If You See Something ...

If You See Something, Don’t Just SAY Something!

I caught his gaze, but couldn’t de-code the emotion behind it.  I was flattered that he looked at me – him being so handsome.  He had that George Clooney, salt-and-pepper hair, a khaki trench coat, and just emanated an “I am a professional, successful, wealthy male.”  Frankly, he seemed out of place in the pizza take-out line, but, as they say, “any port in a storm” -  I’ll take in good scenery whenever it’s around.  It was just his look that puzzled me.  Well, until I got in my vehicle.  Then the pieces came together.

I gently placed the small pizza on the passenger seat.  I made sure the lid was popped so I could eat a few pieces on the way home – ahhh, slightly crispy mushrooms and juicy chunks of pineapple!  I could hardly contain myself.  I straighten-ed myself in the seat; my right hand reached across to the left shoulder to grab the seatbelt and pull it across my body to “click it.”  Then I saw my entire left arm of my black winter jacket.  From the top of the shoulder all the way down past the elbow was colored chalk.  My favorite profanity slipped out of my mouth as easily as it would come out of the bull.  I began fervently brushing off the marks and smudges with a dry napkin.  Now I know why he was looking at me.  And then it came to me:  Why didn’t he SAY SOMETHING?

If all of these campaigns across the whole USA are screaming at us:  “If you see something, SAY SOMETHING,” can we expect a person who does not respond to CHALK DUST to respond to more dangerous things?! 

I am concerned with the cultural inertia that we are prisoner to.  After 40 years of protesting a different area of injustice, I come to question the political value of marches.  But I will never doubt the importance of marches that are prayer vigils.  As the Good Book tells us:  

"Let us rend our hearts, not our garments."

Considering The Woodsman

It was an extraordinary opportunity, kind of like seeing a bald eagle, or perhaps the mystical white buffalo.  He sat perfectly camouflaged on his front step.  I was rounding the bend of the road rather slowly otherwise I would have missed this rare sighting entirely.  I don’t think he wants to be seen, but I see him.  I watch him.  I wonder about him.  I pray for him.

When I first moved to the country, I reckoned his place to be one of the many abandoned farm houses that dot our countryside.  They are a testimony to the change in our society and its values.  Sometimes I even put the party-line bumper sticker on my car:  “No Farms.  No Food.”  It is a way of life that seems to have almost evaporated, yet the fact that I can pull a half gallon of milk out of my refrigerator every morning is evidence that someone, somewhere is milking cows successfully.

His house has character. I imagine it was a lustrous white at one time.  It is not spooky, but it is large with two debris-cluttered porches on adjoining sides of the house.  The railings are broken or non-existent.  The house, like him it seems, has a weather-beaten ambiance to it.  There are giant trees that have crashed willy-nilly on his property and lay there, probably on his very long to-do list.  Last year, he did some sort of wood clean-up behind his garage that involved stacking and chopping.  It was the clearest evidence I had that someone actually was associated with that house. 

There is no mailbox.  Perhaps he has a post office box.  Or perhaps he has no need to receive all of the charity requests, bills, advertisements, and the like that are crammed into my own mailbox on a daily basis.  I envy him if he has found a way to beat the system. 

A truck that has seen better days sits in a threateningly permanent pose on its flat tires on the driveway.  This truck makes Fred Sanford’s humble junkyard pick up resemble a Beamer.  I’m just saying.  More recently, a smaller car has been parked in after the truck, its operating condition also in the questionable status.  The back tire sure looks low but if you have to get to a hospital or some such thing, I guess it could get you there.

Not only are there crashed trees around the house, but smaller standing trees.  They function like Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men:  they seem to encircle the house itself as if to shield it from the eyes of the curious.  That would be me.  I am just curious.  I study people and I study habitats and this combination fascinates me. 

The house does not have a welcome sign on it, that’s for sure.  But he is a human being, and I acknowledge that he must have some thoughts and feelings that are important to him.  I wonder if he has people with whom he shares those ruminations.  I wonder if he has stories of the old ways that he would be glad to tell to friends over coffee at the diner.  Did his family work the canal?  Did they work the rail yard?  Did they farm the land across the street from his forlorn-looking home?

I know that Norman Rockwell would have found a way to capture the image of this man and his dog sitting on the front porch.  He probably could have done it all in camo-colors:  army green, greys, ash, and a gentle sunlight through leafless grey trees.  It is the first almost-nice day with an unusually high temperature for February (65 degrees!).  The man sat there on the stoop in nondescript jeans and a workshirt of some type – I imagine flannel or the like.  His beard went down about a foot from his chin it seems.  He sat like a man who was just sitting for the sake of setting there.  No plan.  No “next thing.”  No agenda…  Just sitting in the company of the proverbial best friend – a scraggly looking dog who probably means the entire world to the guy.  And dogs, being the perfect example of being-for-the-sake-of-being, that dog just sat on the step with him, taking in the moment when heaven and earth seemed to touch a little more closely: a warm day in February, a man enjoying sunshine and clouds with a willing companion.

