ll sprout like dandelions after a good rain. Well, this weekend I’m going to visit my friend in Reno, and there are lots of wonderful little places around, like Truckee, with its really special glass store, and there’s other places Cabby will take me. Temptation will run rampant, and I must be strong! Then at Thanksgiving, Cabby and I will spend the time in Angels Camp, which is really close to Murphys, Sonora, and not too far from Jackson and Sutter’s Creek. Oh, the places in those little tourist-trap towns! It’s major temptation, major danger. I will spend less for Christmas.

I’ll make another promise too. After Christmas, I will come back to this blog with an honest report. I will have spent less and given fewer gifts. Knowing that I have to account to whomever bothers to read my blogs will keep me on the straight and narrow.

Boys! Stop laughing, snickering and snorting!

R.I.P., Mary Travers

For me, this is the day the music died. News of Mary Travers’ death yesterday moved me to tears. I never met her, but I felt about her as I have about some friends. I’d met Peter Yarrow during his Cornell years, when he came to sing at the fraternity house where my brother and boyfriend lived. I was in a sort of trance that night, listening to Peter sing, and when he sang “O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn”, I felt he was singing to me. Peter always stomped (not tapped) one foot, and that night he broke a floorboard at the frat house.

Anyway, this isn’t about Peter, it’s about Mary Travers. The first time I saw PPM perform, she appeared as a goddess—her statuesque body, her silky long blond hair that she continually tossed. Her voice was magic for me, because she was one of the few singers in whose key I could manage to sing. Her harmonies transformed the three people into one entity. I saw her as a real person—a woman not much older than I, who enjoyed singing, had a family, and had a cause. I admired her, not simply because she was doing what I loved to do myself—sing folk music—but she did it with grace and style. She didn’t have to wear sexy clothes, dance seductively, or scream into the microphone. She didn’t even have to play the guitar. She stood there, flipping her hair, clearly having fun, enjoying every moment. And Mary felt every song she sang; ergo, I felt every song she sang.

There was a mighty triumvirate of female folk singers (in alpha order): Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Mary Travers. They inspired me, each of them in their own way. Joan and Mary were the ones I tried most to emulate, since their songs were more accessible to my limited vocal range. Joan wrote incredibly stirring lyrics, and sang them with great intensity. I can’t compare the three one against the other—they were different in many ways. But there was something about Mary.

Mary Travers, you were a light, an inspiration, and a goddess. Thank you, and rest in peace.

9/11

September 11, 2009.

Eight years ago today, our world changed forever. We all changed forever as well, perhaps each one of us differently, but we changed. For me, despair quietly walked in and sat down next to horror and disbelief. Fear lurked continually in the background, but I was somewhat successful at keeping fear at bay. The following year, a friend and I drove over to the coast and sat on the Bean Hollow rock headland and watched waterworks pretending to be fireworks, one exuberant burst-splash after another in military precision along the rocks. We believed.

I can't watch the endless showings of the planes into the towers. It becomes another movie, something almost unreal. It can't happen here.

We are now into a new administration, one that won on hope and change. One that I championed and voted for. And just 9 months into that administration, I am once again watching despair creep into my sanctuary. No, not because of our president, not because of the economy, nor the wars in Afghanistan. I am a patient person. OK, sometimes I'm not a patient person, but for these big things I am. These problems didn't happen all at once, and that won't be solved all at once. I'm amazed to hear people say the recession is over!

My despair is at the extremes that have so polarized our nation in the years since 9/11/2001. That didn't happen overnight either. I stood with my two grown sons in Buffalo, N.Y. watching the first bombs dropping on Afghanistan--we had all come together to share our national tragedy--and we all were sad and devastated, but we believed it was the right thing to do. Find that bastard bin Laden and make him dead! We believed.

It was over the next 7 years that the polarization started to grow and fester. And I neither need to nor want to cite chapter and verse. Suffice it to say that the divide between Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats became deeper and wider, and in our confused grief, we began to vilify those on the other side of what became the Great Divide.

I believe that the "normal" divide became the Great Divide due, to a large extent, to the rise of Conservative Talk Radio--the Rush Limbaughs, the Sean Hannitys, the Bill O'Rileys--who are masters of manipulation and deceit. They prey upon those who do not tend to read newspapers, listen to NPR, communicate with their Congressional representatives, or use the Internet to check something on Snopes or FactCheck. These are not bad people, and they are not necessarily religious fundamentalists. They are people who go to work, kiss their children, vote, maybe go to church, and share BBQs with friends and neighbors. But they tend to let others do the thinking for them, and when it's said loud enough and often enough they begin to believe it.

Remember Sarah Palin saying that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists."? Well, as my mother once told me--once something is said, you can't unsay it. There's a lot of that going around--the saying of things that can't be unsaid, and the purveyors of that misinformation know exactly what they're doing. Exactly. What. They're. Doing.

So--last week, hearing and reading the unbelievable protests against Obama speaking truth to power (our next generation of adults), I mentioned in a Facebook posting that I'm feeling despair again. How silly of me to believe that a new president, whose ideals I embrace, in whom I had (have, dammit!!) such great hopes, could escape verbal evisceration by such small-minded people.

I went to the freezer half an hour ago to empty the ice cubes into the ice container and saw this on my refrigerator:

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

Today is September 11th. It's my boss John Fleischer's birthday. And I am going to find some wild things to be among today. I'll pack up my despair, stow it way deep in the closet, and feel free, along with wood drake.

My Guitar

In two weeks, my friend Cabby and I are having a pretty large yard sale. She has to schlep her stuff from Reno, and has already brought a bunch of items during her last two visits. I realize that what I'm doing is beginning to winnow out my encumbrances ahead of the need to leave this house, the place I've lived the longest since my childhood home. It is a major task, and this yard sale will be only the first winnowing, ridding my house of no-longer-fitting clothes, no-longer-used electronics, and no-longer-wanted accoutrements that have accumulated over many years.

I'm thinking of selling my guitar, which bears considerable thought. I've not been without a guitar since I was 19, with my first one, purchased from a Buffalo pawn shop, a Harmony with steel strings that Brian's father Bob restrung with nylon strings. I didn't learn until much later that it's not a good idea to put nylon strings on a guitar built for steel, and probably vice versa. In a few years, the strings had wandered further and further afield from the neck, making it difficult to play. But I played it anyway. That guitar went with me to Lawton, Oklahoma, when my Bob was stationed at Ft. Sill, and on evenings when thunderstorms killed the power in the service club, I'd sit on the stage and play the guitar and sing folk songs. I wasn't great, but it was better than sitting in the dark without music from the juke box. The soldiers whistled and hooted and I loved it. Sometimes my fingers bled from playing Sinner Man, even with nylon strings, but I played on. One Christmas, just a couple of weeks before Scott was born, both my father and my brother and his wife came to Lawton for the holiday. I used to hang the guitar by its strap in the coat closet, and one day as I was preparing dinner, my husband, father, brother and wife decided to play Bridge. The card table was also kept in the coat closet. My father, in his often hurried careless way, lifted up the card table, knocking the guitar to the floor. I cried with anger and disappointment, but it was only cracked, not broken, and could most likely be fixed. After the holidays, my husband and I took the guitar to a luthier in Lawton, who said he would fix it and not charge us much. He showed us a classical guitar he'd made, and we both strummed it a bit; it sounded like heaven. It had a full, mellow, clear, lovely sound that I'd not heard before, and we coveted it. He was asking $75 for it. I'd paid $25 at the pawn shop for the Harmony, and this wonderful guitar was only 3 times as much. But for us, then, $75 was what $750 is now--at least. That was our monthly rent. We couldn't buy it.

