Category: women

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…

30 Days of Gratitude – Sisters

I don’t post a Facebook status every day.  Some days I don’t really have a status.  Some days, I spend part of the day just trying to decide what my status would be if I really had to have one…which I don’t, of course.   I’m comfortable subsisting in a status-less state.  After all, I spent the better part of my life without a declared status.  Most of that went okay.
Today, and for the next twenty-nine days, I will declare my status on Facebook.  I’m calling it Thirty Days of Gratitude.  
I participated in thirty days of music.  It was fun.  It brought back a lot of memories.  Memories and music always mix with me. 
 
I got halfway through Project 365, an exercise in posting a photograph every day for a year.  My computer went on the fritz somewhere around photo number one-sixty. 
I was tempted to join a friend in posting a different, meaningful film everyday for a month…until I remembered I have no memory for titles, or actors names, and only retain tiny snippets of plot that prove to be ungoogleable. 
So why not do Thirty Days of Gratitude?  One thing’s for sure…I can use the reminder.
Today, I am grateful for sisters.  I have three of them.  All are younger, some more than others.
Laura and I are eighteen months apart which means sometimes I am two years older, and sometimes I am one year older, but I am always older.  Many parenting blogs suggest eighteen months to be an ideal age gap between babies one and two.  I’m thinking this estimation is made from the point of view of the parents whose workload, while doubled, isn’t complicated by diversity.  Basically, it’s like having another kid along for the ride.
Lower to the ground, though, the view is very different.  The competition began the moment she entered the house disguised as a puff of white organza and lasted until, as an adult with children of my own, I realized that with deference comes responsibility.  My mother shared things with Laura she never shared with me, but that doesn’t have to be because Laura was her favorite.  It might also be because Laura was interested, and a better listener and…well…there.
Today, Laura rarely wears organza, choosing instead easy-to-care-for knits, and scarves.  We both like scarves, but we wear them differently.  That’s what we are.  We are alike, but different.  I think that’s why we have so much fun when we are together.  Whatever the reason, the years have stripped away all the things that don’t matter, leaving us with our scarves, love for our kids, and the ability to make each other laugh…at most anything.
Holly came after Laura, and we both thought we’d never seen anything more beautiful.  Compared to us two tow-heads, Holly, with her chocolate brown eyes and curly locks to match, appeared downright exotic!  She had a sweet disposition and a smile to match.  I’m willing to bet both Laura and I carry the same image in our heads of Holly as a toddler, standing tall and proud next to the pencil-drawn line on the wall in my mother’s sewing room.  She couldn’t have been much over three feet tall.
Holly and I were always the closest of the four sisters.  We were the renegades.  We smoked and drank and made bad choices in men…and spent hours together on the telephone justifying our misguided decisions.  We’re not as close as we once were.  She doesn’t know how proud I am of her and the way she set a course for her life and stuck to it.  Years ago she told me she wanted to live on a mountain-top, faraway.  She does now, and she is surrounded by the things she loves best, animals.  I always knew that’s what she would do…what many of us never do.  She found happy.
Candi is the youngest.  She prefers to be called Candace, but after years of Candy, Candi is the best I can do.  Her middle name is Jane, so of course we called her Candy-Jane.  Mom even made a song out of it.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I’m not so sure she liked it.  I always think we are ten years apart but when I count it’s actually seven.  It feels like ten though…
What with the age difference, we didn’t actually play together much as children.  I remember worrying about her a lot.  I expressed this to our parents and checked on her at night, when she was in her crib.
Even as a girl, I loved to concoct stories.  Once when I was about thirteen and Candi was three…no, make that six…I brought her to tears with one of my stories.  I remember the mix of feelings; the horror that I’d made my baby sister cry, and the thrill of doing something really well. 
Though not evident on the surface, Candi and I are probably the most alike in temperament.  We both march to music others don’t necessarily hear.  And, we are okay with that.  The tunes Candi hears are very different from those that play in my head, and we are okay with that, too. 
We live less than thirty minutes apart and only see each other about four times a year.  We addressed this issue a couple of years ago by instituting a monthly get-together we referred to as “Sisters”.  After about a year, conflicting schedules and, yes, priorities got in the way.   What with Holly living on her mountain-top, regrouping will be a challenge, but I hope we’ll find a way to do it…soon.  Whether eighteen months, ten years or seven years apart, we’re not getting any younger…