Rarely do I see light coming from that house.  In fact, only twice in seven years have I seen evidence of light there:  a bulb hanging in the plastic-covered window one winter night.  Is there heat in that house?  A roaring wood stove to cook what I imagine he eats?  I hear-tell that he is a trapper.  I hope that he has a real meal every now and then.  Maybe a niece cooks for him?  Or does he have a sister-in-law that says to her husband:  “Go down there and haul your brother over here for a decent meal tonight, won’t ya?”

My musings in his regard will continue.  Mostly because I think when I get older and can’t keep pace with my house, I may be in the same predicament.  But also truly because all of the mystique about a regular guy who just chops lumber at a house that is aging badly deserves to be considered.  He is the symbol of every one of us who gets out of bed in the morning and fights the atrophy around us.  We clean houses that don’t seem to stay clean.  We work jobs that seem circuitous in their tasks.  We know that some things just will never push high enough on our to-do list to suit the outside critics.  And in the long run, all that really needs to fill us is the moment of sitting in a cast of stray sunshine on the stoop with our dog who loves us just for who we are, not for what we do or don’t do.  That’s the thing that makes it all worthwhile.

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Die-with-a-T

Diet is “Die” with a T on it to distract you.  I’m just sayin’

A friend of mine is one of those health-conscious eaters.  She is very lean.  I worry about her because if there is ever a famine in the land she will have no fat stored to live off of.  It will just be the beefers and me, like a new brand of super-heroes, sizes 12 and up, saving mankind.  I don’t know what we will be doing, but I know that we will have the longevity, if we can get up out of our recliners and couches to rescue the planet.

I may have mentioned before that she tried to “convert” me to not drinking cow’s milk and not eating meat.  I aint buying it.  But she did say something intriguing about the therapeutic properties of apple cider vinegar.  I was initially leery because ACV (the insiders/believers call apple cider vinegar “ACV.”) is allegedly good for so many other things:  cleaning your oven, trapping and killing fruit flies, and a few other surprising and gross things.  I wonder if it also can be poured on a car battery to clean up grime and battery acid leaks – someone once proposed using coca cola for the same activity but I have never tried it… and continue to ingest coca cola myself <insert my proud, mischievous smile right here>.

So, in search of a homeopathic aid, I came upon yet another recommendation for ACV…  this time, as a tea.  What could be bad about tea?  This is the recipe:  a slice of lemon, 1-2 Tbsp ACV, ¼ tspn ground cinnamon, 1 tspn ginger, 1 Tbspn honey and almost boiling water.  It sounded do-able.  The recommended use was once daily for five days … any more than that, the recipe warns, may damage your tooth enamel.  Again I reference my speculation on cleaning car batteries. 

I have tasted this tea (and, yes, swallowed it) for three days now.  You were wondering what could be bad about tea?  I propose “nothing …. As long as you are washing it down with a cinnamon roll or a muffin.”  Eventually the attempts at healthy eating just become excuses for eating what you really wanted to have the first time!

Exhibit #2.  The People vs. Healthy Drinks.

SO picture me driving down the road on a Saturday afternoon – and I am thirsty and hungry at the same time – like the planets lining up, except I don’t have time for a real meal.  I have just finished grocery shopping for Lady #2.  Only fifteen minutes prior, I was standing before the yogurt cooler case and looking for just a smoothie that had some sort of berries in it, but I don’t want one of those all-juice ones that they hit you $3 for a six ounce bottle.  I grab this small container and it says “Berries” on it in a prominent space.  That was all I needed to see, or so I thought.  Again I move you to the point where I’m in my car, singing with the radio, loving life, feeling hungry-yet-hopeful.  I stop at the traffic light, simultaneously taking the opportunity to remove the little foil lid.  I touch the gas pedal slightly, the wind flows through my hair, I lift the drink to my lips.  BWAUGH!  If that is a word, that is the sound I made as the drink slipped down the hatch and the after-taste caught up with me.  My eyeballs popped slightly.  I squinted and snuck a glance at the container in my hand. 

Then I saw the words “two servings of veggies.”  What the bleep.  Why would veggies co-exist with berries?  Then I’m wondering if it’s like the trick that tomatoes play on everyone:  tomatoes are really fruit, except we market them as a vegetable to give the rest of the vegetables a good name.  It works.  Some of you are saying, “tomato is NOT a fruit.”  Okay, don’t believe me, look it up.

Let me say I am not about to make peace with the vegetable community just because One of them is a fraud and tastes good.  But I will be much more careful when reading labels of my yogurt-like drinks.  For the record, one of the two veggies in the drink was “beet.”  Now I ask you:  under what circumstances would anyone want to eat beets?! 

Because I am a magnanimous person, I just want to warn all of you out there who are trying to take a baby-step towards healthier eating:  READ THE LABELS.  You could ingest something that has little nutritional value and no taste for no good reason.  Like beets.  I am proud to have taken-one-for-the-team in this instance but I am also willing to work with  you on a class-action lawsuit against the stealth practices of these drink makers.  Be careful!

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I dedicate this column to A&T, who always want to help me eat healthier… things like veggie straws with no taste.

If you want to discuss the eating issue again, I will meet you at Dunkin’.

