And, That’s When I Saw The Duck

It was just a regular Thursday morning…

I go in late on Thursdays. My schedule was changed a couple of years ago to accommodate customers in other time zones. Personally, I felt those customers could have used the same method they use when planning to watch a program on television. For example, if an Alabamian hopes to catch an episode of “House” advertised to air at eight, eastern, she knows to pick out her spot on the couch no later than 6:58. They are used to it. They’ve always done it. My bosses weren’t having it.

Actually, I enjoy the extra time at home in the morning. I get to see my son and we can have a conversation that doesn’t necessarily include grunts. I can water my garden and/or pick flowers to take to the office. I’ve even been known to start a load of laundry. The real advantage, though, is that I can take my son to school.

School ended for most kids almost two weeks ago. But Shane plays football and, in this town, football players are expected to take summer courses in order to free up time in their fall schedule for weight-lifting, film-watching, and any other activity the coach might deem necessary to win the next game. Of course, all of this comes under the heading “PE” so as not to violate any Board of Education mandates. But I digress…

After throwing seed at the chickens and shutting off the sprinkler, I climbed into the driver’s seat beside Shane who always sits in the car for at least ten minutes before anyone else is ready. Two of his teammates waited in a driveway around the corner, soon filling my backseat to capacity, and the shrunken airspace with just a hint of man/boy funk.

The drive to school was short and quiet, as a local DJ hinted at lascivious content after the next commercial break. The backseat boys exchanged nervous glances.

Banter began as we took our place on line in front of the designated drop-off point. As we inched forward, the boys in the back opened their doors while Shane slid in for a good-bye kiss that could be my last. Every one could be my last. I know this; the preciousness of what I have left. I was also acutely aware of the amount of testosterone sliding out of my backseat. I turned my head, offering my cheek.

Summer should mean lighter traffic. For some reason, that hasn’t happened this year. So far, the lights are just as long, the lanes are just as clogged, and drivers in tiny cars with loud mufflers are just as annoying.

My commute takes me through several very large intersections which, when combined, include fourteen lanes of traffic. I glided to a stop at one of them while considering whether or not to listen to a CD rather than my beloved “Fresh Air” on NPR. The topic was electric cars and the batteries that propel them…snore…

And, that’s when I saw the duck.

She was small, smaller than the ducks I visit at our local park, and brown; mottled brown and white that would turn beige in a squint. Five look-a-like ducklings waddled, in military-like precision, behind her.

ACROSS SIX LANES OF MORNING COMMUTE TRAFFIC!!!

One hand grabbed the door handle, while the other found the console.

My mind raced.

How had she managed the first five lanes?

How would she manage the last? The turn-lane to my right always moved with a steady flow of traffic.

I considered getting out, but didn’t want to frighten her. She’d done such a good job, so far…

All I could do was wait; wait and worry, worry and wait, while white-knuckling my car’s interior.

Sweat beaded along my hairline as I eyed the rearview mirror. Nervous, I shifted my eyes to the passenger-side mirror, while wondering what I might do if a car appeared there. “They’d never see her.”, I thought. “She’s so small.”

The driver of the car to my left tapped her horn as though to hurry her along. I bounced in my seat in an effort at moral support.

I watched Mother Duck gain the curb, before checking the mirrors again. “Hurry!!!” (It was a silent scream.) Like molasses, the ducklings flowed over the curb behind her. She poked her billed into the underbrush several times before choosing a path and, in agonizing fashion, they were gone.

In a gush, I exhaled the breath I’d sucked in upon seeing the duck. Tears came to my eyes, and I wondered how she’d known. What force told her it was time? Whose hand held traffic at bay?

Who said there’s no such thing as miracles?

To Bake, Or Not to Bake

So, apparently, The Rapture is scheduled to take place tomorrow, May 21^st. Or October 21^st. Or, possibly some time in between. I guess that’s why, though he announced a date, Reverend Camping left us guessing as to time.

