“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, small, but valuable. And sometimes I wonder: Do I do it because I like it or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book [or saw on a movie], when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So goodnight, dear void.”
We’ve talked about all kinds of possibilities, but today was the first time I insinuated that I feared something worse than muscle strain might be at play. Though I haven’t had any other troubling symptoms of the “C” word, today, on Karin’s birthday, I couldn’t help but “go there.” I hope and pray (and strongly suspect) my qualms are unfounded on this score. Nevertheless, having witnessed the untimely death of a family member or friend changes us. It makes us more aware of our mortality. I’ve always been inclined to ponder death (as is common to humankind, no?)—not morbidly longing for it, but considering the inevitability of it. And preparing to face it.
I’ve experienced 2 near-death experiences that I can recall. Both happened with Will, both in the same vehicle. In January 1995, during the holiday break between semesters our senior year of college, we went to Long Lake in the Adirondacks to visit friends. Lyn and Leigh were excited about showing us around their new hometown, and we were merrily rolling along one wintry afternoon when I lost control of our Nissan Pathfinder and played Ping-Pong with the guardrails on both sides of the ravine-lined road. While Leigh summoned Jesus’ help from the back seat (and thank God she did), I scrambled to summon my memories of Driver Education: Was I supposed to steer into the skid, or in the opposite direction? I don’t remember which way I turned. I just know we drove away from that country road with our lives intact. We were rattled, but preserved.
In October 1998, Will was driving the Pathfinder to church, with me as the lone passenger. Another country road. A 16-year-old boy was wandering aimlessly in unfamiliar territory, looking for—what was it?—a horse show or some-such. His parents had gone ahead, and he was trying to catch up to them. In his confusion, he pulled out in front of us at a visibility-impaired intersection. Had Will not swerved, we would have broad-sided the kid at 55 mph. The thing with swerving in an SUV, however, is the roll-over risk factor. Will risked it, and we rolled over—twice, according to eyewitnesses. Again, we came away unharmed. Can’t say the same for the Nissan, which was beyond totaled. But all I bear from that accident is a few small scars—amazingly few, considering the billions of bits of broken glass we left behind.
In some ways, neither experience shook me as much as saying goodbye to 2 precious people taken too soon by cancer: First, our friend Matt in March 2005, then my cousin Karin last December. Their deaths—and others, including the recent passing of my colleague’s daughter Kathy—have not only forced me to face the inevitability of my own death (whether soon or far off, I don’t know), but I have also had to come to terms with the difficulty and discomfort of Not Understanding Why. I guess you could call it the death of simplicity.
And yet, “these three remain: faith, hope, and love.” I believe in the One Who knows all, understands all, and loves all. I look to the Light of the World to uphold me, here and now and, someday—with Karin and Matt and Kathy and Edna and Lisa and all the saints who have gone before me—in Heaven, that place of perfect peace for those whose hearts are stayed on Him.
I have the song “In These Times,” by Quaker folk singer and English Lit Professor Bill Jolliff, spooling through my mind. Though I couldn’t find the full lyrics online, the chorus goes something like this: “These are my times / These are your times / We can be the love of Jesus in these times / Count the hours, count the days / It’s really not that long to stay / We can be the friends of Jesus in these times.”
Image: A painting in Karin’s memory, by one of her many, many friends Laura: http://karinupdates.blogspot.com/2009/01/awesome-painting.html
We have young kids, plus we were pretty bad housekeepers before they joined our family. This means we have a mostly messy house, most of the time. But once in awhile, we invite people over. And if they’re people we don’t know very well, or people we’re not sure will still like us if they knew how messy our house usually is, we clean. Frantically.
It’s good for us, I tell myself as I shovel piles of papers, toys, crayons and crumbs into banker’s boxes and march them up to the attic, piling them on top of the previous Visitors Day banker’s boxes. “No,” I mutter to the cat as I shovel, “it was not a mistake to invite people over again. It’s good to reach out and socialize. We’ll live longer.” And the truth is we neeeeed these excuses to tidy up, albeit sloppily.
