Genie-in-a-Bottle Bra

Talk about under armor!

what the big girls wore when I was still in undershirts

So what's the DEAL  with these Ahh Bras and Genie Bras? Do you mean to tell me I've been spending over $100 for custom-fit bras when I could just stroll into a CVS or a Walgreens and throw a Genie Bra into my cart along with my batteries and my fish oil capsules?I'd like a comfortable bra, sure... I'd be cheering, like Brandi here.At least my bras don't dig into my shoulders anymore thanks to enough steel in the old underwire area to set off the metal detectors at the airport. (I am serious. This happens.)And I've been taught by the pros that you're just kiddin' yourself sizewise if the center element of the thing doesn't cleave to your breastbone. (If it gaps, it's too small. Deal with it. The first speciality bra those fancy-pants brafessionals sold to me was a 32F, 32F!, and sold me a bra accordingly. I'm still not over it.)But nowadays my torso is slightly rotated. so there's some weirdness with the bra there, enough tightness in the band more on the right side than on the left such that I am MORE THAN HAPPY  by about 6 at night to pull those straps out through the armholes of my shirt the way we did at summer camp and leave the thing in a tangle on the floor.So maybe I should actually look into the Genie Bra or Ahh Bra.Anyway I've been looking at some YouTube action about them both. All I can say is I hope they paid these women well to walk let themselves be filmed struggling into their undergarments. Me I think I'll just go on setting off metal detectors, at least for a little while longer.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJXVPmJOJuY

Golly Houston

The sand is gone from my bathing suit, the sunburn from my nose. I guess it’s time to stop talking about that lovely cruise I went on. It’s just that I found Hemingway was right about one thing: you DO see a thing more clearly when you’re away from it. He could see his boyhood in northern Michigan in Paris much more clearly than he could ever see it when he was actually there. In fact it took going to Paris and drinking the many drinks with comrades good and true who had seen war and knew that a man must …. (Ha ha, sorry. It’s hard for me not to parody the guy, especially where I just finished reading The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of what it was like for his first spouse living. It was like living with a cad of the first order.“Talk about a thing it and you’ll lose it,” he told somebody once. I was a new writer when I first came across this piece of advice I sensed the truth of it right away. I have always been sorry I didn’t come across it earlier in my life. I’m sorry I told even four people about the time I hunted down my father and sat with him for an hour in my 19^th year. Now I can only remember the words I used in the telling and not the reality of the meeting.If I had written about it maybe I would have described his hands and the way his hair went back in waves from his forehead which was high, like mine.Instead the thing I sealed inside the melodramatic words of that college sophomore and I can’t get to it. It’s like when you make a document into a PDF. Kind of a mistake, you think to yourself after in that you can’t mess with it anymore.I almost got to ride on the Shuttle years ago, meaning I was a National Semi-Finalist and one of the youngest and most idealistic of the thousands of journalists who entered that competition. It was cut short by the Challenger disaster though I’m aware that many young people out there don’t know what this disaster entailed.I entered the contest because I knew NASA needed to sell the idea of space travel to the American taxpayer if it wanted to put anything up there, and they themselves told the society of professional journalists that they needed a wordsmith; that the astronauts themselves, were hopeless at conveying what saw from low earth orbit. The best they could so was say “Golly Houston,” on seeing our little blue earth blinking in and out of sunlight...I can’t do much better when it comes to saying what this little boat ride was like.All is a few pictures.I look at them now: this one of Old Dave and me in the dining room.And the one at the top where the ship itself looks like a baby whale.And this super-short video of the surging deep. Ah, the briny deep, mother to us all.. Where are my fins? Why did we have to evolve?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1orVykWPi8&feature=g-upl]

It's the People Watching

  What I like best on any cruise is the people-watching.Seeing the way folks lick their ice cream down for example.I could watch that all day, and did in fact, since they serve ice cream all day long out by the pool on Deck 9.Some eat it the way a cat would.Others more puppy-style as in Down the hatch! in one quick gulp.To me the people-watching is the best fun thing about all travel.I remember being at Disney World one day when the weather was so hot Snow White was running sweat all down her back under that satiny costume.We were tolling along the main drag trying to fight our way toward Space Mountain, that famous indoor ride with the twists and turns where we figured we could cool off anyway if we could ever get there and here came this red-faced father walking fast behind his ten-year-old son.“Slow down!" he hollered at the boy. “I told you 50 times stop running ahead!”The boy stopped, turned.“Dad I’m not even walking fast,” he said."You shut your mouth or I’ll take off my belt!”“Dad, you’re not wearing a belt.”“THEN BY GOD I’LL BUY one!”That’s some pretty good people watching, when you get to see someone make a jackass of himself in front of a hundred witnesses.Of course it’s all much milder on a cruise ship. It’s more like being in a room with a lot of sleeping zoo animals. People sure look funny when they fall asleep with their mouths open!We had the chance to watch a lot of people because we hung out on deck three where sooner or later everyone passes by on their way to the Casino or the Chapel, the Library or the Fun Shops.The cabins are lovely, paneled in warm wood with balconies and ingeniously-designed little bathrooms where every surface sparkles and the towels are infinite in number and the water from your shower never ever slops onto the floor but still....You want to have maximum fun on a cruise curl up in one of those window seats and watch the whole parade of humanity pass by.It’s the Canterbury Tales all over again.Here’s Nan doing that on our last cruise, book in hand.  

