A Christmas "Fail"

Some people are lucky enough or organized enough to be able to plan the traditions that become part of their family Christmases.  They decide what they want their traditions to be and then go about creating them.  Their trees are decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries, they go carolling in the neighorhood on Christmas Eve, and their freezer is full of professional looking Christmas cookies as early as November.

Traditions exist in our family no less than in the families where elaborate preparations go into creating them. It's just that the routes of our traditions are a little more circuitous. 

Even when I try to create special Christmas traditions, I find that there are only a few things that I can really count on from year to year.  Unfortunately, they're not usually the traditions I've tried to foster.

I can count on our Christmas tree being dead within a week because I can't find a place to put it that's farther than four feet from a heating duct.  I can count on stepping on pine needles through at least March.  And I can count on planning a special family excursion to chop down our tree, but ending up buying it precut in a K-Mart parking lot.

I can also count on discovering new traditions every year that I was totally unaware of.

When the girls were young,  I overheard Alex tell Bess that the presents in their stocking are always wrapped. In truth, those presents had been wrapped only once. But that one time was the previous year, the Christmas that Alex remembered most vividly. Since Bess had only vague memories of any prior Christmases, and took everything Alex said as gospel, I found that we had a new tradition that year.  Henceforth, every stocking present would be wrapped.

Other traditions have been even more elusive.  One year a reporter came to Bess's preschool and interviewed the kids about Christmas.  As with most things that happened at school, I knew nothing about this, and was surprised to open up the local paper and see Bess's picture.  I was even more surprised to read her quoted as saying that "Santa Claus brings you presents and puts candy canes on your tree."  I certainly knew about the presents, but the candy canes were a total surprise.  Knowing that I wasn't always in tune with our traditions, I asked the girls.  Alex knew nothing about it, but Bess swore it was true.  And from that Christmas on, it was.  

This year, our traditions were turned upside down since Alex and her family wouldn't be with us, having moved to Africa in July.  I broke tradition, shopped early, and managed to get all of their presents to them before Christmas.  It even seems that I did a pretty good job, which was particularly important, since returns weren't going to be an option.

Flynn loved his tunnel, Alex liked the earring holders I made for her, and Andy might wear the shirts that I bought at a very deep discount so no one would feel bad if he doesn't. There were other presents too. All equally well recieved.

But I wasn't perfect.  According to Alex, there was one definite "fail."  It was the entire series on CD of the TV show "My So Called Life," which was a favorite of hers years back, and which I was sure she'd enjoy since their own TV selections are limited.

A good present indeed.  Except for the fact that this is apparently the third Christmas in a row that I've given it to her.

It seems I've started another tradition.

You Can Have Our Silver, Just Leave the Christmas Ornaments

It used to be a joke in our house that if anyone ever robbed us, they better go straight for the Christmas ornaments because that's where the money was.

It was only funny because it was probably true. With a nubby, dusty pink, 60's couch and loveseat that I won for a dollar at the local auction house and an old chicken incubator that I cleaned up and refinished for a coffee table, our furniture was eclectic, cheap, and generally used.  My finest jewelry was Monet, our only silver was stainless, our TV's were won in raffles, and our computers were slow and secondhand.

Our Christmas ornaments, however, were bought new and  sometimes at prices that I'd balk at spending for dinner for three at Denny's. Wrapped in tissue paper and packed in plastic tubs, they were prime for the taking in all but the last month of the year.  In that month, they were brought out and put on full display, a sort of tactile history of our family.

At the height of our Christmas celebrations, we had enough decorations to cover three full size trees, two wreaths, two wall hanging trees, several table top trees, and one circular thing that hung from the ceiling and held ornaments that were too fragile or too heavy for the trees.

There wasn't a single plain round ball ornament among them.  I take that back. In later years, there's been one red ball, a remnant of my parents' last tree which, as the years passed, was only reluctantly brought out and then decorated almost entirely with identical red balls.

It wasn't the tree of my childhood which is shown in photographs as being sparse of branches, long on tinsel, and with only a few ornaments, so that the tin foil covered milk container bell that I made in first grade stood out. Sometime after my sister and I left home, and over our objections, an artificial tree came in and the red balls went up.  I don't know where they came from, and I don't know where my tin foil bell went. One red ball is its stand in.

Our ornaments are all different, each telling a story of a time or event in our shared lives.  A beautician holding a hair dryer?  That one's for Alex, documenting the year she insisted on getting a permanent and learned never to do that again. The shark with a little girl hanging from his mouth? That one's for Bess, who discovered an unhealthy fear of sharks while deep sea fishing during a Florida vacation and wanted off the boat, "Right Now!"  The cat with a mouse hanging from its mouth.  That's mine, given to me by my sister, who shares my phobic fear of mice.  It goes on the tree, but  always in the back.  Waldo?  Where's Waldo?  He's there somewhere too.

This year while decorating, Bess sees me holding a little wooden ornament of a fisherman's hat.  "Is that Grandpa's hat?"  she asks.

"Why, yes it is."

I don't think my dad fished a day in his life, but he liked his hats. They were misshapen and discolored, with oil stains from his thinnng hair and black grime smudges from his work.  He would leave them in restaurants on family vacations and we would drive back.  We would buy him new hats for Christmas and birthdays and he would get around to wearing them, but never quickly. When he died, I think the grandkids took them.  Maybe even wore them. I have my ornament.

"We should have one for Grandpa's green golf pants too." Bess says.

"Well, yes we should, but we don't.  We do have one for his pink paisley shorts though.  See, right there at the top.  Next to the star you bought me with the date that I quit practicing law."

Truth be told, some of the ornaments are beginning to look a little worn.   Not surprising, I guess, since many of them are over 30 years old and have moved through six different houses, four musty basements, two garages, and numerous closets.  They've survived small hands of toddlers, sharp claws of cats, many a sniff from dogs, and several trees that fell in the night.

This year some of the survivng are even missing, gone in a box that I gave to Alex when she moved to Africa. She posted a picture of her tree on Facebook last week and it was nice to see that she had  a little bit of home in that faraway place.

My favorite ornaments are the ones the girls made over the years and which, some years, have had there own tree.  There are dough ornaments, mainly intact, but with a mouse nibble here and there. Tongue depressers with holiday greetings printed down the front.  Paper cutouts, brightly colored.  Pairs of little ice skates held together with a string of yarn and with paper clips for blades.  Litttle names or initials (in crayon or marker, not always fully decipherable) on most, reminding me which daughter presented which ornament. Some have years, but more leave me guessing.  Most I remember who made what, but memory fails a few.

Bess holds up a big snowflake, a full seven inches in diameter, cut out of plain white paper and them lamenated for longevity.  It's been on one of our trees for 20 years, usually in a prominent place because of it's size and its lightness.  Perfect for flimsy branches and bare spots.

"Who did this one, Mom?" she asks.

I take it from her, look at the back, see a small "B" and tell her that that one is hers.

She takes it back , looks at it more closely, apparently not remembering her little hands manuevering the blunt scissors.

"Mom.   There are two initials here.  It's not "B," it's "FB."  I don't think it's mine."

 I look again.  She's right.  I laugh.  Bess joins in.  We don't have any idea who made this ornament that we've been packing in tissue for 20 years. There's not a single FB in our family.

 I reach up and put the snowflake in a prominent place on the tree, right next to Grandpa's pink shorts.  There's a story behind the snowflake.  Just not the one I thought.

The One Item Christmas List

When Alex was two and a half, she wanted "big blocks" for Christmas. Nothing but "big blocks."  It didn't matter who asked, the answer was always the same.  When she climbed up on Santa's lap, a little nervous and not at all sure she wanted to be sitting there, she stared down at her hands and shyly whispered two words, "big blocks." And then she quickly jumped down and ran to my arms, without even a thought about getting the candy cane from the outstretched hand of the elf.

It was nice to have a list of just one item to fill for my little girl.  It was going to make Christmas shopping easy and leave a little girl very happy.  Santa was not going to disappoint at our house.

