Blame Game

As the oldest of four girls, I heard the question, “Who did this?”, a lot. “Where did that come from?” ran a close second, but never knocked “Who did this?” out of first place.

The question, of course, always led to pointing fingers and defensive whines. The words “…but she…” were thrown around quite a bit. I’m not saying those fingers were usually pointed at me…but my mother would.

Fast forward lots of years. It’s the late 80’s. MTV still played music videos and John Bradshaw was the darling of public television. Mr. Bradshaw wrote a book called “Healing The Shame That Binds You”, among others. He was featured prominently during pledge week. At the time, I was hoarding quarters in hopes of collecting enough to buy a box of Hamburger Helper, but I often dreamed of pledging and, when I did, I determined to do the magnanimous thing. I’d tell them to keep their silly old umbrella.

Bradshaw fascinated me for a number of reasons. He was good looking for one. And he had a great voice; a voice a father would have if you had that kind of father. You know the kind; the kind whose lap was yours for the taking, the kind that listened, the kind that comforted.

No, I didn’t have that kind either.

The thing I remember most when thinking of John Bradshaw, besides his delicious shock of salt and pepper hair, is the mobile. That’s what sucked me in, really; it was a simple thing. It might even have been made from a clothes hanger. Family members, represented by shapes cut from shiny paper, dangled from it. Bradshaw used the mobile to demonstrate that instability in one family member threw everyone else off balance. With a flick of his finger, he’d send one paper doll spinning. The rest followed suit in a crazy chaotic dance that demonstrated it didn’t matter who jumped first; in the end they were all hopelessly tangled up in their own strings.

Everyone loves a good whodunit…Who was the last one here? Who took the last paper towel? Who left the seat up? Who spilled the tea? Who moved the remote control? Who left the window down? And the classic…who let the dogs out?

Our society’s obsession with blame is the main reason I no longer talk politics. It’s impossible to make a comment, no matter how innocuous, without someone borrowing from my sisters and I; “But, he…”, “But, she….”, “But, they…” And we all know what happens next.

Mom gets the switch.

She never seemed to notice, but I did. Nothing good ever came from getting a switch. Despite her admonitions to the contrary, there was always lots of crying and, afterwards, Mom was red-faced and sweaty. We didn’t stop doing what she didn’t want us to do, we just did it better, more quietly, and with a heightened sense of accomplishment.

As the rare liberal living and working in a red sea of Bible-based Republicans, I’ve kept my head down since the partial government shut-down. (Even typing those words feels ridiculous…but I digress.) You can hear better with your head down, and what I hear is a lot of blaming. The paper dolls are dancing, and everyone is so busy pointing out who jumped first that no one noticed Mom going for the switch.

Maybe Ken Fisher watched John Bradshaw too. Fisher is the chairman of the Fisher House Foundation. On Wednesday, Fisher House committed to providing death benefits and transportation to family members of soldiers killed in the line of duty. Ken Fisher didn’t ask “who”. He kept his fingers to himself and, instead of muddying the waters with feckless accusations; he provided a solution to a problem caused by lesser men with bigger titles and lots to lose.

You can learn more about Fisher House Foundation here: http://www.fisherhouse.org/

Photo credit: http://www.diabetesmine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/pointing-finger.jpg

Jergen’s on Jordan

My mother never asked why I always wanted to ride when she went to pick up Mrs. Jordan. She never asked, so I never told her.

It was because of the way she smelled.

Mrs. Jordan was our baby sitter, most of the time. Occasionally, we were subjected to Mrs. Holiday…she of the over-sized, plastic-rimmed eyeglasses, and mess of frosted hair which only added to the air of “Unfinished” she brought to a room.

Mrs. Jordan, on the other hand, had a place for every hair and every hair in its place. Short in stature, she was a study in cotton…cotton dress, cotton sweater, thick cotton stockings draped about the tops of her black orthopedic shoes. She favored pastels and Jergens’ hand lotion.

Thus the smell.

I don’t remember when I figured it out. I can’t cite the specific moment when I realized that the waft I lived for, as I perched expectantly on the backseat of my mother’s wood-paneled station wagon, emanated from a bottle of hand lotion. But I can say that, ever since I’ve known, I can’t pass a bottle without at least giving it a sniff. Usually I buy it. Today I brought a bottle to the office. It has a pump dispenser, making it easy to use while on the telephone…which I am…most of the time.