Drink and Get Diapered

There’s a jaunty amateurish quality to the daily announcements on board ship that made me smile every day on this last cruise. It's as if they were written by people new to the language.“Like money? Like to be Pampered?”  The author of these squibs wrote in one paragraph, capitalizing the verb form of the word ‘pamper' as if it were a  proper noun; as if to say Here's a nice kind of onboard fun: have someone diaper you!It goes on: “Then then you’ll loooooove what we have in store for you.” (Yep: six o’s in the words ‘love.’) “Play 7 Huge (more upper case mania) games on one card giving away over $1,000. You couldn’t beat this deal if you tried, not that you’d want to!”But .... you WOULD want to beat it if you could, wouldn’t you? Beat a good deal with a better deal. It doesn’t make sense but there is something sort of dear about it anyway.Here's another: “Step right up because we have all the lights, bells and buzzers to make you feel right at home! “ it says regarding a night at the casino I suppose.. But do we HAVE  lights bells and buzzers at home? Should we? What are we missing?Ah but isn't that the question at the root of all advertising. People can't bear to think that they lack a thing that everyone else has. How else to account for all those Pet Rocks we bought a few decades ago?I bought a few things: some cheap jewelry and a pretty satin evening bag... A Deep conditioning treatment at the salon in Deck Nine and about 35 glasses of wine... I'm not immune to suggestion, far from it.Below a picture of the last time I was on a  ship as merry as this last one.They had Toga Night and it was right there in the Daily announcement: No Sheet No Eat it said.. They even supplied us with the requisite linens.Here are Old Dave and I with my Cousin Sheila and my sister Nan. We were all on this cruise too...   Looking at the four of us you have to wonder: can getting diapered be very far off?

This is Me Since Thursday

I've been kind of AWOL and I'll tell you why.This is me since Thursday.I know I should move about some.It’s cold.It’s late November.A mouse has eaten the edge off the hem of my skirts.Plus I have all this mending.But I ate so much Thursday, what with the Nantucket Bay scallopsand the buttery corn,the creamed onionsand that big old turkey roasted to perfection and dry-brined for three days beforehand.Never mind all the pies, the homemade Anadama rolls, the sugar-butter, the fresh cranberry sauce that sets up all by itself, so much pectin is in the skins of those wee rubilous orbs…Oh and the savory herbed cubes of bread the bird was stuffed with.I’m stuffed myself still.Stuffed even now.Maybe I’ll just sit out here in the sun a little longer, til that big old wind blows in later today.Maybe by then I can roll up in my feather bed live off my fat and sleep until spring.

Girls Hug, Boys Run

You have to love elementary school field trips, which somehow never change over the years. I went along as adult ‘helper’ for two Third Grade classes when they traveled to Plimoth Plantation to learn about the lives in 1620 of both for the newly-arrived English and for the Wampanoag Indians who made room for them.I must have asked a thousand questions of the historical re-enactors at the English settlement, and of the modern day Wampanaog as well, who also demonstrate what the art of staying alive in the 1620s was like.The kids asked questions too, but mostly they acted like kids.Specifically, the boys acted like boys, in a way that took me clear back to the late 1980s when I went with children the same age to visit the gravestone of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, seen here on the left.That day, the teacher handed out copies of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” for us to real aloud.We recited it together: “Life is real, Life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal. ‘Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest’ was not spoken of the soul.”While two chaperones wiped at tears, and the girls looked gravely at the earth, the boys all but simmered with suppressed energy, like bacon in the pan. Then one boy leaned over to another and, with a mischievous grin, whispered, “You’re standin’ on a dead guy.”So much for ‘life is earnest’!The boys on this latest field trip showed the same high spirits:From the moment they got inside the gates, they ran in ever-widening circles, though the two teachers had carefully divided us into groups of six: four Third Graders and two adults per group.The Third Grade mom I was paired with spent about two minutes assessing the situation before making policy:“OK guys, listen up! We’re going to call ourselves ‘The Explorers’! Every time I yell ‘Explorers!’ you come running! Got it?”It was a brilliant scheme, even though it didn’t work even a little.The boys scattered like spilled mercury wherever we went – the meeting house, the cabin of Goody Winship, the Indian settlement...The girls. meanwhile, remained in their foursomes, bonding, and seeking common ground and devising quiet games. Later, when we saw the exact replica of the original Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, they climbed three and four together into the wee wooden beds and hugged. It's what little girls do.The boys, by contrast, dashed back and forth along the length of the ship and pretend-shot one another from its cannons. I must have heard the historical re-enactor on deck say a dozen times, “Put the belaying pins BACK please.”Now don’t get me wrong here: I know girls grow up to be explorers, and scientists, and heads of governments that make war on other governments, all careers historically associated with men.I know boys grow up to be nurses, and primary school teachers, and experts in home decorating, careers historically associated with women.I know too that these third graders, and in fact all third graders, will be asked as adults to demonstrate both strength AND tenderness, to function effectively in the home AND in the marketplace.All I’m really saying is it’s fun to watch them in this early stage of life. All I’m saying is if an elementary school you know about ever puts out the call for field trip chaperones, clear the time if you possibly can, and answer that call.You’ll come back bushed, but smiling from ear to ear.

