Good Times on The Year's Best Holiday

Back in the day, we used to get a free local turkey from my husband's work for Thanksgiving and for some reason the thing was always huge, more like a pterodactyl than a domesticated fowl, so huge that one year we had to tie the oven door shut and brace a chair up against it to hold the beast inside. I remember too the year when, taking some bit of turkey-roasting advice I saw in the paper, I cooked our bird breast side down for the whole time, only to extract, at the end of six hours, a roasting pan containing something that resembled a skeletal sunken ship, a sort of scaffolding of bones perched over a world of turkey fat and what could just barely be described as meat. If memory serves, that was also the year the whole roasting pan shot out of the oven and onto the floor.Ah, but does memory serve us very well, or are you, dear reader, not yet at the age where you tell a story about something that happened to you only to be wryly advised by a family member that no, actually that whole thing happened to her? Anyway, isn't it better sometimes if we look ahead rather than looking back?Who is to say?I know my sister and I still love looking back at the Thanksgivings of early childhood in our household of five grownups, four of whom were female and all of whom could be seen laboring away in the kitchen for a whole week leading up to the big day. Our grandfather meanwhile, as the sole male among those aunts and great aunties and our mom and our pretty Aunt Grace, sat in his easy chair smoking a cigar and reading biographies of the great men of American history. Though come to think of it I do remember hearing about that one Thanksgiving eve, when he did what he had said he would try to do and actually brought home the turkey  -  still attired in its longjohns as you might put it, in the form of hundreds of soft under-feathers that took forever to pluck out.  "How did you ever manage?" my sister and I squeaked in delighted horror as young adults which we were when we first heard the tale. "Ha!" she replied. "Well, the first thing we did was pour a few stiff drinks!")That ease-taking grandfather is gone now, as are the ancient great aunties. Gone too is our merry Aunt Grace, and also our funny and irreverent mom. I have my own children now and they have children themselves and I write this from a house that at 10am bears no scent at all of the cooking of a turkey. We are to eat at the home of one of our daughters, and our duty is light duty: We're bringing the beer and the wine and I am to make a salad (which is funny all by itself since really who eats salad on Thanksgiving? I mean, besides me and my strikingly slim, pure-foods-only sister-in-law?) Oh but wait I am almost forgetting! I am also to do the gravy because our daughter confesses herself shy about pulling off a good gravy and for sure I feel ready for that task. We're going over to her house at 1:00 but I have already set out my full-length chef's apron, as well as the special lump-defying  flour and the steel spatula for prying up the pan drippings. I have a pocketful of chicken bouillon cubes too in case we need to make gallons of the velvety stuff,  so I'm pretty sure I can do the task justice. Really all I need do is close my eyes and I can see - see  as if they were standing before me - the literal gravy-making movements of all those hard-working women in whose kitchen I spent one happy childhood.

Accept It?

We all gripe but maybe there’s a way to not mind this endless winter and it is this: Accept it.Look at it this way: Sure there’s always that salt-and-sand mix on the floor by the door, agreed. You track it in on your boots and shoes and every day there’s more of it. Always with the salt and sand by the door!  But what are you gonna do? Sure, you can sweep it up every day and sure, you can put down a mat for those boots and shoes, but mostly things are gonna look a little litter-boxy for a while yet over there by the door. Accept that fact. Accept the fact that there’s still treacherous walking caused by the snow and the ice and the slush and the more snow. Over the last few weeks I have seen so many people take that banana-peel-style leap-and-tumble I feel like I’m watching some kind of super-athletic dance company in action. The other day at the grocery store I saw five people on crutches with casts on their legs. Five! And all of them were under 40!Sometimes it just feels safer to just stay indoors, so accept that fact.Maybe even try being glad for it. Because when you’re spending more time indoors you have the chance to tidy up a bit.Take the job of cleaning your closets. People don’t clean their closets in summer. It’s now that we’re moved to do it.  I’ve been cleaning closets myself lately. I’ve also been customizing things. Yesterday I dyed a bunch of sad old towels with hilarious results. (Let’s just say it looks like my man will be wearing underpants of a gorgeous sunrise hue for a while.)And today I began going over letters sent to me by people who have been reading my column all these years. I laughed all over again at the one where a woman wrote, in reference to the picture that accompanied my column at that time, “What makes you think you’re so great? Your eyes are beady, your hair is out of style, and your teeth look false.”After the initial shock, I laughed when I first saw it too. And when I published my first collection of short funny pieces I put that quote right on the back cover where the gushing remarks usually go. I took at lightly in other words. I took it with a grain of salt.Maybe that’s what we all have to do right now. Maybe we have take these snow banks with a grain of salt - and God knows the salt is in good supply. We can just amble over to that spot where our boots and shoes are and take some from there.As I say, what're you gonna do?