For some reason, I’ve always equated the scent of Jergens’ with femininity. I imagine a perfectly proportioned young woman wearing a slip, an old-fashioned slip, the kind with plastic adjustors on the straps. She sits on the side of a bed, languidly rubbing Jergens’ into her hands and forearms.

It wasn’t until this afternoon that I realized the error in my imagery.

Jergens’ isn’t used by perfectly proportioned young women. Young women don’t generally slather themselves with lotion and they don’t wear slips either.

As a young woman, the only time I applied lotion was after a bath…to smell good…especially if someone else was going to smell me.

I still do that, but it doesn’t stop at that. I have a lotion for my feet, a special lotion with special feet stuff in it. I have a lotion for my face. I have a lotion for my neck that I also use on my face when I run out of the other lotion I have for my face. I have a lotion for my eyes and one for my hands. I even have a lotion for my cuticles.

Having looked at it, there is no denying it. There’s a direct correlation between the number of years a woman has lived and the amount of lotion she uses.

I sat with that for a minute…and I’m okay with it.

Whatever else she was, Mrs. Jordan was a woman who smelled good and who, by her very presence, imbued that scent with a sense of femininity…orthopedic shoes and all…

There’s hope for the rest of us…

>Robert D. Rogers and Me

I don’t remember meeting Robert D. Rogers; I just remember his being there. Always. From the age of eight or nine until we moved when I was twelve, Robert D. Rogers was always there.

I never called him anything else. He was never Bob or Bobby, Rob or Robbie. Sometimes his mother called him “Dee”. He didn’t like it much.

Everyone knew a Robert D. Rogers. Mine was blonde, the kind of blonde that renders one’s skin allergic to sunlight, the kind of skin that blooms bright red with the slightest physical exertion. Ever-moist cheeks the color of maraschino cherries only served to accentuate his otherwise pasty pallor. And, his nose was more than crusty. It was dirty. We never touched. I never forgot.

Robert D. Rogers was a bit of a story teller. For those of you not raised in a southern state during a time in which all public facilities featured shadows of the words “White” and “Colored” under a fresh coat of institutional paint, story teller meant liar. He told tall tales, grandiose tales of his family, or his abilities, or his adventures. His cheeks would often cherry as he told, and I knew that he knew that we knew that he was lying. But he didn’t stop. He went on until another boy, an athletic boy, a boy the other boys followed, made him stop.

Sometimes they stopped him with words; it always started with name calling. But, Robert D. Rogers was tenacious. Sometimes the words didn’t stop him. Sometimes the only sign he’d heard the words was the tears that collected in the inside corners of his pale blue eyes. And, he kept talking.

When words didn’t work, they used their hands. They pushed. Each push deepened the scarlet of Robert D. Roger’s cheeks, and he kept talking. They pushed harder. Falling to the ground knocked the tears from his eyes; they streamed down his face as he sat there, and I screamed.

Silent, but loud enough to crowd out any noise other than his occasional sob, I screamed, “Don’t get up! Please, don’t get up!” He didn’t, until they left. Sometimes I stayed behind to help gather his books, or his lunch.

We didn’t talk. Perpetually dirty hands left brown tracks on either side of Robert D. Roger’s milk-white face as he swiped at his tears as though punishing them for falling. I looked away.

His weakness provoked young and old, alike. The first and only time I every heard my father use the word “Queer” was in reference to Robert D. Rogers, as in, “Why do you hang around with that Queer?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I hadn’t actually heard a person call another person “Queer” in person. I didn’t expect that person to be my father. I answered with all the eloquent defensiveness an eleven-year-old could muster.

My father and I debated frequently, usually about race. I remember proudly hurling the word “underdog” into his blustering face. To this day, I hear the word and an image of Robert D. Rogers flashes through the View-Master inside my head.

And, all the while, I knew he brought it on himself.

“If you would just be quiet!”, I should have said.

If he had minded his own business.

If he had allowed the life he led to be enough, they would have left him alone.

But he couldn’t, and I knew, so I didn’t.

>Tomato Gorgonzola Soup

I was bit by the gardening bug early. Well, not bit exactly. No, it was more like someone wedged a pair of twenty pound post-hole diggers into my sweaty prepubescent hands while marking off the circumference of five circles where holes should be dug at least two feet down.

Yeah, it was exactly like that.