Except that I wasn't exactly sure what "big blocks" were.  Logic told me that they were probably just like what they sounded, but when I saw some big blocks at her daycare center and pointed them out to her, she had one word, "NO!" When I showed her some other blocks at the daycare, she had that same one word, "No." And when we looked through the Sears Christmas catalog for "big blocks," it was "No," and "No," and "No." 

Alex was pretty verbal for a two year old, once telling me, "I am two and a half, but you can't cut me in half."  Yet we were having some trouble with our descriptive words with this one. I tried to get her to explain to me what "big blocks" looked like, but she was unconcerned, uninterested, and a little dismissive.

"Santa will know!" End of discussion.

It was already the second week of December.  I was getting a little nervous and started watched morning cartoons instead of CNN, hoping for a commercial about "big blocks."  But they apparently weren't the big ticket item that season, because there was nary a mention. I walked the toy aisles of the local Venture store after work searching for something that looked like "big blocks" that we hadn't seen in the catalogs or at the daycare. Nothing. I went to the small toy store near our house that we sometimes walked to and that was filled with tin wind up toys that she liked.  Nothing.

I started hoping that her list might change, sort of like her recent preference for plums over bananas. But it stayed the same.  And unlike our hearts at Christmas, it never grew.  There was only one thing that my little girl wanted for the first Christmas that she might actually remember, and I didn't know what it was. 

I talked to Alex's nanny and Miss Amy at the daycare to see if they had any idea what "big blocks" might be. They didn't.  I told Alex that Santa might not be able to make any "big blocks" this year and that sometimes he can't bring the things you want.  She told me, "He will."

And finally, I bought some toys that I knew Alex would like, but that weren't on her list of one. There were all kind of big blocks, including the ones that look like bricks that I remembered wanting as a child. But the real "big blocks" weren't going to be under the tree. 

A few days before Christmas, I took Alex with me to one of the local stores to pick up some tape and wrapping paper.  It had a small toy department in the basement, next to the Christmas displays, and we wandered over before heading for the checkout.  

Alex climbed on a rocking horse, walked through a Little Tykes play house, and then, in the middle of the second of two short aisles, stopped. There on the top shelf, too high for her to reach, was a big plastic bag filled with multicolored, over-sized, generic, Lego-looking, "big blocks."  The look on her face was like she had found her way home.  

She kind of had.  Home to the magical world of Christmas and a Santa who always knows.

      

                          A Merry and Magical Christmas to all.


P.S.  Ellen and I have a list this year.  It only has one item:  1) an occasional comment on our blog, please

   

Leslie's Christmas Song

    I’ve always thought of Christmas as a magical season, but there was one time, years ago, when the magic floated right out of the sky and landed right on my head.

    It was the Christmas Eve family mass at packed St. Matthews Church back in 1986, and I was crammed into a pew, along with Jim and three of my four children.  Instead of Jim’s favorite seats near the back of the church, we were all sitting close to the front.  I had a twin on my lap, as did Jim, and Steve was wedged in between us.  Only Leslie was missing.  She was a proud and happy new member of the Children’s Choir, and we had left her surrounded by her friends up in the balcony choir loft.

    There was a lot of whispering and murmuring in the crowded church as latecomers tried to find seats, and parents tried to hush small children excited about being in church at night instead of morning Sunday School and even more excited about Santa’s imminent arrival the next day. 

    And then, a bell rang, and a child’s voice rang out:  “Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear savior’s birth...” and a hush fell over the entire church.  The whole congregation was suddenly silent, mesmerized, listening to a pure, angelic voice fill the huge church with the true, simple meaning and joy of Christmas.  It was lovely, it was compelling, it was perfect that a young child was reminding us why we were celebrating that night, I remember thinking.

     It wasn’t until the last note drifted away, as the organ began to play and the other children began singing, and the priests began their entrance into the crowded church, that I realized that it was not just any child who had been singing, who had stirred the emotions of hundreds of people.  The young singer was my child, my Leslie, who had nonchalantly mentioned on the way home from choir practice a week ago that she had a little solo in the Christmas Eve program. 

    I was utterly shocked. I knew that Leslie had a sweet voice, that she sounded great singing along with Mary Poppins or the Sesame Street crew.  I knew that she had not inherited my complete inabiity to carry a tune, but I had no idea that she could actually sing.  I remember sitting in the pew, stunned, wanting to hear Leslie sing again, wanting to go back in time and listen again to Leslie’s incredible solo.  I remember leaning over Steve and whispering to Jim “That was Leslie,” and the surprised look on his face.  I remember hugging a twin tight and whispering “that was your sister.”  And I remember, to my surprise, tears running down my cheeks.

    Leslie’s Christmas solo was only the first of many performances I’ve listened to.  I will always hear the Christmas songs “I wonder as I Wander” and “The Friendly Beasts” in Leslie’s voice.  Every time I hear Julie Andrews sing “the hills are alive with the sound of Music,” I remember Leslie’s voice ringing through the trees as we hiked through the woods at Turkey Run.  

        I’ve always been proud and thrilled with Leslie’s performances, but I’ve never been as emotionally moved as I was that Christmas Eve.  In retrospect, I’m wondering if part of my astonished and emotional reaction was because Leslie’s singing made me realize for the first time the uniqueness of each of my children with their special talents, gifts, and personalities and how utterly distinct they are from their parents, no matter how much we love them.  A magic moment, indeed.

Age Is Not Just a Number

     Having reached the milestone of a 60th birthday, I've heard my share of "age is just a number" and "age doesn't matter" euphemisms.  And I beg to differ.
     I spent last evening at my sister's house, entertained by her new grandkids, two month old Zoe and three month old James. At one point someone laid them, side-by-side, on a blanket on the floor for a photo op, and it was immediately clear that those little babies weren't the same age.  They were both adorable, with their wild kicking and occasional smiles. But James had a real heft behind his kicks, making resounding thumps that overpowered the clicks of the camera.  Zoe, with a month's less milk intake, had a much daintier kick, making nary a sound as her little feet hit the floor.  Whether defined by weight, girth, head circumference, or activity level, the difference a month makes was obvious.
     And I'm pretty sure that if my own six month old grandson had been available to lay down on the blanket, the difference of another 3 months would have been obvious too.   Mainly because he would have crawled right off of that blanket in a straight line towards the nearest remote control.
     Jump ahead some several hundreds of months and lay me down on that same blanket next to a 40 year old and a 50 year old, and there would be differences there too.  No longer defined by such milestones as babbling, blowing bubbles, or rolling over (which might make for an interesting test), it would be no less clear that age is more than just a number.
     It is the accumulation of skills and breakthroughs.  Accomplishments and disappointments.  Memories and regrets.  But also, gray hair and liver spots. Wrinkles and wisdom--although the fact that I'm letting someone lay me on the floor at the age of 60 might tend to contradict that last one.
     No one ever tries to stop the natural progression of  milestones in the early years, where each new change is cause for celebration.  And although we may want to, and even try to, we can't stop the milestones in the later years either.  We can work at keeping ourselves alert and healthy, but we can't keep ourselves young. And we can't stop the changes that the months and years bring.  We can only meet them head on with the same determination shown by the two month old Zoe as she valiantly tried to roll over.  It may not be as much fun watching the evolution of our own bodies as it is our grandkids', but it's no less real.
     I vividly remember being young, but I am not, and never will be, 60 years young.  Age matters.  As a 40 year old, I probably could have jumped right up from that blanket.  As a 50 year old, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten up unaided. But as a sixty year old, I'm likely to be apologizing for falling to sleep, and then asking how I got down there.
     And I'd sure appreciate a hand in getting up.  But get up I will.  Because I need to find that six month old.  He's got my remote control.

