Street Fish

Every day, Hubs, the min pin and I walk in the town where I grew up. A couple mile walk generally takes well over an hour because I stop and I talk to at least a dozen people each time we venture out. 

I see my regulars, like Kristin with her delicate body art and long black lashes who raps with me as I'm pouring my Stewarts coffee and auburn-haired Rachel who calls me "my dear" and offers the min pin her highly anticipated complimentary dog biscuit. We grouse with bicycle riding Peter, in his bulky white knee brace. A long distance runner since the 1970s, he's got arthritis now and exercises every morning to keep that joint from stiffening up permanently. We wave to Mike, making time to enlighten the female coffee klatch, ever-present at their red picnic table, with his updates from his children, physicians who know more than we do about Covid-19. The advice, not his fault, changes daily. 

We see Daisy the black lab mix and her owner who she yanks like George Jetson on the treadmill, with his legs flying out of control. We see the tousle haired elementary aged boys who tent on the front lawn, only about a foot from the road, and their mother who seems unconcerned and happy, delivering their Sunny D and Styrofoam cups. We see the gentleman wearing oxygen on his front porch, waving high and proud from his wheelchair despite seeming to be in a seriously compromised position. Cat on lap. Wife inside window.

I see the parents of old friends with whom I reminisce. Know how to make a person feel amazing? Remark on what a great job (s)he did raising their children. Remind them of how instrumental they were in your own childhood. Tell them about how their welcoming nature reminds you, to this day, of being six years old, running down the street with a melting fudgesicle, coming for their daughter and her enormous collection of Barbies. Smiles and hugs abound when I share my tales of the old days, but I have to keep them short and sweet because usually Hubs and the min pin have left me behind and are three blocks down the street by the time I'm tipping my coffee cup in a good-bye gesture. I have two favorites. One is a purple and very expensive Yeti, a 50th birthday gift from a friend. The other is cheap and orange and has Halloween witches all over it. As I strut toward my husband, waiting, I think...this is a great mug and I'll see these good folks again...probably tomorrow. 

Some of the Barbie-playing friends, in-class friends, and friends with whom I played sports are still living in town. A few are even retired or working part time after several decades-long stints as police officers, firefighters, military personnel, or teachers. I stop at their homes when they are out front. We marvel about how fast life flies by, how they're sprucing up the place now that the kids are moved out for good, how they saw in the paper that someone we knew and cared about had passed away, and how the swimming pool has seen better days but there isn't any money in the budget for a new heater and liner...nope, not this year. Then I tip my cup and if it's been more than 10 minutes, I amble to catch up to Hubs and, you guessed it, the min pin. 

We occasionally pick up things on the side of the road during our travels but I have agreed to limit my curbside finds to two very distinct items. Number one: hostas that have been dug up and discarded, because part of my backyard is a shade garden with room for more hostas (and it breaks me to see them shriveled up on the roadside) and number two: "street wood". We have a cauldron, big and black and fit for a sorcerer with punched out stars and moons. Outside fires with friends are one of our favorite summertime social activities. Long ago, we paid good money for wood deliveries but once we started paying attention to all the trees in my old town, hacked down and left for the taking, it's become a sort of game for us. 

"Look! Street wood!" 

"Ack!"

Hubs is a good man. Without complaint, he loads up the permanently-tarped-for-such-occasions back of his Prius and we sail on down the road, trippy and happy to have found the filthy, sappy freebie before the city public works truck sidled up and chipped it into mulch. 

Street wood is such a commodity for us that our fireside friends call us when they see it too. 

(Phone rings.)

Me: "Hello?"

FF: "Street wood on Horicon Avenue! Near the entrance to the park! OMG it might be BIRCH!"

Me: "Ok, we're on it! Thanks!"

Then we harness the min pin and off we go. 

So, it should really come as no surprise that today we were gifted with street fish. 

Yes, you read that correctly.

Street fish. 

We park in front of a sweet white bungalow with a welcome sign on the door and a worn but majestic wooden stockade fence when we drive the ten minute ride in from the suburbs. It's right next to where I get coffee and it's close to the first elementary school I ever attended up here, so as we stroll I can tell Hubs, for the millionth time, the stories of the water feature in my kindergarten classroom and the stuffy bomb closet in which we hid from the Russians when the Commie alarm clanged. The guy who owns the bungalow is a hard working, affable, Irish looking chap named Danny. A chatty type, like me, he seems to understand that he is adding immeasurably to my life by letting us park there for our daily walks and I totally understand that I am much obliged because of his kind gesture so I willingly and happily exchange pleasantries whenever we see him...which is a lot. Over time he has deemed the front of his house our "special reserve spot" which is hilarious and I love him for it.  