My dad marked the holes with the toe of his work boots which my mother referred to as “clodhoppers” when she threatened to make me wear them because I was “so rough on shoes”. They were suede on top with a heavy, rubber sole and always carried a thick crust of orange-colored, red clay on the toe. The clay didn’t come off, even as he drug the toe around and around, marking one hole after another, in a straight line, until he had five.

“Tomatoes have deep root systems. Don’t stop until you’ve dug at least two feet!”, he reminded me, while wiping sweat from his generous forehead with the handkerchief he always carried in his pants pocket.

Somewhere around the third hole, I started to picture my sisters and their perfect hair. And, they were smiling. But, of course they were. They were inside, in the air conditioning, where it was nice and cool. They were probably sitting in the den, watching television. It was time for American Bandstand. Posthole diggers slammed into the earth, harder and harder, until I couldn’t see how far down I had dug. I wondered if I’d left a trail of dirt like the clay on top of my father’s boots as I wiped tears from my eyes and saw I’d have to dig a little more.

Today, I am an avid gardener. Among other things, I grow tomatoes. I grow monster tomatoes that burst from their cages to tangle in a mass of hairy green branches that threatens to take over one whole side of my garden. And, I do it without the assistance of posthole diggers. Turns out tomatoes aren’t so finicky, after all.

Several times each summer I pick a tomato early, just as it begins to turn, while it’s still yellow nearest the stem. A guy at work saves boxes for me that are just big enough to hold one, carefully bubble-wrapped tomato. I apply a red and white “Fragile” sticker to the sides of the box not covered by the UPS label. Sometimes my father calls when he gets the package.

“I had a tomato sandwich for supper tonight, and I’ve got enough left over to have another one tomorrow!”

The excitement in his voice when he does call makes up for the times when he doesn’t.

I don’t eat raw tomatoes. And, I’ve tried. When we were kids, summer meant large slices on one side of our plates. Mimicking my mother I dusted mine, generously, with salt and pepper…and it became something disgusting covered with salt and pepper. My father relentlessly expressed his amazement that I didn’t like “his” tomatoes, especially when he’d grown them himself! I listened as my thumb worked the patch of hardened skin the posthole diggers left behind.

I do like cooked tomatoes. I can’t imagine french fries without ketchup, spaghetti without meat sauce, or life without brunswick stew. In fact, my favorite cooked tomatoes are in soup. Years of indoctrination leave me unable to eat a grilled cheese sandwich without a side of tomato soup.

Unless it’s Tomato Gorgonzola Soup. Tomato Gorgonzola Soup needs no accompaniment. Well, perhaps a salad of mixed greens topped with homemade blue-cheese vinaigrette. Mmmmmm….

Tomato Gorgonzola Soup

3 lbs. tomatoes, halved (Romas are good, heirlooms are better.)

3 tbl. olive oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

1 lg. onion chopped (Vidalias or Texas Sweet are best)

1 red bell pepper, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tbl. good sherry

3 tbl. flour

½ c. gorgonzola cheese (Low-fat is okay)

½ c. cream cheese (You may use low-fat, but I think it loses something in the translation…)

½ c. half & half

5 c. organic chicken broth

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. black pepper

1 can sliced new potatoes

3 tbl. fresh basil, minced

3 tbl. butter (Have you ever read a margarine label?)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Toss tomato halves with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place on baking sheet, skin side down. Bake 1 hour.

Meanwhile, sauté onion, garlic, and bell pepper in butter until tender. Add flour and cook for two minutes. Add sherry and stir, being careful to scrape pan. Add cheeses and half & half and stir until cheese melts. Add all remaining ingredients except basil and simmer ½ hour. Stir in basil..

Transfer mixture to blender and blend until creamy.

Pour into bowls to serve.

Daddy’s Girl

My father fathered four females.

I am the eldest.

“My name is Stacye, and I’m a Daddy’s Girl.”

Of course I am. We all are. We have a Daddy…we are girls. And, like all good southern girls, we actually call him “Daddy”.

Addressing him that way comes naturally. Admitting to it conjures images of Orson Welles, syrup dripping from the corners of Joanne Woodward’s unlined mouth, and a discomfort that smells like warm gardenias.

By now, you have an image. My blonde hair is long, as are my legs. My eyes are large, and probably blue. There’s a natural curve to my lips, which are carefully painted pink; never red. And, you would be right.