Experiencing Thin Spaces

“Thin Spaces” was a new term to me.  In a homily given by a local pastor, he explained the Irish concept of “thin spaces” as being that moment in time where the veil that separates heaven and earth or the material world from the spiritual world seems rather thin.  In so many words, I guess, it’s that moment where you say, “oh. Wow.  That was very godly.”  And I will admit that while I have some experience in the spiritual journey, those moments where it seems there are Divine fingerprints on the window seems few and far between. 

“And just whose fault is that?” one could ask.  I don’t know.  While I am more than reluctant to point my finger to the ceiling …. Because it honestly seems to me He works overtime trying to get humanity’s attention and respect … I don’t like the other choice I’m left with:  my fault.  But I guess it is.  Through lack of adequate personal reflection, many of us lose the learning and grace-filled opportunities of which we are unknowingly in the midst.  We get lost in the daily grind of work and home and society.  Insert here a mental snapshot of a busy city street where all sorts of people are walking in different directions and taxi’s are beeping and children in strollers are pointing and business people are trying not to bump into other humans while the yammer along in self-important poses on the cell phone.  This is the life we know.  It’s easy to get stuck here.  Until you’re not.

Something bad happened to me a couple of years ago.  I was betrayed.  And with that betrayal, a big piece of my world became very disinteresting to me.  I had to try to turn in to look at the interior damage and try to nurture and heal, if possible.  There were days when I didn’t think it was possible.  I lost a lot of motivation, and only those closest to me may have seen a piece of the trainwreck that was sitting inside my heart. 

That’s why it was incredulous to me when a person in my closest circle asked me directly in front of everyone-that-mattered if I “had any New Year’s resolutions.”  I am pretty sure the response that was hoped for was something along the lines of losing weight.  Since, even in awkward situations, I prefer to not lie, I responded:  “You know, I’m a very superstitious person at heart and I find that when I share my resolutions it kind of takes the steam out of them and I get nothing accomplished.”  End of discussion.

My resolutions, actually, were not itemized.  They were really a symphony of attitudes that I am trying to get to “play” in a harmonious presentation.  Lose weight?  I’m not Kate on “This is Us.”  I don’t have that kind of self-loathing and complicated psychological scarring.  I’m not even as BIG as Kate is.  But what I am turning the entire ship of my life towards is far more important than what is on the scale.  I have found, by the way, that if I turn my digital scale just two inches to the side diagonally, it renders a score that is three pounds less.  Yeah, I like that.  But indulge me for a minute, and think of an ocean liner leaving the East Coast for, say, Merry Old England.  Do you know that if you adjust the compass just two degrees off on this end of the journey, you won’t get to see the Queen?  And for this very reason, I begin my journey of re-aligning my entire life with no undue caution. 

I am trying to Listen.  I want to be present to the moment.  I want to not miss the thing it is I need to be attending to in the middle of what I THINK I’m supposed to be doing.  Chew on that for a while.

I began by trying to put some godly order into my environment at home.  And as a sincere stab at that, I tackled the proverbial “junk drawer” in my kitchen.  That led to cleaning the Island off, and discovering that I

do have a kitchen table which is quite functional if I put stuff somewhere else instead of in piles on it.  I threw stuff out.  I created a Burn Box and I will be slogging out to the backyard in the spring and lighting that fire with a grateful heart.  In the course of attending to the 101 business cards I seem to have accumulated, I pulled out one that belonged to a realtor I had met in the church circles about 15 years ago.  I noted it and then filed it. 

Imagine my surprise when a couple of days later the very same woman called my work phone looking to speak with someone.  I asked her, “Are you the realtor?”  She said, “Yes.  I am.”  I re-introduced myself and we began talking about her ministry of looking out for people who seem to fall between life’s proverbial cracks.  She dropped first names only.  One of them flagged my attention.  I asked her, if that wasn’t by any chance so-and-so who was a former student of mine.  She said yes.  THEN, unbelievably it was clear why this phone call was happening. 

Last year at this time another friend was talking to me and mentioned her niece who lives a few towns over.  I asked this woman, “then you probably know that whole pod of kids who hung out together.”  She said yes, and that one particular young woman is, how can I say this politely (I can’t):  dead.  When I first heard it was like getting the wind knocked out of me.  Then it became clear why another random person had called my home phone and left me a message with no details.  I never returned that call.  And so I never knew there was a wake I needed to be at.  I always wondered what this young woman died from.  Here, a year later, the realtor lady was able to tell me what no one else did:  that she passed away from some sort of a seizure relative to her other health issues.  I just needed to know that she didn’t hurt herself.  Somehow that mattered to me.  Now I had closure.  A thin space had come and gone.

The next day I was reviewing my adoring fans and friends on facebook.  I saw an advertisement of an African American woman standing at the water’s edge with her arms wide open as if she was embracing heaven.  She had a wide brimmed white beach hat on.  She was wearing a beach dress.  She had one of those reminder wristbands on her left wrist.  I started to cry.  Hard.   This exact picture is what is in my head when I think of my friend Denise who passed away in the summer of 2016.  She was my beach friend and I looked forward to vacationing with her and our women friends every summer for decades.  Now she was gone and I have this big, giant, cumbersome hole in my heart where one of my best friends used to be.  To think that the Almighty could use an advertisement on social media to put my mind at ease was, again, a very nice thin space to find myself in.  The very next day, it popped up on facebook that it was her birthday.  January 4.  I’m terrible at remembering birthdays and significant dates, but I remember my people. 