So, today we saw Danny as we were done walking and about to get back into the hybrid. We spoke of his job, which is taxing, tough, essential mill work, and how he's been putting in more hours than usual, not by choice. When he has a day off, which isn't very often, he fishes. He can't wait to throw the pole in the SUV and drive north for a few hours of aqueous peace and quiet. 

And that is how we were blessed even more than usual on this day. 

After telling Hubs and I about his 6 fish day trip, with 2 swimmers big enough to bring home, he smiled broadly, told us he'd be right back, and came out of the house with a baggie of frozen perch. He also shared three of his favorite go-to recipe ideas. You might not think that this is a big deal, worthy of a blog post, but to me this is the essence of hometown living. Danny, whose space we invade on a daily basis, thinks enough of us to offer us a portion of his catch. I held the baggie to the sunlight and teared up a little on the way home because gestures like this mean everything to me.

I love living here. 

I love the people. 

I love our daily walks. 

I love everything about this place. 

A friend of mine who moved away to Florida 30 years ago once said to me, sadly, "It was always home...right up until it wasn't" but this will always be home to me. 

My heart is here. 

My home is here. 

My people are here. 

And I have street fish to prove it.  

 

#mushroomtumbler

Chris Craft Crisis

"Please take off everything but your underwear. That includes all your jewelry, " Maddalyn said while sizing me up. "Earrings, too."

"All my earrings?" I asked, scrunching my nose up and rubbing my fingers over the four in my left lobe.

"Yes. They show up on the film and make things messy."

"Ok. I'll see you in about half an hour." I joked, unscrewing my hoops and studs. 

She smiled wearily for my lame attempt at humor and left me alone to change.

Entering the imaging room while pinching the back of the huge blue gown together with my good arm for dear life, lest me violet bum (underwear is permitted) scare anyone ambling by in the hallway, I sigh at the sight of the gigantic x-ray machine and ask if I may please remove my mask, worn for the purpose of keeping my nonexistent cough from spraying anyone in my nonexistent 6 foot field of reach during our 6^th month of Covid 19.

"Sure, no problem" the masked technician chirped, flipping expertly through the paperwork my new doctor had sent over. I set my mask down on a chair and caressed behind my ears, nearly raw from the constant rub of elastic.

"Were you in a car accident?" she asked.

"No."

"Have trauma?"

"No. Why?"

"Well there are so many images requested here, I just..." and she peered up at me over her own bulky white face covering with a look that screamed pity even though all I could spy were her irises and eyebrows.

"I have Lyme." I explain and leave it at that even though my story is so much longer and involves so many other details, problems and realities. It's just that I am tired of explaining myself and have just come from another 90-minute appointment, so I am whipped, frazzled, tattered and I want to make this quick.

She walks toward me and makes a move for my ponytail, which, because of my frozen shoulder, took me approximately four tries and 20 minutes to ‘pony’ this morning. Her close proximity to my hair sends me hobbling sideways in an attempt to skirt her grasp.

“Oh! Well, I need to see if there is metal in it. Yup. There’s metal in it,” she proudly declares. “It’s got to come down.”

I yank my hair, nearly halfway down my back now, out of the purple ponytail holder, carefully plucked straight from the package, new this very morning, because it matched my skort and I wanted to look like I tried.

My locks, gray and soft, fall down my back and tickle the rears of my naked armpits. I stifle a giggle, but ‘Maddalyn’ pays me no mind while she sets me up by scooting me a little to the left and a smidge to the right.

She smells of maple syrup and some sort of disinfectant that reminds me of urinal cakes. I’m sure it’s not urinal cakes. It must be some Covid-approved Lysol that is necessitated between patients. Just the thought of how sterile this place must be kept, by governmental decree, starts to give me a headache.

“You got all the piercings out?” she queries with a raised and perfectly plucked brow. For a red-hot minute, I want to pretend that I didn’t and that I had some nasty barbell hidden deep in my fleshy bits not seen by the public. I wanted to say, “Whoops! Forgot that vulva ring – be right back!” but of course I didn’t, because I don’t have one. I’m 50 and I have a beautifully sensible four door sedan, a prepaid Stewart’s card with which I am going to get a tuna salad on rye and a ginger ale when this is over and I have a doctor’s order with 17 different x-rays necessitated on it. I also have a clear understanding of the mid-life crisis right about now.

