Waiting In Line For an iPhone 5

I left my phone at home yesterday. Again. Not on purpose. I just forgot to put it in my purse. Which I do fairly often. It never really bothers me. 

I'll be on a plane or at a play and they'll make an announcement to turn off all mechanical devices and I'll look in my purse and be a little surprised when the phone's actually there.

Sometimes I even leave it at home on purpose. Not usually for the whole day, but when I run to the store, or walk the dog, or go out to eat.

I think it's a generational thing. Alex and Bess are never without their phones. They're lost without them. If they were at a play and saw they didn't have their phone, they'd probably go back home to get it, or borrow their seatmate's phone to call someone to bring it to them, or panic.

I'm much more casual about it."Oops, I forgot my phone."

It might make a difference if I was expecting important calls or tweets, but I rarely am.

  

And it might make a difference if my phone did all the things that most phones do these days--like play games, receive emails, take videos, write novels. Mine's a flip phone that only does calls and takes pictures. Or at least I think it takes pictures. I never actually do that. 

If you're running for President and making a speech in front of a group that you think is like-minded enough that you can say what's really on your mind, you're going to be safe with me. You'll have dissed 47% of the population before I even figure out if my phone has an audio and video function. That is, of course, if I remembered to bring it.

I think it would make a difference if I grew up thinking everybody was reachable at all times and that I should be too. Which I didn't. And don't. I grew up with land lines and pay phones and being paged at airports.

I was at an airport a couple weeks ago and heard a page, and was immediately on the alert. I wanted to connect with that other person who forgets their phone. 

Back in the day, we didn't even have voice mail or answering machines, let alone text. If you called and nobody answered, you didn't much worry about it. You just called back later. The pay phones even gave you your dime back.

These days I have to be a little more careful. Because Alex and Bess worry when I don't answer. Like the time I went shopping after work and didn't take my phone. It was 7:00 p.m., I wasn't home, and Bess was so worried she started calling people to see if they knew where I was. Even people in different states.

"Hello?!" Is this the same daughter that stayed out all night knowing that I would be waiting up and worrying on the couch?

    

I thought this was a generational thing too. Moms worry and kids think you shouldn't. It kind of makes me happy to realize that I can get payback by doing nothing other than leaving my phone at home.

    

I read some articles recently about privacy issues with cell phones. And I couldn't help but remember the days of party lines, when we actually shared phone lines with other people. Families who lived in the country shared with a whole bunch of other folks, each with their own distinctive ring. But if you wanted to listen in on what Ethel down the road was saying all you had to do was quietly pick up the handset.*

*(a handset is the piece of an antique rotary phone that you hold in your hand, speaking into the bottom half while holding the top half to your ear. It's connected to the base by a coiled cord that tangles easily, but that can be untangled by holding the end closest to the base high in the air and letting the handset dangle.) 

Just now I read about people camping out at night to get the newest version of a phone that's at least six versions away from the one that I'm perfectly happy with, but could no longer buy because it's extinct.

It kind of makes me feel that I'm a little extinct too.

It kind of makes me want to go and camp out in that line.

If I do, I think I'm going to leave my phone at home. Boy will that make Alex and Bess worry.

Memories Across Bike Rides and Continents

I rode my bike to her house for no reason other than a destination on a free afternoon and the vague hope of a dime for the Dairy Bar that was next door. Through four alleys, across the high school parking lot, then north on Second Street past three houses--a short six blocks, which I might have timed at about five minutes if I had been old enough to own a watch, which I wasn't.

She was my in-town grandma, known as "Ma," and was usually found in the garden or the field of strawberries in the first few rows of the cornfield directly South of her house. We picked strawberries and rhubarb, or onions and carrots, or sometimes just weeded and looked for garden snakes slithering through the rows. Both of us were brown from time outdoors, but she less so because of the bonnet she sometimes wore.

She fed me no-bake cookies and butter and sugar sandwiches on white bread before we sat down on the front steps and snapped peas or green beans into metal bowls for Sunday dinners. If there was no gardening to do, she let me sew on her sewing machine with the foot pedal that I couldn't reach, and which made it a two person project.

I picked switches off the weeping willow tree, whipped them through the air, and then trailed them from my handlebars as I rode back home.

My other grandma carried the full name, but lived in Tennessee, requiring a road trip and an overnight stay in a small roadside motel with a tiny swimming pool if we were lucky. We drove on two lane highways, through rolling hills and mountains that made the ride feel like a roller coaster, before reaching her house on Peach Orchard Drive--a street that rose high above the town sitting in the valley below and that felt far away from the plains of south-central Illinois.