the F word

     I've never been one to curse very much.  Oh sure, I've uttered the occasional cuss word under my breath, and I practiced stringing the words together as a kid.  But saying the words out loud in the course of regular conversation has been pretty rare.  I've tended to save the bad words for the occasions that called for them.  And even then, I've used them sparingly.
     Not that I have anything against cursing.  I'm not like my mom who, as I remember it, cussed only once in her life and immediately started crying when she realized she had said the word out loud.  I can only assume that she had made some pact with herself never to cuss in front of her daughters and was utterly appalled at her lack of self control.  And, indeed, I remember being shocked--even though it wasn't a terrible word and was totally appropriate for the circumstances.  Who wouldn't cuss during a family driving vacation, in a hot un-airconditioned Chevy, with whiny kids and "No Vacancy" signs at every roadside motel we drove by.
     But even with my tolerance for potty mouths, there was one word that always bothered me.  The F word. There was just something about that word that separated it from all the others.  It was harsh--nasty sounding--shocking--hardly ever appropriate.  And yet, oh so satisfying on those occasions when the D word or the S word or the H word or the GD word just didn't quite do it.  When nothing else opened that relief valve for the frustration, or anger, or disappointment you felt.  You could bite down on your lower lip and the F word was always there.  Ready.  And it almost always helped.
     I never completely understood what it was about the word.  It is, after all, just letters.  Not all that different from innocuous words like luck or duck, or suck. Well, maybe not suck.  But otherwise, it looks just like one of the string of -uck words that you'd find in a rhyming dictionary.  Yet, make the first letter an F and, instead of poetry, you get shock and awe.
     Or at least you use to.  Lately I've noticed that the F word has gotten common.  Almost a part of everyday language.  I hear it on the street, in airplanes, at Thanksgiving dinners.  And I hardly ever gasp.  Shoot, I've even been known to utter it myself at such mundane moments as dribbling coffee down the front of my shirt or forgetting to pay the cable bill on the final night of Dancing with the Stars.
     Sure, the word may still get bleeped on TV.  But even that's only on some stations.  And not the ones that anybody watches.
    These days, it's almost become just another word.  George Carlin probably wouldn't even have an act. I mean, really.  If the F word no longer shocks a 60 year old woman, where's the gratification?  Where's the relief?  Where are the laughs? 
     Somebody needs to come up with a new word.  Quick.
     Otherwise, where's that leave us grandmas who are stuck in our SUV's, with whiny grandkids, and no McDonald's in sight.

Getting My Religion From Facebook

     I grew up surrounded by a lot of good, god fearing people.  These days, I mainly see them on Facebook, except on Wednesdays and Sundays when they're at church and I'm not.  But growing up, I was one of them.  Catholics on the left, Baptists on the right, and me sitting in the back pew of the United Methodist church seeing how many cuss words I could string together in one sentence.
     I've been uttering that sentence again lately--every time I log onto Facebook and find a big old revival tent set up on my homepage.
     I'm part of the new demographic--the 50 or older Facebook user.  Or, as I like to call us, Facebook users with less than 100 friends. We must be a discriminating group, because I see friend lists of 48 and 67 and 12 (take note, Robert Sloan).  When I signed up, my goal was to break 100.
     But I had my rules.  Don't embarrass my daughters by befriending their friends. Don't befriend old boyfriends.  Or their wives. Don't befriend anyone who might say, "Jeanne who?"  Don't befriend anyone who might want to chat on a regular basis.  Because, really, I just want to lurk and look at your pictures.  There's only one rule that I backed away from.  It was the one that didn't let me befriend anyone who I might turn down a different aisle from if I saw them at the local IGA grocery store.  That one left me languishing at about  10.
     I ended up with a group of friends heavy on people from my hometown--a small, Southern Illinois town that sits just outside of the unofficial boundaries of the Bible Belt. But, if my Facebook page is any indication, somebody needs to move that boundary due North, posthaste, because I can't log on without a flock of old friends quoting me scripture and lifting me up with prayer.
     Not to mention sending me personal "Messages from God."
     I don't know if anyone else gets these, but they show up on my wall in a picture of a blue sky, with "Message from God" written in white clouds, followed by a pithy little message. Morgan Freeman's voice booms out in my head every time I see one.  "MESSAGE FROM GOD!!!!"  It's a little intimidating.  The other day the message said, "God gives us a clean sheet of paper every morning to write on.  It's up to us what we put on it."  That little missive put this blog post on the back burner for quite some time.
     It's beginning to irritate me.  Almost to the point where I look forward to the posts telling me how to win a free iPad.  Because I get a lot of those too. My Facebook friends also seem to be a little gullible.  Not that I'm suggesting a link between gullibility and religion.  I'm just saying.
     I'm more of a skeptic.  Particularly about religion.
     I trace it to my childhood. My best friend back then was my next door neighbor, Donald. We got along most of the time, but occasionally he'd cheat at hopscotch and I'd hit him with a stick. He'd run home crying, and five minutes later I'd get pulled over to his house to apologize.  The next day, sure enough, he'd hit me back.  But come Saturday, he'd get to go to confession, say two Hail Mary's, and be forgiven.
     "Whoah!" I'd whine. "What's with that?  I'm the one that got hit with the stick."  It hardly seemed fair.  Particularly to us Methodists who didn't have access to a confessional.
     As we got a little older and quit hitting each other, we'd sit on my front porch and play all day Monopoly games.  Donald slowly took my money while telling me how I was going to be stuck in Limbo for all of eternity since I wasn't Catholic.  I kind of believed him since we Methodists were pretty laid back compared to the Catholics.  But I knew something was up when he told me that even the Baptists couldn't get out of Limbo. For my money, the Baptists deserved a place in heaven a whole lot more than the non-apologetic Catholics. Which isn't to say that the Baptists didn't have their own problems since their eternity, wherever it might be, was going to feel pretty endless without any music or dancing.
     I think the Catholics eventually backed away from the whole Limbo business, which makes me happy. Still, it's unsettling that it took so long. And, personally, I think they closed Limbo because it just got a little more popular than heaven.  It has me worried that some day they'll decide to close purgatory too.  And I really hope they don't, because I think I'd get along with a lot of the people there.
     Not that it helped me a lot back then though, since, according to Donald, I was facing two separate damnations--I wasn't Catholic and I wasn't baptized.  "Double damned," he gloated.
     I'm a little safer these days because my parents finally got around to baptizing me.   But not until I was 13 and none too happy to be standing next to a screaming baby in front of every Methodist in town. My pink corduroy jumper was the perfect compliment to my red face.  Part of me understood my parents' thinking--that something as important as baptism shouldn't be done until I was old enough to understand it.   But I was 13.  I didn't understand anything.  Especially why they thought it was a good idea to let me spend an hour curling my hair that morning when they knew someone was going to drop water on it. But, also, how baptism could be so darn important  if they felt perfectly comfortable leaving me unsaved and unprotected for 13 years.
     It was all pretty confusing, and I eventually resolved that confusion by walking away--got up out of that back pew and moved just far enough away to get out from under the Bible Belt that encircled my little town so tightly.
     My Facebook friends have mostly stayed put. And while they seem to have maintained clarity on the whole religion business, I'm still languishing in my own personal limbo, trying to figure out how so many people could ever fit into heaven anyway.
     Sometimes I think that my problem is that I don't pray enough.  Because I don't really pray at all.  Well..., occasionally I'll pray when I'm in one of my own foxholes of trouble.  Like when I had pimples in junior high. "God answers all prayers," they said.  But, apparently, in his own sweet time, because that prayer wasn't answered until well into my adult years.
      I'm pretty sure that if my Facebook friends got pimples, they'd be lifting those pock marks right up with prayer.  Someone with a 48 hour bug last week had 37 "lifting you up with prayers" on her wall. I felt like yelling. "GET OUT THE VICKS.  LOAD UP ON TYLENOL! Has anyone heard of PENICILLIN?."  But I ended up saying something lame like, "Wishing you well." I think I heard snickering when I pressed send. "That girl just never got it."
      Although I'm certainly getting it on Facebook, with a homepage that feels like the new "front door" for the devout.  No one's converted me yet, but they have got me thinking.  I can't even press "SAVED" on my computer without thinking, "Nope, not yet."
     I know I might feel more comfortable if I quit befriending the bible thumpers.  But I really wanted to break that glass ceiling of 100 friends without breaking any of my rules, none of which mentioned religion.  If I excluded everyone likely to be vocal about religion, I'd have less friends than god has commandments.
     And it's not like I have anything against my faithful friends.  They're good people.  I ate a lot of fish sticks at their Formica tables and we had some good times in those back pews. There's even a part of me that envies their certainty and believes they might be right.  Or--like the eight year old who's beginning to doubt Santa--a part of me that wants to believe. Just in case.
     If only I could get over that "heaven has to be awfully crowded" problem.  Because I really hate crowds.
     So I'll keep right on befriending the devout even though it means skipping over parables and scrolling past scripture to get to their pictures.  After all, in their own way, they really have lifted me up with prayer.  I climbed through that glass ceiling of 100 friends one god fearing friend at a time.
    "Godspeed," as they say.