I get why the 75-year-old guy next to me on the drive down is going 90 mph in his 500 series BMW, fresh from the car wash and nodding at me in his Serengetti drivers resplendent with their smoke colored Corning glass lenses. I get why my neighbor down the street rips out and re-sods his lawn every Spring even though it is perfectly fine and looks no different once it’s been replanted by 3 twenty-something guys in muddy boots and dingy wife beater ribbed tank tops blasting Megadeth from their truck speakers. I get why the boy who had a crush on my best friend in the 5^th grade keeps sending her private messages via Facebook asking her if she understands what is happening in our country right now while his kid is out front holding signs declaring how down she is with the struggle even though she is living rent free in his basement sporting her gel nails and Ugg boots after he and his ex-wife sadly broke their marriage working two jobs a piece to pay for her hundred thousand dollar education.

I get it.

When the radiologic tech is almost young enough to be your granddaughter and all the two of you can chat about, other than your wonky back and constchondroitis during your plethora of x-rays is where to get good pizza in Schroon Lake (incidentally, I have no idea, I was just playing along for the sake of conversation because she saw where I lived on my papers and she is heading North this weekend) it might be time to get that tattoo, that jet ski, that condo by the shore. It might be time to visit that ashram, buy those courtside seats to the Celtics; might be time to stop asking ‘What do I have to do?’ and start asking ‘What do I want to do?’

After Maddalyn finished taking my pictures and I got dressed, I drove home with my Met Opera station at a volume that would have scared passengers, passers-by and dogs if there had been any, but there wasn’t. It was just me and Donizetti and his tragic Lucia di Lammermoor, the adoration of which might be a sign of my own impending mid-life crisis. Who doesn’t delight in a tragic cabaletta with a three-way affair, bodice ripping and family feuding and stabbing and dying over love? Don’t answer that. I know full well my enjoyment of opera isn’t shared by many in my circle. But screw all that. I full well dig it.  

In fact, my love of opera is directly attributable to my sixth-grade teacher who used to play Carmen and Madame Butterfly on vinyl for us kids in our classroom during “quiet” study time. She’d read that music, especially classical and opera, helped students retain information. I believe it to be true. I remember almost every single detail about that school year.

When I got home and slipped all my earrings back in, I grabbed my laptop and, very uncharacteristically, watched three YouTube videos back to back about applying makeup to middle aged faces. A stunning self-admitted 54-year-old with over 300 thousand views on her channel, applied eyeliner like an artiste. I watched her utilize eyeshadow primer and lash fixative. I google searched the products she recommended and then after 40 minutes I went to the bathroom mirror to check out my own sans-makeup complexion. That’s when I started laughing hysterically, the maniacal laughter of a woman gone mad like Lucia di Lammermoor or the wife of the guy up the street who keeps decimating the lawn when that money could be used this time of year for unlimited mimosa brunches, Jack Rogers sandals, and spa days in Saratoga. I laughed until I nearly threw out my back because I am never going to be any younger than I am today, and no amount of fancy Urban Decay eyeliner is going to fix my aging, aching body.

I am hopeful that my x-rays come back with either a treatable condition or no condition at all though I am not naïve or high enough right now to imagine that will be the case; but if it comes back with Ankylosing Spondilitis, which is one of the things we discussed in earnest today, I might just start searching for the 1937 Chris Craft I have had my eye on since I was 15 years old when my then-boyfriend took me to a boat show. We sat in one owned by a NY state senator who was a friend of the family. I have coveted that gorgeous vessel ever since. As I recall, that boat owning elder statesman had a well-done comb-over, a captain's hat, an expensive navy blazer and multicolored madras shorts. Those who passed by ogled the boat and remarked about how gorgeous “she” was. He nodded sagely, smiled widely, and adjusted his pinky ring while crossing and re-crossing his Sebagos at the ankle, midlife crisis on full display in the boat he christened “Crew Sin”.

 

#mushroomtumbler

Honey and Vinegar; a Friendship

I was typing a greeting to a friend via text this morning and saw, before editing, this phrase: 

How are you my friend?

I edited it to read, How are you, my friend? and added the smiley emoji blowing kissy hearts. 

You see, we are long time pals with a 39 year history, therefore we regularly sprinkle in the lovey-dovey emoji. However, as I sat and stared at my screen, I realized that the first iteration of my intended-to-be-friendly phrase would have worked nearly as well as the second. 

How are you my friend?