And, that’s unfortunate.

You see, it’s clean-up day at the high school tomorrow. All football players and their parents are expected to attend. I suppose we could blow it off. I mean, it’s not as though they’ll be taking attendance, right? But there’s this feeling that if you don’t show up, the coach will notice. You’d be passing up an opportunity for face time, a chance to make an impression so indelible as to create a presence he won’t be able to ignore while fine-tuning the starting line-up. Yes, there is the perception that a day like tomorrow could make or break a kid’s high school football career, rapture notwithstanding.

I spoke with my grandson yesterday. He finished the conversation the same way he always does.

“When am I coming to your house, Nonni?

Had Reverend Camping seen fit to settle on a time, I might have planned a short visit. I could have arranged a sort of Bon Voyage party, just in case. I mean, granted, Elijah probably hasn’t been born again, but that could be because it hasn’t been an awfully long time since he was born the first time. Surely the selection committee wouldn’t hold that against him, right?

My son’s birthday is Monday, and he really, really wants to be fourteen. After all, he’s had a whole year to plan. In anticipation of the event, I purchased a pretty fancy guitar. It’d be a shame if he never got to play it, but I could probably get my money back. There are sure to be plenty of guitar players left behind…

And, of course, a pending rapture calls into question the need for cake. To bake, or not to bake? The cake my son has requested is, when complete, three layers of decadent gooey goodness. The ingredients aren’t cheap and preparation takes some time; time possibly better spent on “making arrangements”, if you catch my drift…

On the way to dinner tonight, my son gave a lecture on rapture. His knowledge was impressive considering his formal religious education is spotty, at best.

“The whole thing is bogus, Mom. I mean, anybody who reads the Bible knows that even predicting the rapture is a sin! Nobody’s supposed to know when that’s going to happen!”

This is the point at which I realized my son has been receiving Bible lessons from someone other than me. We’ve discussed God, rehashed stories, investigated traditions, and read many of the Psalms. I love the Psalms. David is among my favorite poets. But we only discussed Rapture once. I remember we were watching VH1….

>You Know?

“I watched this movie, you know…”

I’ve come to realize that “you know” is anyone within listening distance. Sometimes, “you know” is his Dad. More often than not, it’s me.

We’re in a car. My son is strapped in on the right side of the backseat. Occasionally, his breath bends around the headrest into my hair. He balances a cardboard tray of medium-sized sodas on his thigh pads. We stopped for burgers after the game.

“And this guy was in college. And he made, like, really good grades, and he was the captain of the football team, and he killed himself.”

The smell of things fried in oil that had already fried many other things wafted up from the floorboard where the bag of burgers warmed the insides of both my ankles. I remained silent while reaching down to make sure the top of the bag was folded closed.

“They tried to help him. I mean, you know, he wasn’t acting like himself and his friends were like, “Hey are you ok?”, and he said yes, but they knew he was depressed so they tried to help, but it was too late, and he hung himself.”

The night is cool. The windows are down. He raises his voice in competition.

“They didn’t believe him, you know.”

Realizing he addressed me directly, I respond with an equally loud “Uh-huh..”

“They told him “Oh, you’ll be alright.”, and they, like, patted him on the back and stuff, and they just left him in his room, and then they found him and he had hung himself.”

I allow for several seconds of windy silence before speaking.

“That’s pretty common, actually.”, I begin. “You take someone like Carlton, on your football team. He’s a great student and a star athlete. It’s hard to imagine he has any problems.”

“I was like that.” The words come out in a rush. He isn’t done yet.

“I was like that last year in basketball and baseball. Everyone thinks you’re so great and you’re such a great player and they think you make really good grades and everything, and I was having a hard time. And, I didn’t want to tell you ‘cause I knew you’d be disappointed and so I hid it all through Christmas. And then, at Christmas, I got everything I wanted and more, and I felt so bad. And, I was going to tell you then, but I couldn’t. And then you got the report card, and you saw the C’s, and you, like, grounded me and stuff.” He pauses, giving us both a chance to catch our breath.