She was waiting for us on the front porch, and I wonder now how long she must have waited in the days before cell phones could announce our imminent arrival. As she got up to greet us, she called out to me by yelling "Yeannie," never quite conquering the "J" sound of my name that was foreign to her native Norwegian tongue.

There were bowls of candy in the living room that she let us eat without limits and a box of jewelry in her bedroom that she let us play with without asking. In the morning she fed us little pancakes rolled up with jelly inside and then followed us outside and clapped with glee as we showed her the cartwheels and somersaults that we had perfected since our last visit.

She sent packages at Christmas and on birthdays and came to our house for a week's visit every spring or fall.  I took her to my Brownie meeting to talk about growing up in Norway and skiing to school and was smug knowing I would be the only one who could find Norway on the map.  

My grandson came last week. I fed him fruits and vegetables (like his mom requested), and ice cream sandwiches and cookies and happy meals (like she didn't).

We blew bubbles at parks, took walks in wagons and strollers, and went down slides at playgrounds. He stood at the top of every slide like his mom had warned, and I had to sit him down before counting "un, deux, trois," which was his signal to go. We fed goats, rode a pony, had our faces licked by puppies, and watched ducks ignore us no matter how loud we yelled for them.

We played with puzzles and blocks, found Elmo in books, and sang "Old McDonald" too many times. He chewed on books at the bookstore (leaving teeth marks for me to discover later), held on to my leg when we met new people, and climbed into my lap each night before he fell asleep.

After ten days we flew to DC to meet up with his mom and, three days later, I left him at the boarding gate waiting for a plane headed for Paris,  where he would spend a day, before boarding a second plane headed for his home on yet another continent. 

I waved good-bye at the gate and held back tears, hoping that a grandson's memories can survive across both time and continents.

                                           

Thank Goodness It's Thursday

I walked out the door the other day and my first thought was, "Oh good, it's Thursday, two crosswords in the paper today."

So much for TGIF. I work on Saturdays, so weekends don't mean a lot.

It's mostly little things that I look forward to these days. Enough rain that I don't have to water my flowers every day. I don't have a hose or an outside hook-up, so watering means a lot of trips back and forth from the sink to my little outdoor space. The flowers are nice. The watering isn't.

"The Closer" on TV on Monday nights. I looked forward to that show. I'm a little worried about having to find a replacement.

Thinking of something to write about and getting some comments.

Finding a copy of "Fifty Shades of Grey" at a garage sale. Not that this one has ever  happened. People seem to be holding on to it. I  look forward to finding a copy so I can see why.

But all those things will have to wait. For the next seven days, I have another little thing to look forward to--Flynn is coming to stay.

Alex has some training in DC and, in a complicated transfer plan, 15 month old Flynn is coming to spend some time with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. I get him for 10 days and then spend another few days with him and Alex in DC before they fly back to Africa.

Thursday's crosswords and Monday TV will be taking a backseat for a while because I have a lot to do. I haven't been in charge of a one year old for 26 years and my apartment shows it.  

I'm terrified, I'm excited, I'm putting away all sharp edged tables. I'm moving cleaning supplies. Razors on the edge of the bathtub? What was I thinking? They get put up. How high can a one year old reach? Top shelf behind a closed door seems safe.

But why don't I have safety strips in the bathtub?

They go on my list. It's getting long. Diapers, snacks, divided plate, sippie cup, fruit, food that someone with four teeth can eat, wipes... 

I quit looking for "Fifty Shades of Grey" and started buying toys at garage sales. I went grocery shopping and bought juice instead of soda.

I mopped my kitchen floor. Not for the first time, but I'll probably do it again this week, and that would be a record.

I'm pretty sure the day will come when I'm ready to sit back and say, "Oh good, it's Thursday, two crosswords in the paper today." 

When I can breath and quit seeing everything in terms of breakable or non, potentially harmful or safe. When a day that isn't completely filled up with thoughts of a one year old will be something to look forward to.

Monday nights without "The Closer"? I'm not worried about them any more. I'm going to have pictures to go through, furniture to move back, good times to look back on.

Although I'll probably wish I remembered where I hid those razors? 

Cleaning Out My Memory

I'll be talking to Bess, and we'll be having a nice conversation, and then she'll ask me what I did yesterday.

Yesterday? I have no clue what I did yesterday.

But when I was six we went to Santa Claus, Indiana and rode the....Damn! What's the word I'm looking for? I think it starts with a "c." "C-o" maybe.