Except, the image is that of my sister, my baby sister to be exact; the one who still throws her limbs on either side of his recliner as she sprawls across his lap, the one that bakes for him, calls him daily, and houses him when he leaves the crystal sands of his beloved beach for important family events, such as his birthday, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

But I was there in the early days…

On Saturdays, we logged hours in his two-toned El Camino, driving around town doing errands. His “Honey-Do” list became our “Trip for Two” list, as we traversed suburban side-roads between the post office, hardware store, garden nursery, and occasionally, the local mechanic.

Mostly, we talked.

“Never forget who you are!” I especially loved that one. “You’re a Howell!”

He said as though it meant something. He said it as though mere mention of our name was enough to garner the respect of anyone within hearing distance. He said it so often that I believed it.

He told me stories of him and Joe Wiggins. It was always “Joe Wiggins”, never just “Joe”. Perhaps there was another Joe. I don’t know, he never said. But, he never mentioned his childhood friend without inserting his surname.

I remember the sun being particularly bright one Saturday afternoon. We’d probably just dropped my car off…again. The dilapidated shop occupied most of a block-long side road. They specialized in foreign “jobs”, such as Hondas, Toyotas, Datsuns, and Cortinas. They didn’t actually specialize in Cortinas. No one did. Because, no one east of the Atlantic drove one…except me.

“Why don’t you divorce her?’ My right hand swept blonde wisps from my face. The air conditioner in the El Camino had stopped working weeks ago.

“Because Howells don’t divorce.” He said it as though it were true. He said it as though he was raised by two loving parents instead of a crotchety grandmother who insisted he sweep their dirt floor each morning before mounting the newspaper-laden bicycle he later rode to school.

And I believed, because I didn’t know.

He taught me about cars. He didn’t change his own oil. He had “Eddie, The Mechanic” to do that. But, he taught me to change mine.

He lay under the car, while I leaned across the engine. We changed the oil, added water to the battery, and checked all the other fluids. When we were done; large, continent-shaped swatches of my flannel shirt were missing.

“Battery acid.”, he said while ordering me inside to change my shirt with just a look.

But I kept it. I kept the shirt. I even wore it a few times. Now, I’m sure it lies alongside my holey Peter Frampton t-shirt; the one I kept for almost twenty years before deciding that I really never would wear it again.

But I will…

Angels will sing, harps will play, and there I’ll be…Daddy’s Girl…wearing a holey flannel shirt over a faded Peter Frampton t-shirt.

“Do you feel like I do?”

Hair Raising

It’s fitting, I suppose, that I have unruly hair. I’m a pretty unruly woman. But, sometimes, I think it’s my mother’s fault…

Some of my earliest memories are of my hips wedged between my mother’s ample thighs atop our ultra-chic, avocado green, vinyl couch. For reasons known only to her, she insisted on using a comb on my hair. And, not just any comb, but one of those barber’s combs with skinny, pointed teeth that were so close together a dime wouldn’t pass through them. As she raked those teeth across my scalp, I gritted my own and prepared for the blood that was sure to start running into my eyes just any minute. Occasionally, I howled, until I realized that only made her angry, causing her to plow even deeper.

The only respite from the raking came when she found what she referred to as a “knot”. I don’t know how it happened or why. I only know that every single time my mother raised a comb to my head she found the hair at the nape of my neck to be a tangled morass that inspired her to mutter mild epithets between groaning tugs.

There was lots of “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!”, even though we both knew she’d seen it just last Saturday. And she whined a lot. Occasionally, the comb she extracted contained more than hair. The mass more resembled a bird’s nest than a knot, with wisps of lint and the occasional tiny scrap of paper woven into the mix.

And then there were the permanents…

For years, my mother lined us up on linoleum that was scored to resemble stone, if you were willing to allow that stone could possibly be tinged the same avocado green as the couch. By now, she’d invested in detangler which allowed her comb to slice through our tresses, unfettered. It was pretty smooth sailing, really, until it came time to roll. Because, rolling required wrapping, and wrapping involved small wisps of tissue paper, and, once again, she met her match at my nape.

At this point, she turned us over to my grandmother who owned a beauty shop on the ground floor of what would now be termed an assisted living high-rise. The real money, however, was made styling hair for regular customers who no longer required a return appointment. She spent Saturday mornings at the funeral home. Mother dropped us off after lunch and picked us up several hours later.