The Saint, the Grouch and the Greek Chorus Remarking

A trip to the mall cheers me up every time. I smile just looking at the life-size posters of those sulky-looking models, all starved into skeletons.“Better you than me, gals!” I always think, on walking past them.But if seeing the fashion posters at the mall is fun, seeing the people there is more fun, because let’s face it: people-watching is what you go to a mall to do.The mall is the village square of modern life, the place where you’re encouraged to loiter, on the chance that you’ll suddenly be overtaken by the urge to approach one of these little kiosks and actually buy those smokeless cigarettes, that mane of fake hair, those fuzzy-slippers fashioned to look like giant bear paws.And then there are the human interactions on display there.Below,  a scene I just witnessed at my local mall, the meaning of which I have been trying to plumb ever since.It took place at the Nightie-and-PJs counter of a department store and revolved around an endlessly patient clerk, an out-of-sorts elderly customer and the customer’s friend, who stood four feet behind her and functioned as kind of Greek chorus to all the action.The out-of-sorts customer was giving the clerk a hard time about the coupons she had dug from her bag,  which were turning out not to be valid.“Do you believe this?” she shouted looking up at the ceiling, as if to God in Heaven.“Here she goes again with the coupon tantrum,” her friend said out of the side of her mouth.I didn’t know if she was talking to me or not but I answered anyway.“The coupons are the wrong ones? Or they’ve expired?” I asked.But the words had hardly left my mouth before the customer at the counter started in again.“You people MAIL me these things, I make plans to come IN here with them and now you tell me they’re no good!”“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience,” said the clerk, kindly.“Sheer InCOMpetence I call this!” crowed the customer.Then she turned around to her friend beside me.“It happens to me every time!” she shouted and turned back again to the clerk.“She thinks everything just ‘happens’ to her,” her friend muttered to me. “She never sees what part she might have in how things turn out.”I was nervous now about seeming to talk behind the back of the out-of-sorts customer, so I stepped up to the counter myself.With her shoulders held high, still in a huff, she shot a quick look over at me.“I hate to sound so worked up,” she said.Afraid of saying the wrong thing and setting her off again, I replied, “I bet you don’t sound this way very often.”A sharp laugh emerged from the Greek chorus six feet behind me.The angry lady’s shoulders dropped then. “I think I’m just hungry,” she said miserably.“Let’s go EAT!” boomed her friend, in the voice of a nursery teacher selling the idea of naptime to her weary little charges, and they began moving off.“You ladies have a nice afternoon!” called the sales associate after them, before turning to me with a perfectly pleasant and neutral expression.She didn’t roll her eyes. She didn’t grimace. She didn’t shake her head even slightly to shake off negative feelings.She only greeted me pleasantly, as if the world was made new with every new person she met. Which come to think of it, may be. Which may very well may be.Now if somebody could just convince there poor sourpusses that this is so....

It Was Halloween. You Were SUPPOSED to Eat Everything In Sight

The big day came, here in my town anyway - two little Trick-or-Treaters showed up right at 6:00. I thought I was ready this year but - whoops! - I had forgotten to turn on the front porch light. I sprang for the switch and lurched to the door, giving two fairy princesses a bit of a scare. In my haste to get the lights on, I didn't even have the bowl of goodies in my hand."Uh, can we have some candy?" one of them said unsmilingly as if I needed help understanding how things were supposed to work on Halloween,As it happened, I did. I had candy enough to feed three Boy Scout troops and the right kind this time too, since I was advised twice over thusly:“Where are the Dum Dums?” a kindergartner had said to me Tuesday, inspecting my stash and trying to disguise his contempt.I went right down to CVS and loaded up on them.Then, “Don’t get Three Musketeers !” I heard a guy at the supermarket say to his wife just as she - and I - were hauling Three Musketeers bars by the armful into our two carts.“No kid wants a candy bar that’s just nougat!” he exclaimed.I quick put them back.“That’s right,” he said to me. “Stick with your Snickers, your Reese’s Pieces,” which I’ve noticed a lot of people pronounced “Reesee’s Pieces.”In the end we had maybe 30 kids, including a wild little band of ten-year-olds who had the brass to show up twice. “My, what a lovely house!” said the boldest of these, stepping right inside past me as his buddies helped themselves to fistfuls from the bowl: Snickers, Kit-Kats, Skittles and on and on. "Whoa, be moderate !" I said."Yeah, be moderate!" echoed a masked ninja impishly.And the funny thing is when they rang the bell again not ten minutes later,that stepping-right-inside kid did the same thing again: “My, what a lovely house!” he said with a twinkle in his eye, knowing right well that this gave them away as repeaters and scam artists.I love a kid like that I have to say. Plus you’re supposed to be a little naughty on Halloween, right?And tell ya what it’s a lot more fun to be the one answering the door than the one dragging around after his little kid yelling Tiffany! I said No running!” But seriously it isn't really Halloween unless there's running AND trying to scarf up all the goodies. The squirrel on our yard sure does that every time he visits my nice pumpkins.

