Month: April 2011

A Face For Hats

Despite the fact I only read it last year, on Tuesday I couldn’t remember the name of one of my very favorite books.

But, on Saturday, burying a hand trowel into earth made forgiving by Spring rains, I remembered being eight and being dubbed “Messy Bessie” by my brownie leader.

I forgot to buy an onion at the supermarket.

But every time I see a hat, or a lady wearing a hat, or even a hat-rack, I remember being twelve and standing in the millinery department at Macy’s. My sister and I were accompanied by my grandmother in what was an annual After-Christmas walking tour of Perimeter Mall. I call it a walking tour because, while occasionally an item was returned, nothing was ever actually purchased.

My sister and I donned hats. Both of us posed in front of mirrors.

“Laura!”, my grandmother called. “Laura, you don’t have a face for hats. You need a plain face to wear a hat.”

There was a slight pause as we looked at one another for an answer to the question neither of us would ask before she provided it.

“Stacye…”, it was a statement. “Now, Stacye has a face for hats.”

At work on Monday, I panicked at the idea of creating a whole new set of contracts, only to discover I’d already done it, weeks before.

Wednesday night, as I reclined against the cold ceramic part of the bathtub not filled with warm water, I remembered John O’Conner turning in his desk to ask in his most sardonic voice “Was that really necessary?”, before I even had a chance to lower the hand I’d raised, in vain, to prevent the burp from escaping my fourteen-year-old lips.

I sometimes struggle to remember which son was born on what date. Although in two different months, their birthdates are just two weeks apart. Which one was born in April and which in May?

And, just the other day, as I pinched dead blooms from pansies’ heads, the image of long, yellow hair swirling around my sister’s snarl flashed across my brain. Anger reddened her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world!”, she growled.

The toddler at my feet pressed her back against my legs as instinct tightened my hold on the baby in my lap. We all shrank.

They come in quiet moments, reflections of mis-steps, things I’d rather forget. They’re etched there, burned onto the surface, easy to retrieve. They come unbidden.

They are not who I am but they are, in part, what makes me, me.

A Face For Hats

Despite the fact I only read it last year, on Tuesday I couldn’t remember the name of one of my very favorite books.
But, on Saturday, burying a hand trowel into earth made forgiving by Spring rains, I remembered being eight and being dubbed “Messy Bessie” by my brownie leader.
I forgot to buy an onion at the supermarket.
But every time I see a hat, or a lady wearing a hat, or even a hat-rack, I remember being twelve and standing in the millinery department at Macy’s. My sister and I were accompanied by my grandmother in what was an annual After-Christmas walking tour of Perimeter Mall.  I call it a walking tour because, while occasionally an item was returned, nothing was ever actually purchased. 
My sister and I donned hats.  Both of us posed in front of mirrors.
“Laura!”, my grandmother called.  “Laura, you don’t have a face for hats.  You need a plain face to wear a hat.”
There was a slight pause as we looked at one another for an answer to the question neither of us would ask before she provided it.
“Stacye…”, it was a statement.  “Now, Stacye has a face for hats.”
At work on Monday, I panicked at the idea of creating a whole new set of contracts, only to discover I’d already done it, weeks before.
Wednesday night, as I reclined against the cold ceramic part of the bathtub not filled with warm water, I remembered John O’Conner turning in his desk to ask in his most sardonic voice “Was that really necessary?”, before I even had a chance to lower the hand I’d raised, in vain, to prevent the burp from escaping my fourteen-year-old lips.
I sometimes struggle to remember which son was born on what date. Although in two different months, their birthdates are just two weeks apart. Which one was born in April and which in May?
And, just the other day, as I pinched dead blooms from pansies’ heads, the image of long, yellow hair swirling around my sister’s snarl flashed across my brain.  Anger reddened her cheeks.
“I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world!”, she growled.
The toddler at my feet pressed her back against my legs as instinct tightened my hold on the baby in my lap.  We all shrank.
They come in quiet moments, reflections of mis-steps, things I’d rather forget.  They’re etched there, burned onto the surface, easy to retrieve.  They come unbidden.
They are not who I am but they are, in part, what makes me, me. 