I can't remember exactly when I bought my present guitar, but I was back in the Buffalo area, and I played mostly in the summer when the family was at Kirk Kove, our Canadian retreat. It was a family fishing resort, with our house the first place on the right as you drove in, built in 1924, most likely before the resort was built. In the summer, when lots of kids were around, there were events in the rec hall, and Thursdays were "talent night". Skits were performed, mostly by kids, and then my 2nd husband John and I would sing folk songs--Four Strong Winds, This Land is Your Land, Whisky in the Jar, and too many others to list. One of my favorite memories of Kirk Kove is sitting on our porch at the top of the hill (a small hill, but a hill nonetheless) in the evening, watching the swallows swoop for mosquitoes, and rehearsing whatever we were going to sing that week.

But I neither sing nor play anymore, and the ol' fingers are quite rusty on the few occasions I've picked up a guitar. Both sons have at least one guitar that I could play when I visit them if the need arose. That thought makes me laugh. If the need arose. Right.

Several years ago I took classical lessons for a couple of months, and it was incredibly hard for me to make the stretches my fingers had to make. And aside from whatever pleasure I might eventually have for being able to play a tiny bit, what would I do with it? Impose on my friends and say, "Oh, look at what I learned over the last 6 months!"? No, that's not me.

Four years ago I attended my son Scott's first Gypsy Jam, held at the wonderful Pollywogg Holler in New York State's Southern Tier. I borrowed a friends hard case so I could check my guitar during the flights. I played a couple of things--badly, as I remember--but people were kind, and I knew it would be the only time I'd play at Gypsy Jam, no matter how many more times I might attend the event.

So I look at the once beloved guitar, in its case inside two plastic garbage bags, and wonder why on earth I should keep it around. There is no reason. Why, then, are these tears in my eyes? Eventually I will move from this house, and far more will have to be sold or given away. Perhaps I'll wait until I can let go of my guitar without tears.

Facebook

A few months ago I joined Facebook. I was getting kind of bored, I guess, and my blog muse would disappear for days on end. It didn't take long before I had several friends (mostly relatives) and as time went on, more and more people appeared. Most of them were also new to Facebook, and even now there are new people every day. To say that connecting with old friends--particularly old relatives (not in the age sense), such as a former daughter-in-law, a former daughter-out-law, former step-children I'd not spoken with in years--is a rewarding and touching experience. I don't have to "talk" with these old friends every day; it's enough to know that I can send them a message, that I can drop in on their Facebook page to see what's happening, that they are once again somehow in my life. It warms my heart.

Many of these people--friends and family alike--have not been a part of my life for one reason or another. I moved away. I'm no longer married to their father. They're no longer the significant other of a son. They're children of friends with whom I'm no longer close, but who grew up with my children. There are people from my church that I see on Sundays or on other church functions, but that I really don't know very well, and I find that I am learning about them as they are in their "real" life.

Facebook is about the intricate connections we all have in our lives--those scattered far and wide, those down the street that we don't get to spend time with. I am thrilled to have all these people--past and present--together in one place that I can access almost any time or from almost any place.

I can even learn what my son and daughter-in-law's tavern is serving for lunch every day. How cool is that!

Losing Ribble

Chances are, if you’ve ever had a pet, you’ve experienced a loss when they’ve died, disappeared, or you've had to leave them behind. It can be a powerful grief.

My really close friend Cabby literally lost her cat Ribble last Sunday morning, and when she told me, I was sad, although nowhere near as sad as she. I’m sad for Cabby who’s feeling guilty and bereft, but also for Ribble, whose actual fate is unknown.

Cabby has two other cats, but Ribble is her most recent acquisition, and she was drawn to him because he is a Manx (tailless) and because he’s an orange cat. She learned that he also doesn’t object to riding in a car, and she thinks he actually likes it. She takes him with her when she goes out to photograph birds, sometimes a day trip, sometimes overnight, and he is an excellent companion for her. And when she’d come over the hill from Reno to San Jose to visit, she’d bring Ribble, along with her two birds. That my cat Sheba would head for the hills whenever Ribble showed up is not at issue, but Cabby decided to keep Ribble pretty much confined to the spare bedroom where she sleeps when she visits.

So I got to know Ribble too, and he is a delightful little guy, and if he and my Riley hissed at each other for a while, that was OK. After three or four visits, they learned to accept one another. And I came to love Ribble too.

So when Cabby called me Sunday from somewhere near Fallon, NV, to tell me that she’d lost Ribble and couldn’t find him, I was distressed. She’d stayed in Winnemucca Saturday night, then planned to stop at the Wetlands near Fallon. She made a couple of stops to photograph the birds, then realized that Ribble wasn’t in the car anymore. She returned to the two places she’d stopped, found nothing, and asked park workers to call her if they saw a tailless orange cat sporting a black harness. Then she realized she left her cell phone (and only phone) in Winnemucca, so drove 2 hours East to retrieve the phone, then 2 hours back. She continued to search for Ribble, and spent last night in Fallon to resume the search on Monday morning.

When she called me Monday morning at work, it wasn’t with the good news I’d hoped for; she couldn’t find him anywhere. She said there were coyotes all over, and hawks, perhaps eagles, and Ribble was certainly no match for a coyote, and even if a raptor couldn’t lift the little guy, he could be badly damaged by talons.

She was crying, and I cried with her. She said she was done looking, had spent three hours in her search and was certain he was dead. We cried harder. She said she would go home, clean up and go to work to take her mind off Ribble.

Cabby is a superb photographer—not a professional, but only because she doesn’t want to bother with selling her art. If someone wants more than one picture, she’ll charge them only for paper and ink. When I received a later email from her saying she was going back to the Wetlands to keep looking, she said “I’ll never pick up a camera again.” Hopefully, that’s a statement spoken out of guilt and grief. It would be an even greater sadness for her to give up her passion for photography and birds.

I’ve had my own share of pet catastrophes, and with one of them I spent a lot of time with the woulda, coulda, shouldas, as I’m sure Cabby is doing. She doesn’t remember, but she may have left the car door open for a few seconds. Maybe the kitty jumped out an open window when she stopped. If only! If only she’d rolled up the window high enough to keep him in and let air in. If only she’d checked when she left the first place to make sure he was in the car. If only!

My heart goes out to her, and I prayed Sunday night about as hard as I’ve ever prayed for anything, that she and Ribble would be reunited. But she can’t take back whatever she did or didn’t do that could have led to his escape from the car.

To deny herself her passion—her photography—will not return Ribble to her, if he is indeed dead. I can see that it might be a painful reminder for a while, but my hope is that she will revoke her “never” statement and sadly but proudly return to her camera. It it’s anthropomorphizing to say this, then so be it, but I think Ribble would want her to do just that.

I’m still hoping that Ribble is out there somewhere, laying low, rolling in whatever’s necessary to cover his scent, and will survive his ordeal.

He’s not used up all nine lives yet.

More to come...

Guilt and Yearning

Once again, a blog from son Brian and back-and-forth responses to same has triggered thoughts of my own on a couple of words he used together in one of the emails: Guilt and Yearning.

It’s a pretty sad thing to realize, especially to publicly admit, that much of my inner life has been fueled by and evinced by guilt and yearning.