the above-mentioned blurb , I Thought He Was a Speed Bump

  

Funny Lady

Last week, when my birthday rolled around I reflected once again how nice it has been to share the day with one of America’s great humorists. At the time of her death, every print and broadcast outlet in the country ran a tribute to Erma Bombeck, the homemaker from Dayton who one day sat down and began sending out dispatches from the front lines of motherhood. The dispatches grew into first a column syndicated to over 900 newspapers and then some 15 books, including the wickedly titled The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.But as uniformly fond as these tributes were as I reread them online now, many of them read as slightly dismissive, framing her almost as a clever dabbler, a suburban mom who started writing columns as a lark.As if any writer doing a thing ‘as a lark’ could produce the tightly crafted sketches she was known for. As if anyone tossing something off in the odd half hour could describe the child-rearing game the way she did.She wrote in one column that she once lived in a place so small she had to iron in the baby’s playpen.She wrote in another that if her kids had looked as good as the kids of her perfect neighbor, she would have sold them.She spoke about the child who could “eat yellow snow, kiss the dog on the lips, chew gum that he found in the ash tray, but wouldn’t drink from his brother's glass.”And then there was the column where she imagined how each of her three kids might someday recall her: Her first-born would think of her as “the slim dark-haired mom who used to read me stories and paste my baby pictures in the album.” Her second-born would picture “the somber-looking bleached blonde who used to put me to bed at 6:30 and bought me a dog to save on napkins.” And the baby of the family, she wrote, would remember her as “the grayish lady who fell asleep during the 6 o'clock news, and was GOING to display my baby pictures, as soon as she took the rest of the roll - at my wedding.”She had just that light way of describing time’s effect. But funny as she was, she always told the truth.She spoke of the feeling that comes to women raising kids in the then-newly fashionable ‘nuclear family’ where a man, a woman and their children went off and lived on their own, sometimes far from all kin.Her commentary on this new arrangement: “No one talked about it, but everyone knew what it was. It was a condition, and it came with the territory.”She called that condition 'loneliness.'I found out about this loneliness when I left my job teaching to care for my own small children. In their baby years, I would stuff them into coats and snowsuits and push, or walk, carry them – somewhere - anywhere I might find another woman in another house trying to do the hardest job on earth all by herself.But when those babies napped? When they napped, I’d kick the toys under the couch and begin to read and read, looking for something I could not name – until one day in my daily paper I met the writer who would show me what I most wanted to do in life.Erma wrote a column every week for 32 years. By now I've been writing one for 35 years – and with every passing birthday I think what a privilege it has been to follow in her footsteps, recording life as we really live it and celebrating its vicissitudes.

this was us in 1980, before the final child come and broke the snoozy,two-little-girls peace

Ghost Town

Where IS everybody?It feels like even the Wallgreen's parking lots are empty. It feels like if you called 911 you'd be able to just tell that the dispatcher was filing his nails and slurping a smoothie.It's the weather.When the weather gets like this and stays like this, don't you just want to dress any old way and mosey on over to the Arts & Crafts tent?I do . I surely do. Let's go ask these nice ladies for some gimp and get under that big tree outside and make us some lanyards, whaddya say?

Summer Salad (with a Dash of Kids)

This year June seemed to last forever, yet here we are at the final day of this most beautiful month. Could it stay awhile , cool as it was and lovely every day? Alas no, it cannot.In its last week we looked in on our younger grandson’s First Grade Show and Tell Day, arriving nice and early in our cool summer clothes.We admired his artwork, and played on the classroom terminals,      ate strawberries and bagels outside and watched as he said goodbye for now to his best friend Diego.Then this past Friday we kicked off summer.  We went to Legoland...then dropped off little Miss Sundress at her house and continued on, taking her two big brothers away for the weekend, where Auntie Annie, pregnant on not still did all the cooking for us .On Saturday, the guys in the family chatted away, and hit golf balls. We had a fire, and when bedtime came we made a bed on the floor that everyone wanted to sleep in, even me. Even though it was on the floor of my own bedroom.                         Next morning, there was a game of Sorry with David Marotta the Younger and Auntie Annie,  as Annie and John’s  puppy Archer, who is the size of a large file cabinet, kept Annie’s growing baby warm.The boys fought some of the time and we found out that now, as grandparents we're not quite as good as we once were at taking that in stride. (At one point, when they were hitting each other with OUR i-Pads I snatched them both out of their hands and all but clashed them together like cymbals. At another, David-Marotta-the-Larger picked up Mini-David-Marotta the way a man might pick up a bag of laundry and carried him by the waist into our room where he made him lie for ten minutes on his improvised bed on the floor, while 'Papa' lay on our bed, calmly doing his crossword, same as always.) Nothing came of these small microbursts I'm happy to say. The boys know how we love them and are ever merry and loving back, and as we began the longish drive to return them home again, the car was full of laughter and the eating of McDonalds.And now it’s June 30^th, with a short week ahead and summer, summer, summer stretching like that big happy  dog of Annie and John's before he thuds to the floor all puppyish elbows and knees.   

