It's 8:30 on Tuesday night, and I'm already in my pajamas, which is quite unusual for me. I'm sick. Nothing life-threatening, just an ugly cold, but I feel horrible.
I used to be able to say, truthfully, that I never got sick. Because I used to never get sick. My immune system was pure cast iron. Or titanium. Whatever is more impenetrable. But this is the fourth time I've been sick this year. Apparently, my immune system is now made of something squishy or porous or otherwise not akin to titanium. It's more like a sieve, or a butterfly net. I'm a runny-nose mouth-breathing mess. I think I'll go to bed (after Rachel Maddow.)
*****
So it's Friday night now. What with the round of one damn thing after another that constitutes my life (not original--P.G. Wodehouse, I think), I don't even remember most of the rest of the week. I'm not as sick as I was, but not 100% yet either. One son is at a high school football game (his school is losing 49-6), and the other son and I are watching the Houston Astros beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the World Series. We're rooting for Houston. We love Jose Altuve, and Houston needs a win.
My older son, now a junior in high school, is looking at colleges. He's never been a particularly good student, but he started to work harder last year, finishing the year with a 3.5 GPA, and he's working very hard this year, too, though his math and science grades are not good. He might start at the local community college, but he might start at a four-year university. Anyway, he's looking at possibilities. He's actually reading the letters he's starting to receive. We'll schedule visits next spring, because that's what people do.
A few weeks ago, I spent Sunday afternoon at a college admissions seminar for parents of students with learning disabilities. It was not especially helpful (apparently, grades are important; and colleges also consider extracurricular activities in admissions decisions). In my usual vague and scattered way of gathering information, I managed to learn that November through April of next year will be the critical window of time during which forms will be submitted, and checks will be written, and decisions will be made. That's plenty of time, so we'll figure it out.
*****
I joke sometimes about adult ADD, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's a real thing, because I do and it is and I have it. It's only through living with my son for 16 years that I was able to figure this out. He's lucky that it's a recognized thing now, and that he's been able to learn how to manage it when he's young. I manage it by doing 20 things at a time, and somehow getting them all done, eventually.
This doesn't always work. Yesterday, I sat with the art director at my company, watching video footage that we need to edit into a two-minute video (and don't get me started on how we're going to get that done on time, but that's a story for another day). I promised that I'd transcribe my notes and send them to him as soon as I got back to my desk.
It would be not quite accurate to say that I forgot all about it five minutes later, because I think that I forgot about it before the words were even out of my mouth. I went back to my desk and finished writing a newsletter, and then wrote some proposal stuff, and then skipped blithely home, without another thought about the video. Not another thought. It was as if the whole afternoon hadn't happened.
When I did finally remember the video, and the notes, it was about 4 o'clock this morning. I was going to get up and just write the notes right away, but I decided to go back to sleep and do in the morning (because 4 o'clock in the morning is the middle of the night). And I did. And that was the end of that.
But it doesn't always end well. I'm pretty sure, for example, that I was supposed to go to the doctor's last week, but I didn't write it down, and couldn't remember for sure if it was that week or the next (meaning the coming week) and no one called me, so I didn't go. I'll find out, I suppose. The forgetting of the things and the appointments is becoming more of a problem. I have to write things down, and set reminders on my phone for everything. And I often forget to do either. And so I forget to do the thing that I would have remembered had I written it down.
*****
Well, that could go on all day. It's Sunday now, and the pointless rambling has to come to an end at some point. Several weeks ago, I finally finished reading The Crisis Years, and I also read Martha Moody's Best Friends. I had never heard of her, but I liked the book. I don't have much other than that to say about it, other than than that the protagonist, a doctor (like Moody herself), realizes at some point during her mid 40s that she is just then beginning to understand life and how to live properly. As someone who finished college at age 48 (summa cum laude, but still), I found this idea very reassuring.
Right now, I'm reading This is NPR: The First Forty Years, which I'll finish in a day or so. Fortunately, I have lots of other things to read. I went to the library book sale (a semi-annual favorite thing to do) yesterday, and bought $5 worth of books, which in library book sale terms, is a shitload of books. List to follow.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Distraction
I have been following this week's political events more closely than I normally do. And I should have written things down as they occurred to me, because I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I wanted to say about McCain and Bush and Kelly and #metoo and all of the rest of it. I suppose that I'll just write through the weekend on and off, and I'll eventually get to a point. Or maybe I won't. You've been warned. Anyway, it's just been an interesting week, for lots of reasons. All of a sudden, I live in a world in which John McCain and George W. Bush are my heroes.