“Remember now!”, my grandmother called from the porch where she stood with one waving hand raised. “Don’t wash it for at least two days, so you don’t wash it out!”

I spent the ride home calculating how I could gain entry of the bathroom before my sister.

I drove myself the last time my grandmother curled my hair. By that time, I was compelled by more than style. By that time, the trek across town, and the smelly chemicals, the pulling, the tugging, and hot minutes spent under the hood of a hair dryer were a trade-off. Because, after she curled my hair, we could visit. She took me outside to her sun porch. She showed me her plants, some of which were decades old. She talked to me about them, told me how to grow them, and pulled up tiny samples for me to root when I returned home. It was worth the thirty minutes or so I would spend with my head in the sink later that evening.

The last time my mother tackled my hair involved one of those new-fangled curling irons; the kind encased in plastic bristles, the kind that not only curled your hair but brushed it, too. She was dolling me up for some kind of event. It may have been Easter. Easter was big deal at our house. It was one of two times, each year, that my parents would accompany us to church. We dressed in new dresses and wore pantyhose from freshly cracked eggs.

My mother separated a swath of hair from the crown of my head, twirling it around the plastic-bristled, metal shaft. Steam billowed from the contraption in her hand as she marked time. Time came, and she rolled her hand in an attempt to un-wrap. But, it wouldn’t. The curling iron, with its rows of plastic bristles, had a death-grip on my hair. Steam billowed from the crown of my head as my mother pulled and whined, pulled and whined.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!”

Whines turned to whimpers as we both imagined what I would look like after she cut the hair at the scalp in order to remove it from the shaft. My mother cursed. My sisters watched in horror. Finally, the hair loosened. I never saw the curling iron again.

Two weeks later, my mother made an appointment for both of us at the hair salon she frequented. Despite odiferous armpits at the end of her pendulous arms, Sandra could feather with the best of them. Kristy McNichol had nothing on me…

I was in the eleventh grade. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. I drove quite a distance to the salon and was somewhat taken aback by the pumping, bass-driven beat of the music that greeted me as I entered. “Toto? We’re not in Kansas anymore…”

A tall man with sallow skin under his brush cut rushed, as fast as his leather pants allowed, to reach me. I left with what amounted to a crew cut. And, I loved it…but I never did it again.

Since then, I’ve been shorn by a tattooed biker chick, one Valley Girl, a middle-aged woman with an unfortunate spiral perm, and one really nice Vietnamese man. He didn’t try to talk to me. I like that in a stylist.

Several weeks ago, I got the urge. You know the one; that feeling that you have to have your hair styled…NOW! Several weeks ago, the Valley Girl had sent me home looking like something the cat had dragged in, and it wasn’t the first time. As I left work, I made the decision to stop at the first salon I passed.

It took longer than I anticipated. I was almost home. The sign on the marquee read “Famous Hair”. The fact that it occupied a space just two doors down from the market was a huge selling point.

She was introduced as “Nancy”, but I’m willing to bet her green card reads “Tran” or “Nguyen”.

“What you want?”, she asked, whipping a black, nylon robe round my neck, matador-like.

I produced a copy I’d made of a style I’d found on the internet. Nancy laced tiny fingers through my hair as she studied the picture, frowning.

“But it doesn’t matter…”, I laughed. “I gave up a long time ago. My hair does what it wants to do…and I let it.”

Godsmack

When I was young, my mother deposited my sisters and me on the sidewalk in front of the Methodist Church every Sunday morning. It only made sense to go inside. Especially in winter, since Sunday was the one day a week we were forced to wear dresses. Vicious winter winds whipped the hems of our skirts, pushing us towards the double doors leading to the sanctuary.

Before long, it became achingly apparent that those double doors actually led to a sort of sanctified catwalk and, as soon as the Richway opened on the opposite corner, my entry into the sanctuary was little more than a detour.

As a teenager, summer Sundays found me in a tiny, white, clapboard church, chiefly populated by elderly Baptists. Attendance was requisite to spending the weekend at Mrs. Wise’s magical, heart-of-pine farmhouse. I liken the experience to being a visitor in a strange country. Few of their traditions were familiar to me. But, we were allowed to wear pants, and the friendly parishioners seemed uninterested in where you had bought them or how much they cost. Everyone appeared truly happy to be there, and even happier to see a new, young face.