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

Finally Determined: TBD, Facebook, and Girls Gone Mild

I’m not the most social animal you’ll ever meet.
Just ask…
Okay, there are a couple of people you could ask. 
My oldest/dearest would regale you with stories of sardonic avoidance.  While she’s talking though, remember she’s not exactly the life of the party herself.  We met at work.  I believe the ice-breaker was a question about fellatio.  That kind of thing will bond a girl…
My “Spirit Mother”, a Native-American woman who tackled the job of growing me up within months of my thirtieth birthday, will tell you it’s a ruse.  She’ll dub me magnanimous and explain, in great detail, the ways in which I’ve proven the depth of my caring, my intelligence, and the innate generosity of my nature. 
And, they’d both be right…depending on the day, my level of self-confidence, and the number of days since I’ve been alone.
Really alone.
Because, I have to be. 
Not all the time.  Everyone knows doing anything all the time is unhealthy.
But I need it some of the time. 
Strange as it may sound, being alone actually takes me outside myself.  When forced to associate for days on end, my emotions become jumbled.  Thinking becomes hard, and sleep, evasive.
Alone time, whether spent writing, reading, or inside the cocoon provided by nose-cancelling earbuds, allows my mind to rest, to find space for the tornadic detritus produced by the effort of showing up.
And, speaking of showing up…
Almost five years ago, I joined a social website on a whim.  I’d been surfing the internet, for what I don’t remember.  But, I came across an advertisement for a social website built for Boomers. 
I’m a Boomer…barely.  It gives me a modicum of comfort to be able to say that I qualify by just a few months. 
I joined.  I conjured a catchy screen-name and used, as an avatar, a photograph taken by my daughter.
Photogenic, I am not.  My daughter caught me on an upswing…literally.  The photograph was taken while I shared the porch swing with my eldest son.  He always makes me smile.  She clicked at just the right time. 
Over several years, for several hours, several days a week, I forged relationships with people in exotic places like Goshen, New York, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Sydney, Australia. 
And we shared.  We learned about families, argued about politics, supported artistic effort, and congratulated achievement. 
And we laughed.  We told jokes, poked fun, and honed our already razor-sharp, sarcastic wits into instruments of cohesive amusement. 
And we played…really played…like children play…with abandon, and the certainty that tomorrow, after the responsibilities of “real” life were met, the gang would be there, and we would play again.
And, speaking of real life… 
Websites cost money, and ours wasn’t making any.  Despite our founder’s best efforts, our playground closed.  Seeing the handwriting on the “wall”, several of us joined Facebook in an effort to maintain contact.  And then, a few more joined.
“And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on…”
It’s not the same, but its okay.  And, when I think about it, I’m amazed.  We come from very different backgrounds, different demographics, and various socio-economic strata.  We are African-American.  We are Asian.  We are Christian.  We are Agnostic.  We are musicians.  We are Stay-At-Home-Moms. We are self-employed.  We are grandfathers.  We are disabled.  We are yoga instructors.  We love music, sports, and high-heels. 
Well, not all of us love sports, but high-heels suffer no such prejudice.
We do all the things we did before, only now we do it under the watchful eye of “3D” family and friends, who read our walls in amazement at the bonds we’ve forged with people far-flung in so many ways. 
A couple of years ago, one of our group suggested a meet-up.  Meeting at the beach, combined with the aforementioned wit, suggested the title “Girls Gone Mild”.  This year, regardless of social ineptitude, I’m one of the girls.
I’d tell you I’m excited, but the word isn’t big enough.  I’d say I’m nervous, but that word suggests anxiety…
Okay, I’m anxious. 
There are the pounds put on as a result of dying glands and overworked ovaries. And, there’s my hair.  It’s long now.  He likes it that way.  But the color’s all wrong and, in this heat, it hangs.
And there are the shoes.  We’re going to the beach.  No one wears heels at the beach…but I’ve got this reputation. 
For days now, sleep has been elusive. Last night, after what seemed like hours, I finally turned the clock around to see “4:15”, large, blue, and LCD.    I’d been awake for a while.  The alarm was set to go off in forty-five minutes.  I gave up.
A double-click opened my home page.  It had been hours since any of my friends posted.  I scrolled and read, and didn’t think I’d given myself away, but a red “1” lurking over the message box said different.
“What’re you doing up?”
That’s when I realized that since joining “TBD”, I’ve never, really, been alone.
And, they’ve made all the difference.