I find myself meditating on the relationship between the two, if indeed there is a link. I’m going to ramble here as the thoughts try to find a place to light. How does a child learn to feel guilt? When does a child begin to feel yearning, if ever they do? We know about guilt in a legalistic way, but that’s a whole different topic. Everyday guilt is, according to The American Heritage Dictionary Third Edition, “Remorseful awareness of having done something wrong” and “Self-reproach for supposed inadequacy or wrongdoing”. Remorseful awareness is when we realize we have a conscience. The awareness of wrongdoing is important to live in a ‘civilized’ world. We stop at the stoplight. Most people are not criminals, yet some of those may not be criminals only because they don’t want to get caught.

But wrongdoing encompasses a wide range of actions. Barking at a store clerk when I’m tired and frustrated can induce guilt. Not calling someone when I promised. Talking behind someone’s back about him/her. The examples are numerous, and I believe that most of us know where we’ve missed the mark enough to feel some degree of guilt.

It’s the “self-reproach for supposed inadequacy…” that is my bête noire. It’s so easy for me to feel guilt about things I have no control over, or feel so totally inadequate that it’s no wonder something went wrong. I deal with this at some level virtually every day.

These feelings are usually accompanied by yearning. Yearning to be better, smarter, quicker, faster. Yearning to have someone in my life with whom to share the burden of guilt. Yearning for unconditional love. I’m not sure that guilt leads to yearning, or that yearning leads to guilt. But I know they are linked for me; when I feel capable and strong and good about myself, I don’t yearn for anything, because I know I have all that I need.

Brian’s father told me when I was very young (I was nothing but very young when he and I were together) that I was ‘other directed’. It sounded like a bad thing, being ‘other directed’. He said the alternative was ‘inner directed’, and it didn’t take me long to understand the difference between the two. I know many people who are ‘inner directed’ and they are confident, do not appear to be in thrall to guilt and yearning, and are unacquainted with the grief of self-doubt and regular mea culpas.

When someone says to me, “don’t take it personally", I understand what they mean, but to an ‘other directed’ person, it’s all personal. Inner strength is not an endless commodity for us ‘other directeds’; sometimes we fight our own demons for it, we pray for it. And we look to others for it.
David Reisman, a sociologist, wrote in his 1950 book The Lonely Crowd, "The other-directed person wants to be loved rather than esteemed", not necessarily to control others but to relate to them. Those who are other-directed need assurance that they are emotionally in tune with others.

This is difficult to write, but it’s important that I have some idea of my own psychology and behaviors. If I understand who I am, I can then begin to tackle the goals of the famous Serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Peace.

Reunions

This year commemorates my 50th anniversary of graduation from Kenmore High School. [Ours was the last class to graduate from the school with that name. Future classes would graduate from Kenmore West (the same building) or Kenmore East. But our class was all together. All 791 of us (my memory could be off by some, but definitely at least the mid-700’s). No longer would cheerleaders shout “Let’s go, KHS! Let’s go, KHS!” at football and basketball games.]

Reunions offer an opportunity to reacquaint oneself with old friends and people who weren’t necessarily your friends way back when but turn out to be delightful people now and you want to know them better. It’s also a time for remembering those who didn’t live long enough to celebrate their 50th or maybe even their 25th, or in a few cases, their 10th reunions. It’s a time for memories, and for thanksgivings, and yes, even some “what if’s".

I’ve been registered on Classmates.com for several years, and it’s amazing to watch the increasing number of familiar names appearing on the list. People I hadn’t thought about in years, and I remember them now with fondness. I’m looking forward to see them all again. The six years of junior and senior high school—ages ~12-18—are arguably the most crucial years in our lives. The teen years are full of all manner of angst, wonder, fears, joys, emotional swings, and of course, bursts of hormones that seem uncontrollable. We put aside the ways of elementary school—we are “big kids” now that we change classrooms in junior high. We carry books home, we form our “packs” complete with the alphas, betas, and omegas of every pack. Until the time we graduate, our world is lived with this large group of people who matter to us. We make choices—who our friends are, who we shun (unfortunately), who we eat lunch with, who we choose for our teams. We begin in earnest to figure out who we are and where we fit in and where we think we want to be. And overall, to quote Mr. Dickens, “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

The actual reunion events are in August, and I shall be there. But during the last month or so, I have already experienced three reunions with former classmates.

I have a friend in Buffalo with whom there has been an estrangement for almost 20 years. I can’t remember why; I remember disagreements, but there had to have been more. I love this former friend no matter what, and perhaps she feels the same about me. I phoned her over a month ago and we spoke a bit, but I haven’t phoned her back. Do I fear rejection? I wasn’t rejected when I phoned before, so why would she reject me now? I need to call her again.

There’s another woman I knew peripherally in high school, and when we met again at our informal 20th reunion in 1979, she and I found each other to be kindred spirits in several ways. Over the following decade, we saw each other briefly and infrequently, as we lived in different cities. But we maintained irregular contact over the years—a Christmas card here, the rare phone call there. She lives now in Southern California and I’m in San Jose. She called me when she had to put down her beloved horse—perhaps her best friend over those 19 years of his life. The weekend before last I went to visit her, our first encounter in well over 20 years. I’m embarrassed to count up the hours we talked and talked and talked—we told our stories that began in high school and continued until the present, and we even tiptoed into discussing our future as single and aging women. She has struggled with breast cancer, this dear friend, and is as upbeat and cheerful as ever; her smile alone would convert a curmudgeon.

In high school, our homerooms were assigned alphabetically. Having the last name Woodward, I was in the last group, and the only room available was the wood shop. Boy, did we luck out! We had the smallest homeroom (and the wonderful scent of wood), full of W’s, Y’s, Z’s, and a few stragglers who must have been new to the school. One of the boys, “Z”, was the shyest boy, but he was cute and something attracted me. For some reason I don’t remember, I was pretty sure he sorta liked me, too, but, as I said, he was shy. One time, perhaps from a basketball game, or dance (would he have even gone to a dance?), he walked me home, and we stood for a long time on the sidewalk in front of my house. Who knows what those two 15-16 year olds talked about? School? Dreams? Future? I saw him briefly at the 25th reunion, and he called me after that. But only once, and I didn’t see him again. A month or so ago, one of the reunion organizers emailed me and said that “Z” had asked her if she knew how to contact me. She wrote me with his contact information and asked if she had my permission to give him mine. Yes! Of course, my answer was yes. “Z” and I have twice had fairly lengthy phone conversations, and I’ve enjoyed them both. We have led very different adult lives, he and I, and our world views are quite different. But I still look forward to seeing him in August. We never forgot about each other. We still care.

More to come.

Seven Words That Changed My Life

I was married to a man who, I’ve concluded, was probably the most insecure man I’ve ever known. I’ve told him that in recent years, but I doubt that he truly heard it. I was very young, early 20’s, when we met, was uneducated past high school (save three agonizing months at my local university), and about as down as one could be. He rescued me from myself, and gave me some tools with which I could deal with my demons. We married a few years later, despite my own misgivings. How I loved him! My heart took full control over my head and my better sense, and besides that I was afraid to be alone, on my own, with my two little boys.

My husband used to tell me that my impressions of something—often his behavior—were “only my perception”. I heard that so many times, during infidelities, during times when I commented on his differential treatment of his children and my children. There were to be no “our” children, but I had agreed to that before we married, so I couldn’t push the issue. Over the months and years of psychological put-downs, referring to the way I looked at things to be “just my perception”, I began to doubt my judgment, felt inadequate, and wondered how he could love such a person who continued to have erroneous perceptions.