The third “Thin Space” was two weeks ago at the checkout line in a grocery store.  I was shopping for a senior lady and feeling a bit at the end of my rope until I found myself in line behind a friend who used to work with me.  We had a delightful conversation which included me naming the fact that she had been done an injustice by the people who drove her out of a job she loved.  She remarked (her Thin Space) that it so happens that working as a companion to a disabled person had become her new full time job and that she loved it.  I was glad for her.

I turned and looked at the man behind me for no particular reason at all and then realized I know him and practically shouted, “Steve!  How are you?!”  He said great – and he looked healthy and well – but his face also registered that he couldn’t remember me.  I added, “You bought your dog from me five years ago!”  He beamed and said, “do you have any puppies now?  Because we want another one!”  I advised him that, in fact, we are expecting a litter mid-February.  I produced my business card and felt so happy that his cancer was gone, and his dog was so loved by their family.   

This situation at the grocery store was not like neighbors bumping into each other at a local grocery store.  It is at least 15 miles from my house, and although I go there weekly, the time frame varies.  It is almost as if the stars had to line up for these encounters to even happen at all.  

I am grateful for the Thin Spaces.  I am grateful when I am made aware that the Divine Eye is on me, and that I am His apple.  I am grateful that this year is starting out one million times better and more interesting than last year was in its entirety.  So I ask you, have you been open to the Thin Spaces?  Maybe that is a good resolution for all of us?!

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Ask Me your questions

Ask Me Your Questions

In the heat of our argument, the red face in front of me shouted:  “You never ask me anything!”  I looked at him, sincerely surprised, and responded:  “Because I don’t have any questions!”  It was one of my finer moments where dry humor sent someone else over the edge besides me.  Yet over the years I have had opportunity to address the underlying issue:  do I have the personal intellectual humility to admit that I do not, in fact, know everything about every topic?  Am I able to put myself even momentarily at the feet of someone else and ask a question that will help one or both of us?

In the course of what I do throughout the week, oftentimes I fill out nursing home forms with patients and/or their families.  One of the things that always leaves me a bit misty-eyed is the couples that announce to me how many years they have been married … to each other.  It is typical that I teasingly ask them, “No kidding?  Just to each other?  All those years?” … and then I give them my leading-the-witness, inquisitive face and press in with almost a clandestine whisper:  “So.  What’s your secret?”  Not only do I presume there IS a secret –because so few people are successful at long term marriage – but I also presume they are willing to share it with me.  They do not disappoint me.  Ever.

One woman smiled pleasantly and stated:  “I always let him have the last word.”  I raised my eyebrows.  The husband chipped in:  “And it is always, ‘Yes, Dear.’”  We all have a good laugh.

I have had the privilege to actually hear the emotion of adoration in the voice of more than one husband as he references his wife.  That always bolsters my confidence in the male portion of humanity.  I find myself sitting in a room which, while for the most part is just an ordinary hospital room, transforms into a sanctuary of sorts by the way that elder couples are present to each other in their critical health moments.  I listen.  I gauge my interview process carefully, as sensitively as I can.  In the cases where I am on the phone with a spouse long distance, how beautiful to hear him say, “I can hardly wait to see her again.  We’ve been married for 59 years.”  God bless them.  They have taken the time to crack the code of unselfishness, patience, thoughtfulness, and sense of humor.

I do not have one particular person that I am needing to be patient with – other than my three dogs – so generally it falls on me to try to be patient with whomever crosses the grid at the time.  That is a variable task, to be sure. 

While there is a lot of talk about “mindfulness” lately (what am I putting into my body/mind/spirit that kind of might not really be good for it?) I propose we raise the bar to talk more about “thoughtfulness.”  Thoughtfulness is really other-directed-mindfulness.  The other day, I bought a lottery ticket for myself … and then I added an extra … I gave it some thought as to whom I would share it with.  I guess I picked the right person because she laughed at it, and then even though it was a “loser,” kept it on her desk for a couple of days just to look at it.  Sometimes in the winter I worry that thoughtfulness will backfire – like, if I scrape snow off a windshield of someone’s vehicle in the work parking lot, what if I set off the car alarm?  But then I go ahead and do it because by that time, if it is bitter, bitter cold, I have already used up my cache of PG-rated Swear Words and can turn the act into a sort of penance for my sins.  With my luck, the good deed of scraping a windshield probably only “counts” towards the swear words I just used on my own windshield.  Don’t mark me down as a hero, I’ve only done this once or twice.  It’s the concept I love, not the deed itself.  LOL.