Homemade Halloween

     The only thing I made for Halloween this year was our traditional Halloween stew--complete with the fall leaves that Alex and Bess were convinced came from our back yard until years later when they discovered bay leaves in the aisle of their local grocery stores.
     I didn't make any jack-o-lanterns.   I didn't make any pumpkin pies.  And, living in an apartment with no trick-or-treaters, I didn't make multiple trips to the grocery store to pick out bags of Halloween candy that I'd enjoy having as leftovers.
      I also didn't make any costumes, although there was a time when I did.  A time when I pulled an all-nighter pushing dull needles through layers of  fake fur destined to become a full-body, Care Bear costume for Alex.  A time when I spent multiple evenings cutting out poster board and gluing on hundreds of individual sequins and jewels to make butterfly wings, and then figuring out how to attach 4 foot wing spans onto 12 inch shoulders. A time when I altered one of my own suits the night before Halloween because Bess decided at the last minute that she wanted to go as an attorney instead of a princess.
     I don't get a lot of credit for those evenings, because somehow Alex and Bess remember that Baba, their St. Louis grandma, always made their Halloween costumes.  And to give her credit, there were gypsy costumes, and witch costumes, and Wild Thing costumes that bore Baba's accomplished sewing.  But there were also less professional looking costumes, glued, and sloppily sewn by me.
      The common thread was that they were all homemade--with love.
      And also a little bit of necessity, since the store bought costumes back then were cheap looking plastic, one size fits most, with colors and designs that inexplicably stopped at the side seams so that everyone looked the same as the Halloween parade passed you by.  Accessories were usually limited to a hard plastic mask with eye holes spaced too far apart and mouth holes you could barely breathe through, and fit was accomplished by cutting off a little from the legs, a little from the sleeves, and tying the one plastic tie a little bit tighter in the back.  
      The "good" costumes were the homemade ones-- crafted by moms and grandmas and pulled together by needle and thread, Elmer's glue, and whatever could be found around the house.  They weren't always professional looking, but they were almost always creative.  One of my favorites was worn by a little boy from a family of five kids (and a very busy mom), who came to the door with his winter jacket on top of his head.  When I looked a little confused, he told me happily that he was "a coat."
     There's not much confusion these days, when even the costumes from the drug store come with hats and accessories, and are made out of lots of different, authentic looking materials. My own grandson looked adorable for his first Halloween, dressed as an elephant, with a full-body fleece costume, complete with Dumbo size ears, hooves, and a foot long trunk growing out of the attached hood.  His contemporaries were equally cute as realistic looking pumpkins, and leopards, and butterflies, and pirates.  There wasn't a single dropped stitch or glob of Elmer's among them.  And I'm pretty sure the moms' creative input was directed mainly at deciding, "Walgreen's or Target?"
     Which is why I was surprised when Alex asked if I could help with Flynn's costume next year. She's living in Africa, with not a lot of access to supplies, and was apparently thinking ahead.  I grabbed my Elmer's, ready for whatever she had in mind.
     And what she had in mind was me going to the after-Halloween costume sales that she had seen advertised online.  I dropped the Elmer's and made a quick trip to Target.
     I could say I was chagrined that there wasn't going to be a homemade costume.  Or I could say something about progress sometimes being a little bit sad.
     In my first draft of this blog post, that's actually how I ended it.
     But I didn't post it because it didn't feel right.  And, quite frankly, it was a lie.  All the little kids in their store bought costumes looked adorable this year. I would have loved to have had choices like that for my girls, and would have been at the front of the line to buy any one of them.
     Thanks to Alex, I kind of was.  Courtesy of aisles of professional looking, non-plastic, half off, after-Halloween-sale, costumes at Target, Flynn's ready for next year with a full-body, fake fur, very cute, monkey costume, complete with a long tail in back, and a stuffed banana attached to his left paw.
     Bought with love.  And not even a little regret.

Perfect Babies

October, 2011

    Jill called me after spending the afternoon with Leslie, Joe, and Baby James.  ‘Mom, do you know that Joe Rydberg thinks that his baby is perfect?’ she said with disgust.  And I’m pretty sure that she was rolling her eyes in her inimitable way.  ‘He thinks that James is the most perfect baby in the world.’

    ‘Don’t get me wrong’ she added.  ‘I think that James is a great baby, I think he’s really cute, I think that he’s a pretty good sleeper for being six weeks old....but perfect??’

    I have to agree with Joe on this one.  I too think that my first grandchild is pretty darn perfect.  Just like I once thought my own firstborn son was perfect...

    I have a very vivid memory of standing with Aunt Shirl and staring through the nursery window at Steve as he lay swaddled in a blue blanket in a tiny baby bed, one baby among twenty or more in the Prentice Hospital nursery.  Steve was born before the days of rooming in. In 1976 new-borns spent most of their first hours in a hospital nursery while their tired mothers tried to sleep and anxiously awaited the arrival of their babies at feeding times.  Visitors met the new babies through the nursery glass.

    I remember staring at Steve and thinking that he was the most beautiful baby in that entire nursery.  I actually remember being surprised that all the other people standing and staring at the babies weren’t pointing at Steve and saying ‘isn’t that the most beautiful baby?’  Just like Joe, I thought that Steve was the most perfect baby in the world.

    It wasn’t until months later when I was looking at pictures we had taken of newborn Steve that I realized that Steve was not quite the perfect baby I had imagined.  Steve’s delivery had been a bit traumatic because he was what they called a posterior presentation, so I had spent four hours trying to push him out before he was finally delivered with forceps.  Being stuck in the birth canal for all those hours had given my beautiful baby boy a somewhat elongated head.  While I was blissfully staring at the nursery window at my beautiful baby boy, all those other people at the window were probably thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, look at the pointed head on that one!’

    I also thought that Steve’s sister Leslie was perfect--although her baby pictures show bright red marks on both cheeks from the forceps that were also used to deliver her.  And I thought that Jill and Johanna were perfect--although baby pictures of Jill show a red, squished up face.  Johanna, however, does look perfect in her picture!    

    Love, mother-love, father-love, aunt-love (because Aunt Shirl agreed with me that Steve was the most beautiful baby in that long ago nursery and I’m pretty sure that Jill thinks that James is nearly perfect) may indeed be blind,  and beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder.

  I’m beholding Baby James and I’m thinking he’s perfect.  As perfect as his Uncle Steve!