I started working for a friend of my husband who was conducting a research study and he needed some help with handling the data. I had no experience, so he (my new boss) suggested I take a class in Fortran. That was fun, let me tell you! NOT! Since I was taking one class in the morning, I decided to take another one on the alternate afternoons. Sociology 101 seemed like just the ticket, and it was reinforced by the fact that my husband knew the woman professor and liked her.

I remember that it was the first day of class, and when the students were coming into the class, the professor was writing in large letters across the entire width of the blackboard this sentence: Anything perceived is real in its consequence. ANYTHING PERCEIVED IS REAL IN ITS CONSEQUENCE. My heart beat harder, my breath quickened, and at that moment, I began to grow. Why had I never known this? Why didn’t I realize that on my own, without being told? But most of all—thank God I just learned this!

It took just a few years after that and some intensive sessions with a psychotherapist, but that sentence started me on a journey to selfhood, a sense of freedom and autonomy that I’d never had. Anything perceived is real in its consequence. Wow! OK, tell me that the fact that you’re staying out later and later and that a woman keeps calling you is just my perception and that she’s just a client. Yeah, my perception. Not only was the perception my own reality, it was reality. I learned to trust my gut, now that I disallowed the psychological abuse of “it’s only your perception”.

I went back to school full time after a bit, graduated Summa Cum Laude from SUNY Buffalo, and after our divorce, I received an M.A. from the same university.

I trust my perceptions. They are my reality, and what I perceive leads to what I do, how I behave, and whom I trust. Yeah, the consequences. Seven words, one short sentence, writ large on a blackboard and on my heart and soul. I am free.

Pen and Pencil OCD

This morning on NPR, on “Talk of the Nation”, there was a segment on OCD—Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder—that got me thinking about some of my own proclivities and habits. God knows I’m not cleaning anything all of the time, and I don’t worry about leaving the iron or the stove on once I leave the house. I rarely iron, and cook slightly more often. If I’ve forgotten to leave food for the cats, they can live off their fat for a few hours.

But should you visit me and need a pen or pencil to jot something down, I can ask: do you want a pen or a pencil? OK, a pen. What color ink do you want? Gel or ball point? Thick or thin? Click or cap? Would a marker be better? What color? Thick or thin? Oh, you’d rather have a pencil? Mechanical or regular? Number 2 or 3? .5mm or .7mm? Do you need a separate eraser? No as many choices, but I’ve got a few.

How on earth did I get this way? I went all through school with a few pencils and maybe one pen, which was probably a fountain pen in those dark ages. In my 20’s I never had any money, so probably would have had one or two pens of the BIC ilk, and maybe a pencil.

Then I got married to husband #2, and we moved to Grand Island to a fairly big house. There was room for me to have a desk, a real luxury. I kept all kinds of things in that lovely teak rolltop desk—pictures, decks of cards, odds and ends that can’t find another place, and oh yes, a few pens and pencils. There were three boys living in the house for the next year, and four boys for a few more years after that. Two were my stepsons, both of them considerably older than my “innocent” little boys. OK, that’s the background.

We’d leave a pen near the phone, which was just a few steps from my desk. The phone pen wasn’t tied down, as in a bank, so it always disappeared. Not sometimes. Always. The go to place for a pen was my desk. When I was growing up, my mother’s desk was off limits to us kids. Just as her purse was. I think I managed to maintain the sanctity of my purse with the four boys (and if I’m wrong, I don’t want to know!), but I could get nowhere insisting that my desk was not open to all.

Two years after we moved there, one of my stepsons decided to live with his mother in another city, so he stayed there after his summer visit instead of coming back. We realized we could have a bedroom for each of the “little” boys instead of them having to share a room. Cleaning up my stepson’s room was a nightmare. I won’t go into all the gory details; suffice it to say that in that ~10’ x 10’ room I unearthed 84 (that’s eighty four) pens and pencils! Yes, I counted them. They were under the rug, under the bed, in underwear drawers, in the closet; indeed, there wasn’t a place that I didn’t find a writing implement.

Now I’m the one with 84 pens and pencils, and perhaps more. I must add that I go with my company to trade shows a couple of times a year, and pens are one of the tchotchkes that companies give away. But still. I have a lot of pens. I do crossword puzzles and Sudoku, and I might do them upstairs or downstairs, so I have to have pencils upstairs and downstairs. I have three handsets for my phone, so I need pens where there are phones. Fine. You can probably understand that. But why do I need so many pens and pencils?! It’s nuts! It’s crazy! It’s…it’s…well, it’s obsessive/compulsive, isn’t it?

In my defense, I don’t spend much money on pencils or pens. Most pens come from trade shows, even a very few mechanical pencils. I don’t use regular wooden pencils—I’d have to keep sharpening them. I’m not hurting anyone, it doesn’t take me extra time to nourish my obsession.

Confession is so good for the soul! Just don’t deprive me of my pens and pencils, and I’ll be good. I promise.

Reflections on Motherhood - Mothers Day 2009

From the earliest I can remember, I wanted to be a mommy. Other options during my 40's-50's growing up years seemed to be nurse, teacher, and secretary. Mommy seemed like the best of the bunch. It was hard for me to believe that something so wonderful could ever happen to me.

Brian was born on October 2, 1963, the morning after the landlord called demanding the rent we didn't have. I gave him a nice guilt trip when I told him he brought on my labor!

On November 22, 1963, which would have been my mother's 52nd birthday, I got a call from a friend to turn on my radio--the President had been shot. I was no great fan of John F. Kennedy, but I lay on the couch with my infant son on my chest and wept that in these modern times a President could be assassinated. I wondered into what kind of world I'd brought new life.

Brian was a delightful baby--happy, alert to everything around him, curious, and did I mention happy? We were alone for several months, my baby boy and I, since Daddy was in the Army and stationed halfway across the country. Somehow I bumbled through his first tonsillitis attack, this tiny boy with a high fever. Doctors at the Army Hospital at Ft. Sill, OK, walked me through ways to reduce his fever, and a drug store delivered medication. I was almost a child myself--just 22 and not entirely wise to the ways of the world. When my father-in-law died, 6-month old Brian and I flew to Maryland and stayed there for about 6 weeks to help my mother-in-law and we saw my husband often. Soon after I arrived, we stayed in the guest house at Ft. Dix, N.J., opened the little bottles of Manhattans from the airplane trip, and there's no doubt in my mind that baby number two was conceived that night.

Scott arrived on the scene January 11, 1965, just 15 months after Brian was born. I was delighted to have another son, and one who looked so very different. Brian was fair, with sparse blond hair when he was born; Scott resembled a baby monkey with lots of dark straight hair encroaching onto his cheeks and forehead. I guess that's not a good picture--he was certainly a darling baby, just so different from the first.

So, motherhood was in full swing--two baby boys, both in diapers, both needing attention, and by this time, their Daddy was home, out of the Army. He had a job working evenings, so he was around to help during the day and would get Brian ready for bed before he left for work. I can't remember ever being so happy. I loved washing, folding, even ironing little baby clothes. There were no disposable diapers then, and I folded and folded and folded, smiling the while.

We had no money, though. Most of what we had were hand-me-downs. The crib that Brian used was given to us by a Sergeant who'd laid down 5 babies in that crib. The high chair had no tray, so the baby was belted in and sat directly at the table. Worked fine. Neither child had a lot of clothes, but we managed, and they certainly didn't have the toys that today's children have, but there were plenty, and they were happy and good little boys.