It seems to me that “sense of humor” covers a lot of beneficial ground.  I have warned people that tell me I am funny not to compliment me because it will just encourage me.  I get funnier for the people that find me funny… either that or they have lowered their standards consistently.  An elderly relative of mine spoke a truism to my grandmother long before I showed up on the planet:  “Josephine, if you can’t laugh at something silly, what can you laugh at?”  Let us laugh, then.  Let us search out, find, and enjoy the incongruities of human life for they are many and varied.  Laughing helps get our endorphins up and I suspect it affects our physical and psychological well-being in more ways than we know.  I can’t remember the last time someone made me roar with laughter.

Take a look at television.  Or not.  After 30 years of not having even basic cable, I’ve got it now and

at this point a few months into the journey I am wondering what medication to take to get rid of TV-itis.  I advised a recent ratings company that the level of heartless violence, gratuitous animal-like sexual behavior and overall bad behavior on prime time was a BIG shock to me.  Stories with an otherwise appealing plot throw in a moment of gore and you think to yourself, “AUGH!  I don’t want that in my brain just before I go to bed.”  Most of us are aware of the television network that could be dubbed “The Man-haters Channel.”  I found that after watching a couple of shows which were initially intriguing, I started to feel less safe in my own house.  Why is that, because up until now, thoughts of someone breaking into my home were not even on my mental grid?  But these sinister possibilities were threaded through my brain in the deceptive form of “entertainment” and I find that, you know what, I was better off without this stuff.  My point: television hasn’t even made me roar lately, and it’s the very thing that claims to “entertain us.”  It’s not doing its job!

Dear Reader, you may think I analyze stuff too much.  You will not be the first to suggest this.  But actually it is my vehicle for asking Life questions.  I ask myself questions.  I ask God questions.  I ask other people questions.  Hidden within this asking process, comes the possibility of actually grasping the finer points of Life’s Mysteries.  I think it is only at the point when I stand face-to-face with my Maker and He advises me, “Ask Me your questions,” that I will actually have run out of questions.  I will be standing in the middle of the Answer.

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The Almost-Lost Art

A friend online recently called me “quite the raconteur.”  At first I had to look it up to make sure it wasn’t an insult.  Then I realized it is the compliment that I have striven for all my life.  I think it is important for people to develop their human potential to become useful & interesting people.  I was thinking this way before writer/speaker Matthew Kelly was saying that “God wants us to be the very best version of ourselves.”  So I guess I feel validated in my intentions.

A raconteur is a person who is skilled at the art of telling interesting stories.  Perhaps it was hard-wired into my personality, but I know for sure that I grew up at the feet of absolute Masters in story-telling.  I also recognized that in order to find life more interesting sometimes all you have to do is change your perspective.  As one of the country singers twanged out, “Sometimes you’re the windshield; sometimes you’re the bug!”  The windshield and the bug can experience the same conditions or event and come away with a completely different take on it.  It is up to the story teller to help you find the glorious hidden within the folds of the ordinary.

It was my own perception growing up that Sunday afternoons could be dreadfully boring at our house.  My father truly wanted to just rest.  And frankly, We the People, did not!  When he built our house it was someone’s idea to put a large bay window in the living room that gave you a bird’s eye view of the street and driveway.  I almost felt badly for him when one of the family Storytellers would pull in the driveway – He knew his nap had just been definitively cancelled.  Usually, he would call out something that could have been 50% profanity; and 50% a prayer of desperation and my mother would say, “What?!”  The reply:  “My uncle just pulled in the driveway.”  The coffee pot would immediately be queued-up for the visit from my great uncle, the world traveler.

His stories had color, zeal, mischief, excitement.  They had almost as much intrigue in them as Robert Duvall’s character in “Second Hand Lions.”  And that is a big compliment.  I imagine his deceased first wife Emily must have been initially intrigued with him and his tales… and then perhaps she got to the point where she said things like, “All right, just cut to the chase.”  Years of marriage sometimes wears the veneer of politeness off – so then, you just to with your tales to visit relatives.

Frankly, when Uncle Vince met his second wife and “he got religion” I was a bit worried.  I liked the new great aunt most certainly.  But I was afraid that some of his story telling ability would be hampered by a set of standards that seemed to be unnecessarily tagged onto the title of “religious.”  I was, in fact, delightfully put at ease when he broadened his story repertoire beyond tales of the far past, to tales that included recent trips to shrines and religious sites.  You can get a lot of fun stories just being around people anywhere – but take it over The Pond to a foreign country and it can only get better. 

In reality, you could put “religion” into a man, but sometimes you can’t kick-out the pre-existing tweaked sense of humor.  I remember the strange color of pale and rolling of the eyes that my mother displayed every time he told his Ashtabula joke.  Even though Ashtabula is a small town in Pennsylvania, I believe, he saw the opportunity for creating a folk tale of a traveler who stayed at a farmer’s house.  The only place where he could sleep was with the farmer’s daughter.  The farmer’s daughter’s name was Beulah.  The traveler was allowed to sleep with her as long as he turned his ash-to-Beulah.  As kids we roared at that joke.  Now as an adult, I recognize the mischievous spirit in which it was delivered so I don’t think it counts as a profanity which is a sin.  It’s just, well, as my friend Joan would say, “naughty.”

