Words of Wisdom

At Costco a little while ago, I heard some of the best advice ever. Ever.

A young man at the check out was describing for his co-workers his new car, his first ever. They were suitably impressed and congratulatory. He said, "Now I gotta get a girl to go riding in it with me."

The checker is a man of Island heritage, possibly Samoan or somthing like that. His gorgeous brown eyes glow with a true love of life; his long, abundant black hair is always slicked back into a curly pony tail; his lilting voice draws you into what ever he might be saying. This man turned to the young man and said,

"You don't need a girl who wants you for your car. You don't need a girl who wants you for your appearance. Find a girl who wants you for what's inside you, for what's in your heart."

That young man will probably never receive better advice in a workplace.

Wonder if he'll follow it?

Dream Weaver

Stacy from Life Is Art has been helping me understand my dreams lately. She's brilliant and comes up with recognitions that surprise me.

Writing about a recent dream, she said, "The real mother of us all is what you seek, to be treated fairly, with compassion, not bossed around and superficial going through the motions. The fact that Christmas was mentioned as I recall twice again seems to be -the core of Christianity is authentic love, God's love and it is no accident Christmas coincides with the winter solstice, the darkest night (of the soul) of the year."

She couldn't be more right. I'm seeking the real mother of us all, the source of acceptance and compassion. And I've looked for Her in every nook and cranny possible. Now it's time to look in the one place She can be found—my own heart.

During this latest round of crazy-busy, I stopped making time to meditate. That's going to change. Starting right now.

More later. Gotta go sit with God for a while.

To the Birth Mothers of My Children

Thank you. Deep, humble, loving thanks to you.

I pray that you have found happiness and peace. I pray you have felt some measure of the joy you created for me. I pray that you will feel the Light and Love I send today and always.

What I've Been Up To

The book right before (and I do mean right before) The Book That Would Not Die is called Designing with Tile. I created the shelf unit in this picture for that book. Yes, indeedy. I spent months dreaming up inventive ways to use tile and then weeks and weeks conveying my ideas to a series of editors and then more time describing my methods to the tile-book buying public. This is one of the results.

Just as there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground, there must be hundreds of ways to make a living with words. Writing D-I-Y books has been an interesting career and one that's been very good to me, but now even my dreams are telling me I need to explore other ideas.

Last night I dreamed that I was in Telluride in a lovely hotel room with my folks (who were their ages now) and my children (who looked like they did at about 10 and 5). I was supposed to be flying to Phoenix for a meeting about the DIY book I was writing, but my folks were intent on keeping me from that meeting. They absolutely would not get their stuff together or get in the car. I yelled and stormed, but it didn't do any good at all. In the dream, I could feel the physical manifestations of my fear of losing the writing contract for the book. I was very, very frustrated.

And then Mom and Dad spirited me off to a mountainside, where I met a series of people in gorgeous settings. After talking with these people, I began to understand that I was meant to miss the plane, meant to be introduced to new possibilities. Some of the things they showed me were absolutely beautiful and they kept telling me I could use them to make a living. I bought a couple pieces of stunning handmade jewelry for my sister and then went off into the woods alone to contemplate what to do.

I don't know what any of this means. I do know that I want to add new revenue streams to my world, and I am hereby announcing this intention to the Universe.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Blessings Be!!!!!!

Thank God and All That's Holy!!!!!!

I just sent off the last file of the Book That Would Not Die.

Right now I'm headed for cold wine, a hot bath, and a good book. Tomorrow I expect to feel like a new person.

The Roar of "No More"

Monica Holloway's parents failed her. Miserably. And not just once, but over and over. And now, they're compounding their mistakes by attacking her for telling her story.

This isn't terribly surprising, but it is terrible and it is disappointing and it is heart breaking.

Monica's book, Driving with Dead People, is funny and sad and brilliantly written. It kept me up all night, two nights in a row, when I first got my hands on it.

Monica herself is a thoughtful, loving, hilarious woman who told her stories the best way she knew how and with the clear intention to help others. We spent a long weekend lost in a car together, laughing and crying and sharing our stories, just before the book was published. She knew her family was likely to attack her when the book hit the shelves. She was frightened but willing to face them because she knows that abuse thrives in shadows and the only way to stop it is to shine bright lights directly into those shadows.

Once again, she's going through hell. Once again, her family put her there.

I have had the experience of being lied to for so long and with such vehemence that I no longer knew whether or not to believe my own heart and mind. I have been systematically bullied by someone louder and stronger and more demanding. I have spent sleepless nights analyzing my own actions and motives until I didn't know up from down or in from out.

How do I know Monica is telling the truth?

Because she questions herself. Because she is, once again, looking into her heart and her memories and examining the things she finds there. Because she is in terrible pain. We've talked back and forth via e-mail over the last few days, and pain drips from her words.

My experience with liars—and I've got a lot of it—is that they never question themselves, never doubt themselves, never torture themselves with "what if I'm wrong" sorts of thoughts. Their walls of denial are tall and thick and dense. They make no attempts to shine lights into their own dark corners, they simply attack. Again and again. No worry. No self-recrimination. Just long, loud attacks.

Monica's father and mother and one of her sisters are attacking her now. How could anyone who read the book doubt that her mother and father would deny their actions? And yet, The Diane Rehm Show has canceled her appearance and Monica's publisher's marketing plan is in disarray.

Sexual abuse of children is an enormous problem in this country and it will continue to be until the ones who have survived abuse and those of us who love them stand up and say "No more."

We can't simply say it, we must roar with all the force of all the lions of all the jungles that are now or ever have been, "No more."

Our voices have to drown out the denials, drown out the attacks, drown out the lies. Our demands for truth have to be so loud that the NPRs of the world, the attorneys, and the makers of marketing plans cannot afford to cave to the demands of the perpetrators.

Please join me in showering Monica with Light and peace and love.

Love (period)

Purse-uing Happiness

Several people asked what I told those lovely women about pursuing happiness on Saturday. I thought about posting my speech, but didn't because my experience of mothering is so different from most. I was afraid few could relate.

For the talk, I filled a beach bag with things most women carry in their purse--money, keys, photographs, a cell phone, candy, Kleenex, a Band-aid. I drew out one thing at a time and talked about how it relates to mothering.

Here's one piece of what I said:

Band-aids: They’re magic, aren’t they? Stick one on and the tears just dry up. But it’s more than Band-aids that our mothers carry, it’s the ability to comfort and soothe us.

In our family, we have a favorite story about my nephew, Brendan, the first grandchild. When he was tiny—way too young to talk, he was crying and my mother was trying to get him to settle down. At some point, he made a collection of sounds that both my mom and my sister swear were the words, “I want my mama.”

My best friend is facing a potentially fatal illness right now. The other day, after a scary doctor’s visit, she turned to me and wailed, “I want my mother.” She’s 53 years old, and her mother’s been dead for more than 10 years.

No one, ever in our lives, will have that same ability to make things right, to make us feel better with a smile and a hug. Our mothers carry magic that’s much bigger than a Band-aid.

Here's my conclusion:

The two most important things we carry as mothers and as daughters can’t be pulled out of my giant purse because they’re invisible, intangible. As mothers and daughters, we carry each other’s memories. We carry each other’s dreams. Let’s remember that as we go forward, let’s carry those memories and dreams gently and with gratitude because that is the way to pursue happiness.

Most people were not lucky enough to have the kind of mother I have. So very many of you have grown into the mothers you yourselves needed.

God bless us, every one.

The Pursuit of Happiness

I gave a talk this evening to 300 mothers and daughters at a local church. We had a lovely meal, an elderly gentleman read a poem he'd written about his mother, and then I spoke. The event included a silent auction of purses made by women of the church, and the theme of the evening was "The Pursuit of Happiness."

Afterwards, I stopped to talk with a spunky little woman wearing an interesting silk chiffon skirt of many tiers and many colors. Her short gray hair was spiked up all over head, and her neck and arms were laden with ethnic gold. She was wearing gold mesh kitten heels. She told me that she's 74 years old. And then she told me she'd recently begun selling sex toys.

I kid you not. Sex toys.

There she was, sitting next to the church's music minister, surrounded by presumably godly women, telling me she'd just bought $2,000 worth of sex toys and was now selling them to friends and neighbors. She happened to mention that she planned to give a "soft box" to her recently divorced son for his birthday.

I don't know what that is and didn't ask. I was totally afraid she'd tell me how he was going to pursue happiness with that.

Falling Up

I fell on Monday morning. Down like driving rain, down like baseball sized hail, down like sledgehammer blows. Walking on my parents' driveway, I turned to look back at something in the garage. I felt my right ankle give way and saw myself crumple.