Today is one of these days. (So instead of tidying, you’re blogging? you ask. Yes, I know, I know…I can’t seem to help myself!) But the guests coming later this afternoon (4 hours left to clean, Clean, CLEAN!!!) are not only “new” to us, they’re also above-average in health consciousness. Which means my standy-by “Cheesy Casserole for Visitors” is out of the question. Have I mentioned that I’m neither a housekeeper nor a cook?! For help handling my self-induced predicament, I turned to my good, healthy friend Jody, who sent me a recipe for stew that I’m sharing with A-Town readers today. I shopped yesterday (my very first time purchasing parsnips—for the record, they look like white carrots, not like potatoes as I expected), and I chopped the veggies early this morning. Crockpot, I love you…I think. I’ll letcha know how it turns out.
Gotta go fill some more banker’s boxes. Bon Appetit!
“Autumn Dream” Stew
Originally an EatBetterAmerica.com recipe called “Slow Cooker Winter Stew,” adapted by my good, healthy friend Jody and revised further by me because our visitors prefer to steer clear of potatoes (I upped the parsnips and the squash)…10 points for Gryffindor to the A-Town reader who identifies the source of my stew title!
2 cans diced tomatoes, undrained
4 medium red potatoes, diced
4 medium stalks celery, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4 medium carrots, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 medium parsnips, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
(also throw in some butternut squash chopped up, says Jody - it adds nice flavor and color)
1 can vegetable broth
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. rosemary or Italian seasoning
3 tbs. cornstarch
3 tbs. cold water
1. In 4- to 5- quart slow cooker, place all ingredients except cornstarch and water
2. Cover; cook on low heat setting 8-10 hours or until vegetables are tender
3. Mix cornstarch and water; gradually stir into stew until blended. Increase heat setting to high; cover and cook about 20 minutes longer, stirring occasionally until thickened.
Jody says: I also make a sun dried tomato and garlic bread in my bread maker that goes wonderfully with this! Let me know if you want that recipe too. If you don't have a bread maker they have really good whole grain breads at Tops and Wal-mart that you can warm and serve with this. This meal is a favorite with my whole family!!!!
YoCrunch, the jig is up. It was bound to happen. Now that Ben is Mr. Big Kindergartener, his emerging powers of initiative and ingenuity have brought him to this: Breyers yogurt-candy combo cups—the ones Will insists on buying, despite my shrewd observations about their convenience-food cost, not to mention their astronomical sugar content.
Are you familiar with these little phonies? Fifty cents (on sale) will get you 6 ounces of Breyers yogurt, packaged with a cute container of granola or candy on top. By “cute,” I mean there’s about a tablespoon of bonus additives to the product, which (according to the package) “makes it easy to have fun & enjoy a healthy snack.”
Healthy? Ha! The strawberry kind featuring the “100% Natural Lowfat Granola” packs 190 calories, including 27 grams of sugar. That’s about 6 ½ teaspoons’ worth in 6 ounces of yogurt—I call that high density! Another strawberry version comes with a “cute” serving of M&M candies. That ups the sugar content to 31 grams, or nearly 7 ½ teaspoons of the sweet stuff—200 calories in the M&M YoCrunch, roughly the same as a full-sized Hershey’s Heath Bar.
So it’s bad enough that we have YoCrunch in our ’frig. But last night, Ben turbo-boosted his yogurt. He left the living room in search of a snack and came back a few minutes later mixing up some YoCrunch. “I’m making this extra good,” he exclaimed. “Uh-oh,” I said, admittedly amused. “Did you mix in 2 candy toppings?” I guessed.
“No, 3!” Ben boasted from behind his mouthful.
Miraculously, Ben bedded down compliantly as usual an hour later. But I hope this incident convinces Tom to reconsider his shopping habits. It’s only a matter of time before Ben skips the “Yo” and consumes only the “Crunch.”