The Kids & The Animals

Here is something I wrote some good little while ago.  It's  from my second book , that book of days Vacationing in My Driveway. Hoping it might bring people a smile in the wake of all this mess.

Oh, to be young again in autumn, I think on these windy midnights, these short sun-slanting afternoons.The reports from First Grade come home these days all in headlines. Of course Halloween is a big part of the excitement."WE'RE LEARNING TO PAINT IN ART CLASS!” went the headline two weeks ago from our first-grade boy. “I PAINTED VAMPIRES THROWING UP ON EACH OTHER!”Later there was a witch-drawing contest. “My witch is great,” he hollered that day getting off the bus. “There's blood in her hair and her eyeball is falling out and a spider is lowering itself down from her eye socket...”The season just seems to call for such dismantlings and such grotesqueries, though some kids take it to extremes:“The lunch ladies were really mad today. One stood up at the front of the room and made an announcement,” he said clambering up onto a kitchen chair and imitating the sour outraged face of a disapproving grownup. “’Someone has been doing something really disgusting around here!’” he imitated, and went on to tell a dark tale involving accumulations of spit left close to the food.Imitation is the name of one game at this season. We do on Halloween what we would like to do all year round: hide who we are; become someone other; prowl past unnoticed; and defy a few rules.Years ago, when this child was small, I had some say in how he dressed on Halloween. One year he was a fat flannel pumpkin with an orange lid tied like a baby's bonnet to his unprotesting head. Then, two years running, he was Dracula, with hair moussed back and a tuxedo shirt and a medallion (he really looked like Lawrence Welk.) But this year he did it all on his own; discussed his costume not at all with mom or dad, but came down the stairs sober-faced at five o'clock Halloween night in full regalia: black clothes and an eye patch; a hook hand and Creepy Teeth; scary fingernails and a woman's wig of black shoulder-length curls. He looked like a cross between Cher and the prophet Isaiah.“Uh, who are you supposed to be, Michael?,” some bigger boys asked, seeing him later on the moonlit streets.“A monster!,” he called back over his shoulder, literally sprinting from house to house, his dark ringlets bouncing like Scarlett O'Hara's.“R-i-i-i-ght! Way to go, Mike!,” they called kindly after him.Something big happens when the seasons turn that has nothing to do with the rule book.Last weekend, as usual, the First Grade met on various teams to play one another in soccer. The wind was warm, yet bare tree limbs swayed like skeletal arms. In mid-game two small boys attempted some soccer moves, then fell to wrestling like puppies, then assumed classical ballroom dance positions and waltzed down the field. Two others wandered toward the sidelines where they found a book, sat down and began reading it.“Does this mean the game has ended?” asked the perplexed coaching dad forlornly.No, it just means that autumn is reigning. The air, having turned first to cider and then to applejack, intoxicates us with its tang, especially the more sensitive among us.I woke to a noise one night last week: willed, not accidental, by the sound of it; unmechanical; just furtive enough to be unsettling. A thwock followed by a swish, and then silence. The same thing again. A pause, then two such sounds together. I looked through the whole house for the source if it. A silence grew as I searched; and came at last upon the cause: our black cat hard at a game of street hockey with a Tootsie Pop, her chosen booty from this pagan feast called Halloween.It’s the season that does it. I lie on the carpet in my upstairs study and look out the just-washed windows, on the inside stripped of curtains, on the outside stripped of the framing fringe of ivy. I watch the sky go by, muscular arms of wind pulling clouds past by the handful. The world is trying to turn a new way, it feels like. Stop rotating to the right, and begin again to the left, maybe. Turn itself inside out, like a sweater pulled off over the head.Something happens at this season of the high winds and the swirling oak leaves that makes us restless. We wake at night and ask, “What is it?”Only the kids and the animals know. And the kids and the animals aren't talking.