If I had children of my own, the setting for some of the stories I would tell them would be the Polkabration Festival held at Ocean Beach in Connecticut back in the day.  My parents, my brother and I, would pack into the family station wagon and “It” would begin even as we backed out of the driveway.  I called “shotgun” because I needed a bit of air coming from the car vent.  My mother had a natural antipathy to anything that resembled a “draft” so she sat in the back with my brother…. Which was just fine with me …. Maybe if SHE drew the line in the middle of the back seat he would respect it.  He never did with my line.  I’m just sayin. 

Mom:  “Did everyone go to the bathroom before we got in the car?” (as we backed out of the driveway).

<insert my father’s exasperated sigh here.>  (as we pulled back in the driveway again).

Resuming our backward travel out of the driveway, we begin again.  We turn into the small grocerette around the corner from our neighborhood.  I can tell you that if Mom goes in, you are coming out with nothing in your pocket.  If DAD goes in and you tag along, you can put the squeeze on him for a piece of penny candy.

Dad:  “I’m just going to run in to get the paper.”

Resuming our travel after the grocerette, he turns on the radio.  Ah, country music.

Mom:  “Do we have to have the radio on?  Could we have a little communication?”

Dad:  “What the he!!! Is there to communicate about?”  (the interchange has the flavor of some of the scenes in the iconic movie:  “The Christmas Story,” sans the Red Rider bb gun.)

He turns it down low so only he and I can hear it.  I suspect this is why I turned out musically inclined, and my brother who sat in the back seat did not.  Students in some of the classes I have taught know that I maintain Country Music is foundational in learning to “hear” harmonies in music.  There’s a lot of depth and emotion in it.  And the old ballads are yet another art form of how to tell a story PLUS do music simultaneously – could it be any better than that?!

We are now eight minutes away from our own driveway, at most. 

Dad:  (to mom) “Did you pack my bathing suit?”

Mom:  “No.  We are all wearing ours.  You were supposed to bring your own bathing suit.”

Dad:  “I can’t wear my bathing suit under pants because they …” (well, too much information.)

We turn around and go back home to retrieve dad’s bathing suit.  AGAIN, we resume our travel onward to the home of our family friends, the G’s , which is about 20 minutes ride over the mountain.  Apparently they left without us, so we jump back into gear and proceed to take the routes “32 and 2” to the beach. 

Half way there, the morning sun begins to make the car seem stuffy to me.  I like breathing, so I attempt to roll my window down (manually, the old way) and …

Mom:  “Close the window.  I’m getting a draft back here.  I will have stiff neck.”

I thought only the Pharoah’s in Egypt were prone to getting stiff-necked, as it said in the Bible.  But I digress.  I negotiate – I know, big surprise there – and can have it open approximately an inch and a half.  The seatbelt restricts me from pushing myself up toward the window to suck in the fresh air. Then the Styrofoam cooler in the super-back of the station wagon begins to squeak when we go over bumps.  It makes my stomach feel funny. 

Me:  “Why can’t you throw that cooler out and buy a plastic one that doesn’t squeak?  When I hear that noise it makes me feel sick to my stomach.”  No.  I’m not kidding.  And to this day, they still have that cooler in the basement somewhere.  I think it became a fishing bait cooler.  I think someday as an unsupervisable adult I will take it in their back yard and light it on fire to see if it returns to hell from whence it came.

We get near the sign that says “Egg Farms” and I decide closing the window is a good idea now.  By the way, they did not make all cars with air conditioning back in those days.  So if you wanted a trip in coolness, you left at the crack of dawn and drove everywhere you could before 10 am when the summer sun would attempt to work the dark side of its powers on car inhabitants.

Me:  “Are we stopping for donuts?”  I really should have a tee shirt that says this.  I also should have investment stock in the biggest franchise for donuts which had its origin in a small village in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Sometimes we stopped for donuts, sometimes we didn’t.  If it was looking like a no-stop trip, then Someone would have to take it upon themselves to request a potty stop…. “Oh look, there’s a place we could stop to use the restroom (that happens to sell donuts.)  Dad, you could stop there.”  I am not beyond helping the family by being the requestor.  That’s just who I am…. Nice like that.

So we got to the beach and proceeded to park and unpack the vehicle to get closer to locating a spot on the sand for our blanket and towels.  It seemed like a very long walk, even in my memory now 40+ years later.  I, always the opportunist, made one last appeal to yet another reason why we should get a new plastic cooler:  they came with wheels. My father grumbled a bit and we moved onward.  I think it took them ten years to break down and buy the orange cooler.  Sigh.  I was such a pioneer in my thinking, even then.

I must say the polka music was absolutely BLASTING from the pavilion.  You could almost become Polish by osmosis of sound. Our friends were already there, “What thehell took you people so long?”  the husband asked.  My father just shook his head.  I think my father was always a hidden health-nut.  They’d sit down on the beach and his friend, my adopted uncle, would ask:  “So Steve – as if the word “so” was part of his name – You want some juice?”  My mother didn’t have any juice, and for some reason the kids weren’t allowed to have any juice either.  It wasn’t until later when I became aware of the home-spun ways of avoiding liquor regulations on public beaches that I realized why just three adults had juice on our beach blankets.  It also explains why our Auntie Tillie all of a sudden took to dancing on the boardwalk around lunchtime… by herself.  And I guess because she wasn’t our parent, we were not obliged by unwritten kid rules to be embarrassed by her skipping to the polka music…. Or the “la-da-da-da” type of singing she was doing.