I find it amusing and endearing that Will purchased a Paul Potts CD while I was away last week. Paul Potts, for those who don’t know, is a truly talented British singer who was working as a cell phone salesman when he broke into show business as a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. We hadn’t heard of him until Susan Boyle ‘Dreamed Her Dream’ on the same show. But Potts had sung in similarly surprising fashion (though less globally publicized) 2 years earlier. Boyle’s fame brought Potts back to the fore…and led Will to the store. I’m quite sure he’ll be first in line to buy Boyle’s CD as well, whenever it is released.
In other news…
Ben head-butted the neighbor boy on the bus this morning—and landed his butt in the principal’s office. To quote Jane Austen: We are “all astonishment!” When asked if he would promise not to fight on the bus from now on, he reportedly replied to the principal, through tears: “I’ll try.” Gotta love that honesty.
At Kindergarten Open House tonight we collected a few freebies, including a set of bookmarks listing State capitols, State birds, State flowers, State trees, State songs and State mottos. After we met Ben’s teacher and toured his classroom, we went to the playground. While the kids played, I read the bookmarks, which were both educational and entertaining—the mottos, especially. For example:
Pithy:
Singular:
Divine:
Off-Beat:
Wordy But Inspirational:
Favorite (I might make it my motto):
Hats Off to the Carolinas. And may there be no more butting of heads.
Another observation from my recent travels: On both my Denver trip in July and my Baltimore trip in September, I was accosted by in-my-face screens.
In July, one of our planes returning from Colorado “featured” seat-back screens that allowed passengers to plug in headphones and pass the time with pay-per movies or pre-programmed poppycock. Will and I didn’t realize the screens could be turned off, so we were subjected to the perpetual-motion pictures with no headphones handy and no desire to ingest the drivel—sound or sight. A few minutes into our predicament, I arrived at what seemed like a most appropriate solution: I covered the screens with our seat-back barf bags. Still, my peripheral vision was invaded by the suspense flick my neighbor had purchased rights to see, and it was a long, awkward flight.
Last week, when I went to work out in the Baltimore Hilton’s well-stocked exercise room, there they were again: Screens! Everywhere. At every workout station: the elliptical machines, the treadmills and the stationary bikes. The only non-screen option was the weight bench. Given my current running hiatus (due to injury), I stepped onto the souped-up elliptical machine (a LOT fancier than the one in the A-Town ladies’ gym) to see if I could try to tolerate the screen while working out. I decided I could—but I didn’t like it. At first, I tried to watch CNN without sound. Now, watching CNN is always kind of a downer, in my opinion, but without the sound, even more so. I changed channels a bit, seeking something suitable for the half hour I planned to be stuck staring at the so-called “Cardio Theater.” Finding nothing palatable, I turned the screen off…And stared at myself for the remaining 28 minutes. It was weird.
Note to the Hilton: In addition to free Internet, mini fridges, and full-sized ironing boards, please add to your list of amenities: a workout station for poets!
How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.
Loved Inner Harbor. Lots of people milling about, enjoying the water, the breeze; recreating, restauranting, relaxing—nice.
Un-enamored with Hilton Hotel. Enjoyed the view of Camden Yard (although, unfortunately, no games to ‘spectate’ from our room). Staff was hospitable, warm and friendly. But!
I realize these sound like the complaints of a small-town, non-profit administrator who was raised by the Queen of Frugality. But there you have it.
Professionally, my trip was everything I’d hoped for and more. I am appropriately overwhelmed, overloaded, inspired and energized to help transform my community—so help me, God!
*The water wasn’t cold enough—I crashed before finishing this. Picked up after the Barbie ironing board in the a.m., then had to get the kids ready for school. Back to my regularly scheduled life!
I’m taking a break from housework and trip prep to sit down and write. Stream of consciousness, not gonna think too hard. Tomorrow is the kids’ first day of school (Vi – 5th grade, Ben – kindergarten) and my first day of a 5-day trip to Baltimore for the national conference of Care Net, the umbrella organization for the little nonprofit I now “run” here in A-Town.