Life changed when my husband and I split in the spring of 1966. After considerable deliberation, I decided to move back to Buffalo with the boys and live with my father until I could get things together. Thus started a new chapter in all of our lives.

My father was wonderful with the kids. They were good for him, but I'm sure that he was even better for them. That relatively short time of living with him was the foundation of the boys' relationship with their grandfather, the one constant male in their life that showed them unconditional love. Then I remarried, and we all moved to Grand Island, N.Y., about 15 minutes from where my Dad lived.

Three memorable incidents, although there are many.

Ol' Stick-in-the-Mud Scott

We were living on Grand Island, N.Y., in a house with acres of undeveloped land behind our house. A development was in progress there, but much was just dirt, scrub, and in the Spring, mud. Scott was just over six; Brian was seven, and they were bundled up for a chilly March day. Late afternoon, Brian ran in the back door, and breathlessly reported that Scott was stuck in the mud and couldn't get out. "...and I was stuck too, but this bigger kid got me out, but he couldn't get Scott out! Mom! Ya gotta come!" So out I went, with boots, jacket, gloves, and saw my little boy standing a hundred yards away in the mud. I got to him, and he looked so scared, it broke my heart. I got behind him and pulled him out--all but his boots, though. I carried him for a while, but I kept sinking into the mud and my caked boots got heavier and heavier. The house got further and further away and my load of little boy and boots gaining weight as I went got almost too much. I had to put Scott down and get the accumulated mud off my boots. Poor little guy had to put his stocking feet into that mud! I cleaned off my boots, picked up Scott and after what seemed like hours, got to the house, put the boys into the tub, and we all breathed. "I thought I was gonna die out there, Mom". Scott tried not to cry. He was fine. We were all fine.

The Composer

Brian was eight, and it was my birthday. He had been taking piano lessons for about two years, and didn’t have to be reminded about practicing. He did well. On my birthday, he gave me a song that he’d composed, all the notes written out. I was excited and asked him to play it for me. He said he couldn’t play it; he could write it. I said, in all my naïve and insensitive stupidity, “Brian, it’s wonderful that you wrote this for me, but how can you write it and not be able to play it?” I could tell I’d hurt his feelings, but I had no idea how to fix it or undo it, or even why it hurt him so. Years later, on a visit to Minneapolis, Brian played a part of a ballet he was writing, and he stopped at one point and told me he couldn’t play the next part. I asked the same naïve, insensitive and stupid question again (I’m a slow learner), and this time Brian wasn’t eight anymore, he was in his late 20’s and considerably more articulate. He wheeled around on the piano bench and gave me what for, asking if I thought Mozart could play every single instrument in the orchestra that he composed for? Of course not, I said. The twenty years were gone, and the eight year old boy sat in front of me, hurt, but now able to explain to his musically-ignorant mother. The sad thing is: I have never heard nor was I able to read the song that my beloved eight year old little boy wrote.

The School Bus Thief

We lived down the same side of the street as Grand Island's school bus garage, behind the school the boys attended. Brian had a friend named George he played with--they must have been 11 or 12. The call came in on a Saturday afternoon, from the Grand Island Police Station. Brian had been picked up for starting a school bus. My husband, Brian’s adoptive Dad, an Episcopal priest, donned his clerical collar and went to take care of it. Brian’s was scared witless, and pretty darned angry at his supposed friend George, who took off when he spotted the cops. I don’t know whether Brian ever saw George again, certainly not intentionally.

There are so many more. I am so proud to be mother of these two men.

Cat Training, Part 2.

I’ve learned more about training a cat. I’ve learned that while you think you’re training the cat, the cat is successfully training you! I’ll bet there are dog owners out there who think they trained their dogs, too. But it’s even worse with cats, because cats let you know in no uncertain terms that they’ve turned the tables on you.

In case you didn’t read the first part, I trained my Bengal cat Sheba to come when I call her by giving her little treats she loves. It worked for a while. Now Sheba sits in front of me and hollers at me to give her treats… or else! I do not want to even think about what the ‘or else’ could mean, so I dutifully get the treat container and give her what she demands. I hate the look of evil satisfaction on her face when she’s had enough and goes to lie down to gloat!

You can’t really train a cat.

It’s not easy being green…

…but I’m trying. I recycle almost everything I can. Newspapers, gazillions of catalogs and old magazines, junk mail, miscellaneous paper untouched by food, old phone books, cardboard boxes—all go into my wicker recycle box. Rinsed-out cans, bottles, jars, yogurt containers, other plastic containers with the little recycle logo on them—all go into my wicker recycle box. I’m not patting myself on the back here; for each item I think to put into the recycle box, I’m sure there’s something I’m throwing in the garbage that should be recycled. The plastic bags the frozen berries come in, for example. They’re recyclable, and for a while I rinsed them well, and added them to the wicker bin. Then I get lazy or rushed and put them in the garbage.

Every few months I review the long list that San Jose provides every year on what’s recyclable and what’s not to make sure I’m compliant. I always find something I’d forgotten from the last time. The wicker box fills up fast, and twice a week I dump it into the huge plastic bin the city provides. The recycle bin holds over 300 pounds, it says on it, and it occurs to me that a human body would fit nicely in there, curled up, covered by paper all around, and who would ever know exactly where it came from? I think I should get a smaller recycle bin; maybe I wouldn’t have such morbid thoughts.

My church, St. Mark’s, is concerned about green-ness, too. It’s even less easy being green there than it is at home. We need termite “remediation” for the whole campus. Costly either way, but the noxious poison kills the termites and you can go 5-10 years before needing remediation again. The green (actually, orange) method is non-toxic, but it kills only the termites it actually touches, and does nothing to the ones it doesn’t touch. It’s less expensive up front, but needs to be done on a regular basis. In San Jose, termites are always with us. We can either poison them or kill them with orange juice.

I’ve stopped buying bottled water. I learned last year that it takes more water to manufacture the individual serving water bottles than they actually hold! I now use a thermos or reusable container for water. I do keep a larger plastic jug of water in the trunk of the car, though. The large ones are bad too, but not as bad as the small ones.

At St. Mark’s we still use Styrofoam cups at our coffee hours. When I first attended St. Mark’s, in the early 90’s, we had a pegboard with ceramic cups hanging from it. I thought that worked very well; drink your coffee/tea, wash out the cup, hang it up, and that’s that. No Styrofoam. No paper cups. Apparently not enough people washed out their cups, and so a couple of angels made it their job to wash and re-hang them. (The cups, not the people.) Then the angels died and there were lots of dirty cups hanging around on Sunday mornings, and St. Mark’s does not have a dishwasher. So, when I went away and wasn’t watching, they stopped using the pegboard and went back to Styrofoam. After raising the issue several times over the years since I’ve returned to St. Mark’s, I finally got the message. We will do nothing about pegboards and ceramic cups until there’s a dishwasher; then we’ll think about it. End of story.

But for me it isn’t the end of the story. Don’t we have angels anymore at St. Mark’s? Some have also raised the issue that others besides St. Mark’s people use the parish hall, and might use our cups and hang them back up dirty. Then we might catch their alcoholism, I guess. Or become infatuated with bagpipes, engage in creative anachronism, or take up singing.

It’s hard for me to imagine going into a place that has coffee cups available, using one and putting it back unwashed. Do we assume all other people are brought up in a barn? What has become of civility, taking care of others’ possessions as we would our own?

Well, I’m bringing my own cup of tea from home every Sunday. I’ll not drink my tea out of a Styrofoam cup, thank you very much. It doesn’t taste right, it doesn’t feel right, and it stays too hot too long. Ceramic absorbs just the right amount of heat so the tea is cool enough to drink and the cup warms the hands on a cool morning. It’s ever so much more comforting. Holding a Styrofoam cup is like hugging a fish.