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

>Hot As A Firecracker

>

I collect aphorisms.  A really clever one will stick the first time I hear it.  Others take more time but are used just as often.  My sofa is “heavy as a dead minister”.  My son’s friend is ‘not the sharpest knife in the drawer”, and “time flies, whether you’re having fun or not”.  I really love “…tight as Dick’s hatband”, but rarely have occasion to use it.  

 

My Dad has a favorite I’ve only recently embraced.

 

“Old age isn’t for sissies.”

 

I just have gotten used to being fifty, which I suppose is a good thing since I’ll be fifty-one next week.  Better late than never.

 

As an admitted late-bloomer, I find the gravitational pull of advancing years especially cruel.  I only just arrived, and already I’m melting into my shoes…

 

If I could return, for a full refund, all the moisturizers, and eye creams, and facial serums, and Porecelana I have purchased since the age of thirty-five, I could easily afford the plastic surgery required to erase what time has wrought. 

 

“Porcelana?”, you ask.  If you’re my age, you remember the commercials featuring a frightening, liver-spotted hand.  You remember thinking you would NEVER buy that stuff.  If you’re younger, you have no idea what I’m talking about, and that’s just as well.  I bought one jar, and for the record ladies, it doesn’t work.  A Q-tip soaked in lemon juice is just as effective and probably much less carcinogenic.

 

It’s the baggy eyes, and the laugh lines, and the crow’s feet, and the lackluster teeth, and the nebulous chin.  It’s in knowing that laying on your back takes years off your face, until anxiety sets in as you wonder where your breasts are.  It’s that pair of Calvin Klein skinny jeans, the one in the back of your closet, the one with the permanent dust-line where your knee used to be.  It’s all of it…

 

A couple of days ago, I was summoned by HR.  This is never good.  The man behind the desk is a scant four years younger than me.

 

“Did you change something with your insurance?”  His chair turned side to side, and he with it.

 

Struck by the absurdity of his question, I hesitated before reminding him that he was the company insurance administrator.

 

Unembarrassed, he chuckled. 

 

“I know!”, his voice, and his arms, became expansive.  “That’s what I said!  But my wife wondered if maybe you were having an important birthday.”  The last two words squeezed out of the right side of his mouth while the left crept upward.
“No…”, I began.  “You know my birth date.  If anything, “big” would have been last year.”, the absurdity continued.

 

“Yeah, well…”  He stopped spinning, and waving, and grinning, and gripped his desk instead.  “But you are getting older…”  The last word played like scales on a piano.

 

I’m thinking that’s what did it.  That, and a comment made by a fellow blogger.  Using wise words, she advised against comparing ourselves to young girls.  She suggested, instead, that we embrace reality and try to be the best we can be…now. 

 

The other day as I approached my car in the breezy way I do when feeling particularly light, I caught my reflection in the driver’s side window.

 

“Well!  Look at you!”  The words played, as though spoken, inside my head.

 

I slid into the driver’s seat with a smile. 

 

I’ve “traveled the world and the seven seas”.

 

I’ve “been ridden hard and put up wet, more than once.”

 

Some days I feel “old as Methuselah”, but more often I’m “hot as a firecracker”!

 

Bring it on!

© Copyright 2007-2010 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved

http://www.thewriterslife.net

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.”

Living True

Somehow I’d forgotten the particular shade of blue that is sky.  That blue that defies duplication.  The blue that speaks the word “yonder”, by inviting eyes to see further. 

 Today, I saw it, and knew the wonder.

I’ve missed the caress of wind in my hair.  The feeling of freedom.  A space in time whose only accompaniment is the dull roar of the engine in front of me, competing with wind whipping through an open window.

Today, I felt it, and appreciated the gift.

It’s been a while since I’ve really looked into a loved one’s eyes as she spoke, or shared air, or a fork.  I’ve missed the abandon of shucking my shoes under the table before resting my heels on the booth beside her.  “That’s a lovely shade of blue on your toenails, honey.  It looks just like you.”