Stuff You Rarely See

Here are some things you almost never see:

• Teenagers skipping. I saw this after school the other day and was amazed by such blatant high spirits, blatantly displayed.
• Guys getting pedicures. You see guy getting manicures sometimes but only confident and cool guys. Guys getting the soles of their feet sanded and buffed? Not so much.
• Squirrels lying down. You see squirrels cavorting, leaping from branch to branch, bunching in furry balls and just generally vibrating with excitement over whatever it is they have clutched in those little paws but you never see them lying down.

Also:

•  You rarely see swans one by one. Swans come in pairs. They’re twin ships, sometimes facing in the same direction like the Niňa and the Pinta making for Cathay, and sometimes facing prettily away from each other, like bookends. I saw a lone swan only once, standing incongruously at the bottom of the Post Office steps. So charmed was I by a moment seemingly straight out of Disney I extended my hand – and got a good hard bite for my trouble.
•  You rarely see cats in those satellite-dish collars designed to prevent an animal from getting at some below-the neck wound or affliction.  You see dogs in these collars all the time and your heart just goes out to them, the way dog so stoically accept their fate. It is another way with cats: I had never seen a cat in such a collar until our fifth kitty Abraham had to be buckled into one after some surgery. With his grave expression and that stiff white cone encircling his face he looked like some stern nun or else like a mightily annoyed husband whose wife made him dress like a nun for Halloween.

And speaking of Halloween and rare sights, here is another thing you rarely see:

•  Snow on trees that are still in full leaf, and yet that’s what we got around here a year ago: a true Nor’easter that howled around the corners of my ghostly galleon of a house like the banshees described by my Irish great-aunties. A record 32 inches of snow fell in one New England town. They even postponed Halloween in some communities, the least moveable of all feasts in the eyes of the nation’s children.More examples?
•  You don’t see many tutus worn over snowsuit bottoms - unless it’s Halloween night and freezing out, and the wearer is under six years old.
•  You don’t see bras worn on the outside rather than the inside, though you couldn’t prove this by Madonna or Lady Gaga.
•  You don’t see many people using a blender to mix fabric dye and now I personally know why. (You have to hold that top down HARD.)
•  You don’t see duct tape used much for the patching of window screens, but I know for a fact that it is used that way, and who can blame the user when you consider the versatility of this wondrous substance?
•  You don’t see many women affixing clip earrings to the collars of their blouses  just because they look so sweet there, but of all the memories I have of my Aunt Grace from the last year of her life, the memory of her delight in this new accessorizing style remains among the most endearing I have of her.

I could go on. Anyone could. The rare thing crossing our path unsettles us all at first – until we learn to relax and appreciate the unusual just as much as we appreciate the sameness of the comforting day-to-day.

Devils Posing as Angels

  Devils Posing as Angels: that's us.Here's a dandy little poem in this season of the hypocritical utterance.“Bless her heart ,” you say - right  before you say something nasty.It’s in the same category as  “I love her to death but....."Here it is below:  "Bless Their Hearts" by Richard Newman.  

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add

“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say

whatever you want about them and it’s OK.

My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,

she said. He rents storage space for his kids’

toys—they’re only one and three years old!

I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned

into a sentimental old fool. He gets

weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting

on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came

someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,

then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts

of the entire anthropology department.

We bestowed blessings on many a heart

that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.

Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting

much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.

In a week it would be Thanksgiving,

and we would each sit with our respective

families, counting our blessings and blessing

the hearts of family members as only family

does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please

bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

Keepin' It Light

You have to keep it civil; otherwise things get ugly fast.Like millions of Americans I watched the debate Monday night, but not before I attended a shortened meeting of the book group I’m in with fellow alums from the school I went to. They are all very cool women but the coolest of them might be the one who is soon to turn 90.“I think I won’t join you on the 16th," she said in her email to us a few days earlier. “I didn’t read the book anyway so I’ll stay home and become enraged again watching this new debate.”I could see her smiling as she wrote that. She always smiles when delivering these little quips. It’s the key to aging I think; not digging in and getting too serious.Like millions of Americans I also had my phone on while I myself watched, at the house of David’s brother and his wife, and how could I not look at the chatter on Facebook as I watched?You could tell the Democrats by what they said. “Bully! Let the President speak!” posted one.You can could tell  the Republicans too. “He sure blew the Libya question!" said another.I can’t stand to see people fighting, having grown up in a household run by a mother and aunt who could pull out the long knives and slice each other up before you could breathe in and breathe out again, so I tried to say only neutral things.At one point I remarked on Twitter about how sort of cute it was that Obama had on a red necktie and Romney had on a blue one, an exact flip of their red-state blue-state affiliations.Then on Facebook, at one point, I wrote “Grecian Formula”. It just popped into my head as I looked at Romney.I have no idea if he colors his hair or he doesn’t, of course, but it made me volunteer the information that my husband is the exact same age as Mitt Romney, and his hair is completely white.A Facebook friend who I knew for one year when he was a 15 posted that he would be glad to have any hair at all, but he doesn’t anymore. Easier when the wind is up he said.And then I posted this picture of David holding our newest little baldie…I was bald myself for years and then the curls came in and foamed up out of my head like Jiffy Pop. Maybe that will be her fate too.Anyway this kind of talk kept me from getting all nasty. Why spread that around in the atmosphere when it’s all we can do to deal with the real pollutants. (Tip: when the snow finally does come don’t – DO NOT – gather it in a glass and tip it back - not until it has a chance to melt and you can see what’s really in there!  And there's a topic for much more national discourse!