Now, I know our friendship has been cultivated in very rich soil, the soil of two score years of laughter, comradery, shared experiences and showing up for one another. However, the strange part, the part that might chafe and rub, the part that keeps me wondering if our next beer might be our last, is...for the last two decades or so, we have come out of the starting gates agreeing on almost nothing. 

Our economic views are incompatible.

Our religions are convergent but not always in union.

Our reproductive views clash.

We can't agree on whether buying an American made vehicle is the patriotic thing to do.

One of us digs Biggie. For the other, Tupac is the preferred artist. 

How are you my friend?

We were raised by thoughtful and sensitive people who encouraged us to think for ourselves but we ultimately and unwittingly adopted their ways of thinking anyway...about politics, about family dynamics, about responsibility, about whether to use honey or vinegar as a way to frame a statement. 

How are you my friend?

Thankfully we have a common love of music, of world cultures, of old cartoons, of local history, of the environment. We are fans of unadulterated aging, of antique boats and of 80s era MTV. We had matching Swatch watches. We can't stand cafeteria pizza. We are most comfortable in hot weather. We laugh at any good joke about a rabbi and a priest. 

Some people don't believe in the respectful approach to friendship. They refuse to walk on the occasional eggshell because it's just not in sync with their egos. They post on social media about how they heartily and rightfully dumped folks who used to be a part of their lives because, darn it, they just can't seem to agree. They bluster and puff and decide to be right as opposed to being happy. All of this makes me flinch and although sad is an emotion I clearly identify with, when it comes to friends, I purposely and willfully choose happy. 

How are you, my friend?

I try my best to listen and learn. I state my opinions, though I usually do so with a light and upturned hand so that my friend will keep coming back to our virtual party wearing a chin strapped and paper-tasseled hat, slapping at me as I blow iridescent bubbles from a wand. 

We are honey and vinegar.

I think a lot about the concept. I see myself as the honey, my old friend as the vinegar...and before you or I tie any value to either, you should know I take honey and vinegar into my physical body every day to heal what ails me. The combination strengthens my immunity. It helps my tummy troubles. It balances my inner body systems. Honey and vinegar is part of how I survive. 

How are you, my friend?

Trying to come up with a list of things I appreciate about friendship would be difficult at best because I have so many friends and they are all so incredibly different from one another and from me and the kind of friend I try to be. The list would take me days to create but I only have ten minutes here so this is a short register of what jumps out at me today, particularly at this specific moment in time. 

I guess they keep you close to heart even if, actually, especially if, you disagree. They accept you while you're being obstinate. They judge rarely, but fairly. They find value in who you are as a human being even if who you are isn't within a mile of who they are. They'd walk that mile for you or with you if there was trouble. They open doors for you and celebrate your successes. They notice when you are afraid, even if that fear stems from something they seriously encouraged you not to do and instead of broadcasting an "I told you so" while lording over and peacocking in the neon of their brilliance, they bring you a blanket and tea. But if they can't do any of that because they aren't huggers and talkers and cheerleaders, then they stand by your side and at least they do no harm. 

At least they do no harm.

How are you, my friend?

I look forward to hearing from you. I always do. 

#mushroomtumbler

Memorial Day

I woke up gasping for breath again today.

Where is Vinny? I can't find him.

My heart races. I brush the hair away from the back of my neck, cloying with sweat, and then as I emerge from the haze that is is a dream, uncommon because I haven't slept in 16 years, I remember that Vinny is gone.

Vinny is my son. Was my son. Was the little one that we worked to conceive and who has haunted me every day since we found out his little heart stopped beating.

Vinny's birthday was supposed to be July 14, 2009. He would be 11 this year. Something about that kills me...slays me like a dull knife to the back of the head where someone is sawing my skull off but doesn't have the strength or the perseverance and leaves me half hanging because they have run out of steam. Maybe it's that I love preteens with all of their bravado and their adult but not really adult-like ideas. Maybe it's because my most favorite part of my professional counseling experience was with middle schoolers and they trusted me and I adored them and we were so connected that I physically felt it when they hurt. Maybe it's because he would've been a scrappy and tough little league all star, following in the footsteps of his father. Maybe it's because he would have been a smart but stubborn boy with broad taste in music following in the footsteps of his mother. I believed he would have loved hockey and Christmas and nature and God and animals and he would have been the first to hop up and lend a helping hand, all in the footsteps of those who went before. Who cares what he looked like since looks have never meant that much to me, but in the cavern that is my soul I know he would be the perfect combination of all the genetics that were afforded him.