Dating Lesson Number 1

I promised a new friend, whom I met through work and who has a website dedicated to the concerns of single women (http://singlemindedwomen.com), that I would occasionally pollute my blog with some of my dating experiences. Bear in mind that most of these were in the 80’s, after my second marriage collapsed. I was in my late 30’s-early 40’s, working at first, then in grad school for two years, then working again. This was in Buffalo, and I have named no names (to protect the guilty).

If you’re one of my sons reading this, it might be in your best interest to suddenly remember that you have something really important to do and won’t get back to my blogs for the next month or so.

I have no intention of turning this into a tell-all kind of thing, because I know that my boys think I’m as pure as the driven snow, so I do need to keep it neat. That being said...

Without a doubt, the sleaziest man I dated was a guy I’d met from my downstairs neighbors at a party they had. He sounded intelligent when I talked with him, and he wasn’t an Adonis by any stretch, but not hard on the eyes either. I liked him, but of course this was before I knew him! Around this time I bought my very first answering machine, taped my greeting, and waited for all the calls from potential suitors. The very first message was from Sleazeman, and I was so excited! I called him back and he invited me for dinner and I accepted.

There is one cardinal rule in the sisterhood. You never break a date with girlfriends to go out with a guy. But my mother never taught me that rule, and she could have taught me better to play a little hard to get. She may have tried, but I was so eager for male attention from the age of 11 that I paid little attention to what my mother said. What did she know? She was from another generation if not from another planet!

So, after I said yes to Sleazeman’s dinner invitation, I called one of the girlfriends I had a date with the same night as the dinner invitation, and when I told her why I was cancelling out of the girlfriends’ date, she read me the riot act over the phone. I’d never even heard her yell at her kids, and you should have heard her language and her volume! I felt terrible. I don’t deal well with friends yelling at me. I’d been used to a husband yelling at me, but my girlfriends? This wasn’t fun yelling. This was real. She was livid!

I went to dinner with Sleazeman. Wasn’t a fancy place, but good food. (It was a German restaurant in Buffalo, so of course it was good food.) We sat at the bar, and he recited poetry to me. One poem after another. Good poetry. Literature. Shakespeare sonnet kind of poems. Oh, I was such a patsy!

After that date, we got together a few times, and on each date he had increasingly nothing of any interest or depth to say. He was coarse, boring, and bordered on rude. He had no money and less ambition. To think that I had almost destroyed a friendship because of this boor!

My girlfriend, the one who yelled at me, came by my house to apologize a couple of days later, but I was so ashamed of myself that I couldn’t let go of the shame for a long time. Not days or weeks, but a few years! From time to time, I’d run into her at a grocery store near where I lived and she worked, and we’d chat a bit. I couldn’t believe she’d forgiven me; I hadn’t forgiven myself. All that angst and wasted time with a dear, dear friend for the possibility of a relationship with a man.

He wasn’t the last sleazy guy (I’m a slow learner), but I did learn that unless your husband, father, fiancée, or son is in a life-threatening situation, you should never choose a date with a man over a commitment to your girlfriends.

Training Cats

I used to have a cat, Pouncer, who loved Pounce Treats. (He was named before I discovered the treats.) Pouncer would see the little can, about the size of a small can of tomato paste, or I’d rattle the can, and he’d go nuts. One day I thought that perhaps I could train him to do something…like sitting up and begging! Yeah, that was a good idea! It took less than a week. I’d hold a treat up, he’d raise his paw and I’d praise him lavishly and reward him. At the end of the week he was sitting up just the way a dog does, with the little paws cutely flopped over at the ‘wrist’. I could show him the can of treats and he’d sit up and beg. I could say “sit!” and he’d beg.

It is not in the nature of a cat to beg. Cats are deciders. If they have to resort to asking, they’ll usually meow, or weave in and out of legs. But begging is unbecoming to a cat, as is any form of subservience. I vowed I’d never to that again to my cat.

Now, I have another cat, who for years has been unmoved by anything other than her regular food and the water in the can of tuna I just opened. Sheba is a Bengal and an indoor cat. I won’t risk losing her to a speeding car, so she stays in. It’s not her choice, and whenever possible she’ll sneak out the garage when I open the door to get the car in or out. She refuses to come when I call her, and she either stays in my neighbor’s bushes or leads me on a merry chase from the front yard to the back yard, evading me the while and chuckling under her breath.

Sometimes she’s gone around the corner of the street. I’ll go after her, calling the while: Sheba! Sheba! Soon she’ll answer me with a chastising tone, eventually show herself, and then she’ll more or less follow me home. But it’s her decision and it’s in her time. I began to wish there were a way to incentivize Sheba to come when she’s called. Certainly training a cat to “come” is different from training a cat to “beg”, I told myself.

A week or so ago I bought a little bag of tuna-flavored cat treats that are supposedly good for dental health and “fresh breath” (a real oxymoron for cats, if ever there was one!). Sheba loved them! So I began: “Come here, Sheba. Come here, Sheba.” Hold out the treat, make her come closer, give her the treat in my hand, praise her lavishly when she takes the bait…I mean, treat. Sure didn’t take long for her to learn: “Come here, Sheba” brings her from wherever she is. She got outside last week as I was ready to leave for work. I opened the door, said the magic words, and she bounded into the house. Now I have two more things to do. I need to call her and give her only praise, randomly, so that she never knows when there will be a treat and when there won’t. Yeah, I took psychology 101. Keep ‘em guessing, and they’ll continue to respond to the stimulus.

And then, who knows, maybe I’ll teach her to beg.

More to come...

When your Muse is out of town…

I’m pretty sure my Muse is out of town, or pouting, or sleeping really late every day. When she is around, she doesn’t stay long, sometimes leaves me before I’ve said what I wanted to say. Maybe I bore her. And, of course, she must be busy with so many bloggers out there.

Sometimes the words trip over themselves going from my mind through my fingers onto the page. Sometimes, they’re reluctant to show themselves, as if they’ve settled down into a comfy place and don’t want to leave. But what happens most often is that there are so many words and thoughts that are jockeying for place (take me! take me!), and they get separated from what connects them to other words. It must be the Muse’s job to herd the words so they can emerge as more or less meaningful phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.

Please, Ms. Muse, come back, stop pouting, or get up! I miss you.

More to come...

Wordaholics Anonymous

Hi, my name is Mary and I’m a wordaholic. Not only do I love to speak words, read words, and write words, I am pretty persnickety about the use of words as well. I was brought up by two parents who were determined that my brother and I would learn how to talk properly without adopting the Buffalo flat “a” accent. (When I was young, my mother and I went shopping for an Easter hat for me. One of the many I tried on brought this statement from the sales clerk: “There’s a gayap in the bayack of your hayat”. I’m serious; it was that bad. I was afraid to look at my mother, lest we both burst out laughing.)

In school, as well as at home, I learned to use the pronouns “I/he/she” when they are the subject of a sentence, and using “me/him/her” when the are the object of the sentence. I’m sure it helped that I took three years of Latin in high school, during which these difficult concepts were indelibly drilled into my head. It helped that my parents spoke flawless English. My maternal grandparents had both taught in “normal” schools, and my grandfather especially was unmerciful (but still loving!) in his corrections. We learned to say things correctly, my brother and I.