During one of these iconic trips to the beach, my father and I were 

walking kind of half way between our beach blanket and the foamy tendrils of the surf.  I turned and saw this guy coming toward him quickly – in bathing suit – with a child’s bucket of surf water.  Picture my face as I saw this guy grab the back of my father’s bathing trunks and DUMP the water down his backside!  My dad spun around, “What the??!!!” and the other man, laughing, reached out and shook his hand.  Turned out it was a distant cousin.  There were actually two cousins – Henyk and Leszyk – in my brain they were kind of like those two cartoon crows Heckle & Jeckle (probably the English translation of their names?) and this guy on the beach was one of them.  I think I’ve seen them only a couple of times in my life but they were kind of legendary somehow.  One of those families had a daughter my age who wasn’t particularly interested in being friendly.  No matter, I really just wanted to play with their Chihuahua pup that they brought to my grandparents’ home when they visited.  She didn’t share the dog either.  So my exposure to the distant cousins remains, well, distant in more ways than one.

You would think that with the eventfulness of the entire day that the trip home would have a sense of unwinding about it.  I believe the word “unraveling” suits it better, though.  We stopped at this diner in Connecticut – and I could not find it to this day if I tried – and my father always took his sunglasses off and rested them on the windowsill.  There was more than one time where we pulled into the driveway at home only to remember the sunglasses he left at the restaurant.  They probably have a box in their back storage room from all the Dad’s over the years that left sunglasses there. 

My favorite episode was the one where he ordered spaghetti.  Perhaps he was still suffering the effects of the hot sun and dehydration from drinking only juice on the beach, or the trauma of having cold ocean water being spilled down his shorts?  But he was famished when that spaghetti hit the table and began to shake on the cheese and swirl the pasta to his fork.  A funny look crossed his face.  The waitress passed by just to check that we had our order, and that all was well.  He remarked, “This spaghetti is different – the sauce is kind of sweet, yet gritty…” and then we realized what happened … as we all looked at the wide shaker on the table …. Which did NOT have parmesan cheese in it.  We all got a good laugh out of that.

Families need story-tellers as much as they need the stories themselves.  It is the story-teller who can put the spin on an event and make everyone laugh at the oddities of life.  Stories unite us.  So the next time I ask you, “What’s your story?” I might want more information!

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D - GAS Syndrome

Who Suffers from D-G.A.S. Syndrome?  (We all do)

“Well, apparently, we’re both suffering from a deplorable lack of curiosity,” was one of the best lines by Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) in the musical epic, The Sound of Music.  It was an admission of lack of emotional or intellectual engagement that is completely applicable to what happened the other night at the Big Box grocery store where I shop. 

Sometimes life just happens in front of me and I am stunned.  In this case, I deliberately put myself in the check-out line behind the Amish family.  I was observing them and asking the question in my head of whether the Amish I read about in the lovely fictitious novels (which have become my steady diet) are the same ones I see around town.  I wonder if the Amish are as thoughtful and religious as the books portray them to be.  I also wonder if they use deodorant, designer shampoo, and other pleasantries that we all get used to in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  I wonder if they wear wedding rings.  I wonder if the mother made the little boy’s shirt herself, or if someone else in their community did… and where they get that shade of mint green fabric.  I wonder if the wife is from a different location of Amish communities than the husband … and why his features looked more Germanic than hers did.  She almost had olive skin. Clearly, there are lots of questions crashing around in my head.

I was surprised to see so much “Englischer” food on their part of the conveyor belt:  cereals, snacks, and the like.  For once in my life, MY selection of food looked almost healthy!  I know I didn’t expect fruits and vegetables amongst their groceries because they most likely grown their own.  But the amount of almost junk food was startling.  I thought about my own garden that was almost a 100% flop this year.  If I had to grow my own food, I’d starve for sure and for certain.  I didn’t get the corn in early enough and I think it will be mature, oh, in October shortly before the first frost.  My strawberry plants got moved up to the deck and STILL something with small teeth chomped the berries right off the plants!  I think they left exactly TWO berries for me.  “A fine howdy-do,” from the chipmunks I’m sure.  The bean plants produced exactly three beans and I found them when they were shriveled nearly beyond recognition.  At the time, I pondered declaring the year a “seed-making year” and putting them in a baggie somewhere for next spring.  Instead, I lost my motivation and tossed them on the compost heap.  Yet again my chive crop was crazy and has conquered the entire raised bed.  Ask me how many times I’ve cooked with chives in the past six years.  I actually bought cottage cheese at one point, so to have something to fold the chives into.  Did you know cottage cheese turns pink when it starts going south?  I’ve got a renegade population of mint plants – and a friend at work that keeps telling me how I can “make tea” with them.  I roll my eyes – like I’ve got any time to fool around with making teas.  I’m too busy tearing up the mint plants that are threading root runners everywhere and being a general nuisance. 