That’s one of the most specific, real-life details I’ve offered in my 102 posts on this blog. Although I share true stories of our family life, I do it through a veil of pseudonyms. Sometimes people ask me why. I recently posted a poll asking A-Town readers whether I ought to reveal our true identity—our town and our family. I fully expected to receive a resounding “Yes!”
But I did not. Granted, there were only 24 votes—that’s about half the number of people who visit the blog on a post-day—but of the 2 dozen, only 1 gave a fully affirmative answer to the prospect of A-Town revelation. The majority, 58%, voted that “the mystique adds something to the blog’s appeal.” And 29% said they “don’t think it really matters” one way or the other.
The short answer to “Why Bother?” is that, when I first started to blog, I was working as the primary client services provider at my agency. Other than volunteers and occasionally another staffer, I was the main person meeting 1-on-1 with clients coming to the center. The nature of our work there is private—sex and relationship topics—and sessions with clients can get intense. It’s heavy stuff. And, to be frank, a few of our clients are fairly…unreliable. I mean, some of their life choices would seem to indicate that they are not among the most responsible, trustworthy people on the planet. (My co-workers will laugh at this understatement.) I guess I felt the need to maintain some distance between clients and me. I thought, “I’d rather not make myself and my family easily Google-able.”
Now that I’ve changed roles at work, that concern doesn’t seem so pressing. I am overseeing the center, but not “in the trenches” nearly as often as I used to be. I am doing big-picture planning, background work, and…well, fundraising, mainly. Keeping the place afloat financially. (Or trying. And it is trying in these tight times.) So maybe it’s okay if my family life is more accessible to the masses. (Besides, to tell the truth, some of the shadier characters we serve aren’t likely going online to read blogs about faith and family life.)
Another reason I launched the blog in a vaguely clandestine manner was so that, in theory, I could express my opinions freely without embarrassing my family or my organization. However, in spite of the fact that I don’t use real names, most of my readers know who I am and where I live. And anyway, the pseudonyms have not made me bolder, as I planned they would. I still hold back from baring my soul on these virtual pages, as I suppose I should. Discretion has become a more well-developed part of who I am, and that is good. (Although I wonder if my co-workers will also laugh at that—I think they think I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I do share openly with them, but I hold back a lot, too…really, I do!)
Sometimes like I feel like Maria von Trapp:
Maria: I can’t seem to stop singing wherever I am. And what’s worse, I can’t seem to stop saying things—anything and everything I think and feel.
Mother Abbess: Some people would call that honesty.
Maria: Oh, but it’s terrible, Reverend Mother.
This is why I have never felt at ease as a public relations professional. I’m too frank. Authenticity is too important to me. Which might make my pseudonyms and my caution seem hypocritical. But I’m also increasingly comfortable dwelling among the complexities of life. Most times, talking points don’t get to the point. And I’m afraid I haven’t done that in this post, either. The veil remains.
Image: http://american-city-girls.com/the-lady-with-the-blue-veil/
The Powers That Be in A-Town must be reading this blog. Someone obviously took note of my complaint about the church bells peeling non-sacred songs on a Sunday a few weeks ago and altered the regularly scheduled program. So today was Secular Saturday from on high. The sandstone spire emitted an eclectic assortment of show tunes and classic favorites above the Town Square (with a few syrupy sacred ones mixed in, perhaps to please the Saturday Catholics).
Besides noting the day of the week, I also observed the density of the recital. During the 15-20 minutes I listened, the bells banged out no fewer than 8 songs—only a verse or two of each. It was as if the programmer (and I do think it’s a programmer, not an actual player)—it was as if he wanted to cram as much corn as possible into the allotted time.
Here’s what I heard, in this order:
I found it fun to “Name That Tune” while I cleaned house on a Saturday afternoon. To be honest, it made me feel mushy—and a little bit aged—because the first song recalled “the old days,” when I played the part of Ado Annie in A-Town’s 1992 production of that musical. Good times, good times, truly.
Note for next time to the Church Bell Programmer: Please add “Sentimental Journey.”
Image: Ear of corn water tower in Iowa from http://randomtravels-therandomtraveler.blogspot.com.