The Fabulous Decomposing Ball

Sooner or later there are things we all notice in life.We note, for example, that our senses don’t quite work the way they once did.That, and the fact that time is speeding past.And that we rush way too much in our lives.But if we are paying attention there are other things we notice too, like the fact that diminishing physical powers are more than made up for by a less judging disposition. Lots of folks just get nicer as we age.I myself have noticed that life is full of invitations to have a good laugh.I think of the day my then-Sixth Grade boy was waiting for me to finish checking out at the supermarket.He dropped a quarter into those little vending machines there by the door and fished out a sort of tiny plastic jigsaw ball which, we gathered, you were meant to pull apart then try putting together again.On the basis of what they chose to name this strange little gizmo, we guessed that its makers were new to the English language.“The Fabulous Decomposing Ball” it was called and the instructions that came with it, encircled by a forest of exclamation points, read this way:

• (1)   Hold in Hand
• (2) Drop to Floor
• (3) Have Fun Decomposing.

This three-line ‘poem’ had all of us - four shoppers and the checkout person - laughing our heads off there by the cash register.And for sure that was something I didn’t expect to see happen when I set out that day to follow my same old path to my same old supermarket.But that’s my point:  ‘unexpectedly’ is exactly the way most laughter comes; unannounced and as a gift, often from a stranger.I believe life offers us regular helpings of such opportunities for laughter.The trick is staying awake enough to notice when you’re being offered such gifts.What helps me stay that awake is jotting down what I see and hear in a week or a day or even just an hour.You can call that keeping a journal but really it’s not as formal as that.In fact you don’t have to write things down at all to be such a chronicler.You just have to stay alert and notice what you’re noticing, like the kindness, and the courage and the simple joy fountaining out all around us every day.I can attest to the fact that witnessing such things will act as an antidote to the blues every time. Noticing what happens around you, remembering the exchanges you have with people and the exchanges you see them having with each other will help you fully inhabit every minute of your waking day.There’s a poem by Robert Frost that I have always loved in which he talks about savoring autumn’s beauty.In it he is addressing Nature, the architect of all this glory. “Release one leaf at break of day; at noon release another leaf,” he implores Her..“Retard the sun with gentle mist; enchant the land with amethyst” And how I love that last line with the evocation of amethyst’s royal tones!Maybe we actually CAN slow down the all-too-quick progression of our days, just by savoring them.And what wise soul said that the journey was the destination? That person was right. The journey IS the destination.So let’s raise a toast to the change of seasons, and laugh, and – why not? - have fun decomposing just like those quirky instructions advised.

A Busy Mom's Best Friend

It’s amazing what you can do in a car. Parents in the 1920s almost lost their minds worrying what the young people were doing in their cars, these rolling parlors they could get in and go just anywhere, get themselves just anywhere, as far as they liked if they had gas enough .But I’m not talking about THOSE kinds of activities.I’m talking about the myriad other ways your car comes in handy, especially if it’s a minivan.In my book the minivan is the nest invention since the blow-dryer. The pencil sharpener. The clothes drier even.And I’m serious. I got my first Dodge caravan in 1986. It was red, like three-quarters of Nancy Reagan’s wardrobe. When it died in seven years’ time I got a white one. Then a green one. Then another red one and I’m here to tell you my lords it over the cars of every other car out there, be it Honda or Subaru, Toyota or big old Caddy.The Chrysler is the only minivan with the Stow-and-Go seats, these plush comfy thrones that at the push of  a button fold up and sink away under the floorboards, yielding me a ballroom of space. Then another touch and up they come again like a band of jolly ghosts appearing  once again at the dinner table.Look at all the room!In this space I can and have toted swoony big palm trees, dining room chairs past counting, whole dining room tables, or as I did yesterday, a seven foot long buffet. I have stretched out for a nap, soothed travelling cats, cages and all, and now apparently refinished furniture. (Just as a note the furniture refinishing I did in my car Sunday and Monday didn’t involve any 5F5 which you wouldn’t use in a small enclosed place of course, unless you wanted to keel over  dead within ten minutes. It was just a little subtle steel wool-and-rubbing agents that I know about as someone who has been rehabbing furniture since before Nancy Reagan was First Lady of California, speaking of that slim the giant-headed clothes horse who went to my college but didn’t finish, just like Fellow Republican Barbara Bush did with her pearly dog-collar and her salty talk. (Did you know she is famous for sketchy? I didn’t know that I until I read that thinly disguised 2008 fictionalization of Laura Bush. Which I read. In my car. In stolen moments in various grocery store parking lots.))Here they are the two of them, Miz Pearls first  and Nancy below her.Well here’s the beauty of a blog: you can just go on and on spooling out stories and nobody fires you or gets out the red pencil. even. Everyone in my family of origin could do this, speaking of ghosts at the table. There were four grownups at my dining room table growing up and any one of them could talk tile the cows came home. Once my 90-year-old great aunt fell asleep during one of these talkathons and fell clean out of her chair and onto the floor.Anyway the Chrysler Plymouth people have a wonderful car in the minivan. Mine is now eight years old and I can hardly wait to get the new model. In the 2013 Chrysler I’m hoping to set up a small bowling alley. :-)