My left knee took a pretty bad beating, but I can't feel it (don't have much feeling left from my kneecap to the middle of my shin after a rollerblading injury 15 years ago). The rest of my physical self was shaken up but okay. My psyche took the hardest blow.

How did this happen? Yesterday I was a young mother, falling down the stairs holding my infant son, marveling at the instincts that allowed me to protect him even while I was bumping down an entire flight. He didn't even wake up, and that was all that mattered.

Today I'm . . .shall we say. . . mature. . . enough that I just don't bounce the way I used to. The thing is, I still want to fall.

I want to fall in love again.

I want to fall under the spell of poetry that's new to me.

I want to fall for bad lines and good jokes.

I want to fall into bed, exhausted at the end of long, fruitful days.

I want to fall into bed with no thought of sleeping.

I still want to fall.

Life Becomes Art

Jennifer Lauck's writing workshops open your heart to your life and your art. She's gathering circles of amazing writers in New Haven, New York, and Sisters, Oregon over the next few weeks. Check it out here.

Narrowing My Focus

My soon-to-be 53-year-old eyes serve me well, but they struggle with close vision. I've got three or four (or maybe five) pairs of reading glasses, but they never seem to be around when I pick up my laptop in the morning.

If I squint, that is, narrow my focus, I can read the screen. With good light and clear intention, I can see enough to read.

Isn't that just the way?

Clear as Mud

Prema's most recent post at River's Grace stirred my thoughts and my dreams last night. Here's what I've been puzzling through.

So often I see either/or, black or white, even where all colors exist, overlap, and entwine. Prema reminds me that relationships are the practice, they are the stony path we're asked to walk. Like Christianity and Buddhism, relationships and The Learning peacefully co-exist in our hearts if we allow and accept the simple truth: Many paths. One God.

Why do we watch tv and eat junk in moments we could be practicing? Because in the daily flow, we forget who we are. Too often, I forget what truly feeds me and reach instead for what's easy and close at hand, no matter how hungry it leaves me.

One of the ideas that most affected me in Prema's post: "the one in whose glance and grace I found (or returned to) my place."

Another: "Every sunrise. . . a new beginning. . .a gesture of remembering again."

Prema expresses so beautifully the knowledge that before we had faces, before we took on these bodies and these stories, we knew our place. Our learning is not acquiring new information, it is shedding that which is not Truth. Every sunrise brings opportunities to remember.

In these lives, the ones we've chosen this time, we do not exist only in meditation caves, where teachings are clear and understandings are not challenged or polluted. No, we've chosen paths that include toddlers and husbands and sisters and editors who demand that we bring forth our understandings and live them in the light of day, out where the winds tear apart our calm and disperse it to fields of new mown grass like dandelion fluff on an April morning.

But if we stop, if we remember our place, we find that those same winds that blow the Teachings away from us also return essential truths to us. This is the cycle of destruction and creation, Shiva and Vishnu, the vibrational syllable that founds one world as it takes another apart.

Entropy, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, tells us that the moment a thing comes into existence, it begins to be destroyed. We gain an understanding, recognize the spark in someone's eye, meet ourselves in meditation and at that very nanosecond, the understanding begins to slip away. Our path is learning not to clutch at that which is always changing.

We have attracted to us the teachers we need for this learning. That is why they stir us up so vehemently. Our strong reactions to them are not deviations from the path, they are the path.

God, I hope I remember this. Again and again and again.

Thanks, P. You are a Light unto my path.

Gingerbread Dreams

The doorbell startled me about 9:30 last night. When I got to the door, no one was there, just a plate filled with homemade gingerbread and an envelope addressed to me, with my name spelled correctly. The note inside read: Thank you for all that you do. You are loved."


Isn't that just the way? Right when the world seems to have gone off the rails, when it feels like shootings on college campuses and the beheading of a service dog by a crazed ex-boyfriend and a bomb threat aimed at a building where your daughter just finished a chemistry exam are all there is, gingerbread shows up on your doorstep.

Like the sun behind the clouds, love is always present. Sometimes we're not prepared to perceive and RE-ceive it, but it's always there.

It's raining here right now, but I expect sunshine tomorrow.

Reflections

It is beyond beautiful here on the pond this morning. Gentle ripples reflect the path of the rising sun in a shimmering ribbon—thousands of fireflies on a float trip. Geese call to each other and birds tweet in the distance. Longing waltzes in the breeze, twirling with the pollen and the promises.

Following Prema's wonderful advice, yesterday I took care of myself, starting with giving myself a break from The Book that Would Not Die. I put Paula's top down and drove through the spring sunshine to a garden center where I bought beautiful plants and a pair of Crocs garden clogs (something I've long wanted but refused to buy myself). I tilled the soil for a new perennial garden and dug a 2-foot hole for a clematis in a 4-inch pot. I dug two huge bags of cotton burr compost into the soil and raised two big blisters on my soft writer's hands. When the sun went down, I showered and then put a healing treatment on my dry-as-hay hair and smoothed Bibi's olive-oil lotion on my lizard-skin arms and legs.

It was a great day.

I also read a little and have two recommendations for you. If you want to incorporate more humor into your writing, read Cheryl Peck's Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs. I love this book for lots of reasons, but its humor is near the top of the list. Peck's dry, understated stories fill me with amusement and admiration and hope. Here are two graphs from one of her stories (not funny but so great I have to share):

It was a cold and blustery November day, colder than it had been, but not as cold as it was going to be. The sky was gray.The trees, which had clung stubbornly to their leaves that fall, had suddenly thrown them all off—some still green—so that the trunks wore ground skirts of wilted gray-green leaves, thick and in nearly perfect circles as if they all dropped straight down. Everything was changing, making rushed and ill-prepared concessions to winter. In the ditches along the roads wildflowers chilled on their stalks as if they had expected either more warning or more time.

There is something in that weather, which I can feel but I can't describe, but it whispers to sandhill cranes, "go—fly." Once purely by luck I stood on the edge of a stubbled cornfield and watched several hundred cranes dance to each other, call back and forth to each other, jump into flight and rise up into the crisp November air as if they were being sucked into the sky by invisible tornadoes, still calling down to their flock mates as they spiraled up into the thermals. I had no idea what I was watching until I read about their migration rituals later in a book. But I saw it. And I remember the air. Crisp. Sharp. Something changing.


I also read a few pages of before women had Wings by Connie May Fowler. The opening paragraph is one long sentence that includes these words:

Back in 1965, on a day so hot that God Almighty should have been writhing with sick-to-the-stomach guilt over driving His children out of the cool green of Eden. . . .

Here is the third graph:

These are questions for which I haven't a single answer. In fact, answers aren't part of my nature. Details are what I'm about—stacks and stacks of details—the bones of my family, calcified vessels, the marrow chock-full of wishes and regrets. In my mind I pick up the bones one by one—a leg bone, a hip, then a spine that looks like a witch's ladder. Before you know it, this skeleton made of memories is rattling me.

These women can flat-out, by-God-and-all-that's-holy WRITE, and here's the hope they inspire in me: SO CAN WE!!!!

Today, I'm going to dig in the dirt, cook and eat some great, fresh foods, drink coffee here on my deck, and spend at least one hour writing the things of my heart. Only then will I set myself back on task with TBTWND.

May you all have such blessings. May the love and support you've shown me, especially over the last few days, be returned 10-fold. Now and always.

Stuff Running Through My Mind

Yesterday was a very hard day. The crux of the problem wasn't D's behaviour at the firing, or even my own. It was (is) the decades-old struggle to earn my sister's love and the recognition of my failure at this task that has been so central my life. Family legend has it that on the way home from the hospital, D asked our parents to throw me in the ditch. Their refusal set a precedent she still fails to appreciate.

After stewing for a while, I called a friend to talk over the situation. She was riding in the car with her husband; after listening, she relayed some pieces of my tale. Their advice was solid: get out of this situation. Fast. With her typical humor and a Southern drawl you could use to row through stormy seas, she yelled into the phone, "Girl, she ain't NEVER gonna be the sister you want her to be. Stop trying to get her to love you. It ain't NEVER gonna happen. You gotta get love from places it's a-VAIL-a-ble--from your kids, from your friends, from your own damn self!"

Prema called. In her gentle, charmed voice she invited me to look within, to find my strength, to take care of my self. She suggested images I could hold during rough patches. It helped enormously.

Deb called. She suggested that these difficulties are tenderizing me for a big step forward. She helped me see how my stake in seeing myself a certain way keeps me stuck.

Bit by bit, the sting is leaving these circumstances.

Who knows what might happen next?

Buddha Nature or Chickenshit?

Most of you know my sister and I own a salon/spa. Yesterday we had to take two employees off payroll (my favorite euphemism for "fire"). Neither of us wanted things to go this direction, but our hands were finally forced and there truly were no other choices. We had to think of the well-being of other employees and the salon as a whole.