Skinnyman

Thinkin' about bones today. It must be this desert around me that's doing it. I just love bones, the way one nudges so nicely into another; the way the fat round head of the femur nestles into the deep bowl-shaped part of the pelvis fashioned to hug it tight.I used to keep a little dancing man of a skeleton on display in my office in the years when I practiced massage. He stood a good three feet tall there where he perched atop my file cabinet. You couldn’t miss him when someone opened my office door and I guess that’s why that little brother-and-sister team knocked shortly after I had arrived that one time. When I had passed them in the hallway where they were playing, they must have looked in and seen my clattery man, grinning down in that dapper little ​Mr. Bones way.“We want to see your skeleton!” is how I remember the little boy saying breathlessly, while his sister hid herself behind him.“Hmmm Well, I’m actually wearing my skeleton at the moment,” I replied, pretending to misunderstand.​ “I mean it’s under my skin.”He brushed past me and my silly joke and together with his sister entered my office.“THAT skeleton,” he said, pointing upward.“He’s scary,” he added gravely.“Scary? No!“ I said back​. “These are just his bones, just like we all have.” Then I went on. I can never help going on when it comes to this topic.“Bones do so much for us, holding us up, helping us move, providing a platform for our muscles...”“Look at his FEET!” squealed his younger sister.“I know​, aren’t they great, with all those tiny parts? And look at his ribs, like a perfect little birdcage, just right for protecting his heart.”The boy swallowed hard. “Show me his skull,” he said dramatically.“Let me see if I can lift him down then,” I answered and did so, causing the figure’s limbs to caper and sway.The children squealed, and squeezed back toward the wall.“And you know what the skull protects, don’t you?” I said. “The most important thing you have, which is….”“Your BRAIN!” they both yelled together laughing, then piled back out to the hallway.The boy dashed off then, but the girl stopped before following him, shot out one arm and waved a merry goodbye.“My name is Terry,” I told her because we had not introduced ourselves exactly. “What’s yours?”“Vanessa!” she shouted gleefully.“Well then Vanessa, goodbye for now. We’ll see each other again soon, I’m sure.”“Goodbye!” she yelled and danced away down the hallway.And that was ​that. It was an exchange that lasted maybe five minutes, but even all this time later I still cannot think of a nicer way to have started my day. For the whole rest of the week in fact, I felt cheered and buoyed up by it, and newly conscious of all the small people present among us.For if humanity is a forest, then we adults are its stiffly standing old trees, while they are the new ones. Self-important lot that we are, we imagine that we rule the forest. We even imagine we hold up the sky, with our barky old arms, hurrying the very clouds along to their next assignment.But the future of any forest lies in its new growth. And the whole time we elders go on looking upward for meaning, the meaning lies below us in these tender saplings - like the ones I met that day, so bright, and limber, and trembling with that fresh young life.