“And you know the funny thing? I was so glad! I felt so much better when you did that, you know?”

Yeah, I know.

>Making It

I made a yardstick cover once. It was my first, and last, experience working with smelly, scratchy burlap. I might have gone with a nice, polished cotton except I was eight at the time, and I worked with what the Brownie leader gave us. The flowers we glued to the front were nice. They were large, made of felt, and sherbet hued.

My mother hung my gift next to the door in her sewing room. It sheathed her favorite yardstick; the one made of soft, balsa wood with the telephone number of a local hardware store printed on both sides. It stayed there until the flowers’ petals began to curl, just like real petals do. I never left the room without pressing on them.

I made a vest in home economics class. And, then I made a jumper. Remember jumpers? I loved jumpers, especially a simple A-line jumper.

The class was taught by a large African-American woman who favored chartreuse double knits. She also taught cooking classes. I can’t recall what I cooked, but I do remember her announcement, “There’s no such thing as blue food!”, and my bemusement when I realized she was right. I’d never really thought about it before…

I made an amazing score on the SAT. This has no real significance other than knowing that my sister, the one who made straight A’s for twelve straight years, didn’t.

I made children; four of them, one daughter and three sons. Of course I had help, of both a divine and not so divine nature, but their complete reliance upon the inner workings of MY body suggests “making” to me. And when you make children, you make something more. You make history, and legacy, and hope.

Putting my home economics classes to good use, I made all of my daughter’s clothing until she started elementary school. I made shirts, and shorts, and ruffled panties. I made dresses, and long, cuddly nightgowns. My favorite, of course, was a jumper. I made it of brown corduroy, and embroidered a yellow Care Bear named “Funshine” on one side, close to the hem. Upstairs in my attic, I’ve stored one outfit each of my children wore as babies. I hope to see a granddaughter wear that jumper. Maybe Care Bears will be popular again. It could happen…

I made a lovely counted-cross stitch sampler which I then stuffed and fashioned into a pillow. The design suggested a friend, and I gave it to her. That was over ten years ago, and it still serves as the centerpiece atop her creamy, white chenille bedspread. Some of the stitches have loosened, and synthetic stuffing often peeks through one burst corner. You see, she doesn’t just look at it, she uses it.

I made a different birthday cake for each of my children. My daughter, a “Christmas Baby”, favors red velvet. One year, my friend made her cake. I can’t recall why she did it. Perhaps I was just busy with the other children. My husband might have been in the hospital. Or, rehab. Rehab is more likely. Once in the hospital for surgery, and he came out a new man. Several trips to rehab never had the same affect.

My friend, in her creative wisdom, added crushed candy-cane to the cream cheese frosting covering the cake. We’ve made it that way ever since.

Bruises, especially large, purple, soon-to-be yellow bruises, are hard to ignore. When they are on your face its damn near impossible. Before they healed, I made a home for my children out of a 12’x60’ metal box. In the south, most people refer to them as trailers. If they’re trying to be polite, they might say “mobile home”. But it really was just a metal box. Oh, it had a hitch on one end, but the last time it was mobile was at least thirty years ago.

I felt fortunate to have scored the lot across from the pool. At night, red lights on the Coca-cola machine winked at me, taking me back to my childhood, when all motel rooms were on one level, and a peek through rubber-backed curtains revealed the pool’s glistening surface reflecting off brightly-lit, multi-colored vending machines. Despite what some deem squalor, living there was a perpetual vacation, and it wasn’t just the lights…

I made a field of flowers out of what used to be a lawn before the septic tank was replaced. When it rained, red clay ran in rivulets down the street towards the baseball field behind the pool. I say “baseball field” because my sons played baseball on it. But, whether you call it a trailer park or a mobile home park, diamonds were hard to come by.