As usual, D elected me spokesperson for the actual events. In one case, I invented the conversation on the fly and in the other, I stuck pretty much verbatim to the script D had outlined for me. The first situation went quite well. The second less well but not terrible.

In the second conversation, I got through my speech, we concluded our discussion, and then D started crying. She hugged the woman at length and told her how much she'd miss her. She told her she could come back later if she wanted. She helped her carry her things to the car, still crying. After their big crying scene, the woman nodded curtly at me and said good-bye.

And then the (now) former employee went out to dinner with two current employees, a plan of which D was aware before the whole thing started.

And just how do you imagine the dinner conversation went? Once again, I'm the bitch from Hell and D's the good guy.

D invited me to stop by her house on the way home for a glass of wine. Whe I walked in, she said she hoped I didn't feel she hadn't supported me. I said I hated being in the position of being the bitch again but agreed with her feeling there's no reason to make a bad situation worse.

Damn it all to HELL. Why did I lie to her like that?

In the car on the way, I had decided to rely on my Buddha nature to get me through. Didn't think there was anything to be gained in discussing how she insisted I take point and then made sure I'd pay the price for it.

After a mostly sleepless night filled with dreams that leave no doubt my subconscious is not pleased with this choice, I am at a loss. Was I using my Buddha nature or taking the easy way out? Am I willing to be the bigger person or just throwing myself at her feet so she can not only walk over me but wipe her feet on my back as she passes?

When I started writing this little rant, I thought this was an acutal question. Now I realize there is no question. And no doubt about what I have to do this morning.

Please hold me in the LIght today. I'm really going to need it. My Buddha nature and I are a little battered around the edges right now.

Still Here

Still alive. Still kicking. Still working on The Book That Would Not Die.

Miss you all. Back soon.

The NTKoG Pieces

In answer to several comments: The piece on Trisha (the woman who can think her way into an orgasm) may precede a story about my discovery that the ability to have one lies within one's self rather than in one's partner.

David (from the No Dancing for Me stories) is a principle character in that story and it's not entirely flattering to him. (Me, either for that matter, but I'm writing memoir and that's part of the premise.) So far I haven't gotten brave enough to get beyond the first sentence or two. I think about it all the time, though, and expect it to burst out of me early some morning.

Writing the NTKoG pieces has introduced me to parts of myself long denied, shown me again how much I've learned from the girls and women I've known throughout my life, reflected characteristics I wish to have, mirrored issues I have and want to get past. Writing them as tightly as I know how, in a distinctly different voice, has been a fascinating experience. (Thanks, Jennifer!)

Not That Kind of Girl: Reshaped

Braces slowly reshape Trisha’s 38-year-old mouth. Every three weeks, a stylist shapes her hair into a shiny, red-brown helmet; every other visit, he replaces the color worn away by time. In any room, Trisha's laughs bounces off all four walls and the ceiling before bleeding slowly into the air.

Trisha’s eight-year-old son, Luke, lives in Ohio with his father. He spent the first two summers after the divorce with Trisha and her rich new husband, Jacob, but didn’t want to come back to Chicago any more after that. Trisha agreed, saying “summer mother” was not her color.

Trisha loves sex. She can practically think her way into an orgasm any time, anywhere, even while sitting at her desk at work. Jacob loves this about her. Trisha finds it useful, especially now that the new and shiny has worn off her marriage.

Donald, Trisha’s former boss, stars in most of her stories. Her eyes shine when she says his name and get wet in the corners when she talks about his decision to come out of the closet after 32 years of marriage. She spent years hoping he would leave his wife and now prays he will leave his partner.

Meantime, she has Jacob. And her imagination. They're almost enough.

Alive and Well

Several of you lovely and loving people have e-mailed to ask if everything's okay.

Yep.

Just semi-crazed trying to finish a book by deadline next week. The title is The Complete Guide to Luxurious Living, but let me tell you, my living has not been luxurious lately. No, that's not right. Much of my life has been luxurious--the family gatherings, Easter dinner, my son's arrival and so on. It's all been great.

All except writing this book. Most of the trouble is me, some of it's not. The bottom line is that I want to write. I want to write all day, every day. But I want to write stories and memoir. Working on this book feels like being mired in nasal mucus. I know I need a ginormous shift in attitude, but so far haven't mustered it.

I'll try to wrestle a few minutes to write something real tomorrow. Meantime, thanks for your concern.

love.

Not That Kind of Girl: Dyed

At the beginning of 5th grade, Zena bleaches her hair platinum blonde. By 6th grade no one, least of all Zena herself, remembers the real color of her hair. Not even her hairdresser knows for sure because Zena’s gone solo on her tour of the hair color aisles. By 9th grade, she goes full circle and becomes a platinum blonde once again.

The summer after her sophomore year, Zena’s boyfriend, Richard, graduates, is drafted, and gets shipped off to Viet Nam. On the day the rabbit dies, Richard is creeping through the jungle, trying not to get himself killed. The day the telegram arrives to summon him home for the wedding is one of the best days of his life. He catches a chopper to Da Nang and a plane back to the world, where his blushing bride waits.

Their honeymoon is short—a week in a nearby hotel, where Zena enjoys hot and cold running room service and Richard enjoys hot and cold running water. At the end of the week, a plane ferries Richard back to Da Nang and Zena's parents drive her back to school. Her dark roots get longer and her belly gets wider and time drags on.

In Zena’s 6th month, her water breaks and her baby struggles to be born. Richard does not make it out of the jungle in time for his daughter’s birth. He barely arrives in time for her funeral. On this trip he doesn’t notice the hot food or the hot showers. When his 10 days of emergency leave are up, he drags himself up the metal stairs to the military transport plane. When he turns to wave, Richard hardly recognizes the zebra-headed ghost of a girl sobbing on the tarmac.

Before the end of basketball season, Zena zips herself into her cheerleader uniform and shakes her pompoms. Her new red hair looks great with the blue and gold uniform, but she never does the splits anymore.

All Tied Up

We finished 6 aprons Sunday. Here are 5 of them.



We got a little carried away and added sequins and ruffles to a few of them.




To be truthful, the "we" who got carried away was mostly me. Everyone else kept their heads pretty well, and we all had lots of fun. Oh, and Mom made us muffins for breakfast before we started our play day. Aren't they pretty?

Pure?

Prema asked yesterday if I remember my family and my childhood as pure.

The best I can answer is yes and no.

Yes, our family was built on pure love--no question that our parents loved each other, no question that they loved us. No question they did the very best they knew how, every day.

No, they were not perfect people and so not perfect parents. We were not perfect kids. At 27, my mom found herself living with three small children in a town where she didn't know a soul and her nearest friend or relative was 8 or 9 hours away. Predictably, she was depressed before we knew what that was. Dad worked too much. My adolescent storms coincided with Mom's menopausal storms. The results were painful if not calamitous.

But my mom and my sister and one of her daughters and I will spend this afternoon making colorful, spring-y aprons, one for each of the women of our family plus my friend Barb. We plan to wrap them identically, mix them up, and hand them out when all of us go to dinner and an Anne Lamott reading this Thursday. We'll unwrap the aprons, trade, bargain, and haggle to get the ones we really wanted, and laugh until we're almost sick. We'll wear our aprons when we make and decorate cookies and cupcakes for Easter dinner, which we'll have together by the pond in my back yard.

Maybe love trumps our human imperfections, our mistakes, our personal issues. All I know for sure is that after everything is said and done, we choose to spend precious free afternoons hanging out together, playing with colorful fabrics or baking or gardening.

Maybe pure, like perfect, is highly over-rated and unattainable. And maybe that doesn't matter because, in spite of my family's individual and collective flaws, we still choose each other. Over and over again.

The Cookie Crumbles

The crunch of his tires on the gravel driveway announced 12:00 noon as faithfully as the fire whistle in any little country town. Daddy made the two-mile trek home every day to eat lunch and watch “The Cookie Crumble,” which was Dad-speak for a soap opera called “As the World Turns.” When we were home in the summers, his appearances were the highlights of our days.

About 11:30, one of us girls set the table while the other “made the tea.” Making tea was part of the preparation for every meal other than breakfast. You put water in a pan and set it to boil, got out the Lipton’s Loose Leaf tea and a spoon, and waited. When the water boiled, you put three or four teaspoons of leaves into the pan and turned off the stove. Next, you got out the strainer and a pitcher and put ice into the glasses waiting on the table. By the time you finished with the ice, it was time to pour the tea through the strainer and into the clear glass pitcher. The hot tea usually filled the pitcher about a third of the way until you added cold water, and then the pitcher was full and the tea was ready.