I'm Happy Today

I'm happy today hanging out with my old man David  - these are his arms -who slept so late I thought he'd been kidnapped from our very bed, sucked out through the bedroom window by aliens. Call Liam Neeson!I'm happy because we will see our daughter Annie and her man John,though not their baby-dog Archer, still just a pup, though tall enough at 8 months to sweep the counters clean if left unattended.We'll see our daughter Carrie too, which makes me happy......though sadly not her  Chris, or their oldest son, since the two of them will I suppose be watching basketball or some such silly March thing while the rest of us are at our favorite eatery.Along with Carr, we'll also get to see their two younger children who are always ready to join me in restaurant fun. (Today: tiny black-velvet fuzzy-posters with bright neon-colored markers!) Sadly, we won't get to see our son Michaelsince he's out in Utah this weekend pretending to ski, a thing not really in our blood. David grew up with sandlot baseball, and pounding and being pounded by the other kids at the park, while the main pastime for my one sister and me was sneaking into the alley just around the corner from Blue Hill Ave. to inspect this one dead cat as it went through the absorbing transformation from the three-dimensional to something flatter than an old kid glove squashed under somebody's tires. I'm happy because I'm about to sit down and write 14 days' worth of entries in my diary. (My entries are a lot more interesting, I find, if wait 'til I'm really in the mood for the endeavor and can do the mental levitation that let me look at my last few weeks from the air, so to speak, and thus spot the highlights.)I'm happy because I just said 'Screw returning those shoes to Macy's today. The store will still be there tomorrow when my workday ends.'I'm happy because I think I might be about to actually vacuum that room I've been meaning to vacuum for a month.I'm happy because we watched that old chestnut Ghostbusters yesterday and I read my three books and stripped the lid to the piano bench for a piano that lives at the ABC house. I'm happy because I got it all sanded and primed and even stained. Now David will help me screw on the lid, I can put on two finish coats and then trot it on over there.I am not so happy when I remember that I almost learned to play the piano as an adult, together with Michael who was then 11, but quit just as I was getting that itchy feeling in the top of my head when my fingers were starting to know what a note was. We both quit and I'm sad now that we quit, causing the people who gave us the loan of that nice old upright piano to take it back again to give to worthier persons ... But the days are getting longer now and who knows but what I'll go out and buy a little keyboard and have another go at learning a new thing? We learn till we die do we not? I'm happy remembering that truth.And now, me playing that classic beginner's piece The Happy Farmer at age six (but why doesn’t that guy in the suit leave my nice pink dress ALONE!  

Nice Weekend. Good Times

It was such a nice weekend:ONE PERSON threw up eight times.ONE PERSON watched 21 episodes of Modern FamilyTWO PEOPLE gave a dog a bath using Johnson’s No More Tears, offering him a pedicure after. Lucky dog!THREE PEOPLE played the board game Risk for hours.TEN PEOPLE devoured a yummy meal made by the dog-bather above: super-fresh thin-sliced swordfish drizzled with cherry tomatoes in oil, broccolini, braised kale with shredded parmigiano reggiano cheese, roasted cauliflower and a wheat-berry side dish.ONE OF THOSE DEVOURING PERSONs also blew out some candles....... on a chocolate  cake made by a family of five who ended up fleeing before the plague of throwing-up and so were not present for the fun - but! who, in their niceness, also left a giant shepherd's pie for us all, a homemade banner saying Happy Birthday and a wonderful card.ONE PERSON, having recovered entirely from the throwing up fits, enjoyed an iPad, with headphones so as no to drive the rest crazy with the sound.ONE PERSON enjoyed the cake so much he had several pieces.And ONE PERSON  watched it all with very wide eyes.It was a very nice weekend. A family is a family is a family all right.Wait, what's that you say? You've never seen that HBO documentary? Here's a 45-second clip from it. Dare ya to watch it unmoved. :-)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkFr-rjjzlw]

The Joke's on Me

Just after the last really big storm I drove over to the ABC House and was just hurrying up the hilly sidewalk to get inside when - whoops! - the icy walk got the better of me and I slammed down on the ice on both knees. I tried to get up and slipped again. And worse luck, everything in my hands flew out of my grip, and landed far out of my reach across the treacherous stretch of sidewalk. What to do, what to do?Luckily, since my phone was tucked into the pocket of my jeans, I still had it anyway. Crouching down so I wouldn't fall a third time, I called the house phone just inside and one of the students answered."Bryson, I fell down out here. I'm fine but I keep falling down somehow. I can't seem to even take a step. Plus I lost my keys, which are like six feet away from me.""What?! " said Bryson. "Oh God, I'll be right out!"And sophomore Bryson did come right out, along with senior Hazees, and together they led me up the hilly path into the house."You were so alarmed, it was sweet," I said to Bryson once we were safely inside. "Did I really sound that panicked?""No it wasn't that! It was when you said you lost your keys. I thought you said you lost your TEETH."Lost my teeth! And me a mere baby of 65 as of today.Still I take scant comfort; losing my teeth could be next all right, all right. For now, on this quiet birthday I'm just feeling grateful.For friends and family...For the full set of teeth I grew in my own once-little mouth... and for the help of the young and strong. Thanks, all of you! Thanks for all the fun and learning, you super ABC guys! 

If a Man Asks for Your Shirt...