I never heard my mother curse until she had cancer.

“I’ve got some heavy shit to tell you.”

She died over five years ago, and I still hear those words at least once a week.

Upon hearing them the first time, I made the decision to return home to Atlanta. We shared a duplex with a young couple expecting their first child. I went back to school, and on a diet. My fitness class instructor partnered me with a more traditional college student. He was cute. He was required to touch me. Matronly just wouldn’t do.

Many nights, I made a bed of the couches in the ICU waiting room. Visits were limited to fifteen minutes out of every hour. I made one when I arrived, and one before leaving. My father couldn’t bear the thought of my mother being alone. I couldn’t bear the thought of my father worrying.

Today, I made pickles. It’s been a banner year for cucumbers. I can’t pickle fast enough. Fortunately, my friends are pickle eaters. My son thinks we should sell them.

We visit our local Farmer’s Market weekly. As we walk the aisle, tasting and touching, he taunts me.

“You should sell your pickles, Mom! I could help you!”

I don’t need to sell them. I don’t even need to taste them. I just need to make them.

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.”

Pompless Circumstance

Shane’s long-time baby-sitter, Christin, invited us to her graduation ceremony. The invitation, and the opportunity it presented, seemed timely.

Shane will start eighth grade in the fall or, as he puts it, he’ll be the “Big Dog”. So many facets of Shane’s life serve to accentuate the fact that the upcoming school year will be a period of transition, a stepping stone if you will, from one phase of life into another. As high school graduation should be the pinnacle of this next phase, attending the event seemed an opportunity to plant a seed, to secure a goal, to expose him to all the pomp and circumstance afforded scholastic achievement.

He balked only slightly when I insisted he wear dress shoes and the imagined pain of buttoning his button-down was assuaged by the mirror over my shoulder, as a slight jerk of his head almost produced the coveted swish of Justin Bieber hair.

“Hey, Mom! I look kinda good!” He’s a slightly pudgy thirteen-year-old. “Kinda” IS good.

Christin had called earlier in the day. Her words were punctuated by a distinctive “click” as she released long golden curls from the clutches of a steaming curling iron. Her usually swift cadence was enhanced by excitement as she shared ticket information and encouraged early arrival.

“You’llbesittinginbleachersIt’sgoingtobehotbutthey’resellingChick-fil-asothereisthat.”

We parked at the church next to the high school and walked a down-hill block to the stadium. Shane’s baseball coach met us as we circled the football field.

“Luke’s up there somewhere.”, he shaded his eyes against the burning twilight, searching for his son. “There!”, he pointed.

Shane asked the question with a lift of his eyebrows. I answered with a blink and a nod, and he began a clumsy ascent towards his friend

We were early. There were plenty of seats to choose from. I headed for an empty metal bench in the center, and as I climbed towards my perch, overheard someone make reference to the fifty-yard-line. It felt out of place

Easing onto a very warm aluminum bench, I was disappointed to realize that the stage had been set up facing the opposite side of the field. They were, apparently, playing to the “home” crowd. A handful of people scurried to and fro around the stage as though assigned a very important task, but no one actually seemed to do anything. A golf cart sped past the bleachers several times. The sun had dipped below the treetops, but left her heat behind.

A group of people wearing black caps and gowns approached the stage area. It took me a minute or so to realize that they were teachers and not really old looking students. Mentally, I chastised myself for the mistake. It’s not as though I’d never attended a graduation before. I’d seen those same caps and gowns at my own graduation.

Of course, my graduation took place downtown, in the air-conditioned comfort of the Municipal Auditorium. And the event was actually a culmination of events that had taken place over the preceding two weeks. Parents feted their children with parties that felt a lot like bridal showers feel today. An assortment of gifts flowed in from my parents friends, many of whom I’d never met. Most sent money, but one relative sent a boxed set of Anais-Anais perfume. I was so impressed! It seemed so…continental! I wonder if it’s still available…

Crimson colored caps and gowns were delivered to the school two weeks before graduation and taken to the music room for fittings. We stood in line with our friends, waiting our turn while sharing our enthusiasm and an occasional joke at the expense of students whose heads measured extra-large. Afterwards, a group of us went out to lunch and, later, to the mall. It didn’t matter that we would be wearing calf-length gowns. The occasion called for a new dress. And shoes, of course.