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"
So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.
Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much. And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course, excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.
Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter. Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.
(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)
So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context). With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.
Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger. It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.
It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow. We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?
Sunday, October 15, 2017
KP
Last Saturday, I went to a family party in Philadelphia. It was the kind of party where you see people whom you haven't seen in many years, and everyone brings something, and there's far more food (both homemade and catered) and drink than anyone could ever consume.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.
 |
| I like deep windowsills. |
When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.
 |
| Is this a kayak or a canoe? I have no idea. My 16-year-old son got the hang of it pretty quickly, and enjoyed a solo paddle around the confluence. |
So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.
There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.
The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.
The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.
A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Goodbye, friend
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. It's to never see, smell, or hear of pumpkin spice anything, ever again. The pumpkin spice trend should have been over two years ago, but it seems to emerge stronger than ever, every damn October. I was shopping at my beloved Aldi last week, and was horrified to see a shelf full of pumpkin chipotle salsa. This is nothing more than a hate crime against corn chips.
*****
*****
So that was the beginning of my post for the week, which I started on Friday night as I was baking brownies for a party. I mentioned once, to one of my neighborhood friends, that I hate pumpkin spice everything with the sort of hatred that should probably be reserved for ISIS or white collar crime.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
My friends, wise asses that they are, immediately launched a trolling campaign against me. For four years or so, starting right around Labor Day and continuing through Halloween, people have filled my social media feeds with pictures of pumpkin spice salsa, cream cheese, hand soap, and even toilet paper. People text me from Starbucks, asking if I want them to deliver a PSL. Someone once left a tiny pumpkin in my mailbox. People's kids are in on this. For four years, I have been left almost alone to defend decency and humanity against the forces of pumpkin evil.
One of the ringleaders and instigators of this annual pumpkin spice gang warfare was a woman named Bernadette Bueno Minor. I first met Bern in 2010 or 2011 when she signed her kids up for our neighborhood swim team. The first thing I noticed about her was how beautiful she was, with shiny dark hair and a wide-open joyous smile that radiated fun and good humor. I liked her right away.
We were friends in the way that mothers become friends when their children are in sports or band or school together. We weren't really close but close enough that we cared about each other's kids and kept up with each other's family and personal news. And we just liked each other.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
I didn't really have much in common with Bernadette. She was much younger and much more outgoing and social than I am. But she was also smart and good-natured and ridiculously funny, and so I was always happy to see her and hang out with her, even for a few minutes. One thing that we did have in common was that we really loved summer, and swim team, and the pool. Since I returned to work full time, I haven't hung out at the pool as much as I did when my kids were little and I worked part-time, but I usually go to swim and see my friends on Sunday afternoons. Bernadette, who also worked, was almost always there on Sundays, too, with her radio and her sunglasses and her shout-across-the-pool happy greeting every time a friend showed up.
Bernadette's first bout with breast cancer was in 2014. It was summer and swim season was in full swing. She didn't make it to many meets that year, but when she was around, she was unfailingly cheerful and brave and full of good humor. I know how hard it must have been for her to lose her beautiful, long, thick hair, but she joked about it, and about all of the other things that she had to endure. We were all delighted to hear, a few months later, that she'd had her last treatment, and that she was expected to make a full recovery. Her hair grew back, and by the next summer, she looked a lot like herself.
This past summer, she and I were sitting together at a swim meet. It was a very hot morning; so hot that stroke and turn judges were rotating so that no one had to stand in the sun the whole time, and I had just finished my shift. "I feel guilty," she said to me. "I was supposed to time, but I was just too tired this morning, so I had to make someone else do it. If it's not cancer, it's MS, you know?"
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Of course, I didn't know at all. I've never had any real health problems, and can't imagine that I'd have been as easygoing and lighthearted about an MS flare-up alone, let alone having to suffer MS and cancer in one lifetime.
By now, you might have guessed that this is a story that does not end happily. Sadly, Bern was wrong about her symptoms, as she told us a few weeks later. The exhaustion and malaise were not the result of an MS flare-up, but a recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive this time. And then just before Labor Day, right on schedule, she was trolling me about pumpkin spice Cheerios and spaghetti sauce (an actual thing, I give you my word).
She wasn't out much for the rest of the summer and early fall, but she'd post optimistic updates on Facebook, and her usual jokes and funny pictures. I saw her daughter (16 and just as beautiful as her mother) out in the neighborhood last Saturday, and she told me that Bern's radiation treatment had gone well, and that she was about to start chemo. She said that her mother was upbeat and optimistic, and that they were hopeful for a full recovery. So her death just a few days later came as a terrible shock.