This is going to drive me crazy! I'm off to the dictionary. There are 44 pages of "c-o" words in Webster's Collegiate. All small print. Still, I can handle it. My finger scrolls down the list and then stops. I've forgotten what I was looking for.

I remember when I was ten and decided to read all the words in the dictionary. I got as far "asparagus" and stopped. I hated asparagus. It was mushy, and an ugly olive green color, and had these strings that stuck in your teeth.

But I don't need to remember that! I love asparagus now. All I need to remember is not to overcook it and not to buy it in a can. Delete, delete, delete!

I need to delete all this useless information rolling around in my memory so I have room for what I did yesterday.

I don't need to know where all the McDonalds with playgrounds are located in St. Louis.  I don't live in St. Louis anymore and my youngest kid is 27. Time to delete.

And, yes, Clinton brought some shame to the presidency. I remember all the details. Everyone else seems to have forgotten it.Why shouldn't I? Delete.

How to diagram sentences? Pfft! I could do it in my sleep. All the while remembering Mrs. Elliott standing in front of the class in her jersey dress telling us how important it was. But, really, I've become quite comfortable with dangling participles. Delete.

My first grade teacher's name? I don't need to remember that. I can always make one up. If a classmate remembers it differently and I stick to my guns, they'll just blame it on their own bad memory. Delete.

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Delete. Delete. Delete. I don't want to hear that one ever again.

How good the chicken at Chick-fil-A tastes? I'm pretty sure I can delete. Because it's never going to taste that good again.

All those slogans from the '60's like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Make Love Not War"? They don't seem to be of much use these days. Delete.

And while I'm at it, I need to get rid of all those words like "neat" and "groovy" and "bummer" and "nifty." When's the last time I used them? Well, okay, I'll keep "neat." The rest go.

Things are looking clearer already. I'm pretty sure the word I was looking for was "colossal." A few more deletes and I might even remember that I went shopping yesterday.

Whoa! That came out of nowhere--winded right through all that useless information and landed on center stage.

If only I could remember if I bought anything and where I put it.

Delete, delete, delete....

Poetry

All of my children will always know why a person would be “stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.”  They learned all about those snowy woods in Seventh Grade English at St. Matthews School--where their English teacher required all students to memorize her favorite Robert Frost poem.  Part of the Seventh Grade ritual every year was memorizing the infamous poem, practicing it over and over, and then proudly reciting it in front of the class.  There’s not a St. Matthews seventh grader around who will ever forget “promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

Having sent four children through Mrs. Pickard’s class, Frost’s words are firmly imprinted in my brain as well.

But those words are not the only poetry I know.  I too had  English teachers who believed in making students memorize favorite poems.  I, and everyone else at Marshall High School in the 1960’s, will always know that nothing “is so rare as a day in June” and that “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”  The words of James Lowell and William Shakespeare are just as firmly etched on my brain and pop out with greater frequency than I’m sure Mrs. Elliot and Miss Stephens ever imagined.

I have sixty four years of information and knowledge knocking around in my head, but most of it has accumulated bit by bit on top of itself, and almost none of it is place-specific.  I know a lot of things, but for the most part I can’t tell you where I learned any specific piece of information or who taught me something.  But memorizing poetry is different.  I’m not sure if it’s because the task is concrete and finite, or if it’s just because there is such a feeling of accomplishment when the piece is finally mastered perfectly.

I only know that at least once a year in early summer the sun shines, a warm breeze blows, clouds drift across the sky, and I find myself saying “then if ever come perfect days,” and remembering the smiling face of my old teacher.

I think that it’s just about certain that when my kids reach the age of sixty on snowy nights they will remember the smiling face of Karen Pickard.

Skyping With a Walker

                                      

After Flynn was born 13 months ago, I wrote a post about how Skype was helping close the gap between a grandson and grandma who live on different continents. It was one of the few times that I found myself fully embracing new technology. I have no use for Twitter, and my texts remain limited to one word answers because I've never upgraded to a phone with a keyboard.

But Skype? Well, count me a convert. For most of that first year, I was able to watch  Flynn scoot, roll over, and sit and play with toys without ever having to change a diaper. I saw bubbles and first teeth and smiles, and I heard babblings in real time. I felt like we were getting to know each other despite an ocean of separation--even though I harboured a few duobts about how our virtual playdates would translate to real life.

But that was all before I got the walker. And, no, I'm not talking about a walker that helps me navigate across the living room and into my desk chair. I'm not there yet. I'm talking about a grandson who went through the stages of rolling and sitting and crawling and, in the natural order of things, arrived at walking. 