Today I took the time. 

Today I saw sky, and felt wind.  I memorized the eyes of a friend, and held my daughter close for no reason.  I stretched out, barefooted, in a booth at a restaurant and laughed loudly, with abandon.

Today, I knew the gifts of those who truly live.

Driving Home

“Did you get it, yet?  I checked, and it’s shipped.  I really wanted you to have it by your birthday.  I’m sorry it’s going to come after….” 

The last word swung back and forth along the invisible line connecting their cell phones.  She saw it getting larger, and then smaller, hurriedly rushing at her with the force of resignation, before dancing away in a pathetically hopeful soft-shoe.  Her birthday was still three days away.  “After” no longer meant just her birthday.

She smiled before she spoke, knowing it would sweeten her tone.

“Don’t worry about it.”  She chuckled softly as much for her own encouragement as to ease his angst.  “It will come, and I’ll love it.  I know I will.”  The blinders she’d donned earlier in the day, when he’d called to tell her the news, remained firmly in place as she trained her eyes on a colorless traffic light.  Every word, every action, required a decision and focus.  And though her car sat motionless for several minutes, she maintained a 10-and-2 death grip on the steering wheel.  She only breathed when she had to.

Even before he spoke, she knew he was crying, again.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen…”, he began.

She interrupted with resolution.

“Yes, you do.  You know what’s going to happen, because it’s the only thing that can happen.  We’ve talked about this.”  She stopped to breathe and drew in the dust of her words.  “From the very beginning we’ve talked about this.  There’s nothing to think about.”

“Ok…”  The second syllable rode the wave of a sob he couldn’t contain.  Both were quiet while he tried harder.  The cars around her began to move, and she moved with them.

“Ok..”  This time he whispered the offending syllable and control powered the rest of his speech.  “…but know this.  I will never forget your birthday.  Every year, on your birthday, you will hear from me.”  The long “e” stretched longer on the end of a quiver.  He cleared his throat, and she imagined him sitting taller in his leather office chair.  The car in front of her slowed, forcing her to shift her feet.

“I promise.” 

The words echoed between them, reminding her of all the promises he had to keep.  He lived with a woman he’d promised to love and cherish until he died, and children, whose care was promised by their creation.  She pictured him wearing a promise fashioned of cloth under one of his sensible suits as he offered an easy smile of welcome to those who would follow in his church-sanctioned footsteps. 

Night had fallen while he spoke, and as she eased the car to a stop under another albino traffic light she tried to imagine him alone, unaccompanied by his promises.  She thought she heard him sniff as he finally swam into view wearing a gaily colored madras shirt; the kind a family man wears on vacation…because that’s all he would ever be.

“Don’t do that.”  Though spoken softly, her words rebuked argument.  “Don’t make a promise you won’t keep…because you won’t…because you can’t…because promises mean everything to you.”

A whispered “I love you” caressed her ear as she made the final turn towards home.

“Promise.”

Punting

 

It was late….

Darkness swaddled winding concrete pathways, separating injured playing fields, where echoes of parental calls of support lingered just above the distant tree-line.

The sound of slamming car doors bounced, softly, off firs enclosing the parking lot; and warning calls of parents to street-dancing children muffled.

And, that’s why I noticed her; she who was arriving just as everyone else was leaving.

The rubber band she’d twisted, earlier in the day, into her wispy, blonde hair was giving way, mocking facial lines that had deepened as the hours passed. Amidst the shadows, her face suggested Eastern Europe.

Two small girls of similar wisp and structure ran behind her as she began the descent towards the park. Each child clutched voluminous mounds of plastic grocery sacks.

I imagined their small hands cramming the sacks into receptacles dotting the park, above signs that read “Please clean up after your pet.” I’d always wondered who filled them.

But, they had no pet with them.

I slid behind the wheel of my own car, juggling my keys while I watched. The girls danced excitedly, taking turns leading the tiny caravan, unaware of their mother in a way that said they knew she was there, and always would be.

Just as they breached the fir-line, the woman slid her cellphone out of the pocket of her belted shorts.

And, I recognized the opportunity…and kinship.

I have been that woman…