But Vinny never breathed air or cried. He never announced his gifts, or his presence in our world and I was too heartbroken and grief stricken and too fucking broke and tired and insane after two years of constant trying to try again. Broken and broke went hand in hand. And because we kept things private and no one was intimately involved, we inadvertently chose to have no network on which to rely for rallying and support and casseroles and cards, and it all ended with Vinny, though he also had a half dozen unnamed precedents who I am hoping he met in heaven. My daily prayer is that they are all together.

So memorial day means soldiers and it means the fallen and it means those who went before and it means cleaning graves and it means prettying things up at the cemetery which we faithfully do every year but it also means my son is dead and it means I never got to hold him and it means that because of this I ache for him every day in my heart which was actually shattered like a fragile wine glass dropped from a ten story building long before he existed. I suppose you aren't supposed to give a kid a job...I've read that...but Vinny was already at work repairing my heart when he died. Maybe he would have been a cardiologist. Maybe he would have been a bum. I don't know...but to me he is the little kid in the Memorial Day parade...the pumpkin with his hat on backward which I focus on a little too intently and hoot and holler and clap for even though he's not mine, because if I don't spread this love somewhere it will eat me from the inside out. It will devour all that I have to give and it will bury me.

And Memorial Day will be something more entirely.

(Thanks for reading this...I know it's dark as shit but I am, as my friend Patti recently remarked, finding catharsis in my writing. If this resonates with you in any way, I wish you peace and I wish for you to have closure, whatever form that takes. Also, many thanks to my friend Kim D-H. who gave me the encouragement to put this out there again after I published it and then retracted it minutes later.)

(PS. People were very good to us after we lost Vinny, I took a little liberty as a writer here with the no casserole, no card comment. I mean no harm to anyone who happened to know and who lovingly expressed sympathy.)

#mushroomtumbler

Fi Fo Fum Fe. I Smell the Scent of a Memory.

I really enjoy the company of adults much older than myself. I want to sit with them and hear their stories. I want to help them paw through their collections of clippings, photographs, and tchotchkes. The elderly have an altogether different "bouquet". Infused with what one might call the tincture of a  long and well lived life, they are earthier than kids and most younger adults. Or, maybe because they've had so many experiences, the scent of memory just seeps out of their pores.

Smell is the sense from which I get the greatest number of emotional residuals. You can tell me about your life and your experiences but if you describe the smell which surrounded you during a particular juncture or you are bringing me somewhere, either physically or verbally, to show or explain something and a scent finds its way to me, I will forever associate that aroma with whatever emotion I feel at the time. I also have one hell of a sniffer. My husband refers to me as The Bloodhound. I take it as a compliment.

You can tell a lot about a person by what they deem to be their most favorite smell: the air after a soaking rain; bacon frying in a cast iron skillet; the roses that we are supposed to stop and linger upon; old hockey equipment; night blooming jasmine...

Essences that make me happiest include:
the acrid static that comes off of a vinyl record album played over and over again;
the fermented gummy rubber smell of new sneakers right out of the box;
the sour drag of stale coffee left on a warm burner for an unknown number of hours;
and the chemical aura of a newspaper, unfolded and inky on the kitchen table waiting to be read.

But it seems I also have quite a sizable list of smells that make me sad.

While walking past some freshly built homes recently, and others in a state of unfinished construction, I asked hubs to pause for a thirty second stop with me so that I could press my sensitive nose against the just-hewn boards. He knows me well, so he does not question my compulsive, urgent need. Deliberately positioning my face near a flawless white blonde beam, I momentarily stand at attention. As expected, I feel the familiar surge of scorched memories travel the length of my spine. Heat rushes from my nose down to my hamstrings and back up to the front of my brain in a fraction of a second...and with closed eyes I see what I was hoping for, what I knew was coming, and what always appears when my beak is filled with the thickety reek of hardwoods; I see the house my father built when I was sixteen years old.

We never lived in it, which is a somber story in itself, full of loss and heartache and dreams coming undone; but before things went sideways, we had a summer of great anticipation thinking that we were going to have a new home, a fresh outlook. We had ninety odd sunrises and sunsets where we inhaled sealants, flooring, sheetrock and wood and, collectively, it smelled like hope.

Pushing back from the memory, faintly dazed and embarrassingly wrecked, I walked back to my husband and cried.