Something about the prospect of walking down an aisle prompts profuse primping. Not until I married would I again spend so much time in front of a mirror. I emerged from the bedroom I shared with my sister to find my family waiting in the den. My father wore a suit and tie, my sisters, their Easter shoes, and my mother, heels under a skirt that probably hadn’t seen the light of day more than once or twice since she’d owned it. We all piled into Mom’s Vista Cruiser station wagon and headed downtown.

The auditorium was dark except for tiny lights imbedded in the aisle seats. My family went inside while I followed a beckoning, black-shrouded teacher whose job it was to herd graduates backstage.

The noise we made as we assembled ourselves upon the risers behind the curtain seemed deafening. I was sure our parents could hear. The relative darkness only served to accentuate the heavy blanket of expectancy that fueled our collective state of giddiness. Several robed teachers stood in front of the risers alternately moving students who had yet to master the alphabet and threatening rowdy boys by addressing them as “Mister”.

And the music began…daaaa, dadada, daaaa-da, daaaa, dadada, daaaaaah. A nervous silence fell over my class. Even the rowdy boys stood a little taller.

“Excuse me…”

I woke from my reverie to the face of a young father wearing cargo shorts with a baby dangling off one arm. He looked pointedly at the bleacher beneath my feet.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” I turned towards the aisle, allowing him passage. A young African-American man climbed the steps towards me. He wore blue jeans under a t-shirt which exposed carefully cultivated biceps. Very large basketball shoes bloomed beneath his pants. Loosened laces allowed for a protruding tongue. The toddler perched in the crook of his right arm made repeated attempts to dislodge his doo rag.

Behind him, a middle-aged woman in tank top and shorts, pushed a mop of unruly blonde curls from her face as she searched for a bench long enough to contain her similarly clad contingent.

I shifted on the bench that was becoming harder and more uncomfortable by the minute to see that two rows of black robes were filing in towards the stage.

The man sitting next to me leaned in, “Why are some of the kids wearing black robes, while the others are wearing white?” I felt so vindicated…

The presence of a tiny sea-foam-suited woman waving her arms, frantically, in front of a small group of students wielding instruments was the only indication that music was playing. The air around me was filled with the cacophony of mixing voices, frequent laughter, and the occasional baby crying. Suddenly the fifty-yard-line comment seemed less inappropriate.

This time I leaned in. “Are these people just going to talk through the entire ceremony? It’s bad enough we can’t see. We aren’t going to be able to hear either?”

My position granted me a line of sight though which I could see Shane. His eyes were focused as he sat immobile save for his thumbs, which danced rapidly over the controls of Luke’s Gameboy.

Four rows down, a slightly overweight, middle-aged man sat in a suit and tie. His hands folded and unfolded a program as he surveyed the crowd.

Frayed Strings

No one loves their children more than I do. My youngest is thirteen now, which only goes to prove that all the minutes I spent wishing he could be my baby forever were for naught. But I knew that…

To my credit, I’ve turned those mournful minutes into reasons to be grateful. When he recounts an exchange with another student in school, I pay attention. The day will come when sharing won’t be so easy. When he calls “Mom”, as I walk past his darkened room, I stop and listen before reminding him, again, to go to sleep. When he allows me to take his hand as we walk, I feel it as I hold it. And, when he wraps his arms around my waist, and rests his head against my chest I thank God for the blessing. Every little boy hug, every little boy kiss, could be the last.

He turned thirteen last week, three days before school let out for summer.