Bangs

Last week while I was on vacation, somebody told me my bangs were too long.“You need to sweep it back, get it off your face,” he said.The thing is, he was eight years old. Eight years old!So I knew it was true.Therefore as soon as soon as I got home I went to Ronaldo."Cut my bangs WAY shorter," I said.And after protesting for a while, he did, with the result that where I formerly looked like an English sheep dog...I now look like.....Ramona of children's-book fame.

Oh well. She is kind of cute, right? Like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, and she was cool as well as cute.

AND I can see really well.

My Secret Vice

“I LIKED it all right, but what was that whole thing at the end?" This is me after most movies, because I just MAY have been talking.Just a little of course, but about almost anything: the popcorn I spilled when I fumbled the giant-sized tub that’s as big as your chest, or the raw carrots I slipped into my back pocket that were now digging painfully into my backside. Or maybe I was asking my friend beside me, “IS THAT THE GUY? Isn’t that the same guy from the beginning?”That person generally just stares straight ahead, like a man waiting for a bus. This talking when I shouldn't be talking: it's been a problem for me in life.I talked to my best friend all through worship services when I was 12. Who wouldn’t talk, with the whole parade of humanity passing by? How funny they all looked to me!But then everything is funny when you’re 12.  And I just wanted to share the joke.This ‘sharing’ started when I was in Second Grade at the nun’s school where I whispered so much in class that one day Sister Mary Suffering went red in the face, shouted that I was expelled and put me out, all alone to wait for my mother, at the remote edge of the convent property.There I stood by the box of textbooks she also put out with me, because in Catholic school you have to buy your books. When you go, the books go.“What will I do NOW?” I’m too little to get a job!” That was my first thought standing out there as the El screeched by overhead.My second thought: “Mom is going to lift Sister Mary Suffering clean off the ground for this.” And so she did, or almost did.My mother was 50. I was seven. And poor Sister Mary Suffering was barely 20, with scant experience in the classroom.“You EXPEL a child for talking?” Mo=m bit each word hard as it left her mouth. “Don’t you know that a child who is talking is a child who is bored?” And so on.Poor Sister Suffering; she wasn’t our teacher anymore after that. We were told she had gone away for a rest somewhere.So I was off the hook for that crime anyway.It was different later when I got all those detentions for whispering in 7th grade: detentions and punishments like having to write "I will not talk in class" ten thousand times. And one memorable demerit which made me feel so ashamed.Luckily, I grew up. I became a teacher myself and so got to talk for a living. Hurrah!Then I turned to writing and tending babies and things got quiet for a while - until I began getting asked to give funny speeches and even workshops.More talking! Double Hurrah! It was such fun making people laugh. Seeing them come alive like that.I did this for three decades, and then…Almost overnight…I went quiet.I’m quiet still.Used to be, in book groups or at community board meetings I talked my head off. Now I say hardly a word.It’s not that that I’m sleepy, or that that I have no ideas. It’s certainly not that I’m uninterested in what’s being said.It’s just that all these year in, I find I would rather hear what others have to say than talk myself.All these years of being in “Transmit,” I am finally, gratefully, on “Receive.”Respite for all!