I saw some of those first steps on Skype. Tentative movements that took him from leaning against a table or a chair or dad's chest and into mom's outstretched arms in two or three wobbly steps. Really more like lunges, but I cheered for him anyway. I encouraged him as those two or three steps became four and five, then six or seven. I clapped as I watched all tentativeness fall away. 

And now as we skype, I watch him walk with confidence. Even run. Unfortunately, it's almost always right out of the picture.

It seems that with his new independence, he's gotten a little bored with flat grandma.

                                         

There's a toy on the other side of the room that's calling. There are drawers to open in the kitchen. There's a dog to chase. There's a ball pit to dive into. And then there's grandma on Skype, trying hard to turn his disappearance into a virtual game of hide and seek.

"Where's Flynn?'' I repeat, hoping he'll come back into camera range, but simultaneously thinking that my year of Skype is some sort of fast forward microcosm of life, where our kids grow up, gain independence, and walk out of our own pictures.

Occassionally my calls work and Flynn leans around a door frame, grinning, or walks back in from stage left. More often he doesn't. He's off and moving.

I think the day may come when he'll be interested in sitting down and letting me read him a book over Skype. Maybe we can even play some virtual games. Or he can complain to me when mom and dad won't buy him a skateboard or let him stay up late to watch a movie. I'll listen. 

Until then, it's okay. I'll always have his back.  

                                                          

A Qualified Fortune

When I was growing up, we went to Chicago for a long weekend every summer and ate at a Chinese restaurant. It wasn't the only thing we did, but fortune cookies and the improbable video phones at the Museum of Science and Industry are what I remember most.

It was the early 1960's and Chinese restaurants and buffets had yet to show up on the main streets of small towns in Southern Illinois. Our diversity was pretty much limited to the gulf between  catholics and protestants. And our food choices were almost exclusively centered around meat and potatoes. The only Chinese cuisine I knew was the very occasional chop suey that came from a can at home and, later, the chop suey that came from a bigger can at the school cafeteria.

It was an eye opener to walk into an actual Chinese restaurant with red lanterns and tassles, waiters wearing silk pajamas and talking in accents, Chinese families sitting at tables, and a menu with Chinese characters that I couldn't begin to understand. It was a window into a world I didn't yet know. A glimpse into a future bigger than our town. A step towards being worldly.
 
I ordered chop suey. So did Ellen. And so did Mom. It was all we knew. Dad had grown up in Chicago and was a little more sophisticated--although I use that word loosely. He ordered beef with broccoli, fried rice and egg rolls, and made sure that they brought us hot tea with those little handleless cups that I so wanted to take home.

Almost as much as I wanted to order the fried ice cream for dessert. But dessert wasn't usually in our budget. And, after that first visit, I was okay with that because they brought us something even better at the end of our meal. They brought us our fortunes.

I think my first one said something like, "Happiness is yours if you enter each room with a smile and a wink." I took it to heart and started walking into every room with a wink and a smile when we returned home. I'm pretty sure that people thought I had a tic, but I knew I had a fortune. A road map to happiness. Straightforward and assured. Something that made me feel good about myself and positive about my future. Something that a scrawny nine year old from a small town could hold onto.

Subsequent fortunes just buoyed my growing confidence. "Hard work will bring big rewards." I could do that. "Keep your family close." I've got that covered.

I can think of only one other thing that had an impact comparable to my Chinese fortunes. It happened in seventh grade when our home room teacher was leaving to go to another school and gave everyone an award at the end of the year. Mine was for the "sexiest voice." I carried that certificate with the same confidence that I carried my fortunes. I was 12 and didn't even need a bra, and on some level probably knew that it was a stretch. Yet, somehow I've managed to live for nearly 50 years believing I have a sexy voice. Even though not a single other person has ever noticed it or commented on it.

I stopped at a Chinese take-out last week and brought home some dinner. I ate my beef and broccoli and  dug out the fortune cookie from the bottom of the bag with an innocence a little more jaded than the nine year old me. Still, I looked forward to reading it.

"The stock market may be your ticket to success," it said.

"What the hell?" I thought. "My happy future is now tied in with the stock market?"

 "And, even then, it's qualified? It's just a 'maybe' ticket to success?"

"What happened to rosy futures that made 9 year old girls enter rooms with a smile and a wink?"

"Where's that big reward I've been working hard for?"

"What's the stock market got to do with anything anyway? Can't you see I'm wearing a smile?"

"Confucious would be ashamed!"

I said this all in a very sexy voice.