“Do you want a party? You could invite your friends from school, the guys from your baseball team, and some of your football friends. We could go to the park. You guys could play baseball, and we could cook-out.”

Shane sat silent, looking through the window to the backyard. Movement in his eyes told me he was considering the offer. He’d attended several birthday parties this year.

Valerie invited him to his first boy/girl, night-time party. There was dancing, which led to sweating, which provoked Shane to stealthily comb the health and beauty aids aisle during our next visit to the grocery store.

Chelsea’s mother went one better and rented a pool-side clubhouse. As we pulled up, the outer walls of the building seemed to vibrate in time with the disco ball sparkling through an upper-floor window. Expecting hesitation from Shane, I turned in my seat to offer words of encouragement from someone who has personally experienced countless disco balls. The backseat was empty, the car door slammed, and by the time I turned around Shane had mounted the walk towards the door without so much as a wave good-bye.

A pattern began to develop, and I saw my mistake.

“Oh…I just realized all the parties you’ve gone to this year were given by girls. Boys your age don’t have birthday parties, do they?”

Relief colored his face.

“Not really…”, he smiled, lowering his head.

“Ok! So what do you want to do? We could go out to dinner. Your choice! Or we could go to the movies. You could take a friend….You tell me. What do you want to do?”

“I want to spend the weekend with Josh.”

Josh is his oldest brother. He married just before Shane’s birthday. He and his wife live in a rural area seventy-five miles away.

Shane left on Friday.

Friday night I had dinner out, and for the first time in a long time, no one offered me a children’s menu. My companion and I enjoyed uninterrupted adult conversation. And when we left, there were no tell-tale crumbs beneath our table.

Saturday I slept in, and woke to a quiet house. I never realized how much noise is generated by the simple act of breathing until mine was the only breath drawn. I took my coffee to the patio and never felt compelled to grab at the table beside my chair in hopes of steadying it. Birdsong fell on my ears without accompaniment. No one asked me any questions.

I spent the rest of the day doing as I pleased. I shopped without uttering the word “no”. I turned my Ipod up as I gardened, never giving a thought to what might be going on inside the house. I gutted the playroom, and in so doing generated quite a pile for the next charity pick-up. He hasn’t touched those toys in years…

I organized his dresser, and added several threadbare t-shirts to the aforementioned pile. The one with the hole in the collar has bothered me for months.

I baked cookies for the neighbors and no one whined, “You always make the good stuff for other people!” I watched tennis on TV without giving advance warning of an imminent takeover of the den. Music wafted from speakers mounted beneath the eaves as we grilled on the patio and no one asked me sardonically, “Why don’t you like rock music anymore?”

As I turned out the lights above the mantle and closed the sunroom door against the night I thought, “So this is what it will be like when he is gone. I can do this…”

The phone rang and I jumped to answer it.

“Hello?!”, I never gave a thought to sounding casual.

“Hey, Mom.”

Those two words began tales of Clydesdale horses, front flips from diving boards, and a dog Shane loved enough to bring home.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

“Ok, Mom. Gotta go.” Male voices parried in the background. I understood the distraction.

“Ok…” Silence in the line told me he had hung up already.

For the first time in thirteen years Shane hung up without saying “I love you.”

But he does…

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…

Sins of the Father…

My son, Shane, loves Social Studies class. I know this because his Social Studies lessons are the only ones he regurgitates without provocation. He regularly regales me with facts and figures such as the gross national product of Haiti, and the length and breadth of waterways throughout Italy. This is why I know that his seventh grade Social Studies class is studying the Middle East, and that the country we now know as Iraq used to be called Mesopotamia. I don’t know why they changed the name. “Mesopotamia” is a lovely word, unlike the harshly clipped “Iraq”, or as some people regrettably refer to it, “Eyerack”. But, I digress…

Last Tuesday, as we ticked off subjects on his study checklist, Shane mentioned they were having a guest speaker in Social Studies on Friday. That’s what they call it now. When I was in school, and someone from the “outside” came in to talk, we called it an “assembly”. I always looked forward to assemblies. The verbiage is different, but the excitement inherent in an hour of school being filled by someone other than a teacher remains the same. The conversation ended, he repacked his backpack, and I never gave it another thought.