I have a picture to prove my theory. Granted, it’s a black-and-white shot from the 1940s, but still, it’s silver. My grandmother’s hair. She’s standing there, flanked by her 2 sons and 2 daughters, ranging from about 3 to 10, in front of the Antioch cabin at church camp in Vermillion, Ohio. She couldn’t have been older than about 35. And her whole head of hair, even pulled back into a bun with modest post-War waves, is plainly gray.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been told I’m the spitting image of Grandma Esther. “Grandma’s Clone,” my parents often called me as a girl. I saw the resemblance, I suppose. It’s the sort of thing you simply accept if you’re repeatedly reminded of it as a young person. But I hadn’t considered the “Old Lady Look” as part of the genetic deal until about 5 years ago, when the grays started showing through on my own Esther-derived scalp. And then I saw the Antioch photograph, and I knew I was destined to go gray at a younger age than most. And so I have.
At first, I felt adamantly opposed to covering my gray with hair colorant—for 2 reasons: 1) Money, 2) Principle—oh, and 3) Convenience (what a nuisance to have to keep up with coloring gray roots every 6 weeks, especially for a woman who can’t shave her legs more than once a week, even in the height of summer). As for the first reason, it would be an added expense, no doubt. And those pesky extra expenses add up. I avoid them.
The main thing, though, was the principle of the matter: I considered covering my gray hair because why?
Because I’m an American woman and that’s what American women do. Why?
Because American women want to look beautiful and our culture considers youth beautiful, not old age. But if I were a man in my late 20s going gray, wouldn’t I consider it an advantage to my career? For a man, gray is “distinguished.” For a woman, it’s “frumpy.”
Because women are primarily valued for their appearance, not for their character. The message seems to be: “Stay sexy for as long as you can, honey, ’cuz when you lose ‘the look,’ you’re not ‘worth it’ (as Maybelline claims all women are…hullo—hand over your 12 bucks a month, ladies, ’cuz ‘if you don’t look good, we don’t look good’ to our stockholders—oh, hold on, that’s Vidal Sassoon).”
Fortunately for me, I worked in an academic setting for the first few years of my graying process. While I was there, I could claim my feminism stance and nobody balked (much). There were lots of ladies there who did color their hair well into their 60s, but many others—professors, especially—did not. On principle.
Since moving back to A-Town, however, first working 1-on-1 with clients literally half my age, and now being the big “boss person” representing our little non-profit organization, I’ve grown significantly more self-conscious about my hair’s silver “highlights.” I’ve wondered: Am I supposed to color my hair? Do people expect me to color my hair? What will they think if I don’t color my hair? That I’m lazy? That I have poor self-esteem? That I can’t afford to buy hair colorant? Is it as much a distraction for people looking at me as I suppose it might be?
The answer to that last question is almost always a resounding “No!” But my perceived pressure to “look good” for the sake of my organization is what finally prompted me to dye. I’m not doing the permanent stuff yet—still want to avoid that whole 6-week root problem. But ever since last spring, about every 6-8 weeks, I’m “Washing that gray right outta my hair” with a temporary color that lasts 24 shampoos or some-such. It’s a tenuous compromise.
Notice I did not list “Because I want to fool people into thinking I’m younger than I am” as a reason for color-rinsing my graying-brown hair brunette. This is the standard objection of a male professor-friend of mine from my former place of employment. Whenever the topic of hair dye comes up he says, “Women aren’t fooling anyone less than 30 yards away. Let it go gray!” To his pious refrain, I say:
a) You’re a man; it’s easier for you to say;
b) You live and work in an academic environment where such principles are applauded as “intellectual,” “high-minded,” and “cultured”; and
c) Hair color—at least, for me—is not about fooling people into thinking I’m younger than I am. It’s about submitting to a societal norm—in my case, for the good of the cause I represent.
Would I rather not shave my legs? Yes! I’d rather go au naturale. But I live in the United States, not Germany. So I shave. I now live in A-Town, not College Town. So I color.