Amidst my reverie, the dear Amish woman wrote a check to the store.  And the cashier who was so neutral in her interchange with her customers that I wanted to lean over, grab her wrist, and check her pulse, took the paper check without ceremony, and attempted to feed it into the cash register.  In my brain I thought:  Of course she would pay cash or check, if she had a debit or credit card the Amish lady would be participating in an electronic process which is verboden. (forbidden).  The cashier stood back from the machine and the belt and assumed the position pictured in the dictionary next to the phrase “Irritated Cashier,” as she announced, “we might have to check ID because it’s not taking It.”  I watched the Amish woman not flinch.  I watched the husband strain his eyes a bit wider at the mountain of groceries and products in the cart.  “Was the cool whip melting,” I thought, “and does cool whip ever truly spoil because it is so artificial? Or does it all just morph into that crispy yellow form?”

The tiny lad in his Amish green shirt and adorable smoke grey pants and suspenders did not make a peep.  He seemed totally at home with his little dark, brimmed hat resting on his golden hair.  His bangs rested just a smidge beyond his eyebrows giving his face a demeanor of shyness.  He seemed to hover around his father and the edge of the grocery cart like the hummingbird does near my front porch feeder – lightly and quietly.  Will he always remain this secure amidst the two pillars in his life – Maam and Dat – and expand their curious community among us?  They did not have to warn, throttle, chide, plead, threaten or glare at him the way 85% of parents do at this point in the checkout process.  Did I accidentally cross paths with the Two Most Successful or Perfect Parents on the planet?

Suddenly, even though they seemed to be awaiting a manager, the cashier turned back to the machine and pressed a button or two and muttered something about not supposed to do this herself.  The machine chug-chug-chugged the check through its teeth.  She looked in her dis-interested way at the woman and said, “Need you to sign.”  The woman signed the surface of the check screen with the inkless pen.  Did that count as participating with electronics?  The accepted, tendered, and cancelled check was handed back to the customer.  It struck me as an ironic gesture.  Ie.  1) Customer gives check.  2) Customer faced with check not being accepted.  3) Customer must sign screen.  4)  Check accepted.  5)  Customer gets check back, which is magically worth money no longer.  Off they went with their groceries.  I hope they don’t find this cashier was representative of the Englisch culture.

When they were beyond ear shot, I asked the cashier a question although I already suspected the answer:  Do the cashiers at this store get trained on how to work with the Amish and their special requirements?  “No.”  <insert her blank stare here.>  I continued:  “You know for you to ask for ID is going to be pointless because they don’t have their pictures taken.”  She said, “nah, I don’t know about that.” 

I replied:  “I do.  That’s WHY I’m telling you.”  She said, “well, then how’d she get checks?”  Here’s my surprise answer:  “They walk into the bank.”  She said, “Well, I hardly ever write checks anyways.” (I checked back the response in my sarcastic gut:  I’m sorry, did this conversation just turn to be about you, because that wasn’t where I was fixing to steer it… you typical 20-something.).    I wanted to offer her some more information – but clearly her D-GAS Syndrome was kicking in. 

You wonder what D-GAS Syndrome is.  (Mom, stop reading here.)  It stands for Don’t Give A Shit.  This has over and again characterized “some” members of the 20-30 year old population as of late, and it is getting to be a bit old.  In fact it is downright maddening to me.  They are very poor at customer service (see my previous stories about finding a hair stylist), because for the time when they are required to be about the business of work IT AINT ALL ABOUT THEM.  And that takes them completely out of their comfort zone.  It does not make a cheerful or helpful worker.  It does not make them pleasant human beings to interface with.  It is a drain on the soul of the planet and all its inhabitants.  (well, perhaps I dragged their influence too far.)  But I will tell you, when I find helpful cashiers and attentive waiters I just feel like HUGGING them because they MAKE a difference.  I particularly love the two tech guys that have helped me with my cell phone problems lately.

That cashier probably doesn’t realize that with all those groceries, the couple isn’t going to jump in their own buggy and drive away:  they most likely hired an Englischer driver to bring them to the store in a vehicle because the buggies tend to stay off the streets toward the evening (BECAUSE our drivers are so self-absorbed, we tend to hit them, speed around them, or cause accidents.)  Also, when they go to their own home, they won’t be flipping on a light switch – they will be lighting a gas lamp.  If the air is chilly, they will be lighting a kerosene heater or wood stove.  There are a lot of things we take for granted that make it easy to shop for groceries any time of day or night, whenever we want.  

For the Amish, living independently of the electrical grid and certain luxuries of modern American society, makes daily life take more time and effort.  That may seem like a waste of time to the D-GAS generation as they click away on their cell phones and tablets and ipads, etc.  For all the communication tools that the D-GAS kids have, they are getting a lot less true, heartfelt, and community-building communicating accomplished.  They are often self-absorbed and lonely at the same time.  I wish we could declare a social media time-out day, or even week, to try to save them.  

We don’t have to become Amish to realize the Amish have something figured out that we more regularly struggle with:  building stable, loving human community.  Maybe if we pay more attention in the grocery store to the person in front of us, we learn more than we expected we would.  I-GAS.  Do you?

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