Mom cooked three hot meals, including dessert for lunch and dinner, nearly every day of our lives. Lunch wasn’t as big a meal as supper, but it was an honest-to-goodness meal—meat and potatoes and vegetables and bread and butter. Daddy couldn’t sit down to a meal without bread and butter.

When Dad opened the back door, the three of us kids bum-rushed him, each one trying be the first to get a hug and a kiss. He wrestled us and kissed Mom, then walked to the back of the house, where he washed his hands before coming to the table. We all sat down together for lunch, and then Debbie and I did the dishes and swept the floor while Mom and Dad watched the cookie crumble (we could see the tv from the kitchen, too).

When the organ music cranked up to signal the end of the program, Daddy kissed Mom and went back to work. Five days a week, 52 weeks a year, this was the rhythm of our lives.

There was one variable. Every once in a while, Mom decided not to let Dad kiss her good-bye, which meant he couldn’t go back to work. When he leaned over for his kiss, she covered her mouth with her hands and took off running. Daddy, of course, chased her, and we chased him. Out the front door, down two wooden steps, around our little white house, through the garden, and around the LP tank we went, a 6 foot 4 inch man chasing a 5 foot 4 inch woman, both of them followed by three shrieking, laughing children.

The three of us did everything possible to keep him from catching her, and when he finally did, we tackled them and clapped our hands over his mouth and hers so their lips couldn’t touch. Eventually, we were always defeated: Daddy collected his kiss and went back to work. Mom and Deb and I went back to cleaning or cooking or doing laundry; Jeff went back to whatever game he was playing. We all went back to waiting for the crunch of tires on the driveway.

In a comment the other day, Prema said something about what I thought loved was like. This was it.

Love was three hot meals a day, clean, ironed clothes every morning, never coming home or leaving without a kiss. It was winter picnics of tomato soup and fried Spam sandwiches, skating together on the frozen creek at the roadside park, all five of us scrunched into Mom and Dad’s bed on Sunday mornings.

More than anything, it was knowing that we had each other and always would, no matter what.

Stop Cyberabuse Now

Hot and Good

I love the hokey old movie, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” a story about the incredible life of a Titanic survivor and all-round fascinating character. The movie isn’t particularly true to the historic facts of Molly’s life, but it’s charming in a ridiculous kind of way.

If you’ve seen the movie, you probably remember Mrs. Gladys McGraw, Molly’s next-door neighbor in Denver. Fresh out of Leadville, Molly is enthralled with Mrs. McGraw’s elegance, including the news that she “gives a party when her roses bloom.” Later, Molly meets Mrs. McGraw’s mother, Buttercup Grogan, who is a rough and tumble, good-hearted, backwoods woman. Mrs. McGraw keeps Buttercup hidden most of the time to protect the elegant image she’s created for herself since moving into Denver society.

This is a long explanation to get to the fact that this morning I feel like Mrs. McGraw. Might even answer to Gladys if anyone calls it out. I don’t hide my mother and father in the basement, but I don’t often tell their stories, either.

It’s easy to tell stories about how shocked we were when the teenagers next door showered behind the lilac bushes in the rain. We were shocked. We were only 7 or 8 and had never seen anything like it. It’s harder to report that my dad bathed in ponds and creeks all over Iowa and Missouri when he was a teenager.

You see, Dad and his family traveled with a carnival during the summers of 1948 and 1949. He was 17 and 18 during those summers and they've marked the rest of his life. Part of the musical score of my life has been the call of a carney. Engaged in some mindless task, Dad sings out, “Hot and good and good and hot. Fried in butter and golden brown. Half a cow on a bun for one. Come on in.”

Dad tells stories of living out of the back of a truck, taking baths in ponds, and sleeping on the ground. At every little town, he got paid $4 to help put up the Ferris Wheel and $4 more to take it down afterward. Dad’s mom and dad ran “The Cookhouse” hamburger stand; his younger sister ran a photo booth; he ran a string game.

“Oh these lucky strings. Every time you play, you win. A winner ever time for a dime. Can’t win if you don’t play. Come on in.”

Dad later went to college. I remember his college graduation, as a matter of fact. He was a teacher when we lived in California and owned a substantial business in the town where I grew up. Like Mrs. McGraw, we became “second generation.”

Even today, if Dad is served a large portion of something or another or comes across something larger than expected, he’ll exclaim, “Now that’s half a cow on a bun!” The rest of us say it, too.

How much of my "not that kind of girl" attitude has been an unconscious attempt to cover those roots? I have no idea, but you can bet that now that I've come upon the question, I'm going to dig around down here for a bit.

Our family may not be crazy, but it's damn colorful, don't you think?

Not That Kind of Girl: Unbound

Stares and whispers follow Lunissa through the halls like the vapor trail of a jet in a clear blue sky. We have no idea what to make of this full-grown woman masquerading as a high school student.

We hear she’s married. We hear she’s from a rich Jewish family back East. We hear her folks are famous. If her appearance is indeed a masquerade, her costumes disguise her well: long, wild, dirty hair, three or four men’s shirts at a time, long cotton skirts, and steel-toed work boots.

When spring comes Lunissa peels off several layers of dirty clothes and her husband’s boots, and we discover she doesn’t shave her arms or legs. Evidently she doesn’t believe in deodorant. Or underwear.

She doesn’t believe in the regular order of things, either. For as long as anyone remembers, boys have taken Shop and girls have taken Home Ec. Lunissa says she knows how to cook. She wants to learn how to weld, how to build and fix things. She takes her fight all the way to the school board and wins. The Board doesn’t want to be sued by fancy New York lawyers.

Lunissa can take Shop, they say, but if she gets hassled or hurt, she’s on her own. She does not get hassled (all the boys have seen her moving mountain of a husband) and she does not get hurt. She does learn how to weld.

As the weather warms up, Lunissa wears fewer and fewer clothes. Teachers say her appearance disrupts classes; girls say she’s weird; boys say leave her alone. Meetings are held to discuss the situation.

Finally Lunissa appears at school wearing NOTHING but an extra-large man’s white t-shirt. Well, nothing unless you count the red silk ribbon tied around each big toe. These ribbons, she says, are her shoes.

That morning a teacher drives Lunissa back to the farm where she lives. We never see her again, but we never forget her, either.

Not That Kind of Girl: Bold

In late spring, when Rebecca’s husband is promoted to Vice President of a major national corporation, he hires a new assistant. He doesn’t mention this to Rebecca, mind you, but she notices a new voice deferentially announcing “Mr. XX’s Office” when she calls his top floor corner office to remind him to bring home milk.

Over dinner that night, Rebecca asks Billy whether he likes his new assistant, and he says not much. He says Candi is well over 55 and not up-to-date enough to be provide much assistance with his high-powered position. He also says he’s not very comfortable being represented by a decidedly unattractive woman.

In early December, Rebecca decides at the last minute to attend Billy’s office Christmas party. She’s never gone to company functions but wants to meet the woman not attractive enough to sit outside Billy’s office. She dresses carefully, hoping he will feel she represents him well.

Before dinner is served, a woman introduces herself. Her voice is familiar and her nametag says “Candi,” but Rebecca is sure she can’t be Billy’s assistant. This Candi is not a day over 25 and stunningly beautiful.

At dinner, Candi seats herself next to Billy, leaving Rebecca to sit across the table. Candi steers the conversation to Billy’s favorite topics and signals the server to refill his coffee before he even notices it’s empty. Rebecca comments on this and Candi tells her it’s all part of her job. She has, she says, learned to anticipate Billy's needs.

The conversation lags, and Rebecca leans across the table to catch Candi’s attention. Speaking in a loud, theatrical voice, Rebecca asks what kind of skin care products Candi uses.

Candi’s perfectly tweezed eyebrows shoot up, and her lovely eyes narrow.

“I’ve just got to know,” Rebecca says. “Whatever it is must be absolutely fabulous. Billy tells me you’re over 55 years old.”

No one at the table finishes their dessert. Suddenly, every single one of them feels compelled to visit the cash bar or the restroom.

Rebecca feels compelled to call a cab.

Time on My Mind

Trailers for "The Last Mimzy" freak me out. Only moments ago, Timothy Hutton was the hot—but tortured—guy in "Ordinary People." Now he's the father, a parental foil for the real action.

Elizabeth and John Edwards announced today that Elizabeth's cancer has returned, this time with no hope of a cure, only management. Yesterday, while I was unpacking a gift sent by a loving and lovely friend or walking my dog or drinking green tea, Mrs. Edwards was waiting for news that would change her life, her family's lives, and possibly the country's future.

Neither of us knew of the other because we are separated by physical distance (as well as the vast difference in our experiences of those moments). Could similar "distances" be created by layers of time? Could time be rippled like the surface of the pond this morning?