I Can't Be 60 If I Still Shop At Gap

    My blog posts have been a little heavy on the age issue so far and I'm trying to get away from that.  It's just that becoming a grandmother and turning 60 within the span of the last five months has kind of unglued me.  I can't seem to get my head around it, and find myself mumbling, "I can't be 60...," almost as often as I start sentences with, "Remember when."
    But I think I'm finally coming to terms with it and am ready to move on to other topics.  Like fashion.
    Bess went shopping recently.  Not high end shopping, but Goodwill shopping.  And not regular Goodwills, but three massive Goodwill outlets filled with Goodwill rejects that are sold out of overflowing bins instead of on racks and are priced by the pound instead of by the piece.
     Bess is a lot like me, with an eye for a bargain and a willingness to spend her Saturdays at garage sales or rifling through warehouses in search of a find.   She's also like me in that she often makes the mistake of going for quantity over quality.
    Which means that she sometimes arrives home with 50 pounds of clothes--or floor to floor clothing once I dumped out the 8 super-sized bags in search of treasures for myself.  Unfortunately, her finds on this trip were heavy on large sizes and I didn't find much to try on.
    Unlike my age, my weight has stayed in low numbers over the years and I rarely wear anything larger than a medium.  Not a bad problem to have, but also not nearly as good as it sounds.  Because, although my weight hasn't changed, it certainly has shifted.  "I remember when I had a waist!" has become a common refrain.
    I uttered it again when I tried on the cute little Ann Taylor skirt that I pulled from Bess's pile--the one that was tailored.  The one that, unlike me, had a waist.  The one that wouldn't come close to zipping closed and sent me back into the pile and not climbing out until the next day when I found a small pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans.   The jeans were a keeper.  They were made out of that wonderful stretch denim that looks just like the real thing--at least in low light and in the eyes of someone who wears bifocals.  My girls might scoff, but stretch jeans are one of the few things that can get me through a day without leaving a button indentation on my non-existent waist that lasts until my next bath.  I love them.
     They're almost as good as the Gap jeans that I discovered on one of my own bargain hunting trips.  
     I've been shopping in Gap for years--mostly for my daughters, but also for myself.  Gap has great sales, and it's been gratifying to hang things in my closet from a store that my daughters didn't turn their noses up at.  It's also been one of the few stores that I've been able to shop side by side with the girls without eventually saying, "I'm just going to run over to the elastic waist department, or meet me in Naturalizer in 30 minutes."
     It's only lately that the Gap dresses have started to feel a little too short,  the tops a little too tight, and the store a little too young.   I still went in, but I rarely left with anything other than Christmas candles.  I got the bag but not the gratification.
     Until the day I came across a pair of jeans on the Gap sale rack, in my size, for $4.98.  I'll try on anything for $4.98, even jeans that look like they might be cut a little skimpy--like they should have been sent to T.J. Maxx as an irregular because someone cut the top five inches off of the pattern.  Like you can't hold them up without wondering what you're going to do with that extra five inches of underwear that will be peeking out.
     But low price tags resolve a lot of reservations  And I'm actually getting kind of used to a little underwear showing.  I've even been known to show a little bra strap myself on occasion.  Okay, not necessarily on purpose, like my daughters, but still.  And thank goodness for that, because I made a great discovery that day.
     Gap has these amazing jeans called "Low Risers."  They look just like regular jeans, but they stop many inches below where your waist used to be.  Now, admittedly, when you first hold them up, you're tempted to put them back because, "Whoa... these things are going to fall right off."  But when you try them on and turn around in front of that slightly too-well lighted mirror, you realize that your hips have expanded just like your waist, and will comfortably keep them up through whatever contortions you have to do to get out of your Lazy Boy.
    Sure, you may not want to bend over too far, but you're probably not doing that very much these days anyway. And, yes, you may need to buy some longer shirts and some shorter underwear, but that's a small concession for being able to breathe comfortably.   There's no waist band cutting into your stomach, no zipper extending all the way up into that dangerous area of belly fat, no sucking in to force that big button through the too tiny button hole, and no embarrassing elastic waists to stare at you from your dresser drawers and remind you that you've turned the wrong way at another fashion corner.
    I'm telling you these "low-risers" are made for the over 50 (okay, 60), no-waist body. Why Gap isn't out there marketing them to the aging baby boomers, I don't know and don't understand.  Because there's a thick-waist market out there just waiting to be tapped.
     They've certainly sold me.  I bought multiple pairs and am breathing more comfortably than I have in months.  And, really, I can't be 60 if I still shop at Gap.

Cursive Writing

September, 2011

    I was shocked to read in the newspaper several weeks ago that the state of Indiana has decided to drop a requirement to teach cursive writing as part of the public school curriculum. Instead, all Indiana students will be required to learn and become proficient in keyboarding.  I was even more shocked today when I looked up ‘cursive writing’ on Wikipedia and learned that  as of June 24, 2011, cursive writing was not longer a mandatory part of the grade school curriculum in my own state of Illinois!  

    Starting 3rd grade at Northside School with Mrs. Buckner was a big deal back in my grade school days, primarily because Mrs. Buckner was famous for making caramel apples for her class.  But 3rd grade was also the year that that Mrs. Buckner taught thirty nine year olds both our multiplication tables and cursive writing!  Even now, almost 55 years later, when I think of 3rd grade, I think of caramel apples, timed multiplication tests, and D’Learian cursive letters circling the room high above the blackboards.  Even now, I remember how proud I was when I could finally write my own name!

    My mother had a unique 3rd grade experience.  She lived in the country and attended a one-room school where one year she unexpectedly found herself the only 3rd grader in the school, so she was suddenly promoted to 4th grade.  She always claimed that the reason her handwriting was so bad was because cursive was taught in 3rd grade and all of her new 4th grade classmates already knew how to write, so no one bothered to teach her.  Fortunately, however, she never seemed to have any difficulty with multiplication! 

    My son Steve has the worst handwriting of any of my children and I’m pretty sure that his bad handwriting can be blamed on his 3rd grade experience as well.  Steve’s 3rd grade teacher was Mrs. Marietta.  Mrs. Marietta was a no-nonsense teacher who, legend has it, kept a red scarf in her desk that she whipped out if and when she was in a bad mood.  Her students quickly learned to tiptoe around their teacher whenever they spotted the scarf.  She was also a big believer in detentions.  I’m not exactly sure what Steve was doing in Mrs. Marietta’s classroom besides not paying attention to that red scarf, but, although he was a whiz at multiplication, he never really mastered handwriting--and he averaged at least one detention a week for the first semester of 3rd grade.  Steve’s detentions finally decreased when I realized that he didn’t mind detentions.  He actually liked hanging out after school with his friends in detention, and sometimes he even got a head start on his homework.  It was me who had to make a return trip to St. Matt’s to pick him up who was being punished.  Once I figured this out and started charging him $1.00 a late ride, the detentions improved.  But his handwriting never did!

    Leslie, my most artistic child, also had Mrs. Marietta but she sailed through 3rd grade with only one detention (for chewing gum) and emerged with beautiful handwriting that today makes her unique within her chosen field of medicine.  Her father, another physician, has the stereotypic  doctor’s scrawl. His 3rd grade teacher was a nun!

    The trouble with having more than two children is that after two, everything begins to blur.  I’m pretty sure that Jill had Mrs. Marietta for 3rd grade, I’m pretty sure that, knowing Jill, she got her share of detentions, but my only vivid memory of Jill’s cursive skills is the fact that by high school she could perfectly imitate my own not terribly proficient signature, so much so that I couldn’t tell her copy from my own.  I’ve since learned that Jill spent most of high school signing her own permission slips, report cards, and detentions!  Mrs. Marietta would be appalled!

    Johanna’s brain tumor made multitasking activities difficult for her so, while she learned cursive, she has always preferred printing.  However, she is a whiz at her times tables.

    Obviously much has changed since my mom and I were in school.  Obviously much has changed even since my kids were in school.  My son’s keyboarding class in high school was still called typing.  No one had any idea that opposable thumbs would supplant index fingers when it came to tapping out messages on communication devices! Leslie got her first cell phone her junior year of college and all it did was make and receive calls.  Texting was still years away.  According to Wikipedia, only 15% of high school students taking the ACT’s today write their essays in cursive.  Clearly schools today are correct to insist that all students become proficient in keyboarding.  But I’m not sure that keyboarding vs cursive needs to be an either/or choice.