Back to Reality

Sometimes you get home from a week away and find that the pipes have all burst.That happened to us one winter. We went to my sister's in Florida, leaving a 20-year-old house-sitter here with the cats.Her phone call to us three days later was so sweet:"Well," she said "things are fine, really. But it's 33 degrees in the living room and the cats and I are under the electric blanket in your bed."She was such a dear. She was from Austria where for all I know it's 33 degrees in everyone's living room.Or maybe being just three months in the States, she thought this was normal for us."Thirty-three degrees!" David yelped when I conveyed the news to him. "The pipes are going to burst !"This was at 3:00 in the afternoon and even down in Florida we knew that temps back on our northerly shores were headed down to zero.The pipes burst all right. It was New Year's Day and we couldn't get hold of the furnace man in time and when we came home the whole first floor was under water.It wasn't that bad this time.This time we came home from our week on Kiawah Island to rain and 56 degrees. Our floors were just fine however. And our nice neighbor Henry had brought in all our mail and kept an eagle eye on the needs of my zillion house plants, still enjoying summer camp on our screened-in porch.The problem we faced - or rather the problem I personally faced - is the problem I came home with, and isn't that always the way? My problem continues to be a computer riddled with viruses and an external disk drive so oddly configured by well-meaning amateurs that even the guy at the Apple store couldn't discern what was on it. I can't use the new Mac Book until I can bring 30 years of writing over. So it's back to a period of speechlessness for a while as the files are being ritually cleansed and then brought over, because really how much can a journalist produce just using her smart phone and I-Pad?I realize that in the last week I have written more about my family than is my custom and am grateful to all who bothered to read it all. We were all together except for Carrie's wife Christine, 'Mama' to those three young children while Carrie is 'Mum.' Chris just couldn't take the week off work and we sure did miss her. Hopefully she will be with us next time, in five more years, when Eddie will be 13 and David 10 and little Callie 5, and who knows? There may even be other little ones by then.Carrie took this picture of little David at Olde Charles Towne Landing where she brought both boys for an outing while we stay-behind adults worked together to mind one 13-pound baby.He asked his mother to take it, which almost never happens. He wears an expression on his face her I find very interesting. I can't say in what it means but it strikes me as oddly reassuring. He looks so content, and assured of something....Do the young see more than the rest of us? Does he see the day when his little lisp will vanish and he will tower over his parents rather than vice versa? Can he imagine the day when he will perhaps speak at the funeral of these grandparents he spent a week with in the summer when he was five?Who knows what lies ahead, whether leak or flood or cascades of virus? We are kids ourselves, in the backward -facing seat of that classic old station wagon. We see only where we have been, and thank God for that.

Radio Silence

It's our family vacation but there was a slight pause in the fun for me with this busted laptop.I'm together with everyone for the week so my kids are around. When I came down from our bedroom in this rental house and said I had this weird message every time the laptop crashed, they asked what the message was."Well it seems to say, 'That's all she wrote Jim!' and then everything goes away.""Mum! That's not a message Microsoft would send you! You have a virus!"Now when I personally have a virus I know it because I usually have a temperature.Not so with my laptop. And a person born like me from the Eisenhower years can go on for a quite a long time without realizing that something is very much amiss.People like me are old and when you are old you get used to certain facts: Things break, wear out, go rusty.The shower faucet in our bathroom in this vacation-house went awry sometime yesterday morning and poured only super-scalding water, with the result that I had to go to the food store with salt and probably clam bodies still nesting in my hair.My hair feels like straw and tastes like pretzels even now, with the thing still busted.It makes me jealous of certain other members of my family on this vacation, with their bald or near-bald heads....More soon I hope. Writing this much on my smartphone.

As I Lay Dying

Every few hours at unpredictable intervals my computer crashes.It's nerve-wracking.All of a sudden, one by one, within less than three seconds, the applications shut down, email Facebook, Google Maps - whatever I have open on the Internet... And then all the others, Word, Excel and so on.Goodbye work! Goodbye favorite poems I have saved as Word documents and was just rereading! Goodbye all Word documents I have open!One by one they say goodbye to me, some never returning, even after the heroic retrieval attempt the system then makes.It's like seeing the process of your own dying, only sped up. You were talking - just a second ago you were saying something interesting, or putting a commitment on your Google calendar and then - poof - all goes quiet.When real death happens, where will I be? It makes you wonder.I was reflecting on the beauty of the ocean which was right in front of me as I wrote.Also labeling more of the pictures taken at our family wedding.And editing newer pictures with Google's Picasa.Working on the ABC Fall Newsletter which we hope to get out in three weeks.And throwing some brightly colored threads of words down for a college recommendation I'll soon be writing.Because I'm also childish and distractable I was also looking at the lineup of new shows as presented by yesterday's New York Times.At the last system crash I was watching this short clip about the new show Animal Practice, debuting tonight. Hard to think that the last thing I might ever have done on this little laptop was watch the following. (On the other hand though, you gotta love a monkey. :-)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEmQwjeDqCI]

Wedding by the Sea

What’s nicer than a family wedding on a Sunday in September?When the sky is so blueAnd the prelude is by Pachelbel [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sHpAP-qevc&feature=g-upl] And even the view from the hotel room just lifts the spirits.And then we have the bride and her father. Ah the bride and her father~! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sHpAP-qevc&feature=g-upl] Such a day is bound to be happy, as folks stroll and playAnd toast and yell and wave their spoons around ... And everyone claps the "May I present Mr. and Mrs." moment... And the dancing goes on for just hours.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7LtE00tXI&feature=youtu.be]