I toyed with the idea of converting, until I learned that Southern Baptists disallow a plethora of enjoyable activities; among them, dancing. I am not a frequent dancer, and when I do dance, I don’t do it particularly well. But, I value the freedom to do so when the spirit moves me…

As a mother, I returned to the Methodist church. And, not just to make a deposit. I actually attended along with my children. By this time, a few avant-garde women were wearing pants, but I stuck to my skirts. As a stay-at-home Mom, I embraced any opportunity to wear make-up and pantyhose.

We attended for several years. My children joined youth groups and were baptized on video. Several years ago, while cleaning the attic, I found the VHS tape in a box filled with books. I gave it to my daughter who watches it with her brothers, on occasion. It reminds them of a pleasant time.

While my children were being sprinkled, however, florid men in Sunday suits were arguing the benefit/cost ratio of a lottery in Georgia. The argument spilled over into the church. Political fire-storm soon superseded religious education, and it became apparent that, while this congregation didn’t stand in judgment of one’s fashion sense, it made no bones about dictating a political stance.

I didn’t attend church in search of a political science lesson. I attended church in search of religious education, for me and for my children. As the level of negativity within the congregation grew, I once again beat a retreat, with one yearly exception.

Every Christmas Eve, we happily interrupted the preparations and festivities for an opportunity to touch God. Inside the sanctuary, the lighting was ambient, the music inspired, and the presence of God more tangible than at any other time in my experience. I always left the church better than when I went in, grateful for the peace and hope He had placed within my heart.

Of course, I see God everyday. What more perfect evidence is there of God’s presence than a bird? These marvelous creatures, who carry everything necessary for life in a tiny feathered bundle that defies gravity, effortlessly. What better proof could there be of the Divine?

And I feel Him working in my life, especially when I have dropped the ball. He usually lets me have my head long enough to realize I’ve lost sight of the finish line, before pulling back on the reins hard enough to unseat me. And, often, it’s not until I’ve regained my composure enough to brush myself off that I realize I’ve just enjoyed a Holy Smack-Down. This realization usually prompts the first smile I’ve allowed myself for days.

You have to smile. It’s just like being a kid; a kid who does something she knows she shouldn’t. And Dad comes in with that look on his face that tells you he knows. He knows and he isn’t happy about it. The only relief for the anxiety inspired by that face is retribution. And, you secretly smile. After Dad leaves the room, you smile. And, for a while you behave, content in the knowledge that when you don’t, when humanity rears its ugly head again, He’ll be there to jerk the reins.

Thanksglibbing

To my mind, Halloween has always represented the top of a slide; a long slide, the big metal kind that burns your legs in summer, but not so badly that you don’t mount the ladder a second, and even a third, time. And, it doesn’t go straight down. There are twists and turns, and bumps and dips. All in all, it’s a pretty raucous ride.

Thanksgiving used to represent one of the bumps, a high-point on the path towards the next bump of Christmas, on the way to the New Year’s sand pit that leaves tiny black flecks on the backs of your calves and the palms of your hands.

Nowadays, though, I would characterize Thanksgiving as more of a twist, a turn requiring careful navigation before resuming the descent.

My reticence about the holiday became clear to me a couple of years ago as I read posts on a social website to which I subscribed. There were several prompts along the line of “How Will You Spend Your Thanksgiving?”, and “Share Your Favorite Thanksgiving Memory”. As I scanned menus I wouldn’t choose from and ticked off strangers’ guest lists, complete with anecdotes, I began to feel sad. It became clear, relatively quickly, that my plan to post a virtual cornucopia of familial dysfunction would elicit a reaction similar to that experienced by a person unable to quash a particularly loud belch after finishing an elegant meal. Not that I have ever been in that exact situation, mind you. My embarrassing belch came disguised as a yawn, which I shielded prettily with one hand, in hopes that our English teacher wouldn’t mistake a night of late-night TV for impolite disinterest. The offending sound was as much a surprise to me as it was to the quarterback of our high school football team, who sat in the next row and two desks closer to the front of the room. His was the only face to turn in my direction.

“Excuse you!”, he bellowed through his laugh which soon became a chorus.

I responded with a weak smile, refusing to acquiesce to an overwhelming desire to escape the room. My intention here, though, is not to write about teenage angst.

My mother was a product of the times in which she lived. The decade of the sixties is widely associated with peace, love, and rock and roll. But due to a burgeoning space program, the sixties also ushered in canned vegetables, enveloped spice packs, and crystallized orange drink. Grocery stores remodeled to make room for the “Freezer Section”, and my mother was all over it.