Bernadette was a beautiful and spirited person, and I'm so sad to think that her children will have to grow up without her. I'm glad that I knew her. I'll think of her often, especially on hot summer Sundays, and pumpkin-spice filled fall days.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
The Van Buren Boys
There was a lady who lived in a house around the corner from mine. A widow, she spent many hours in her garden, weeding and--well, I don't know what else. She always seemed to be weeding, crawling on her hands and knees inch by inch, finding weeds that were all but invisible to to everyone else. She had these trees--I'm not sure what kind they were (I'm terrible at identifying plants and trees), but she had them shaped, almost topiary-style, so that they resembled open umbrellas. She obviously loved those trees. Most of her weeding and manicuring was concentrated on the little beds at the base of the trees. She had a professional come to trim the trees themselves, so that they'd maintain their perfect umbrella shape.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
The lady was very reserved. I started to work part-time, often from home, when my son was in 2nd grade. So on nice days, my other son (who was four at the time) and I used to walk to Bel Pre Elementary School to pick my older boy up after school, and we'd all walk home together. We tried a few times to say hello to the lady, thinking that maybe we'd make friends, but she'd just nod politely and then return to her weeding. I didn't mind. Not everyone is outgoing, and not everyone likes little children.
The lady died a few years ago. I'd heard that she was sick and had gone into hospice care, and a few months later, I saw a For Sale sign on her front lawn. The trees are gone. They were kind of hideous, so I don't blame the new owner for taking them down. Even the beds are gone, replaced by what look like little rock gardens. I don't miss the silly-looking trees, but it seems sad that there's nothing left on the property to remind neighbors of the lady who used to live there. I never knew her name.
*****
I don't really know what made me think of that. I was thinking about something earlier today; something that I thought I should write about. Now it's gone, just that quickly.
*****
So here's a little known trick, which I learned from a cooking blog. Male bell peppers are different from female bell peppers: the male ones have just three bumps on the bottom, while the females have four. Male bell peppers are better cooked; and they're less messy when you cut them up, because they don't have very many seeds inside. Female bell peppers are sweeter, so they're good in salads and vegetable trays. I usually look for the male ones, because I make a lot of stir-fry dishes.
So I was in the grocery store, looking for boys among the peppers, and an older lady (even older than me, I mean) stopped and looked at me, looked at the peppers, nodded, and looked at me again, smiling. Then she walked away without a word.
She knew that I knew about the peppers, and she wanted me to know that she knew that I knew. It was like a shibboleth. It was like a secret handshake. I felt like Kramer, accidentally flashing the Van Buren Boys' secret sign.
 |
| "Martin Van Buren was the eighth President! That's their sign!" |
*****
Another grocery store story, and another nice old lady: My children were pretty well-behaved when they were little (and lucky for me, they still are). I often used to get compliments from strangers about how good my children were. But even good children have bad days.
We were in the grocery store again (because that's where I hang out). My older son was not quite 4, and my younger son was about 7 months old. The not-quite-4-year-old asked for something (probably a car; they still sell little cars at the grocery store) and when I said no, he flung himself onto the floor and commenced his second-ever (and last; he never did it again) public temper tantrum. I had to abandon an almost-full cart of groceries to get him out of the store and into the car. He was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot.
Anyway, as the tantrum progressed, I saw an old lady shuffling toward me, and I braced for what I was sure would be a world of judgement raining down on me. Instead, she looked at me and said "Honey, the years go by really fast. But some of the days are reeeeallly long." We didn't have hashtags in 2005, but that was a #truth moment if I ever heard one.
*****
My youngest son is 13 today, which means that I don't have any little boys anymore (and it also means that I live in the same house with two teenage boys). I remember things that happened, and I'm astonished to realize that they happened 8 or 10 or 15 years ago. Blinding speed, even amid some long days.
While it's nice to have older children, it's all going way too fast now. We have only a few more years of band concerts and swim meets and track meets and baseball games. When my children were little, I'd listen to older friends, parents of teenagers, and wonder why they were nostalgic in advance. Now I know. Now I know that all of the old ladies--in the grocery store, and weeding their gardens--were changing diapers five minutes ago, and now their children are grandparents, too.
Sometimes, though, things slow down for a few minutes. Sometimes, two teenagers decide to build something, and then I don't even mind stepping on a pile of Legos in my bare feet. The years go by really fast, and some of the days go by even faster.
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