    Keyboarding is efficient and quick.  It’s a skill that everyone needs in this technological age we live in.  But it lacks the personal touch of something written in cursive.   I have a group of high school friends I still keep in touch with, and, 45 years after we all graduated from high school, I immediately recognize all their handwriting when I find their Christmas cards in my mailbox.  My parents have been gone for almost ten years now, but occasionally I will come across a card, a note, the back of a photograph--and immediately I recognize their handwriting and have a sense of their presence.   

    Indiana (and Illinois) haven’t eliminated the teaching of cursive writing, they’ve just made it optional.  I’m hoping that the Mrs. Buckners and Mrs. Marietta’s teaching third grade today will continue to incorporate cursive in their own curriculum.  Handwriting is a very personal thing, one of the things that makes us unique individuals.  Good or bad, neat or messy, artistic or ugly, slanted, sprawling, it’s ours alone.  As someone named ddavidshi once said, “I don’t have bad handwriting. I have my own Font!”

    In this increasingly homogenous world we live in, we all need our own Fonts!

     

Sweet Baby James Cooper

September, 2011

    I’ve been a grandmother for three weeks now, thanks to the happy arrival of Baby James Cooper Rydberg.  And with the eminent arrival of Baby Harms in the next few week, after a long and emotionally draining wait, suddenly in the Harms family, it’s raining grandbabies!!  

    So, what does it feel like to be a grandmother?  Well, it’s wonderful.  There’s nothing better than cuddling with a baby, sniffing that sweet baby smell.  I’m thinking that this grandma gig is going to be really great.  

    But...

    When Joe took me in to the recovery room to see Baby James for the first time, it was an amazingly emotional experience.  I was beyond thrilled to meet my new grandson, but it was seeing the joy on Leslie’s face that brought the tears to my eyes.

    When we brought the baby home that first week and he was struggling with breast feeding, I was never concerned about the baby’s weight gain.  Instead, I was worried that Leslie would feel depressed and guilty about not being able to feed her baby in the way she wanted.

    When the baby had trouble sleeping, it was Leslie that I worried about being tired.

    When Leslie checked the baby’s diaper and was worried that his circumsized penis might be infected, I took a peek and offered my opinion.  I thought that everything looked okay, but I was immediately concerned about how tricky it was going to be for Leslie to combine being both a mother and a doctor.

    And when Leslie struggled with trying to decide whether to call her baby Jamie or James, it never occured to me to try to figure out which one he more looked like.  James Cooper is Leslie’s baby to name; I have already named mine.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I am truly enamoured of James Cooper.  I think he is the the most beautiful baby on earth right now, a title he will hold at least until his cousin in born!  I can stare at him for hours and like nothing better than for him to take a nap on my chest.  I love the times when I have him to myself and I can whisper love words in his tiny ear and pretend he is smiling back at me.  I am having a wonderful time wandering through baby stores and picking out cute baby clothes that I would probably have never been able to afford for my own firstborn.  I lay in bed at night and imagine all the fun things Baby James and I are going to do over the years.  

    But...

    When the phone rings and it’s Leslie, I ask first how she’s doing before I ask about James Cooper.  Because, I’ve realized that no matter how old I am, no matter how old Leslie is, she is, and will always be, my baby.

   Just as Baby James Cooper is, and will always be, hers.

Remembering Marshall

     There's a new page on facebook where people who grew up in my small hometown of Marshall can post their memories about growing up there.  It's only been up for about a week and already has a following of nearly 700 people.  Which is a pretty good turnout for a town that graduates less than ninety seniors each year and whose population has never topped 3,500.
     And, I have to say, Marshall's coming off looking pretty darn good.  Of the hundreds of posts, I haven't seen a single one that's negative.  All the teachers across the generations are loved, the catholic priests are revered, the mushrooms are to die for, the food in the school cafeteria is tasty, and everyone who moved away misses the town and still thinks of it as "home."  There are no memories of bullying in school, boredom at home, economic inequality, joblessness, break-ins, or worries about food being on the table.  Nor is there a single mention of alcoholism, even though the town has as many taverns as churches.  According to the facebook page, Marshall is the idyllic model of a small town--with happy families, rosy cheeked kids, no crime, no poverty, and no problems.  Mayberry at its best.
     Which is pretty much how I remembered Marshall too.  That is, until I moved back for several years in my mid-40's and started doing public defender work and seeing an underbelly of the town that I never knew existed. Murders in Marshall?  No way.  A serious drug problem?  I don't believe it.  Child abuse and neglect?  Not in my town.  Crippling poverty?  Not a chance.
     But it was all there underneath those shady elm trees.  And I'm pretty sure it was there when I was growing up--that there were a lot of kids who grew up in something other than idyllic conditions.  I thought I  knew everybody in town, but somehow I didn't know those kids.
     Which all makes me wonder about the facebook site and the Pollyanna picture that it portrays.  I suppose it's possible that people with really bad memories wouldn't be drawn to the site or wouldn't want to publicly post about them.  But what about the smaller problems that can play havoc with a happy childhood?  Is it possible that not a single person who was bullied in school has joined the group? Where are the memories of bad teachers, being the last one picked for the kickball team, loneliness, boredom, never getting off the bench in group sports, not having the quarter to get into the pool, the alcoholic cousin, the unemployed uncle?
     It may be telling that nearly all of the followers of the facebook site are over 50, with a well-worn AARP card in their wallets.  Maybe those 50 years are the time it takes for bad memories to fade and for the good ones to take on a prominence that they might not have always had. Maybe that's the time it takes for us to rewrite our memories in a way that deletes the bad times.
     I kind of hope that's the case--that bad memories get overridden by good ones as we get older. It makes me feel better about the bad things I saw in Marshall, especially those involving kids.  And it makes me think that there might actually be a silver lining to this whole aging thing--something better than my AARP  benefits and the promise of Social Security--which isn't looking all that promising lately.
     But I don't want to think about Social Security right now.  And I don't want to think about how my own memories of Marshall were a little tarnished when I moved back. I want to read about that 2 cent carton of milk we all used to buy at school.  And do you remember how much fun we had playing "Home Free All" late into the night?  Sleeping in the back yard in tents? Walking barefoot to the pool every day in the summer? How we all knew everybody in town?
     It really was an idyllic childhood.  Or so I think.