There it sat on the humble strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street: My stroller. I mean, my stroller—the one I rode in as a tyke, more than three decades ago. The very-same stroller (unless I am mistaken) that my then-7-year-old sister Kaye and her neighbor-friend Suzie pushed to the end of my parents’ A-Town block and abandoned, with me in it. Apparently, they wanted to see how long it would take me to wail my head off. (More likely, they were sick of my sweet face siphoning attention from their big-girl accomplishments.) Mom dashed down to retrieve me as soon as she heard I’d been ditched—or maybe she just heard my screeching. Either way, the aluminum-tubed, umbrella-style stroller got me home. (Nothing like some all-American red -white-and-blue-striped vinyl to make a girl safe and secure in the ’70s!)
And there it lay, folded up, abandoned again, alone on the mown grass. I knew my mother didn’t know about this. I knew my father had set it there to be whisked away. By a passerby? Unlikely. Even a person in need of a stroller (and there are plenty of people in need of strollers in A-Town) would likely not stop for this carriage. It’s too old, too faded, even for a down-and-outer.
I faced a crisis moment, fraught with irony and sentimentality—a choice between loyalty and freedom.
The stroller sighting happened as I dropped off my Vi, age 10, at Grandma and Grandpa’s house the day before my annual experiment in entrepreneurial homemaking delusion. Every year—at least once a year—I envision the miraculous transformation of our cluttered house and messy finances with the wave of one magical wand and these 2 little words: “Yard Sale!” This year, I summoned a smallish amount of sense and refrained from hosting the sale on our own weed-infested lawn. Instead, I seized the invitation to haul our crap over to my co-worker’s house. She loves a good sale…and a good auction, a good thrift store, a good ebay find... In short, she’s like me. Except she’s much more easy-going, which makes her a much better sale host. Even in the rain. (Yes—sigh—it rained the morning of our sale. But more on that another time. Back to the stroller in the grass.)
What made my stroller-in-the-grass moment so ironic was that I was knee-deep in de-cluttering when Vi asked to be delivered from the yard-sale-prep tedium at our house to the sew-bake-watch cable TV excitement readily available at G&G’s. I gladly took the short break to drive her “across town” (6 blocks away). I saw the stroller as I was leaving. I had the Tercel in reverse, and I held my foot on the brake for a long pause while I carried on a mental conversation something like:
“Oh! There’s my old stroller…Ohhh! There’s my old stroller!!!” (Memories of me and MFS, my favorite neighbor-girl, pushing dolls back and forth, barefoot in the summer sun, on the very-same sidewalk now beside me, spooled through my mind. ‘Misty, watercolor memories…’)
“It’s just a stroller, an object. It was a long time ago. You’re a grown-up now. You had a happy childhood. Enjoy the memories.”
“But…” (I pictured myself saving the stroller and displaying it…somehow artfully…in my soon-to-be-clutter-free home.)
“You don’t need that stroller to secure your happy childhood! It’s done, it’s over, it’s history. Live here and now. Make a happy childhood for your kids.”
“But…” (I imagined my Pearl, age 3, enjoying the stroller with her own dolls, her own friends.)
“No! It probably smells musty from too many years in the basement. It will be clutter at your house. It might not even be safe. The aluminum tubing might have sharp edges.”
I wondered if anyone might actually pick up the stroller—someone who really needed it, who could put it to good use. I felt that perhaps I should retrieve the stroller for my mother’s sake. I strongly suspected she would want to keep it. But something in me wanted to leave it there on the grass, partly to allow another mother the opportunity to take it, if she needed it, partly to save my mother—and myself—from the clutter-ridden consequences of our sentimentality.
I left it there.
I Left It There!!!
This was a major victory in my battle to live in the moment.
I drove away (I Drove Away!!!) and 3 hours later, when I returned to collect Vi, the stroller was gone. I walked into my parents’ kitchen and announced, as casually as possible: “Someone took it…my old stroller. I hope they get some use out of it.”
Mom and Dad exchanged glances and gestured to the back porch. The stroller had been “rescued” for another decision day.