It doesn't show poor boundaries that I offered a guy one of my contact lenses, does it?He came to look at our house to see if there were any way we could air condition such a leaky old ship as this place and arrived a little after our appointment time."I'm so sorry I‘m late!” he said. “My contact lens just popped out of my eye on the way over here! I had to pull over and I looked all over the truck but I didn’t find it.”His eye was watering.“If you’re like me you can't see at all,” I said.“Right!” he said.“Are yours the extended wear 30-day kind like I have?"“Yes they are.”“What magnification?”“3.75 in that eye,” he said.“Just a sec,” I said. I went to my medicine cabinet, pulled out one of my own 3.75s and gave it to him - and we had a little festival of joy for the poorly visioned then and there.It isn’t often you can help someone in such a specific way like this. I was glad I could. 

Had Some Setbacks, Had Some Fun

Setbacks first; the delivery guys came a third time to install our new fridge but now the plug doesn't fit. (Sigh.) After whining about it here and then again here, I choose to think of other things today.Like the fact that our son came home this past weekend  from faraway Arkansas and made us laugh til our sides hurt about the adventures he and his buddies had trying to drive an RV so wide that saplings were breaking off along the lonely desert road until they managed to get the hang of it. (It's like when you're pregnant: at first you just don't KNOW how wide you really are.)Also, the Whole ABC Family gathered to celebrate Fall Family Weekend, and had such had a nice time eating and talking and cooking (and square dancing!)Also fun looking at pictures of ourselves doing all this. :-)Then too, one of our 'extra' kids  came home  and did some champion sleeping in his room. (Computer Science major is not for the faint of heart; he was tired!)  We went through some of his stuff from high school and I came upon this picture from when he was just a freshman with Winchester ABC. He doesn't look a thing like this now but what fun to be reminded of when he did. Was it only four short years ago?Sunday morning I took my two grandsons to eat pancakes at a McDonald's Play Place where they came to the realization that at six and nine they now feel too big to crawl inside those large plastic intestines. Sad! The first of many closing doors for them but instead......Instead we came back to our house, just in time to meet the rest of the fam, pretend to watch football and bask in the joy of being all together.Which is what it's all about really in life. Which for sure is what it's about. 

Glad I Came

I flew to Florida Friday to go to the house of my sister Nan and be present at my niece Grace's bridal shower. Here they are some few years ago when Grace was a little on the bald side.When she first invited me she said she knew I couldn't come. Fly 1200 miles to see a roomful of ladies cheering in the dismantling of gift wrap? No one expected that of me.But the minute I heard about it I knew I wanted to be there. I didn't say so but I knew. 'Maybe, just maybe, I'll surprise this godchild of mine.Then, eight days ago Grace texted me to say a quick hi. "I so wish you were going to be there" is how she ended it.I couldn't help myself. "Oh Gracie I am going to be there! " I texted back. "I booked my flight the second I heard about it and even got a good price! At $237 round trip Boston to Tampa how could I NOT come?"So much for surprising her. "We'll surprise Nan," we decided, but really there was never any surprising Nan, somehow, who has been three steps ahead of me all my life.But the point wasn't for ME to be the event anyway. The shower was the event and I'm so glad I came for it. The guests on the bride's side and the groom's side seemed to instantly bond and share stories both funny and sad, the way women do when they're alone together. I am so glad I was there.And now it's Sunday morning and I'm packing up for the airport. I stayed at the Tarpon Springs Hampton Inn, not to be in the way, and I rented the car that in 30 minutes will take me to the airport and then back to my own near-and-dears who I texted someplace in there yesterday, suggesting we all go swimming at the local pool one last time when my flight gets in. They went for it but we might all be crazy given the cool front that's just blowing in up there.Anyhow all that lies in the future. As for right now which is the only moment we ever really have, I am feeling happy and grateful and stunned by the glory of a brand new day.