When my kids were growing up, I did my darnedest to ensure good English usage, but the prevailing winds of misusing “I” and “me” was, apparently, stronger than I was. One of my sons continually uses the pronoun “I” as both the subject and the object a sentence, but fortunately not often in the same sentence. I still correct him now and then, but somehow it doesn’t ‘take’. He’ll say, “yeah, that too.” I still love him. But when radio and TV newscasters, speakers that are assumed to be part of the intelligentsia, and writers (yes, writers! How does it get past their editors?!) misuse “I” and “me”, I am really upset and I lose hope for the future of correct English usage. I don’t understand enough spoken Spanish to determine whether this use of subject/object pronouns happens in that language (and others) as well. However, there used to be a Romanian software engineer who was appalled by the usage errors made by educated and native English speakers.

Besides the “I”–“me” issue, there are several others, many of which I grant various degrees of clemency. For instance, I am fairly lenient about “lie, lay, lain” and “lay, laid, laid”, especially in the past perfect tense (“I had just lain down when the doorbell rang.” or “I had just laid the baby down for a nap when the doorbell rang.”). If you don’t see the difference, you’re definitely in the majority; don’t worry about it. But here’s the skinny on lie and lay. (This “lie” is not the fib.)

The verb “lie” is intransitive (there is no object that the verb applies to; it can take an adverb, but not an adjective), and it is used as follows:

I’m lying on the couch. (present)
I’m going to lie down for a nap. (future)
I lay down earlier today and slept too long. (past)
After I had lain down yesterday, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. (past perfect)

The verb “lay” (meaning to place something somewhere) is transitive and takes an object. It is used as follows:
You can lay your coat on the bed in the room down the hall. (present)
When I get back from the store, I’ll lay the baby down for a nap. (future)
I’m sure I laid the keys on the table last night. (past)
I had laid the remote on the couch, but when I came back, it was gone. (past perfect)

Another common misdemeanor by the news media is the “less”–“fewer” usage. If you had 12 apples in a bowl when you left for work this morning, and you have only 6 apples in the bowl when you get home, you have 6 fewer apples, not less apples. However, if you had twenty dollars with you when you left for work, and ten dollars when you got home, you’d have fewer dollars, and less money. So: “fewer” is used when you are using plural units, e.g. dollar – dollars, and “less” is used before a word that is a plural noun used as a singular noun. “Money” can be a penny or a billion dollars, but you don’t have “fewer money”. You have less money with fewer dollars and fewer quarters. My rule of thumb, which works almost every time, is to use “fewer” with quantifiable plurals (e.g., dogs, bicycles, men) and ”less” with words whose singular refers to a plural ‘group’ (e.g., money, candy, jewelry).

Teen speak is another bête noire for me; I keep wondering if their babies will say, “like, mama” as their first words. I’m not LOL! The shortening of words while chatting online, twittering tweets, and texting on a cell phone or in emails is another worry. Will the burgeoning generation be able to lose the teen speak as they go to college or out in the world? OMG, I hope so!

Slouching Toward Retirement

This morning I met with my financial advisor, a very knowledgeable young man, who listens to me, makes good comments and suggestions, and I’m feeling a bit more positive about my future. This is not a good time to retire—partly because I haven’t yet figured out what I want to be when I grow up, and partly because my retirement funds have really taken a hit in these economic times. But I do need to think about it and prepare for the time I will stop working at a full time job, and will undoubtedly need to dip into retirement funds.

So I’d like to think a bit out loud here. The way I see it, I have three options. There are probably more, but these are the ones that have continued to present themselves whenever I think about retiring. The order presented is not necessarily the order of preference, as it changes with the cycles of the moon (or something else entirely!).

1. Sell my house, which is worth far less than it was three years ago, and move to a much less costly place to live. Western New York comes to mind, since I grew up there, have one or two friends left, plus (a huge plus) my son and grandson live there, plus (another big one) housing is really cheap, at least compared to the Bay Area of California.

2. Continue to live in my house in San Jose and rent out the downstairs bedroom and bath, which is sort of a suite. I had a tenant for nearly two years, who was the perfect tenant. He didn’t drink or smoke, had no parties, made no noise (unless he was laughing at John Stewart or Steven Colbert), loved my cats and took care of them when I went away for a weekend or so, was of the same political persuasion. How can I find such a person again? A serious grad student would be good, but they would leave after a year or so, and I’d have to keep looking for others.

3. There are places for seniors that are less expensive than other places; whether they’re partially subsidized, I don’t know, but a decent and affordable place can be found. The ones I’ve been aware of so far, however, are full of old people! Who wants to live with a bunch of old people?! Don’t think I’m operating under illusions here; but I am quite ambulatory, I don’t want to sit around watching TV, playing gin or any other card game with old ladies. I don’t want to take bus trips to museums with the old ladies either. I don’t feel like an old lady, but then, I know some who are but who also don’t feel like them. I mean, they look like old ladies, but inside, they’re who they’ve always been. I need to give the old ladies a break—their hair may be white (however little they may have), but if their hearts and souls are young, then they probably don’t want to sit around with a bunch of old ladies either.At any rate, I’m sure there are places where only some people are old ladies; many are people like I would be: newly retired and needing a less expensive place to live.

There may be other alternatives as well. I’ve heard that in some cities they’re building structures with, say, four apartments that are connected to common areas, so people can eat together if they choose to. The common area includes sitting areas so that people can play cards and games, or watch TV together. And these places are not necessarily for seniors, but for people who want to share resources, such as purchasing food at places like Costco, which is a real money saver unless you end up throwing unused food out.

I’ve talked with my friends about starting a system of sharing perishable food items from Costco. The same could be done with farmers’ markets. But the idea pretty much got shot down. No one wants to manage it and/or has time to manage it. Well then, perhaps a pot luck dinner each week, so that buying something in bulk would be more effective.

Anyway, learning to live on less is something that all of us can benefit from. If we can live on less and also meet some social needs, so much the better!

This is one of the uncomfortable places my head is lately—all this stuff, these thoughts and ideas run around, sometimes crash into one other, and are looking for a place to light. Somewhere, hopefully, that they can take root and grow.

When I think about retirement, I think not only of how I’ll manage financially, but also how I’ll manage without someplace to go during the week where I feel valued and have people to say “good morning!” to. As difficult as my workplace can be, I’m thankful that I have a place to be where I feel like I belong. What would that be for me once I retire and don’t have that structure? I was unemployed almost 20 years ago for about 6 months, and it was great for the first couple of months. It was Spring and Buffalo literally blooms in the Spring. I could go visit my son, who worked from home. I could stroll the Elmwood Strip, since I lived only a block away. My father needed help after he fell and had a cast on his right arm, so I felt useful for a few months. My daughter-out-law needed me to babysit my grandson a couple of times a week, and since I was home, I could do it. I could read, write letters, sleep late, stay up late. I could do anything I wanted! Until what I wanted was people on a regular basis. People I could greet and shoot the breeze with. After I interviewed for a few jobs that didn’t lead to anything, I began to get depressed. I felt useless and worthless. I had problems with friendships, probably because I was so needy. How will I handle those things when I retire?

I’d best figure it all out beforehand. The place to live, the finances, and even more importantly, how I will take care of the less concrete needs. How will I fulfill my need for people contact, my feelings of self worth, my sense of place and belonging?

Maybe Carbon Dating Works...

There’s a lot written about dating between the sexes out there, in books, articles, gazillions of blogs and even more, it seems, online dating websites that are raking in bucks while their clients spend hours seeking for Mr./Ms. Right. Recently I met a woman who runs a website for single women, and she urged me to blog about my dating experience.