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Net-Overworked

>

When it came to market, I was among the first in line for the IPOD.  I had one of the early models, the one that looked like a space-age tic-tac dispenser.  I later traded up to the Nano, which I rarely mentioned without thinking of Robin Williams, prompting the duplication pronunciation as in, Nano-Nano.  My I-touch came soon after my son received one.  Two years later, I’ve yet to meet a cooler gadget.  Mine goes with me everywhere. 
In all the time I’ve “podded”, I’d never downloaded a podcast, but that was before I ran out of treadmill diversions.  Music doesn’t do it for me.  Music provides a soundtrack.  Rather than taking me to another place, it helps me focus on the task at hand.  I don’t want to focus on the treadmill. 
Television was an option for a while.  Several years ago, I watched an entire season of American Idol on the treadmill.  Since then though, I’ve moved it.  I’ve taken over the Living Room, turning it into a Game/Workout room.  It’s not carpeted, inviting every little noise to travel through a stoned foyer, down a similarly bare hallway, to the door of my son’s bedroom, and that’s a problem.  Sometimes I use the treadmill before work.  Waking my son at 4:30 AM would only mean trouble for us both.
After hearing someone on television discuss their favorite, a podcast seemed a viable solution; not to mention a reason to spend another hour or so poking around in I-tunes, which is for me, similar to shoe shopping in that I could do it until I run out of money or someone I’m related to shouts “Mom!”.
It took a few minutes to get acclimated, but after perusing “Staff Picks”, and “New and Noteworthy”, I chose a handful of podcasts to audition.  I clicked on each icon, downloaded the latest entry, and it wasn’t long before I began to notice a pattern.  Many podcasts are supported by websites, and those websites encourage participation in a social network of like-minded listeners.
Really?
Later that day, a friend sent me a link to a site dealing with Kabbalah.  I know two things about Kabbalah.  I know followers wear a cool, little, red, string bracelet, and I know Madonna is one.
You might say I’m a student of religion.  I’ve studied and/or read the text of many religions, from Daoism, to Mormonism, to good old Southern Baptist theology.  I even read “Dianetics” and, afterward, sent an email requesting information on becoming a Christian Scientist.  I got no response.  I never decided if that was a good thing or a bad thing…
I visited the site my friend suggested, and submitted the information required for a fourteen-day, free trial.  Almost immediately came the email suggesting I join their social network for those new to Kabbalah.     
Really?
Open Salon, too, has become something of a social network.  The fact is, you can post all you want, but if you don’t take the time to read other’s posts, add them to your friend’s list, and message them when you add another post, your post probably won’t get read.
I joined Facebook.  We all did, didn’t we?  I mean, even if you didn’t join to catch up with old friends, or to cheat with old friends, or even just to lurk on old friends’ walls to live vicariously much as you did in high school, you joined to monitor your kid’s activity, right?
Facebook is THE social network of all social networks.  All my “friends” are there.  I put “friends” in parentheses because I have “friended” people I have never met or even conversed with, in any media, at any time, anywhere.  These are people my “real” friends have suggested I “friend”.  So, I did.
The fact is, I feel pressured.  When a “friend” suggests a “friend”, I feel pressure to friend.  When I post on Open Salon, I feel pressured to read.  I am 4 days into my free, fourteen-day trial of Kabbalah Online and I feel pressured to rush through the videos so I’ll have something to offer the “group”.   
Enough.
Are we this lonely?  Where are our friends?  Don’t we have anyone to talk to, to share air with? 
Or, are we talking everything to death?

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Writing Yoko

>

My mother insisted I write letters…mostly to my grandmothers…mostly to her mother.
Grandmother Eakes (We called her “Eakes” to distinguish her from Grandmother “Howell”, though the two were as different as night and day.) never answered.  Never.  I don’t mean to suggest she forgot.  I don’t mean to infer she was busy.  She just never answered.  Period.
I mentioned it to my mother once…the lack of response.  The meat of her answer escapes me now, some thirty-plus years later, but the flavor remains.  I taste it often.  It serves me well.  After all, there are many occasions in which when we are called upon to “rise above”.
Eventually, my mother presented me with a pen-pal.  The how’s and why’s faded over time, but I know her name.  It was Yoko, as in Ono, but no…Ono was not her name.  It is, however, the way I’ve thought of her since John Lennon died. One day she came to mind as she always had; she was Yoko Yakushima.  And, the next, she was Ono.  I don’t know…
I can’t stop thinking about her.
We exchanged letters for a couple of years.  Hers were always enthusiastic, filled with life, and all the drama a thirteen year old girl could muster.  I tried to keep up.  I pretended.  I crafted excited sentences and feigned filial frivolity I didn’t feel; until I didn’t. 
I stopped writing Yoko.  Her letter came, wrapped in onion skin that labeled it foreign even before seeing the postmark.  I read it, but I didn’t answer.  I felt guilty for as long as allowed between volleyball games, swim meets, and clandestine bumper pool lessons given by Bernard, a seventeen-year-old boy my parents hated that I would have followed to the ends of the earth. 
Even without response, Yoko continued writing for weeks; until she didn’t.
And now, I wonder where she is. 
I hope she’s okay.  I wish I’d kept writing. Are her children safe?  Did her house wash away?  Was hers one of the faces standing in bread lines?   I worry.
The tragedy in Japan compelled me to break my years-long boycott of television news.  I watched as death flowed onto the beach and kept on going.
Over and over and over, again, I watched houses join other buildings, unidentified debris, and the occasional vehicle, in a watery swath that wrapped its arms around everything in its path, until I couldn’t breathe. 
Yoko wasn’t the kind of girl that would have left home. 
Days passed.  I continued watching. 
An elderly man excused himself as he passed between two people standing in a line that wrapped around the grocery store he exited.  He walked down the line handing out loaves of bread from his ration.
Diane Sawyer, appropriately devoid of makeup, happened to be standing nearby.  In a voice filled with just the right amount of disbelief, she asked the man why he was giving away the food he’d waited in line for hours to receive. 
“I only need one.”, was his answer. 
And I wonder, “Would that ever happen here…here in the land of “me”?”
No matter her actual proximity to the destruction, nothing I have survived can come close to what Yoko has endured. That knowledge serves me every day; that and the image of that man, the one who shared his bread. 
Combined, they are grace.  In deference to their sacrifice my spirit quiets.  I am more giving.  I strive to share what they have taught me.
Today the earth shook again.
And still I pray.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net