He's accustomed to my tears. He knows that olfactrilly speaking, I'm regularly in search of punishment.
I smell lumber.
I hold onto chain link fences in hot weather and then pull my hands off and huff the fumes of childhood hopping where I snuck into other people's swimming pools, lonely and closed for the season school athletic fields, and forbidden cordoned-off parking lots.
If I cut myself I calculatingly inhale the coppery tang of the wetness before the bandage gets applied.
I wear my mother's perfume from 1982, right before things went south with my parents. To me, it smells like funeral flowers.

This is why I don't enjoy e-books; I need a whiff of a century old library as I shelter myself in the story.
I can identify your brand of tobacco even though I don't smoke.
I know exactly where, within miles and miles of a familiar patch of woods, I am planted based solely on the smell of the verdant moss, how drenched and loamy and dank the roots of the heady oaks are, and whether or not a wayward teenaged troupe has recently sparked a celebratory bonfire.
Give me the low tide fetidness of the ocean with its decaying driftwood, stranded salty jellyfish and the reeking briny algaeic funk of seaweed.
The white towel of my love after he's mopped it across the back of his neck, post treadmill, gets pressed against my chest like our lost baby in whose crown I want to ensepulcher my grief.

Today I am bathing in self-imposed sadness. I am low-spirited. I am wallowing and I am languishing. I know how to feel some peace, though. I will grab some potent Vicks Vaporub which, with a single draw, transports me to early childhood and a set of doting and worried parents who teamed up to slather it on my collarbone when I was sick. I will hurriedly twist open its green plastic cap, which in woebegone days used to be a beautiful midnight colored metal.

And
I
breathe in,
I
breathe out.

A List for Mom

This is a list for my Mom.

She will understand why.

1. "I would like to porch sit with you."
As a kid, we used to spend late warm summer evenings on the front porch of our city home. We had webbed and plastic tubed lawn chairs. My mom had a glass of wine. We would sit quietly and listen to the wind blow softly through our cheap wooden owl windchime and wave languidly to neighbors as they walked or drove by us. That thermally pleasant sundown time, in the sticky air, pre-bath, but post-events of the day, was the most relaxed I have ever been, then or since. In yoga class, when the instructor tells us to go to that place in your mind where you feel most at ease, I picture myself on that porch, with unwinding braids and dirty feet, smelling of slightly soured suntan lotion, with the sweet whiteness of the wine, hearing the chirpy hum of crickets and the tintinnabulation of slow moving vehicles. That was bliss for me.



2. "I would like you to hem my pants."
My mother was a first class seamstress and corrector of ill fitting hand-me-downs. We'd spend hours in the fabric store, me looking at the shimmery rhinestone buttons on slick white cards as she methodically thumbed through drawers of patterns, looking for something suitable for me. One of my most vivid memories is my unfeigned impatience at standing near the sewing machine, my mother kneeling in front of me with lips full of silvery straight pins, mumbling (and occasionally glaring) at me to stay still. I used to like the fact that she couldn't fully express her disdain with my fidgeting in that compromised position but I also was scared to death of the idea of her suddenly choosing to and mistakenly swallowing a dozen tiny swords, effectively rendering her a human pincushion.  I would like to stand in front of her again so that I could be the model child that would have appreciated her efforts instead of begging her to hurry so that I could go throw the ball around outside.



3. "I would like to model clay, draw fashion plates, and play checkers with you."
These are the three most fun activities we did on the regular before I became a teenager. I was not artistic, and couldn't seem to get the hang of three dimensional animals so while I made ugly flat black cats out of clay, my mother would make romping frogs, cheerful lions, and sleek seals, all so realistic that I would carefully carry them in my hand to school to show my friends. Then, on the way home in my backpack they would flatten and smoosh so that they looked less like her creations and more like mine.



4. "I would like to collect for cancer and work for the census with you."
My mother constantly described herself as painfully shy when I was little. She used to tell me all the time to go out and be social and focus intently on not being like her because her tendency toward reserve was a nagging problem in adulthood. When it came time for charity, though, my mother would summon some sort of shyness-defying strength within when the call came and she'd put on a pretty plaid shirt, her flared jeans, purple Avon eyeshadow and her chunky wooden clogs and we'd clomp up to people's doors singing "Collecting for cancer, would you like to give?" It's like a 40 year involuntary tic that runs across my mind every time I get tagged for a fundraiser. I can still see her holding the envelope in case we were lucky enough to find someone who was kind and generous. A couple times we haphazardly said it in unison, and people seemed charmed by that. Around that time, Mom was also a census worker and we'd take photos of homes with a Polaroid camera which she was given for the task. It was my job to jiggle the damp pictures dry and keep them from sticking together as we drove around. I miss singing charitable jingles and flapping plastic house pics in my little hands.