On Turning 60

    I made a bank deposit at the drive through the other day and drove away  with both my deposit slip and  the big pneumatic cylinder that they return the slip in.  I didn't realize it until that evening when I looked over and wondered what the odd thing sitting on my passenger seat was.  Oh.....
    When I told Alex about it the next morning, she just rolled her eyes and shook her head.  If Bess had been in the room,  I'm pretty sure they would have exchanged one of their knowing glances--that irritating, conspiracy of youth look that says, "I think Mom is losing it." 
     I'm turning 60 in a couple of weeks and the girls seem to see this as some sort of milestone, although not necessarily a good one.  I'm pretty sure they've started looking for signs of deterioration.  And I don't doubt that they're finding them.
     Saturday, for instance, I couldn't come up with my cat's name.  Which is a little bit pathetic since her name is "Kitty."  But, really, it was no big deal.  I  just used the anonymous call of, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty," and the cat came running.  No harm, no foul so to speak.
     My girls tend to see it differently though.  They seem to think that forgetfulness is a bad thing.  That it's tied up with aging.  Or brain cells dying. Or Mom losing it.  And so they look for signs.
     I probably should just ignore them.  But it's kind of got me worried that Alex may decide pretty soon that she can't let my grandson Flynn ride in a car with me. Come to think of it... I've never actually driven him anywhere yet.  And last weekend when I offered to drive home from St. Louis, she and Andy were quick to say that they weren't the least bit tired even though neither one of them has had a full nights sleep since Flynn arrived eight weeks ago.
     I think it might be time to sit down with the girls and explain to them that I'm okay, and that 60 is the new  40.  That I can still finish a crossword puzzle before either of them, name all of the finalists on Dancing With the Stars,  read several books a week (even if I can't remember the titles), and react in record  time at seeing anything vaguely resembling a mouse scampering across the floor. And that car accident this past winter?  It was absolutely not my fault.  Okay, I might bear a little responsibility for the broken back window in the Harms' Explorer, but that other accident...I was faultless.
     "Being able to text," I'll explain to them, "or having a phone with a keyboard, is not an appropriate test for competency."
     "And a little forgetfulness at a bank drive through is not a sign of impending senility. After all, I did remember to get my deposit slip.  It's right over....well, it's somewhere around here."
     All those signs they think they're seeing--they're really just nothing.
     When I was expecting Alex, I spent the entire nine months embroidering a special hand made blanket for her.  And then, on our very first outing, I set it on top of the car while buckling Alex in, forgot about it, and lost it forever somewhere along highway 40 in St. Louis.  My guess is that it probably ended up right beside my three gas caps that had the same fate.  And these things happened while I was a young 30-something.
    Surely the girls must remember me driving them to grade school and arriving with my coffee cup still on top of the car.  And I was how old then?  A baby...no more than 37.
     And what about that time that I wore two different shoes to the mall and shopped for 30 minutes before looking down and seeing one brown, one black, one flat, one with a heel.  I don't think I was even out of my 40's.
    That lost book that I finally found in the freezer....I was no more than 42 when I put it there.  Using hand lotion instead of conditioner on my hair....I've done that fairly regularly for decades. Forgetting to put the eggs in the recipe...not all that unusual over my lifetime of cooking.  And what about your Aunt Ellen?  She was only in her 30's when she drove the carpool and remembered to pick up everyone except her own daughter, who she left stranded at the grade school.
      "So girls," I'll explain, "the next time I drive off with the bank's cylinder, or forget your name, or open up the freezer when I'm looking for my book, don't assume that I'm losing it.  Because, believe me, I lost it a long time ago."
     And by the way, if you don't see me when you're reading this and think I might have wandered off, don't worry.  Flynn and I just went out for a little car ride. 

     
 

Where Have All the Bookstores Gone

     When I opened my used book store four years ago, I discovered some pet peeves I didn't know I had: dog-eared pages, books with writing in them, missing dust jackets, broken spines, scribblings in children's  books, and prices written in ink on books that eventually made their way to my store.
     Small irks.  All things I learned to live with.  A little Wite-Out took care of the inked prices.  Broken spines and dog-eared pages came to be seen as signs of a well read book.  Lines of initials on first pages as proof of a well traveled book.  And children's scribblings as a sign of an early appreciation of all of the arts.
     A few of the peeves I even learned to love.  Like the personalized inscriptions that so often express a fondness for a specific book as well as for a certain person.  All in all, a more than even trade for the pleasure of spending my days surrounded by books instead of by lawyers.
     But lately my pet peeves seem to have gotten bigger.  I get irritated not at books but at people.  The ones who write letters to editors bemoaning the closure of a local bookstore but buy their books off of Amazon.  The ones who don't browse in a bookstore because their lives are just too busy with all their electronic gadgets.  The ones who buy Kindles so as not to clutter their homes with books, but have four sets of china and two more bedrooms than family members.  The ones who consider books clutter.
     Admittedly these new irritations are all in direct correlation to what I see as dwindling book sales and the willingness of people to give up the pleasure of holding an actual book, flipping through it's pages, cuddling up in a chair with it, writing a personal inscription in it and, when they're finished, handing it off to a friend who might enjoy it.
     A woman came into my store recently looking for paperbacks because she thought her new Kindle was causing her hands to cramp.  I almost cheered.  It gave me hope.
     Surely, amid all the warnings and testings for hazards that we do in this country, someone will verify a causal connection between the new book readers and some minor health hazard.  Maybe they'll even find a slight, but verifiable, harm from second hand exposure to the devices.  They might even want to test for any slightly offensive odor that they emit.  With luck, some sort of graphic warning will be required.
    I'm not hoping for a cancer connection.  Just something minor that we booksellers can grab onto.  Something that makes people just a little bit afraid or irritated.
    And while they're at it, I hope they also do a test to reaffirm that browsing used book stores and holding an actual book in your hands causes pleasure. Because too many people seem to be forgetting that.

Soap on a Rope

Jim isn't the easiest person to buy presents for at any time, and June is a particularly bad time because his birthday and Father's Day are usually only days apart. Years ago, one of his children had the grand idea of getting him soap on a rope for the shower. Jim oohed and aahed over the gift, used it daily, and hung it up in the shower where it became a very visible symbol of a successful gift. Forever after, soap on a rope became the present of choice for Jim--and the present that always created dissension among the four kids as they competed for who would find the first (and best) soap on a rope.

Many months ago Johanna and I found an amazing collection of soaps on a rope at our favorite TJ Maxx. They had soaps on a rope in the shape of a dog bone, a ghost, a frog, and a rubber duckie. Ever aware of the difficulty of finding soap on a rope at auspicious times, we bought out the lot and Johanna came home with a big grin and years worth of presents for Jim. And unique soaps on a rope that would probably outshine any that her siblings might buy.

We stashed the soaps in a drawer for safekeeping, completely forgot that we had a ghost soap on a rope for Halloween, but did remember the dog bone for Christmas. Then we promptly forgot them once again until, searching for items for Steve's garage sale, I opened the drawer and found a ghost, a duck, and two frogs!

We were heading down to Lake Mattoon for Father's Day and had invited our friends the Garlands and the Meents to join us. Jo and her friend Sarah love to sing and they had decided to compose a song in honor of Father's Day. It only seemed appropriate to incorporate soap on a rope into the song and share Johanna's soap on a rope bounty. Jim and Greg Garland ended up with frog soaps on a rope and Dick Meets got the rubber duckie. I'm guessing that they had no idea just how much panache attaches to soap on a rope, but they were still impressed. Jim, as usual, was pleased.

As I am sure that he will be next Halloween when he gets a ghost soap on a rope!

Jo, Sarah, and Matt's Father's Day Song

We like our DAds, /Yes we do

Jim, Dick, and Greg,/ What a crew!

Jim takes our pictures. / He makes us smile.

When it comes to fashion,/ he is out of style

Our coach, Greg, /always makes us hustle.

His son, Matt, /shows off his muscle.

Dick likes to talk a lot./ He's full of hot air.

That's why Sarah/ can lift him in the air.

Jim says that we/ are a bit squirrly,

He always yells/ “not another girly.”

Dick's favorite spot is/ his chair that reclines.

He likes to relax/ with a clicker and felines.

Greg is our favorite coach./ HE loves running drills.

When he's not coaching us,/ he loves running GRILLS.

Jim likes poker/ and he likes sudoko

We all think that/ he’s a bit loco!

Dick likes to drink/ a beer after mowing

We wonder where/ his hair is going.

Greg likes to make us/ run laps and jog.

He would really like/ to get a family dog.

We like our Dads,/ yes we do

JIm, Dick, and Greg,/ What a crew.

You’re the best dads,/ so lets give a cheer.

We’d like to give you/ a year’s worth of beer

But beer is too expensive/ and we’re too cheap

Jim, Dick, and Greg, /please don’t weep!

You're the bestest fathers/ and that's not a joke.

So here's your present, / its soap on a rope.

