Sidewalks, Silence and Siding - the Stories

Complete strangers always tell me their stories.

I suppose you could say I have one of those faces or I remind someone of an old friend they once knew and felt comfortable with but honestly, I think it's because I just look people in the eye, smile, and stand around and listen. I try not to rush off in a hurry. I let people know that I'm holding space for them even though we've just met.

Last week I was approached by the woman who methodically and repeatedly, day after day, sweeps the common concrete and blacktop in front of her apartment complex; a large community that houses hundreds of people. She can't wait to tell me, after vigorously petting the min pin, that her mother had ten chihuahuas when she was a kid, all with names straight from the bible. She proceeds to recall the little buggers, squeezing her broom handle, wooden and worn, under one armpit for what is probably the first time in the last few hours. She counts off on her calloused, dusty fingertips...Abraham to Zebediah. 

I'm routinely blessed to interact with a cherubic mute man who breakfasts at Stewarts. If he wore a baseball uniform, he'd be a dead ringer for a differently-abled Don Zimmer. Although he's older, he has the smooth kewpie face of a perpetually astonished blue-eyed child that you've just surprised with a sheet cake and balloons on a morning he forgot was his birthday. Our Zim doppelganger wears effeminate sneakers, in a style your Memaw might call 'house shoes', but he balances their grandmotherly charm with an unexpected fistful of chunky silver skull rings and as he stands before me in his periwinkle soft soled slip-ons, I ask him questions to which he utters, urps and ughs while conducting an invisible orchestra; mammoth stainless steel biker jewelry shoved down every arthritic digit; a gleam in his glacier-colored globes which tells me he is an amazing orator despite not possessing a single recognizable word. 

But today, I got to chat with a new guy, a guy who is single-handedly re-siding his home, a building rather stately but in need of a facelift. 

We've probably walked by this house forty times in the last three months and bit by bit, the old beauty is being veneered a pleasant brownish gray, very much like the feathers of mourning doves.  

I get weirdly excited when a city house undergoes significant repair. I can't help but heap praise upon the flippers who are busy pouring sweat and love into a dilapidated home. Hubs sometimes leaves me be and circles the block with the min pin when I start yakking with the tile guy or hollering up to the roofing crew balanced precariously on slate like the chim chimeree stack sweepers of my youth. So, I was pleased when my love stood with me this morning and looked for whomever'd been busting his or her hump on the two story colonial. 

Like most days, there is an old van in the driveway. There is a paint splattered boombox playing classic Bryan Adams. I strain my neck to see who's responsible for the handiwork but there's never been anyone there to converse with...until today, that is. Today, Mr. Siding Man is there. 

Mr. Siding Man is probably somewhere around my age, though, admittedly, I am a very poor judge of that nowadays. My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be and though my sunglasses are prescription, they're old. Hubs points things out to me all the time and I peer skyward, rather Magoo-ish as I step off of curbs squinting and saying "Where? What am I looking at?"

But I can see that Mr. Siding Man has a short shock of perfectly silver hair and a build suggesting hard work and home cooked meals. 

We compliment him on a job well done thus far. He apologizes for the amount of time it is taking him. He is but a one man show and he likes things done right the first time. This would have been sufficient explanation for us, but as I cheerfully flatter his colorful choice of vinyl, he blurts out that he has recently had a variety of below the belt cancers, three rounds of chemotherapy, a prostate left back in the operating room and a bladder surgically crafted from his small intestines. He also mentions that siding work with a colostomy bag is about as uncomfortable as anything you can imagine. 

We stand, mouths agape, at the determination this man possesses. I start feeling that familiar heat coursing up the sheath of my spine whenever I am in the presence of someone who has more fortitude and backbone than I perhaps ever will. I want to shake his hand and tell him I am proud to know him, but I really don't know him and shaking hands has become such an overstep in this horribly awkward time; so, instead, I offer simple exclamatory statements suggesting awe and blessings that sound rote but what else can you say when presented with such information? He goes on to tell us that he has two new grandchildren and he is beyond thrilled to be in their lives. Hubs declares that grandkids are definitely something to be thankful for. Mr. Siding Man says this will probably be his last job so that he can spend more time with them. 

His last job. 