Carrie's Rojo left her an e-mail predicting his love for 7:00 EST. "Eastern Standard Time." What is that? We collectively agree that in any given moment it's a different time on an Atlantic beach than on a Pacific beach, a different time in Poughkeepsie than in Punjab. We can objectively know that the colors and temperatures of the water are different from one coast to another. We can measure and compare the angle of the sun above the horizon at specific moments. But what do we know about time?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

As a former hospice volunteer, I've been blessed to be present for deaths. In the weeks of volunteer training, one idea came up over and over: everyone's life is different, but our deaths are all the same. Shortly before death, people believe departed loved ones are in the room with them. In my experience, no one sees living loved ones who are not present; they see people who are not, in our understanding, alive at the time.

But who or what is more alive than our memories?

Some of the memories I've been examining are real enough I can pick lint from the nap of my velvet party dresses, real enough I smell the vomit splashing on my legs, real enough I turn my head to hear more clearly the sounds I'm describing. Are those events less real today than they were when they "happened" 35 years ago?

Like the old Chicago song, I wonder if anyone really knows what time it is. More than that, I wonder if anyone really cares.

Taking a Breather

I keep trying to write the story of the Big O, but it simply will not be written. I’ve tried every trick I know. I’ve done stream of consciousness just to get my fingers moving over the keys, I’ve allowed myself shitty first drafts (several), I’ve meditated to try to find my way in. No dice.

So, I’m going to do other things for a bit. Maybe a little gardening. Certainly some walking in the sunshine. Playing with my doggie.

Meantime, Amber at The Believing Soul tagged me for this meme.

May 8:
3 events:

1886: Pharmacist Dr. John Styth Pemberton invents a carbonated beverage that would later be named "Coca-Cola"

1933: Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast in protest of British oppression in India.

1973: A 71-day standoff, between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.

Other birthdays:
1884 - Harry S. Truman, President of the United States and fellow resident of Independence, MO
1940 - Peter Benchley. (the reason my kids are afraid of the ocean)
1943 - Toni Tennille, American singer. (Muskrat Love anyone?)

Deaths:
1998 - Bebe Rebozo, American banker and Watergate figure (Do any of you even remember Watergate?)
2000 - Henry Nicols, AIDS activist (b. 1973)

Holidays:
VE Day
Parents Day in South Korea

Holy Smokes!!!!

YOU GUYS ARE SO SMART!

The wise and loving Tanya from Go Mama commented on the most recent NTKoG that there was some of me in Sheila, which is true, of course. I got to thinking about all the wisdom in the comments you guys have made and went back to read them all--every comment since the workshop.

And there--right in front of my eyes--was the answer. Several of you have commented on how these girls are pieces of me. Also how so many of them were sacrificed. That's so true. They were sacrified to greed, to incest, to social climbing, to arrogant men.

And THAT's the biggest thing we have in common. I was sacrificed to silence, to ignorance. I knew nothing in so many ways, especially about sex. So much couldn't be talked about because it made my mom and dad uncomfortable. Ignorance and fear have helped me make some really bad decisions through the years. (I'm not blaming my folks for my bad choices here. Just saying ignorance was a big part of the picture.) Among other things, I spent 30 years--THIRTY F'N YEARS--unconsciously denying myself physical pleasure out of fear and ignorance.

Stacy, the wise and fascinating woman from Life Is Art read a strange, strange dream for me the other day. Here's some of what she had to say:

There is a lot going on here with womens issues in anger, powerlessness and spiritual trust. The cord is the spiritual cord or tie there seems to be some female anger, or anger at a female guide for not (or ancestor) for not giving you the strength or power to speak up for yourself to protect you in relationships.

Geez, Stacy. Could you get a little more RIGHT?

You could read books during an eclipse by the glow on my face and in my heart right now. You people—every one of you who reads and comments here—you have filled in a space that has been blank my whole adult life.

I am SO grateful.

I feel SO blessed.

I have SO much work to do.

Thank you. Thank you all. A thousand humble thank yous.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 7

Sheila rents a storage space her husband doesn’t know about. Its shelves are laden with fluffy towels and Egyptian-cotton sheets and goose-down pillows. Custom-made furniture and lovely vintage pieces are stacked in the corners. Gorgeous luggage stuffed with boots and shoes and silk lingerie are wedged into open spaces.

Sheila hasn’t paid retail for a single thing in there. She’s an excellent shopper.

When the space is filled, she plans to divorce her rich and arrogant husband. Meanwhile, she goes to Mexico twice a year on a girl's trip. At the beginning of each trip, the women select a fellow tourist and compete to be the first to bed him. There's a prize and everything.

Sheila’s very skilled at sleight-of-hand. It comes in handy with seduction as well as with hiding a few extra expenses in the household budget.

Slow Process

My family is not crazy. Well, if you don’t count my great-grandmother, who burned herself to death in the outhouse after she caught her husband smiling at his nurse after surgery. And it is true that my grandfather (her son) spent most of 1946 in his bedroom because he was afraid he’d catch pneumonia. But still, none of us have gone completely ring-tailed-, batshit-, howl-at-the-moon crazy. Yet.

My parents are still married—to each other, even. 55 years and counting. Their biggest arguments these days are over who could survive best if the other one died. “I better not go first,” my dad will grumble as he hands Mom her glasses. “You’d never see anything again.”

“Like you could get along without me for a week!” Mom will snort. “I feel sorry for you girls if I go first,” she’ll fake whisper out of the side of her mouth. “If I do, remember that I’m sorry.”

The strongest drug used in our home was Extra-strength Excedrin and I was in college the first time I saw anyone drunk. There was that one time my uncle passed out in the neighbor’s flower box when he came home on leave from the Navy, but I didn’t get to see anything except the lights coming on when Dad went next door to fetch him.

My daddy always had a job, my mama’s brand of discipline occasionally could be described as harsh but rarely left marks or drew blood, and we always had a good home and plenty of food. My older sister and younger brother annoyed me, but no more so than the average sibling, as far as I can tell.

I’m a garden-variety, Midwestern heterosexual raised in the bosom of a family no more or less dysfunctional than the next. So why would I write a memoir, and would read it? The only honest answer is, “I'm not sure.” But these stories have been kicking around inside my head for so long, trying to be heard. It feels like time to bring them out for a little light and air.

I’ve spent my entire life not quite fitting in. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like the proverbial stranger in a strange land. As a young child it seemed my mom and sister formed a closed society into which I did not fit. Then my brother came along, and I discovered the peculiar (and to my mind, unpleasant) position of the middle child.

When I was seven or eight, my family moved from a good-sized town in California to a tiny one in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. In those hills, we were outsiders, which added a layer of “other-ness” to the distance created by being a slightly chubby, too-smart-for-my-own-good book worm who was afraid of balls (inanimate—didn't know a damn thing about the other kind) and talked way too much.

From that time to this, I’ve defined myself more by what I’m not than by what I am. I’ve practically made a religion out of not being my mother, and I’ve put together whatever pieces are assembled in the puzzle-that-is-me by watching others live out their self-portraits and eliminating the shapes and colors that are not part of my own true self.

It’s a slow process.

No dancing for Me, The End

That’s how we are when Mom and Dad and Deb and Jim clatter into the house an hour or so later. Debbie’s hair bubble bounces and her aqua feathers flutter as she tells us all about who danced with whom and who fought and went home early. She tells us over and over how great The Lavender Hill Mob was and how awful it is that we missed it.

It doesn't feel like we missed a thing. I consider telling them how nice it's been here with the Christmas lights and the fire but they'd think something bad had been going on, so I keep my mouth shut.

Mom walks into the living room and immediately back out again. The weight of her footsteps broadcasts her anger but it surely can’t be about me. A medicine bottle rattles and then the faucet runs. When the water stops, Mom calls Dad into the kitchen and they whisper. Mom's hisses slide under the kitchen walls and slither into the living room. David and I look at each other and shrug. We haven't done a single thing she should be mad about, but that sound can not be good.

The spell broken, David says good night and gathers his things. Dad practically pushes him out the door after they shake hands. We didn't do anything wrong. Why do they have to act like this?

As soon as the door closes behind David, I go to my room. My head is pounding again and I feel sick, but it doesn't have anything to do with the flu bug. I slide between my blue-and-yellow daisy sheets and curl up in a ball of anger and misery. What is wrong with them? Seconds after I turn my lights out, Dad comes in to sit on the edge of my bed.

“Jerri,” he says, “if you’re going to lay with your head in a boy’s lap, point your face into the room. Don't ever face him. It’s not fair.”

Curiosity wins over anger as I roll over and sit up to look at him. “What do you mean, ‘not fair’?”

“I mean. . . .Well. . . .Just don’t do it.”