Just Like My Dad

     I've always been a lot like my mom--small in stature, introverted, self-conscious in groups, and a little too quick to find something I'm dissatisfied with or worried about.  My dad, on the other hand, was portly, a people person, and completely content with all aspects of his unassuming life--including me.  I adored him.
     As a kid, I tried to be more like him.  I went to White Sox games instead of shopping, practiced softball more than piano, and collected autographs of major league players instead of movie stars.  I avoided the hard classes, reined in ambition, and on almost every night during my last years of high school I watched Johnny Carson with him.
     We had our regular seats.  Dad's was a big brown plaid recliner that I never had enough heft to make recline.  The fabric was worn in patches and the arms were smudged with grease that the Lava soap didn't reach and that Dad brought home every day from the chemical plant where he worked from my birth until his retirement.
     Mine was Mom's stuffed, blue tweed rocker that sat to the left of Dad's chair, separated by a lamp table that allowed them both to read their library books at night.  By the time Johnny came on Mom had usually vacated the chair and moved to the couch, where she'd recline and fall asleep with an open book by her side.  On the few occasions when she stayed awake, I'd lay down on the shag carpet directly in front of the console TV, with Dad at my back.
     Dad almost always had a crossword puzzle that he would work on during the show and I had Dad.  It was a more insular world back then and not a lot of popular culture reached our small rural town.  With only three TV stations and sporadic radio reception, I didn't know the majority of the guests. As they were making their entrance, Dad would patiently explain who they were and why they were famous, often adding a little of his own history to their stories.
     We each had our favorites.  Mine was an author, whose name I don't remember, but who was urbane and witty and always brought along his Asian wife, who was both exotic and gorgeous.  Dad liked anyone who was connected to sports or the big bands, but also had a particular fondness for Angie Dickinson, who never failed at getting him to set down that crossword.  We both liked the new comedians and Carmac the Magnificent, and rarely missed the opening monologue.
     Sometimes Dad would get up during a commercial to make us popcorn.  And sometimes, I would get up and bring back ice cream.  But more often than not we didn't need anything besides each other's company. It was an hour and a half each night where I was completely content--and just a little bit like my dad.

Sathre as a Surname

     I have an ongoing inner debate about whether the internet is a good thing or a bad thing.   It was a good thing when I found a "no egg" cookie recipe the night that I had a sweet tooth but an empty refrigerator.  It was a bad thing when I had a minor back ache and self diagnosed myself with any number of scary diseases.
    And earlier this week it was a good thing when I discovered yellowpages.com and realized that I could throw out all those Yellow Books that seem to arrive on my doorstep in multiples several times a year.  I  probably could have thrown away all of my white pages too.  Except that I have a particular fondness for white pages.
     Every vacation when I was growing up, I had a mission.  As soon as we checked into a motel room, I'd pull out the local white pages and search for other people with the name of "Sathre."  I never found a single one.  And  I always felt a little smug about having a name that no one else had.  It was almost like having our very own family crest.
     According to our family lore, my grandfather made up our name when he immigrated from Norway in the early 1900's.  Starting the journey as Peter Anderson, he became increasingly upset to find that a large number of the passengers on the crowded boat shared his common Scandinavian surname.  Not wanting to start a life in a new country with a name that so many people had, he decided he needed a new one and, somehow, came up with Sathre.
     Since my grandfather died when my dad was seven, this account was never properly vetted.  But I loved the story and was certain that my grandfather had done a great job of distinguishing our family with a wholly original name. I didn't know a single Sathre outside of our immediate family, and there weren't any Sathres in the phone book of our small, southern Illinois town.  But since our town had only 3000 people and a phone book of a mere 34 pages, I wanted further proof.
     And I got it. On family trips to Springfield, Illinois, Kentucky Lake, Kentucky, Kingsport, Tennessee, and McCormick's Creek, Indiana, I'd check phone book after phone book to confirm my singular distinction as a Sathre.  I was never disappointed.
    But it was our trips to Chicago and Indianapolis and St. Louis that really made me proud.  There, right next to the Gideon bibles, I found phone books the size of booster seats with more names than even my grandfather could have imagined.  I nervously ran my finger down page after page of S's and Sa's and Sat's and Sath's, and to my great delight, never found a single Sathre.
     I was able to travel through childhood and most of adulthood without ever having to see my name in print next to someone else's address.  It played a part in my deciding to keep my surname when I got married and in giving "Sathre" to both of my daughters as a middle name. 
     This morning, like I do so many days, I got up, got on the internet and opened my Facebook page.  I had a suggested friend.  It was no one I had heard of before.  His name was Joseph Sathre.
     The internet is a very bad thing.

What To Do Next?

     Alex had just given birth to Flynn four hours earlier when she looked up from her hospital bed and, in all seriousness, asked me, "What are we going to do here for the next 48 hours?"
     I broke out laughing.  It was so like her.
     Go into labor.  Check.
     Get to the hospital.  Check.
     Give birth.  Check.
     Okay, that's done.  What's next?
     Admittedly, she was probably still under the influence of her epidural and almost certainly still had an adrenalin rush.  And, as a first time mother, she likely didn't fully understand how much she was going to need both sleep and pain medication over the next 48 hours.  Still, for someone who had worked right up until the day of her due date, I would have thought that the idea of 48 unplanned hours would be something to look forward to rather than something to fill.  Especially since free hours were going to be in short supply all too soon.
     It reminded me of a coworker I once had who insisted that when he had kids, they'd have to fit into his life rather than he into theirs.  I laughed then too.  I knew that kids tend to take the front seat in your life whether you want them to or not.  There are pacifiers to find, cheerios to pick up,  mini-vans to shop for, tantrums to tone down, and t-ball games to coach.
     And it doesn't even stop with the busy stuff.  They also dominate your thoughts.  I certainly hadn't intended to write a second blog post about Flynn or grandmotherhood--at least not so soon.  Yet here I am.
     It's like the poster I bought for Ellen years ago when she had four small kids running around, all wanting to ride shotgun. It shows a picture of a woman with kids growing out of her head like frazzled hair, and the caption, "My head is full of children."  It hung in Ellen's kitchen for over twenty years and was taken down just recently when she remodeled.  With her own grandmotherhood looming, I think I can safely tell her to hunt it down.  It's going to be true again soon.
     As for Alex, she's proving to be a natural mother, perfecting swaddling, feeding, and diaper changing like a pro.  All the while cuddling and marveling at her new son.  Her days and her head are filled, and it's unlikely that she'll be asking "What to do?" any time soon.
     More likely, her next question will be the same one I had as I watched my first-born hold her own first-born.  "Where did the time go?"

Jeanne's a Grandmother!

As the older sister, I’ve spent my entire life doing things before my sister. I was the first to ride a bike, to go to school, to swim the length of the pool, to dance in red boots, to lead cheers at ballgames, to learn my way around the University of Illinois campus, to get married, to have a baby, to buy a house, to be eligible for social security. The list goes on and on.

So how on earth can Jeanne be a grandmother?

I’m sure that Jeanne could have done all those things that I did first on her own just fine, but I like to think that following in my footsteps eased her way a little bit, that North Side School and swimming pools and the University of Illinois and motherhood were all a little bit less scary knowing that I was there. I like to think that it was comforting to have a big sister who knew the ropes.

So how can Jeanne be a grandmother?

Despite what social security says, I barely feel old enough to be a grandmother myself. It was only yesterday, it seems like, that I joined the ranks of mothers. My baby sister is much too young to be a grand mother.

So how can Jeanne be a grandmother?

It’s not as though she’s that far ahead of me. My own grandbabies are no longer just the proverbial twinkles in their daddys’ eyes. My first two grandbabies are firmly entrenched in their mommys’ rapidly expanding bellies! And I’m going to meet them soon. But I haven’t met them yet.

How on earth can Jeanne be a grandmother?

While I’m dreaming of tiny bundles of joy and trying to remember my old repertoire of lullablies, Jeanne is cuddling Baby Flynn and singing real songs. She’s deciding if she’s a Grannie or a Grandma, buying itty bitty boy clothes, learning how to work the newest carseats, trying to remember that babies no longer sleep on their stomachs, and falling madly, crazy in love. And she can’t stop smiling!

I can’t believe that Jeanne’s a grandmother!

There’s a whole lot I don’t know about this whole grandmother thing. I’m used to blankets on babies and umbrella strollers. I’ve never swaddled a baby, hooked up a baby monitor, or attached a car seat to a base in a car. And I’ve never watched my own baby be in charge of a much loved infant. It’s all going to be a bit scary. It’s going to be crazy. It’s going to be wonderful. I think it will be comforting to have a sister who knows the ropes.

Yeah!! Jeanne’s a grandmother!