5. "I would like to hang off your float in the lake."
Mom was employed by a local manufacturing company which made paper and foam products. Back in those days, employees were able to buy inexpensive "seconds" so we had Christmas napkins in shades of green that weren't quite the right shade of holly and ivy and we had 25th Anniversary napkins printed in gold on cream that should have been silver on white; but the day Mom arrived after work with the huge snowy rectangle of pressed foam flake was the best. Her company was trying to make some sort of dense product, for what purpose I don't know, but it was created in substantial sheets about 4 inches thick. One of the product runs was insufficient and thus, seconds were available for take-home. Mom procured one and when she arrived home with it, we both squealed with joy. It was a never-flatten, no blowup required, queen sized pool float! That weekend we brought it up to the family camp and she pushed it out to waist deep water and climbed on. I kicked my feet and propelled her out further, away from the splashing smaller kids and we just hung there, her relaxed and quiet, me humming and fluttering my toes, but just barely...ever so slightly so that the fish didn't bite me. She a siren, me a mermaid.



6. "I would like to watch a variety show with you."
I love variety shows more than any other television format because I watched them with my mother. Donny & Marie, Sonny & Cher, Tony Orlando & Dawn, The Mandrell Sisters. We'd watch and I'd ooh and ahh over the costumes. We'd toe tap to the music. However, if one of the characters, in slapstick style, fell over something unseen and rolled around a little, my mother would laugh hard enough for the two of us. She'd howl and then laugh in a high pitch and then howl again. She adores physical comedy: pratfalls, foul-ups, bloopers and blunders. I used to spin around to the ice skating and the little bit country/little bit rock and roll ditties but when the comedy bits began and someone was about to fall down, I knew to go sit on the couch and try to mimic Mom out of the corner of my eye, taking cues as to when to laugh even though I wasn't sure why tumbling was so side-splitting. As I grew older, I understood. There's a complete lack of pretense. A total surrender to the craft. There's an element of danger. There's a feeling that suffering can be made into humor. Comedy and misfortune rolled into one.


#1970s #1980s  #fashionplates #Valcourpaperproducts #varietyshows #mushroomtumbler

"All We Had Was Old Men" - Q&A with my Moo Moo about WWII

"All we had was old men."

This was one of the answers to a series of questions I asked my 93 year old Moo Moo when I spoke with her last week about living in the US during the 1940s (wartime).

I'm writing this on April 14, 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, our cases arching upward, peaking like a small boat on a big wave while we watch it hoping, daily, that it begins to flatten or, even better, sail down the other side.

I haven't had this much daily tutelage in bell curves since graduate school...not a big fan then, not a big fan now.

I called my beloved grandmother, one of the rocks in my life, for a number of reasons. I checked in to tell her that hubs and I are okay. Also, I had told her a few days prior I would be calling to pick her brain about tough times, about being in a multi-year state of want/need/lack/despair/tragedy/grief/longing/etc. Honestly, I really wanted to talk about all the directives we are being asked to adhere to, all the civil liberties we are being asked to reconsider for our own safety and the safety of others. Kind of like arguing with your spouse about who left the butter on the counter overnight where the cat would invariably find and lick it and then getting an unexpected call from a relative who is filing divorce papers and trying to figure out where to live, I wanted a serious reality check and a huge kick in the ass guaranteed to help me feel better about this uncertain time in life.

Plus I wanted to write a good blog post.

So I asked her 8 questions. Her answers, some surprising to me, are herein.

Q1: V: "What was the worst thing about World War II and living in Rensselaer, {NY}?"
M: "All we had was old men."
V: "Umm, what?"
My Moo Moo then went on to explain that in a square city block, during her teenaged years, every boy around her age, some as young as 16, went off to war. The only people she saw for 3 years whether home or out were young girls and older couples. There were no school dances, no proms, no lindy hops. 
At family weddings, my Moo Moo always danced the jitterbug with her sister, my Great Aunt Ginny and not my grandfather. As a child this was curious to me but now I understand. They grew up dancing together as teen girls.

Q2: V: "What did your parents tell you about what was going on?"
M: "My mother told me to pray, especially for the families who sent all their boys away."
Moo Moo clarified that during WWII, many families in Rensselaer sent ALL their sons to war. My grandfather and his brother, the only sons of my Great Grandma and Grandpa Hamlin both enlisted. "Pray hard for the Hamlins." is what Moo Moo remembers most about what my Great Nana taught her. 