I can just see everyone out there falling asleep reading my dating stories. Besides, I have two grown sons who read my blogs and God forbid I shock them! (They’re probably ROTFL at that sentiment.)

But, seriously, folks. Dating is big business. If you live in a place such as Silicon Valley, you either meet someone where you work or where you go to church. But when you work 60+ hours a week, as many in S.V. do, when do you have time for a cuppa, a chat, or attending church? People don’t go to bars as much as they used to for the purpose of meeting people, unless they can walk or take public transportation. It’s not fun to be arrested for a DUI or DWI! Not that I know firsthand, mind you. There was a time, back in my post-divorce days when the laws were not so strict that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ was my mantra. I don’t want to say too much about all that—I’m not sure about the statute of limitations in New York State, and if I confess, they’ve got me cold.

So how on earth do people meet? There are some great people at church. At the church I go to, there are a number of handsome, educated, articulate, thoughtful men. They have only one thing wrong with them. They each have a round band on the third finger of their left hand, and she usually shows up with them. I’ve had two experiences with meeting someone in church. The first one was really great—but wasn't a long-term deal. Long story. The second was fairly recently, late last fall. I try to welcome new people who come to St. Mark’s—we need all the bodies we can get—and this geezer (that’s not really fair; turns out he’s a year younger than I am!)—standing by the door looked kind of lost, so I spoke with him. He proceeded to tell me his tale of woe, and being the hugger that I am, I gave him a huge one. More than one, actually. Without having to publicly own up to every mistake I made that day, suffice it to say that he got what he thought was a clear message that I was really interested in him. Not so, and it took a few more occasions to make my message quite clear. I'm not interested. In his brief time at St. Mark’s, he hit on every one of us single women, as long as we were older than jail bait. He has moved on to a megachurch where there are far more available ladies from which to choose. So, for me, church is out. Besides, if it doesn’t work out, then someone usually has to leave the church, particularly if the congregation is as small as ours is.

Several years I took classes of some sort, mostly for work. They were evening classes, and I wasn’t going to them for the purpose of meeting men, but hey, if you can kill two birds with one stone, why not? Sadly, the ones that were interesting either had that ubiquitous wedding band or…well, what difference does it make, because there was no time whatsoever for chitchat and everyone had been working all day and wanted only to go home, have some dinner and a nightcap before bed.

I’m not much of a joiner anyway. I work all day, too, and I run out of gas about 4:00 p.m. I don’t like to go out mid-week more than once, at the most twice, even for things I enjoy doing!

In my group of six women, three of us are single (one fairly recently; the other two of us for decades) and three are married. The three married ones have on occasion admitted to envying us single folk, while two of us single folk (the decades ones) envy those who have a good man at home who will scratch a back or take them out to dinner.

So, the other decades-single woman and I have done the online thing from time to time. She has gone on lots of first dates, and on one occasion announced (before even meeting the guy) that she has met “the one”. We didn’t burst her bubble; that happened all on its own, and was truly popped when she met him and found that while she’s looking for someone to have adventures with—museums, concerts, travel—he, slightly disabled, was looking for a companion cum care-giver.

Yeah, when you get to the age of Methuselah, not only are the pickings slim, they generally want a companion cum care-giver. The other side of that coin are the guys just slightly younger than the aforementioned Biblical character, and regularly ski, sail, play a mean game of tennis, enjoy riding their Harley, as well as their bicycle, and love to hunt and go deep-sea fishing. Of course, they also love fine dining, beach walks at sunset in the moonlight, all that stuff we begin to gag at. And they’re “spiritual but not religious”, honest, fit, financially independent. In other words, way too good to be true. And are probably looking for a trophy on their arm, not an old broad like myself.

I’ve given up. I “winked” at a few online possibilities, and even sent a couple of emails. A few were kind enough to write back and say “I’m sorry; I don’t think we’re a match.” The utter nerve! To suggest from a photograph and a little “profile” that we’re not a match! How dare they! However, when I do the same thing….well, it’s different.

So, my juicy dating stories will have to come from an earlier chapter in my life, the first 10 years or so after my marriage ended. That’s another blog or three.

I will say on this subject, however, that I know online dating works. My son Brian met his wife online, and they are a real success story. My niece met her husband, after many, many tries, by expanding the geographical parameters, and is now living in Idaho with him—they seem to be meant for each other. So it works. But not for me. Hey, that would be a good song title!

More to come…

Snow Boys

(or how I [allegedly] tried to kill my sons)

I need to set the record straight. My younger son, Scott, asks friends of mine when he meets them, “Has my mother ever told you about the time she tried to kill my brother and me?”

The trouble is, I start to laugh when that happens, probably because I enjoy being teased, but the last time that particular son told the story, he changed a few things. Yes, it had me laughing and protesting, but I want to set down the very true story of what happened.

It was a normal November day on Grand Island, N.Y. Grey, cold, a Saturday. The 15th, I believe. The boys, at that time almost 11 and just 12, seemed itchy, which is also normal on a Saturday when it’s grey and chilly. So I did something my mother did when I was itchy—I sent them to the store.

“OK, guys, I need a few things from Mesmer’s. We need milk, better get a gallon, and I need some eggs; a dozen is fine, and oh!, get a bag of noodles.” They were pretty happy to have something to do, and knew there was probably a candy bar or other treat in it for them. After all, I didn’t believe in slavery!

Off they went, and I continued on with whatever I was doing, and their Dad continued whatever he was doing barricaded in his recliner. Seriously: the chair was in sort of a corner, with a floor lamp and table on one side and another table on the other side. One couldn’t get around him on either side—table, lamp, and wall on one side; table and then plant stand on the other side, and with the chair reclined one couldn’t get around to the back either. No way to approach, except a frontal attack, but that wasn’t really safe—the recliner could possibly tip backwards and that wouldn’t have been for either the tipper or the tippee. No sir. But I digress.

Anyway, Mesmer’s was about half a mile away, no more than half an hour for even dawdling boys, and another half hour at the most back, probably less with a gallon of milk and the two other items. They wouldn’t have taken much time at the store either.

I noticed snow falling a bit very soon after they took off. Within half an hour, it had begun to accumulate rather seriously, and after an hour it was getting a little harder to see. Ten minutes later I couldn’t see the church across the parking lot, at most 50 yards away. Worry was not in my nature—there were no streets to cross and Grand Island was a pretty safe little town to live in—but it wasn’t snowing when they left, so no boots on their feet.

I called Mesmer’s, asked about two young boys, and the woman who answered laughed and said “Oh, the two little snowmen? Yes, they were here, covered with snow, but they started back home at least half an hour ago.” I put on boots, coat, hat, and went out the back door, thinking I’d go to meet them. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face—literally—and figured that I could just as easily miss them as find them. The wind was fierce and blew my calls over my shoulder, away from where they’d be. I went back inside.

It wasn’t much later that we could hear them at the front door. Stamping feet, the usual sounds of two children entering the house, only slightly muffled by the snow.

“Mom, we could have died out there!” Scott complained. “In fact, Brian would have if I hadn’t been there. He was tired and wanted to rest, but I wouldn’t let him, ‘cause he would have died.”

“Well, the milk was heavy! You weren’t carrying the milk!” Brian retorted.

"No, but I had to be careful I didn't break the eggs!", sniffed Scott, quite self-righteously.

“Why didn’t you just leave the eggs and milk?” I asked.

“You woulda killed us!” they said in unison.