I try to catch Daddy's eye, but he looks out the windows, into my closet, at the floor—anywhere but straight at me. His face glows in the moonlight, tight and flushed. I think he's blushing, but it's hard to tell for sure. Whatever's going on here clearly has something to do with sex. He won't explain, but I have to try. I want so badly to know what lies behind the curtain of secrecy and silence.

“Okay. But what's the big deal?”

There’s a long pause. “Ask your mom. . . no, wait. Don’t say anything to her.” Dad gets up to leave the room. “There’s nothing more to talk about. Just don’t do it,” he repeats as he closes the door behind him.

The tone in Dad’s voice, especially the sort of panicked way he said I shouldn’t ask Mom, makes the whole thing more mysterious. Sex is rarely alluded to in our home and never, ever mentioned right out loud. The not-so-subtle message is that it’s wrong and we simply should not do it. Ever.

I drift toward sleep, determined not to let them make me feel wrong or dirty. Whatever the problem is, it's theirs, not mine. David’s kindness transformed a disastrous evening into sweet romance, the way Rumplestiltskin spun straw into gold. That, I decide, is the magic of love.


The memory of that night never loses its magic. If I close my eyes now, some 35 years later, I see the Christmas lights and the fire reflected in all four panels of the bay window, and I smell the tree and the fire logs and English Leather. Most of all, I remember feeling loved despite ruining the dance, despite smelling foul, despite looking awful.

Despite it all, I remember feeling loved.

No dancing for Me, Part 7

I abandon my shoes on the bricks and head down the hall to the bathroom. My ruined dress and pantyhose land in a heap on the green carpet and stay there while I brush my teeth. In the shower I realize David and I are alone in the house. I’ve never been alone in a house—mine or anyone else's—with a boy. If only I felt better, this would be interesting.

When the hot water’s gone I step out and wipe the steam off the mirror. Oh, Lord. My eyes and nose are red and puffy, and my mascara is smeared all over. Only one streak remains of my lipstick, and it’s over by my left ear. Noxema and a washcloth get rid of the mascara and the lipstick, but nothing is going to help my eyes and nose.

I wrap myself in a towel and step into my room, where the problem of what to wear presents itself. I can’t imagine putting on a dress and the only pair of pants I have is in the laundry after this afternoon’s tree-cutting misadventures. I settle on yellow flannel pajamas and the mint-green floor-length robe Mom made me last Christmas. I don’t really know if this is a good idea, but it’s certainly decent. I’ll be covered from my earlobes to my toes. No one can object to that, not even my mother.

I carry my reeking clothes through the kitchen, put them in the laundry tub, and then go back to the bathroom to wash my hands and brush my teeth again. I rescue my poor little silver shoes—have to get them out of the hall before Mom gets home. She's been known to throw our shoes out into the yard or even in the trash if we leave them out, and even being sick wouldn't get me a free pass.

I really need to sit down, so I head for the living room.

David has turned on the Christmas tree lights and built a fire. His dinner jacket is on the back of the rocking chair and he’s lounging on the pale green velvet sofa. “All in the Family” is on TV. Archie's telling Edith to stifle, but David's not really watching. He’s waiting for me, probably as aware as I am that we’re alone in the house. He sees me and jumps to his feet.

“What do you need, Baby? What can I get you?”

“I just want to lay down.”

“Here,” he says. “Lay right here.” He sits at the end of the sofa and pats his legs; I sink down and put my head in his lap. He comes up with a quilt from somewhere and puts it over me. We sit like that in silence while I drift in and out of sleep. When I'm awake it feels peaceful and oddly familiar, as though this is our house and we are having a cozy Saturday evening at home. After a while, The Movie of the Week comes on and we watch, talking only during commercials.

“I’m so sorry you missed the Lavender Hill Mob,” I say.

“Don’t be silly, Girl. Don’t you know it doesn’t matter? There’s no where I’d rather be than right here, right now.”

I can’t imagine ever loving anyone the way I love David at that moment. He pulls the quilt up over my shoulders and I drift back to sleep. When I wake again, his left hand is on my shoulder and his right is on my jet-puffed-marshmallow hair. I have never felt safer or more protected. The glow of the Christmas lights and the fire has soaked into my heart and everything—everything—feels right with the world. I curl into his lap and close my eyes.

No dancing for Me, Part 6

I lean against the brick wall beside me. It doesn’t matter—my dress is filthy anyway. The jumble of smells in the alley—vomit and David’s English Leather mingled with rotting trash and old cigarettes—sets me off again. Dry heaves leave me doubled over and wishing to die or at least disappear.

David’s not behind me any more. I walk toward the street, trying to get away from the smell. Off to the right, Brenda Kay is marching through the pool of light in front of the Legion Hall's entrance. David follows her, carrying a folding chair.

I sink onto the chair and turn my face up. Brenda puts her hand on my forehead and looks into my eyes, and we both know there will be no dancing for me tonight.

“You have to go home,” she says. “I’ll get your folks.”

“They can’t leave. They’re chaperoning.”

David steps up. “I’ll take her home. I can take care of her,” he says.

Brenda nods and goes off to find my mom and dad. I slump on the cold metal chair, sick and sad and smelly. Mom’s feet appear in front of me and I look up into her tight, disapproving face.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

“Don’t know. Just started throwing up,” I answer.

“What?” Realization breaks and she pulls a big wad of paper out of each ear. I recognize the red-and-white paper we used to cover the Legion’s dirty plywood tables. “It’s so loud in there I can’t stand it. What did you say?” she asks.

“I’ve been throwing up. I don’t know why.”

Mom’s lips disappear. Suspicion sparkles in her eyes as she looks from me to David, trying to decide whether we’ve been drinking. She leans toward David and sniffs.

Good grief, could she embarrass me a little more or is this the best she can do?

I’m cold. I’m missing the dance. My head hurts and my throat burns and I’m miserable.

“Go home,” she says. “We’ll be there as soon as this thing is over.”

David takes my arm. I worry about what I must smell like but don’t resist. The Lavender Hill Mob kicks into “Gloria” as we walk toward his car. By the time they should be getting to the G-L-O-R-I-A part, I can’t hear them anymore. Tears stream down my face. I tell David he should come back to the dance after he drops me off.

"No way," he says, his voice a strange mixture of gruff and gentle. "I'm staying until your folks get home."

I don’t argue.

No Dancing for Me, Part 5

David has beautiful manners. And big brown eyes that light up when I step out of the dark hallway and into the light of the foyer. My eyes probably light up, too. David’s broad shoulders are wrapped in a white dinner jacket; he’s wearing a crimson velvet bow tie and black slacks with sharp creases down the front. He holds a box from Waters Flowers. When I open the lid, I find a surprise. Not the carnations or roses I anticipate, but a creamy white orchid with crimson flecks at its throat.

The orchid is wrapped in silver netting and tied with a silver ribbon. Exotic, elegant, unique—nothing could be more perfect. My heart beats wildly as David pins the corsage on my vest, just above my breast. Mindful of my parents standing nearby, his hands don’t stray but linger slightly: whispered promises. I fetch his boutonnière from the refrigerator and pin the red rosebud to his white lapel. With a few more assurances to my parents, we step out into the night.

After he opens my door and helps me in, David circles the Rambler, rubbing his hands together and grinning. “Oh Girl,” he says as he slides in, “this is going to be good.” His teeth gleam in the yard light and frosty wisps escape his lips with his words. “You look like a million bucks.”

We roll down the driveway and across the dirt road to the highway. Before we turn onto the highway, David pulls me close and kisses me, then puts his hand on the inside of my leg, above my knee. I move his hand off my leg and slide over to put my window down. It’s warm in the Rambler and the fishy smell seems stronger than usual. After another kiss or two, we head into town, singing Temptation Eyes along with the Grassroots.

We park the car and walk down the block to the Legion Hall. I breathe deeper and deeper, trying to ease the tightness in my chest and gut. Just before we get to the door, heat rushes up my throat and across my face and I realize I’m going to throw up. I make it to the darkness of the alley before it starts.

The meatloaf and green beans do not make a graceful exit. I make awful, ripping, retching sounds as my body rejects everything I’ve eaten for days. Vomit splashes onto my legs and puddles around the trash and broken bottles lying in the gravelly dirt of the alley. David holds me from behind; he finds a piece of dirty cardboard and puts it over my feet to protect my beautiful silver shoes; he runs inside to find me a cup of water.

I don’t want him to touch me; I don’t care about my damn shoes; I briefly consider throwing the water at him. All I want is for this to stop. If it won’t stop, I want be alone. I don’t want anyone to see me like this, especially not David. But he won’t leave and I can’t stop vomiting.