Until Thursday…Thursday morning I received an email with the subject line “Your Immediate Attention is Needed” from a board member of our athletic association. Supposing the message had to do with my son’s football league, I clicked without hesitation. The first words I read stringently assured me that her son would not be attending school the next day. I was understandably intrigued.

What followed was an email sent by a pastor in her church, complete with official letterhead, which began with the words; “I need to ask you to pray earnestly to stop the spread of discrimination against Christians and violation of “Separation of Church and State”. The pastor went on to explain that the middle school had invited an Islamic speaker to address the seventh grade class as part of a comparative religion study, but had failed to invite a Christian speaker. He expressed his views of this action, calling it “wrong on just so many levels”, and invoked the First Amendment a second time. He urged prayer, being careful not to suppose what action God would have his reader take, making instead a personal plea. He went on to suggest that parents “strongly consider withholding your student from this presentation”, and closed with an invocation to “charge the gates of hell like a mighty army”. The violence inherent in the last sentence shook me. Hoping I had mistaken the context, I read it twice. Realizing I hadn’t, saddened me.

I sat, unseeing, for several minutes after reading the email, while thoughts pinged, wildly, about my brain. I marveled that this email had been forwarded to me at all. Anyone who really knows me would not have included my address in the CC line. I wondered if the pastor had purposely misrepresented the facts, or was truly ignorant of the actual context of the class. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be privy to the details were it not for my son’s love of the subject. And, who is he to harangue anyone regarding the First Amendment, anyway? Why just last week, all students were encouraged to attend a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event held in the school gymnasium!

Sadness quickly became outrage that somehow evoked a memory. Two dark-haired girls rode side-by-side in an aged go-cart that often spoiled the peace of a sunny Sunday afternoon. They rode with abandon and joy-etched faces. I might not have given them a second glance had it not been for their headgear. Instead of a helmet, each girl wore the equivalent of a white, mesh muffin cup on the crown of her head. The clash of cultures was striking; hard core Islamic fundamentalism meets good old American know-how.

And another, more recent Sunday, when the air was cooler, allowing notes played on a distant sitar to float on its buoyancy. Occasionally a mournful male voice accompanied the strings, giving me pause as I weeded the garden. Laughter filled the breaks between songs, urging me to join the party. And, I almost did. I considered walking the few blocks between my house and theirs, if for no other reason than to observe their joy. I had no doubt I would be welcomed by my neighbors. But, I didn’t. The light was fading, and there were so many weeds left to pick…

My son did attend school on Friday, but not before he and I had a talk about what to expect. And I resent that what might have been a discussion about a unique opportunity for understanding, was, instead, a crash course in how to deal with ignorance and hate-mongering.

The day passed, mostly without incident. The local news featured a piece on the uproar, interviewing a protesting parent whose daughter bore the brunt of her father’s “fifteen minutes of fame”. Her plight became the focus of Shane’s re-telling; as he expressed the pity he felt when other children taunted her, and his relief that I hadn’t felt the need to express my opinions in a similar manner. I think he put it best, when during our morning discussion he expressed his dismay at the controversy.

“They’ve done this for seven years, Mom, and we’re not studying religions, we’re studying the Middle East! Islam is the main religion on the Middle East, not Christianity. It wouldn’t make sense to have a Christian speaker!” He has a habit of propping his forehead in the palm of his hand when feeling exasperated and he did so now. A curtain of hair that usually hides one eye now fell over still pudgy fingers.

He raised a solemn face and said quietly, “People just need to quit being scared. We’re just trying to learn. Maybe if they learned they wouldn’t be so scared anymore.”

Out of the mouths of babes…