Q3: V: "What items were scarce?"
M: "Oh! Gosh! Many things. Coffee and sugar for sure!"
I'm not surprised she remembered those first. Pity the fool who gets between my grandmother, her coffee and her sweets. Moo Moo observed that you had to shop only at your neighborhood grocery store and at your particular store things were rationed and available only on certain days of the week and/or in limited supply each month, for example: if you bought two pounds of sugar the first week of the month, you couldn't get more until the first week of the following month. During this time, her brother was off to war, so that left 4 girls and my great grandparents in the family household. She excitedly recalled a very special dessert made from bread, canned milk, and sugar pressed into a cast iron frying pan and cut into triangles. It was a delicacy in those times. 

Q4: V: "You mean you couldn't go to East Greenbush to get groceries if you wanted to?"
M: "No, no, no! You had to stay local. I can't remember how but if the grocer didn't know you then you had to prove you lived around the corner or no farther than Columbia Street."
As strict as that seems, Moo Moo didn't seem to think that the grocery boundaries caused too much of a ruckus. She harkened back to those at home being generally accepting of what was going on and carrying on; coming together for the good of the city, country and world. 
Edit: There were ration books that proved your location. I learned this after a Google search a few hours after writing this. 

Q5: V: "Did your parents keep their jobs during wartime?"
M: "Oh yes! My father worked as an auto mechanic and my mother was a nurse for Doctor Wilkie. Both of them were very busy during those years."
She also informed me that when townspeople came in with, say, cars that needed fixing or an ailment that needed tending to but had no cash on hand, both the auto shop and doctor's office would float a personal loan to people who had sons or spouses in the service, knowing that soon a paycheck would be received and the bill immediately rectified. People offered and kept their word with a simple handshake. Business owners felt comfortable having known and trusted everyone within their towns or neighborhoods for the entirety of their lives. 

Q6: V: "Can you tell me about where you worked?" (This is a favorite story I've heard dozens of times. It never gets old.)
M: "I welded bombs for the American Meter Company at 80 State Street in Albany with my sisters and my girlfriends. It was a great job. We felt like we were doing something very important for the boys overseas. We would take the finished ones and write messages to the boys in CHALK on the shiny surface telling them we loved them and missed them and couldn't wait for them to come home. We drew hearts."
She apprised me of a little secret this time: these girls knew the boys wouldn't see the messages because these were shells that needed to be filled with explosives and by the time they actually went through the additional manufacturing processes and got to the troops the chalk would have long worn off...but the idea of chalked love letters made the girls feel giddy, and giddiness felt good after standing on your feet and crafting cold steel weaponry all day, so they did it. 

Q7: V: "I expected sad memories. This coronavirus is making people so depressed and it's only been a month and a half that we've been isolated. Don't you remember WWII as a time of great sadness?"
M: "Well you know I try to keep everything happy. I try to only think about the good memories. And, we were lucky because all the boys in our neighborhood came back home."
She added that some were never the same, including my Great Uncle Bill, but they made it back...and that was something to be happy about.

Q8: V: Do you remember victory gardens?"
M: "Oh yes! I remember families planting all sorts of things and sharing. My father planted onions and tomatoes, specifically, and my mother had no room for her beloved flowers because he took and used every one of her flowerpots for green onions! {scallions}"
Victory gardens are making a comeback, which is why I asked. We plant veggies every year but this year we'll make an even greater effort.

I really expected Moo Moo to tell me of great hardship, of great sacrifice, of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, but instead she shared what was good about the time: neighbors praying and looking out for one another; sharing and caring; moments of laughter during long days of uncertainty; sugary bread as a dessert families could look forward to once in a while.
Bringing the boys back home.
Weddings and babies. (Gratefully, that's where my Dad comes in.)

Reflecting on her spirited replies, I will, if asked about this crisis in years to come, try my very best to recall the good things that happened as a result of having to pause our lives: taking stock of what really matters; eating more clever and homecooked meals together; an appreciation for the wonderful lives we have; exponentially increased respect for our freedoms; a renewed focus, for some, on prayer and God; and learning to find enjoyment in the moment. For me, in particular, it's also been a creative boon.

Please feel free to share in the comments what good things you are learning or taking from this uncertain time.

Thank you for reading and please be well.

#1970s #1980s #thegreatestgeneration #victorygarden #americanmetercompany #rensselaerny #mushroomtumbler