Jumping the Fence

We were like a couple of second-story men backing down the driveway of this empty house.No one was home and we knew that. “This won’t take long,” we told each other, stepping out of the vehicle.But not 30 seconds after we opened the van’s rear gate, a muscular woman with short curly hair from the house behind this one shot out of her back door and began trotting toward the chest-high chain link fence that separated her yard from this one.  Then, without so much as a pause for breath, she placed two hands on its forbiddingly spiky top, gave herself a boost and vaulted over it. “Hey!” she called, striding toward us.  Talk about your neighborhood watch! was all I could think.As it turned out though, she wasn't there to challenge us; she was there to help us. And we weren’t there to take stuff away from this empty house but rather to bring stuff into it. The door off the back deck had even been left open for us. The muscular woman must have seen that at once, taken a long look at these two old Boomers and thought, “These two sure need help! “We’re the Marottas,” I said, pointing to the empty house. “We’re his godparents.” “Name’s Maura,” she said, quickly extending a hand. Then, just as quickly, she brushed me aside and took one end of the Queen Ann Sofa we had begun pulling from the van. I glanced back toward her house and saw a second woman who looked to be in her early 70s also approaching the fence. She wore a sleeveless blouse and Bermuda shorts and held in one hand the longest cigarette I think I have ever seen. We too exchanged names. “That’s my daughter,” she said, lifting her chin to indicate our muscular helper, who, together with my spouse, was now carrying the couch up onto the deck of the empty house. “She just jumped over this fence!” I told her. “She’s been doin’ that for the 40 years now.” And so, while the two lifters tipped and tilted the sofa, trying to get it into the house, the two of us chatted. “She’s an electrician,” she said. “No kidding?” “Uh huh. Like her dad is  - or was, I should say.  He passed three years ago.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” said. She nodded, looked away for a minute. “Yep, not one but TWO electricians right in one family.” “The  International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers!” I said, rather foolishly I fear. But “You know it!” she said. “And don’t I thank God every night for Local 103! They took care of me.” We both looked toward the house, at the precise moment the two lifters were concluding that this sofa was definitely NOT going to fit through the door.But just then, lucky for us all, our godson materialized on the back steps, home early from work. “Well, I’m the one who put this door on,” he smiled. “I guess I can take it off too.” And he went to get his tools. “You guys got this? If you’ve got this, I’ll take off,” said Maura. “I’m playin’ in a softball game a few towns over.” She gave a kind salute, waved to her mom at the fence and was gone, almost before we could thank her. And ten minutes later, a Queen Anne sofa, two tables and a dozen boxes were inside the house, everyone had said their goodbyes and this little stage was empty of players, leaving us with the fresh reminder of what good neighbors really are.

Afternoon Delight

I worked at my keyboard for three straight hours each day of this vacation,  but then I did nothing.By nothing I mean I sat on the deck and read my book called Titan, the new biography of John D. Rockefeller with his long skinny face. (I’m just on page 21 of its 800 pages but it's a start!)I read this for an hour sitting up. Then I turned over onto on my stomach and read some more, now on the fully collapsed lawn chair with the book on the floorboards beneath me. Then I fell asleep for 90 minutes.On waking, I made a tuna sandwich without the bread or mayo which is a little like eating salty sawdust but never mind.  I also made a protein shake using as its base 8 ounces of strong coffee, a cup of ice cubes, a scoop of  chocolate flavored protein and two  and a packets of Truvia, the natural non-caloric non-sugar that would put a smile on the face of dead man.THEN I went back out to my lawn chair on the deck and read  some more  on my Kindle this time, that old sob story of a novel The Prince of Tides by by Pat at Conroy, made into a movie starring Blythe Danner, Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand. I have read both this book before, which vacation is for. :-)It's true that since last Sunday I have I logged in about 25 hours of work for the organization that lately claims all my heart and many of my waking hours, but really I mostly just walked a little and looked out at the water.Around noon yesterday, a ruckus broke out on the deck next, like the sound of  a tiny helicopter crashing. I looked down and behold: it was two tiny helicopters crashing:  Two dragonflies, mating.The sight of them brought to mind the e.e. cummings poem I so I loved in high school about what a fine thing it is  when two creatures mate on your premises. These dragonflies whirred and fluttered and remained locked together for four or five minutes before the male flew off, leaving the female still and dazed.I have felt that way too this week: Still and dazed. It’s my one week off in the summer and I’m making the most of it. My man is outside for five of our 16 waking hours every day working,working, working on his ministry of weeding and when he comes inside in the world’s filthiest T-shirts and dirt in his teeth I can see he is one happy man. I’m happy too.  Once in a while I guess we all just need change of pace.And here's e.e. cummings from a different poem, speaking for me again:

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

a sweatshirt, a railing and a wee weeding man bending over his trash can. (I'll take the 800 page book ;-))

We Were All Together

We were all together over the Fourth and the little kids took pictures.These are some of them, showing how the babies schmoozed and the grownups talked and Bambi drank from a cup, smart little Bambi!We held all the babiesand played all the fun games like Pictionary - 'til 2 in the morning some of us. Our son came back just for the weekend and that was so nice, seeing him and Marie too. It pierced all our hearts to have him leave again for the distant south.We ate Annie's famous fried chicken AND her special tacos AND we made our own pizza with Annie's homemade dough. We had her brownies too!This child, our rising Fourth Grader, just chilled on the deck with a borrowed i-pad. Something about his pose kind of says it all. It's really summer now!