Between rounds of retching, David tries to wipe my face with his handkerchief. I snatch the cloth out of his hands and push him away. He won’t stay away, though. He reclaims the handkerchief and gently mops up the mascara mixed with tears and snot running down my face. “It’s okay, Baby,” he says. “It's okay.”

But it’s not okay. The Lavender Hill Mob is playing and Rainbow Girls and their lucky dates are dancing inside the Legion Hall. Sin is happening mere feet from me, and once again, I'm not part of it.

No Dancing for Me, Part 4

The Legion Hall is decorated, my dress is finished, and I’ve had my turn at the Cut and Curl, where Betty Curnett has ratted my hair and shellacked it into an unrecognizable cotton-candy pouf. I try to eat some of the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and green beans Mom made for dinner. There’s a tight, tingly feeling in my stomach, probably because it’s less than an hour until the Lavender Hill Mob starts playing and David and I start dancing in the candlelight. For once, Mom doesn’t harp about eating everything on my plate, and Deb and I do the dishes quickly and without squabbling. I sweep the floor while she washes the counters and the table, and we’re free.

Safe in my room, I lean close to the mirror above my dresser and take inventory. My brown eyes glitter and—under the Xs of pink tape holding a pin curl to each cheek—my face looks splashed with color. I wipe tiny dots of perspiration from my temples with the back of my hand and check for invading pimples. None, so far. I step around the corner to the bathroom Deb and I share, pull the tape from my cheeks and wash my face with cold water. The cold feels good, so I take the washcloth into my room and lie with it over my eyes for a few minutes. Finally, I get up and change into my dress.

From the clock radio on my night stand, Carole King sings about feeling the earth move. As her voice swirls in the room, my head swims, and I sit on the edge of the bed to pull up my pantyhose. I love L’eggs. Before their egg-shaped plastic-and-foil packages hit store shelves, we wore stockings and garter belts with peculiar rubber and metal clasps that poked from the fronts and backs of our legs like hugely knotted varicose veins. L’eggs go all the way to our waists and cover our crotches, which leaves our legs smooth and our skirts shorter than ever.

I wrap a towel over my dress and put on my make-up: two coats of natural beige Cover Girl clean foundation, pressed powder on my face and eyelashes, smoky grey eye shadow and two coats of Maybelline’s UltraLash mascara. No blush tonight. My face already looks like it’s on fire. Must be all the time we spent out in the cold, wrestling that stupid tree.

Finally, I take off the towel, slip on the crimson bolero, and step into my silver shoes. I’m glad David is tall because the platform shoes make me two or three inches taller than usual. When I step back and look in the mirror again, I’m happy with the total effect. My legs look long and my skirt looks short (but not short enough to get me in trouble).

Headlights flash across my windows. Moments later, Dad answers the doorbell. Swallowing hard, I sit down on my bed for a few minutes. Eventually I walk down the long hallway and into the foyer where David stands scuffing his toes on the brick floor and calling my dad Sir. “Yes, Sir. I’ll drive carefully.” “Yes, Sir. We’ll see you there.” “It’s kind of you and Mrs. Farris to chaperone tonight.”

No Dancing for Me, Part 3

This year I picked a simple pattern, a bolero vest and an A-line dress with full sleeves that end in deep cuffs connected by loops of fabric and tiny covered buttons. I chose white knit fabric shot with silver threads for the dress and crimson velvet for the bolero and the covered buttons. The silver trim for the vest is perfect—sparkly but not tacky. Debbie chose a simple A-line pattern and white fabric, too, but she added aqua and white maribou feathers for the bell sleeves and the hem.

The dresses are practically finished when we cross the line somehow and end up with them in our laps. Debbie’s dress is even hemmed—the feathers, you know. Mine still needs a hem and the facings need to be tacked down. I don’t mind because hemming the dress myself cuts down on the arguments about its length. The difference between knee-length and as-short-as-possible-while-still-decent has caused too many tantrums to count around here. Mom's and mine.

Patty Bailey kneels on the floor in the hall in front of the speech room. Mrs. Thacker stands in front of her, wood yardstick in hand. The between-class river of kids streams past them with barely a ripple. No one stops to stare, but it’s impossible to miss the shame blazing on Patty’s cheeks or the hate burning in her eyes. School rules dictate that our dresses can be no more than three inches off the floor when we kneel.

I don’t know where the dress I’m wearing would fall on Mrs. Thacker’s yellow yardstick but am not worried. Just as surely as Patty will be sent home if her dress is a fraction of a fraction of an inch too short, I will not be asked to kneel in the hallway or in front of class. I’m smart enough to recognize the unspoken caste system around here and compassionate enough to know it’s wrong, but not brave enough to challenge it. I walk past Patty with the others, turn at the stairs, and go up to Journalism class.

No Dancing for Me! Part 2

Somewhere between selling brownies at the center of the square on Saturday mornings and decorating the tree for the dance, we pause for the serious stuff: choosing our dresses. Most of the girls buy their dresses—some even go to Springfield for them. Our mom usually makes our dresses, so Debbie and I have to plan ahead. We pick a pattern and fabric and concentrate on keeping Mom happy until the dresses are finished.

It rarely works. The plan usually breaks down somewhere around the covered buttons or the hem, the parts Mom hates doing. Just about the time she gets to that stage, one of us does something to tick her off, and she throws the dresses at our feet snarling, "Finish the damn thing yourself."

I am seven when Santa brings me my heart’s desire—a real Barbie. Not a Jewel Tea Madge or a Katie from Katz Discount City or even Barbie’s annoying cousin, Skipper, but an honest-to-God Barbie from Mattel, plus a carrying case filled with beautiful, handmade clothes. There’s a red cotton coat that covers a red shirtwaist dress; a dreamsicle of an evening coat and gown—orange satin lined in cream; a red knitted dress topped by a knitted capelet; a blue-and-white skirt knit in a basket-weave texture; blue suede pants and a matching jacket; a black-and-white gingham checked dress with tiny passementarie trim. I pull the outfits out of the case, one by one, thrilled with each. I never in my life imagined I’d have a real Barbie and all these beautiful clothes.

Everything’s perfect until I try some of the outfits on my new Barbie. None of them have buttons or snaps or zippers. I can put them on her, but they won’t stay. I don’t want to be ungrateful, so I learn to hold the clothes on her body with my thumbs. It works okay.

No Dancing for Me! Part I

Ten Saturday morning bake sales, five Saturday afternoon car washes, three Sunday afternoon trips into the woods to collect pickup-loads of walnuts to sell at the mill. We’ve worked nearly every weekend for five months and it all adds up to this: a live band for the Christmas dance. Not just a band but the band of our dreams: The Lavendar Hill Mob from Springfield.

We get by with local bands for Homecoming and the dance we hold after the Athletic Banquet in the spring. In the real world, those dances would be given by the school or at least held there. But here at the epicenter of the Bible Belt, the shiny silver Rodeo-champion buckle itself, we aren’t allowed to dance in school. We don’t play cards, we can’t enter the contests on the backs of cereal boxes (Enter and Win an all-expenses-paid, 10-day vacation to DisneyWorld. Void where prohibited by law and in Missouri), and we don’t dance in school.

Luckily, Rainbow Girls, an organization for the daughters of Masons or the members of Eastern Star, is not part of the school. Our ancient Eastern Star advisor is mostly deaf and never sure exactly what we’re up to. We wake her at the end of each meeting and help her down the Lodge Hall stairs to the parking lot where her husband waits. No one else seems to care that we’re throwing ourselves down a greased chute to Hell, so several times a year, we pony up $50 to rent the Legion Hall, fill it with crepe-paper streamers and folded-Kleenex flowers, and invite hormonal boys to risk hellfire and damnation by dancing with us.


The Christmas dance is the highlight of our year. We spend months working and saving and planning for it. We add a Christmas tree and aluminum-foil snowflakes to the usual crepe paper and Kleenex-flower décor. This is no ordinary Christmas tree. We cut it down our very own selves. Sue Curry’s father lets us have a tree from some land he owns out south of town. Debbie and I talk Dad into letting us use his big green Ford pick-up and a handsaw.

Bundled in 14 layers of warm clothes, the three of us drive as far as we can get, then hike the rest of the way to the ridge where the big trees grow. We take turns pulling the saw back and forth until we can’t stand it anymore and then push the damn thing over to break it off. Then we haul its carcass back to the truck. No matter how many times we do this, we never learn to pick a tree we can drag easily or one we can throw over the fences between us and the truck. Instead, we choose a tree that requires a series of physics experiments to get it back to town. There are sharp words and more than a few tears. When Sue and Debbie and I finally get the tree up in the corner near the stage at the Legion Hall, we agree that it was worth all the trouble. It’s beautiful.