She made an exception, though, at holiday time. Thanksgiving dinners were prepared fresh, with only the finest ingredients, and usually featured the same dishes year after year. One holiday she decided her Coke Salad was boring, and introduced instead a pale, orange concoction featuring apricots. Realizing our dinner wouldn’t include plump, juicy cherries confined by coke-flavored cottage cheese, I loudly bemoaned her decision. My sisters echoed my sentiment and the cherries were back in place the following year. What I didn’t realize until recently, though, is that while the center of our table might have been held by a large pine-cone, threaded with multi-colored strips of construction paper, my mother was truly our Thanksgiving centerpiece.

This year, Thanksgiving will find my sister, Candi, hosting her husband’s family at their beach-side condominium. It sounds like a lovely way to spend the holiday, but I wasn’t invited. After assisting with accommodations for the in-laws, my father called seeking reassurance that his three remaining daughters could provide a holiday at “home”. Two weeks later, he called again.

Several telephone calls later resulted in our “family dinner” being held in Cleveland, Georgia, a picturesque mountain town about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. My sister, Holly, is excited to serve turkey she raised from a chick. I visited the unfortunate fowl a couple of weeks ago. At that point she hadn’t decided which of the several strikingly unattractive birds would make the sacrifice. That’s okay…I didn’t really want to know.

All three of my children have chosen to settle near the town of their birth, necessitating a seventy-five mile drive to my house for Thanksgiving. My daughter will work until four in the afternoon, pushing our dinner late into the evening. They will settle for a store-bought turkey, smoked the day before, and my impressions of the earlier celebration. They will bring friends. My house will be packed to over-flowing, and laughter will fill every corner of every room.

But, I’ll still miss the cherries…

Missed Opportunities

“Oh, you know how he is…”

And, I do. I do know how he is.

The difference, now, is that I also know how he could be.

And, I think he should be.

Traditions in Transition

My family’s Easter traditions became lost in the cry of gulls over pristine white sand. My sister travels to Destin to spend the holiday with my father who, understandably, welcomes the opportunity to visit without travel. Often, as finances allow, one or more of us join them. More often, we do not.

For years, my older children traveled the seventy-five miles between my house and theirs to participate in smaller scale celebrations. This year, my daughter is grateful to have the extra hours at work, and after putting in eighteen hour days for two consecutive weeks, my son is looking forward to an afternoon spent resting on a riverbank, watching the water ripple around his fishing line.

I assembled my final Easter basket last night and felt the finality. The look of wonder left Shane’s eyes years ago, but I’ve continued the ruse, for both our sakes. I admit to feeling just a little ridiculous as I fluffed plastic grass and poured jelly beans into plastic, egg-shaped baseballs. Next year I’ll limit myself to a nice card, and maybe a bag of chocolate-peanut butter eggs.

We’re not a particularly religious family. While my father could be called a religious scholar, given the hours he has spent reading various religious doctrines, only one of his four daughters attends church regularly. I’ve decided that this lack of structured piety is partly to blame for our lack of celebration.

As a child, Easter meant a new dress and a fine white purse to match my shiny, new, white shoes which I would wear only to church. It meant traveling across town to share dinner with a family of friends from Chicago, who marked the occasion by molding butter into the shapes of lambs and crosses. Our Easter baskets were always grandiose things; large and round they were stuffed with chocolate, before being wrapped in pastel-colored cellophane, cinched with matching ribbon. Easter morning found four of them, arranged in a grand display upon the kitchen table. The trick was to slide your hand into the flap created by the cellophane in order to pilfer a peep before Mom and Dad woke up.

By the time my children were born, Easter dinner had become a strictly family affair. Easter egg hunts were added to the celebration, meaning my children usually had at least two opportunities to load their baskets. The hunt at my parent’s house was always conducted outside, while I occasionally chose to nestle my children’s loot against window sills, behind curtains, under a lamp, or between two books on a bookshelf. The children seemed to prefer the indoor hunts. I like to think they enjoyed the intimacy.

“What are we going to do today, Mom?” Shane’s question left me wanting. We settled on a trip to the park. He and his Dad will play pitch and catch, while I walk the dog around the track. It should be a good day for it. The weather is beautiful. Later, we’ll cook out.

But I can’t help wishing there was something more…