What Did YOUR Mom Do All Day?

I spent all weekend fixing things, or trying to, so today I'm dressing up as my mother and meeting my friends for coffee in the living room... My friends are all  imaginary so I won't have to clean up much.See how pleasant we all look? I'm the one with the dark hair.

• We may play a hand or two of cards after this.
• Or discuss silver polishing techniques.
• Or the best way to keep your girdle from riding up.
• Or if we feel really daring , maybe we'll talk about that new Magic Fingers gizmo you find these days at the Howard Johnson Inn...

The kids are playing stickball outside, we think. Johnny sassed his little brother earlier but we'll have to wait for Father to come home to deal with that since after all Father Knows Best. Or, er, Ward Cleaver maybe, the Beav's dad...ha ha.  A little irony for you guys today! In truth my hair has never looked as tame as the hair of the lady on the left.Here's how I really look today, a fresh two inches of rain having fallen on my little head  last night.Truth in advertising ha ha! And while I'm telling the truth I should admit I borrowed the photo on top from a Chock Full O'Nuts ad in a magazine.

I'm Not the Pope

When I joined the Fewer Than 12 Items line at the supermarket recently, the woman directly ahead of me turned and made the  ‘After You’ sign with her hands. “Go ahead,” she said. “You have only one item and I have 12.”“Nah, it’s fine,” I said smilingly back, and we both turned to watch as the sales associate rang up the purchases of the man in front of her, a process that took a while, what with the weighing of his produce and the waiting while he dug out his reusable bags.Finally he was gone and this nice woman was next - but instead of unloading her items on the belt she turned to me once again. “Go!” she said again, standing back as if to let me pass in front of her. “You need to go, I can tell. I have an instinct.”“No, really,” I said. “I mean, my day is no busier than yours.  It’s not like I’m the Pope.”“The Pope! I wouldn’t give my place to the Pope!” she laughed.“You don’t like the Pope?” I asked, worried that I had wandered into a dicey realm.“It isn’t that. It’s more that… well, you know. Popes, Presidents: they get all kinds of breaks.”This was true, as I knew from my junior high boyfriend, who has worked protecting both Popes and Presidents. They don’t even carry any money.She went on. “So see I like to do what I can for …”“For the little guy? Regular schlubs like us?”“Exactly,” she said.  “Now go ahead of me.”So… I went ahead of her.And she didn’t even seem to mind that I turned out to be carrying over one shoulder my own silky reusable bag, which I use to put my items in as I shop, to save the trouble of using one of the store’s wire baskets. Thus, like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, I drew forth a packaged salad, a bottle of water, and a pint-sized container from the aisle of bins where you can scoop out your own nuts, grains and seeds.“What’s this?” asked the cashier holding up the small container.“Oh I’m sorry!” I said. “It’s Red Wheat Bran. That’s what the bin it came from said.” He stopped and drew out a booklet and began laboriously hunting through columns of small print for it for the Wheat Bran code number. “I guess I was rushing so much I forgot to label it. I’m scheduled to meet someone in the eating area at the front of the store,” I added lamely.“See? I was right!” said the woman, now behind me. “I told you I have an instinct! You did need to go first!”I thought about this exchange for the whole rest of that day, and what we mean when we use the word ‘need.’I guess maybe I did sort of ‘ need’ to get through the line fast and meet my party. But what I needed even more was to meet someone like this, people who keep their her fine antennae tuned outward, toward others, rather than inward, toward themselves, ever aware of what they might do to help. Those people are our real spiritual leaders in my book.

Turns Out You Really DON'T Need Big Muscles

It’s been a while since someone asked me to swordfight and play basketball but I got to do both Sunday afternoon. Lucky thing I didn’t have pointy high heels and an Easter bonnet on!This was with little David, my second grandson, who is five.The shooting hoops was his idea. He said I’d probably be ok at it even though I didn’t have big muscles. He pointed out that John, seen above here taking a splinter out of David’s finger last summer, doesn’t have big muscles and yet he’s good at everything. (Funny idea of not big muscles eh?)As it turned out, I proved not to be so great at the basketball part. Plus then the little boy's grandpa came out and sunk a few while holding a beer in one hand just to show he still could. (I knew the guy played varsity basketball in high school but the only evidence of all that I’ve ever seen is the tiny Medford High School satin shorts that still sleep in his bottom drawer. I didn’t know him then.)But never mind, because I was good at the sword-fighting which was my idea in the sense that I brought the swords. Light sabers they were really, newly purchased and brought to this Easter celebration just in case 'Somebody' needed a little more exercise.What I didn’t know; what I learned from little David with his cute lisp is that sword fighting is only really cool if you keep leaping up onto stone walls and back down again. That I could have done all day.Here’s how little David looks these days, ready for anything, as you can see.And here’s how I looked Sunday, just heading back outside for the re-match he challenged me too. Ah spring!