Music, Heard and Unheard

My daughter sleeps in her bedroom. I have an hour or so before the demands of the day begin. I pour coffee into my red "Love" mug and contemplate how to invest this precious time. Shall I repot my new Buddha Hand Citron? Make a piece of art that's been richoceting in my head? Write?

Riches. My life is filled with riches.

My sister and nephew and I went to see a house yesterday, one we might buy for the boys to rehab. People lived in this house until September last year. It was beyond horrible. Entire walls consumed by mold. Ceilings falling in. Flooring worn away down to the floor joists. We all agreed that the boys would have to wear heavy-duty respirators to do the demolition. We felt the need of them, just walking around in there.

People live in these conditions. Some are happy to have the shelter, such as it is.

I've been skeptical about this venture. But what better choice could our sons make than to create decent, affordable housing for those who have none. I'm in.



Watch the dust grains moving
In the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,
But we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.

Rumi

Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy!!!!

Look what I found at my front door this morning!



The Girl surprised me by showing up for her spring break. No beaches and beer for my college girl. Nope, bless her heart, she picked Mom and movie marathons. And I had no idea until she opened the door. Awwwwwwwwhhhhh.

I could not be happier!!!!!!!

Good Day to Die?

Headlines tell us Brad Delp, the lead singer of Boston, died yesterday. He was 55.

Looking for things to jog my memories, I've been reading my hometown newspaper on line lately, including the obits. I'm shocked at how many people die in their 50s.

A dear friend is critically—some doctors say terminally—ill. We were born in the same year: 1954.

It was 65 degrees and sunny here yesterday, I put Paula's top down on the drive back from the multi-million dollar mansion. Stopped at Costco and bought a rose tree and a big carton of fresh blackberries. Stopped at Barb's house and we sat on her deck in the sunshine. We ate every damn one of those blackberries over thick Greek yogurt flavored with real vanilla and stevia. Swung into a garden store and bought a Buddha's Hand Citron tree, an enormous pot of lavendar, and a gardenia. Came home and repotted several of them.

All afternoon, I was filled with gratitude for life, for my life. For its real and sometimes messy details. For sunshine and friendship and the smells of growing things. For my beautiful little house and all the real things in it.

Talked to my son while walking through the greenhouse. He agreed to think about moving here. That's all I asked, just that he honestly consider it.

Not inviting death, but I am acknowledging it's time—way past time—to begin making every day a good day to die. It's the only way to fully live.

Got to go. Sooooo many wonderful things to do today. Just in case.

Friday Five

Taking a page from the brilliant and lovely Amber over at The Believing Soul who does a Thursday Thirteen, here's my Friday Five, in no particular order:



1. Spring is trying to be sprung here on the pond. The heron came back yesterday, always a good sign. The air smells different now than it did just two weeks ago, before I went to Portland. Soon, green things will be peeking their heads out and I will be prowling the aisles of nurseries and greenhouses, inhaling the smells of growing things. If they have them yet, I'm going to buy a lemon tree today so it can fill the house with the smell of promises.

2. My son called yesterday, distraught after yet another disagreement with his dad. It breaks my heart to hear and see him beaten down over and over, his self-image battered by The Wasbund's opinion of him. I've suggested that Evan move here. Many times. Yesterday he said he was considering it. It would be a major miracle and one I'm praying for. We'll see what happens.

3. Barb and I are have been invited to lunch today at the multi-million dollar home of an acquaintance of Barb's. This woman wants to write a book of the sort I already write, so Barb promised to introduce her to me. This should be big fun. Barb and I have been practicing not appearing to be wowed by the multi-million dollar surroundings and we've promised to pinch or kick one another if we notice mouths dropping open or drool forming.

4. The salon dramas continue. Yesterday we had "the mystery of the missing pregnancy test." Someone had left a pee-stick thing in a drawer a month or so ago. It was left from a two-pack, I was told. One of the girls wanted to use it yesterday, and it was gone, leaving just the empty package in the drawer. The girls were wild, absolutely wild, with theories, and made a list--a written list--for God's sake. They asked every staff member, including me, whether they'd taken it. I told them if I were pregnant we'd be alerting the media and preparing to create a shrine to another IC. They didn't seem to think that was as funny as I did. When I left, they were still interrogating one another over it. No one cared about the pee-stick thing, they wanted a story to tell. (sigh)

5. The "Not That Kind of Girl" stories and the memories they've stirred up have taken over my head since the workshop. When I get ready to write one, I think of the girls I knew growing up, choose one, and slip into a kind of meditative state where I can see and hear and smell the times we spent together or the stories I remember of their lives. There've been a few I've passed on after looking carefully at the memories, not ready to write them. But mostly I just start typing and let the story form itself. I leave it for a couple of hours, then delete as many words as possible and post. Hours slip away unnoticed and I'm as happy as if I had good sense.

Looking for Love

I’ve been searching for love as long as I can remember. I haven’t exactly looked in all the wrong places, but God knows I’ve looked in some peculiar ones. Damn peculiar.

Speaking of which, you couldn’t find a place much more peculiar than XXX, Missouri, the town where I grew up. We moved there in 1961 when I was 7 years old. Landing in the Ozark Mountains after living in southern California was a lot like landing on the moon, except that was the year President Kennedy announced we were racing the Russians to the moon. No one was racing anyone to XXX, Missouri.

* * *


We’d never seen anything even remotely like it in our whole lives. There they were—the neighbor girls, I mean—naked behind a big lilac bush beside their house. Two teenaged girls buck naked in the yard. In broad daylight. Through the foggy living room window and the pouring rain, my sister and I caught glimpses of bare boobs and butts and everything else. “Mom would kill us dead if we did that,” I whispered.

Debbie nodded and replied, with all the accumulated wisdom of her eight-and-a-half years, “Deader than doornails.”

Debbie wiped the window with one of the dishtowels we were supposed to be folding. When she finished, we stood on our tiptoes and craned our necks to get a better look. Behind us, Mom walked into the living room, carrying more clean laundry. We were too absorbed to notice until she dropped the plastic basket on the hardwood floor.

Both of us jumped like we’d been shot for the nosy little peeping Toms we were. My head smashed into Debbie’s nose; she squealed and smacked me. I was just getting cranked up when Mom grabbed my arm and stepped between us.

“You know better than that,” she said.

“What about her?

“I’m not talking to her, I’m talking to you.”

Of course you are. Debbie always gets away with everything. Tears filled my eyes at the horrible injustice of it all.

I might have been the teeniest, tiniest bit melodramatic back then, but being the middle kid wasn’t easy. Debbie was special because she was the oldest. Jeff was special because he was the baby and the only boy. But me? I was just plain old me. Plain, straight brown hair. Plain brown eyes. Nothing special at all. I'd long since decided that when I grew up I’d have two kids or four kids, but not three. Never three. No one would be stuck in the middle in my family.

“What are you two doing?” Mom asked.

We tried to look innocent. “Watching the rain,” Debbie said.

Mom looked out the window. Her eyes got big and we knew she’d seen them, too.

“Good grief,” she said. “They’re out there washing their hair.”

We ducked under Mom’s arms to look again, and sure enough, two soapy heads were clearly visible through the leaves near the top of the bushes.

“And they’re na-ked!” Mom said, her breath coming out in a rush.

We looked at each other in wonder. What’s she going to do to them?

Mom wasn’t exactly mean, but she definitely had ways of letting us know when we’d crossed the line. She didn’t hesitate to let us have it with the business end of a fly swatter or with a belt. Never with the buckle, though. Only the leather. Once in a great while she made us cut a switch out of a tree and then she spanked us with it. But not usually. Usually, she just yelled.

To our everlasting surprise, Mom didn’t do anything to those girls. She didn’t even go out and yell at them. Instead, she handed each of us a laundry basket and made us go to our room to fold the towels and washcloths. “I’ll put up the ironing board,” she said. “You can iron Daddy’s handkerchiefs when you’re done with those towels.”

Later, I thought I heard Mom crying in her bedroom. It bothered me when Mom cried. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to cry.

That night, when she thought we were asleep, Mom told Daddy what we’d seen. “Out there in broad daylight, Chuck,” she said. “Completely naked.”

“Their house doesn’t have running water, Honey,” he said. “They’re trying to keep clean.”

Mom knew all about not having running water. Our grandma’s house in Iowa, the house where Mom grew up, didn’t have running water either. When we visited Grandma and Grandpa, we took baths the same way they did, the same way Mom took baths when she lived there. We went out in the yard and pushed the long, silver pump handle up and down to fill buckets with water. Then we carried the water into the house, heated it on the stove, and poured it into a small metal tub. We didn’t stand naked behind a lilac bush in the rain, for goodness sake.

“What kind of place is this, Chuck?” Mom was crying again. “What kind of place did you drag us to?”

If Daddy answered, we didn’t hear him.