Holiday Surprises

Things aren't going that great around  here. We began having the kitchen painted the Monday after Thanksgiving and as of this past Tuesday all the kitchen stuff was still in the dining room. Holiday decorating!My little guys came over a week ago and put all the fake-dripping-wax 1980s-era candles in the windows but the rest of the project stalled.I didn’t even buy the tree 'til last Sunday, in the pouring rain and dark, and failed to notice at the time that it has a kind of giant goiter of branches on one side only. Hence it falls over.Twice it careened onto the ground and once, when we turned it goiter side in, it fell into the wall behind it , which made the front half of its base life right up off the floorLast night just before dinner was the last time it fell. We heard that telltale whoosh and then a sort of muffled thud as of a heavy person sitting down on the floor. We hurried into the living room and there it was.There it is I should say. It's there as I write.Another complicating factor in my week was my last-minute opportunity to go with all the ABC scholars I love, and their Resident Academic Coordinator Mario Paredes, into the Boston State House to meet with the Honorable Deval Patrick , Governor of the Commonwealth.What a lovely man he is, who made these eight feel how much he has in common with them , having himself left home at 14 to be an ABC student at Milton Academy.I was too shy to ask for a picture of me alone with him but everyone else got to do that as the official photographer snapped away.This picture is one Mario took as we first sat down together at the table in that jewel of an office in the old Bulfinch building.  Look at these happy faces! How glad I am that Mario arranged this and the Governor agreed to give us 30 minutes!It's a lesson to me: nobody cares what the table looks like at most gathering, as long as everyone can find a seat at it.And we'll get there on the house preparations. Today we're lashing the tree with wire to hardware on the two windows that flank it. The show must go on!  :-)

Here's the tree after its third and most recent  fainting spell. ( Sigh.)  At least there aren't any lights or ornaments on it yet. 

Look at It This Way

I’m looking back at what I’ve written here in the last week and thinking Yikes! A lot of silly talk about ladies’ underwear? An account of setting fire to the evening meal once again? A video showing dogs with human hands eating with knives and forks? It must’ve been an off week for me, though it did bring me one nice thing: a brand-new friend who found me at Columnists.com. We had some back-and-forth about the scribbling trade and the next day he had this to say:

So you told me I should write in my blog every day, and if you read my post today you will see that can lead to a bit of a stretch. Then I read your post this morning and I say, “Geez she’s writing about her crooked frickin’ spine!?” And I am somehow strangely entertained by this. My initial response was genuine concern for your well-being, which is odd since up until Saturday I didn’t even know you existed. But then my concern lessened, and turned to ease and chuckles when you described the state of your pants. 

He was referring to the post where I talked about how I’m trying to ‘treat’ my recently-emerged case of scoliosis by going to the Y every day.

Someone said, not sure who, maybe me that  life has a way of putting us exactly where we need to be, when we need to be there.

“Wow!” was all I could think. “Maybe that’s true!” I mean I HATED to exercise when I was young; hated to do much of anything that didn’t involve either reading or talking my face off. And now here I am, thrilled every day to be hurrying into the Y to do the treadmill, and the  funny machine that makes you feel like you’re roller blading, and then the Pilates or the Yoga or the lifting of weights while balancing on a therapy ball, depending on what day it is.  This new friend has thanked me like six times in five days for the few tips I gave him about getting your writing out there. The the truth is I should be thanking HIM for having pulled me away from self-mockery AND self-pity and made me see that Old Alfred Lord Tennyson was right: "Though much is taken,” in the course of our living, “much abides. “And” - shall I finish it? I have it memorized. It’s Ulysses, aged now, at the end of his long, long voyage: "Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will - to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."   Yeah!Now here's me at the Y on the Technogym Wave Runner, which is the real name of that  thigh-and-glute building skatey machine. I look pretty good for my age don't I? ;-) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0KvopwtTB8&feature=related]