It is then that we realize he doesn't live at this house. He is working on this house. Someone hired this guy to start and complete what for some might be a one-man Sisyphean task but he's doing it...while jamming to Bob Seger's "Against the Wind" as his colon empties into a bag strapped to his abdomen. 

Think of that next time you have to mow the lawn or scour scrambled eggs off the stovetop, or watch Bubble Guppies for the hundredth time this week, or pick your in-laws up at the airport. Think of the dog-loving lady forever sweeping a driveway that can't possibly stay clean or the poetry of a wordless, slipper wearing bard, or the cancer conqueror on a ladder wearing his insides on his belt and dreaming of pushing two brand new littles in a double-seated stroller. 

And then, after you've done what you didn't want to do, breathe deep, go outside, throw the doors to your beating heart wide open, look your hometown in the eye, and marvel at the sweetness of how everyone starts telling you their stories. 

#mushroomtumbler

James Taylor, October Nights and Thrill Hill

It's that kind of a night.

The kind of October night that brings back bonfires, a borrowed jacket redolent of post-practice sweat and teen boy pheromones, and a long walk through the woods to our party spot, high up on the hill. 

Thrill Hill. That's what we all called it. Spoken of mostly in legendary terms now, it was our teen hangout and best place to be in the brisk fall darkness.  

Those were the days...when we left the house on a Friday evening and headed to the football game, back slapping and yelling ourselves hoarse before zipping up our coats and hiking far into the forest to drink out of clear plastic cups while either hanging onto our best friends or our best hook up.

Music. There were always tunes though, oddly, I never much thought about from where they came. Was it a car stereo? A boombox? There was no electricity at Thrill Hill so someone was willingly, for our collective entertainment, eating a whole lotta battery, whether automobile or D cell. 

Boston begged us not to look back. JT reminded us to shower the people. CSNY asked us to carry on. The Grateful Dead said being friends with the devil just might be acceptable. 

The beer might have been cheap. Who knew? Who cared? For a dollar you got all you wanted (and then some).

Lighters got passed around all night. Don't bring the one with the Navajo silver and turquoise cover that you "borrowed" from your brother's girlfriend 'cause you'll never see it again. There were cigarettes (menthol for the girls, so only bum one if you can handle their icy harshness), the occasional cigar (for which we were thankful as they really did keep the bugs away) and, always, the ropey diesel of marijuana. One sniff of pot transports me to that time like almost nothing else, except maybe the powdery notes of my old perfume or the sulfur stench of coppery downed leaves. 

I've heard marijuana called a 'gateway drug' but for us, back then, it seemed to provide only a gateway to mellow authenticity. For the socially shy, it made covert thoughts sharable. For the anxious and worried, it brought the feeling that every little thing's gonna be all right. For the brash and bold, it offered a more harmonious style of communicating. For the carefree and genial, it turned the regular world into a kaleidoscope of colors.

For me, it took away the chatter in my head that said I wasn't attractive enough and that my family was woefully unsettled. It offered me the chance to sit quietly next to a friend on a log, staring skyward at the navy greatness of this chasm, in which I was nothing more than a tiny quark. It gave me some peace. It prompted me to join the song circle, torsos intertwined, with no discernment as to where one arm started and another ended; belting out lyrics about rain and flying machines and "I always thought I'd see you baby, one more time, again". It offered me the lifelong gift of recognizing myself in everyone else. It made me sink into the shoulder of a friend I could trust while he walked me more than a mile to the safety of my front porch, light on, door unlocked.

The solidarity that my high school friends and I created in those moments, that brand of unwavering unity, is usually either formed in situations which are memorable and perfectly lovely or in situations helping each other survive something perfectly awful. So, in our time, in the woods, warmed by the firelight, bathed in the smoky haze of our collective harmony, we took what was perfectly lovely and perfectly awful about our lives, our bodies, our grades, our homes, our adolescent mindsets and our oft-broken hearts and forged those emotions into torrid links of cadmium and tangelo; into chains of oriole-breasted red-orange fire that will never break.

Truly, never. 

So tonight as we traipse by others' outdoor backyard burns, smelling the grass that's now curiously legal, the pungent combination takes me back to how we existed like a spirit family. A fraternity conjoined.

And I sigh so very gratefully for having been a part of it all. 

It's that kind of night, Glens Falls. 

Ain't it good to know? 

Ain't it good to know? 

Yeah, yeah. 

You've got a friend. 

#mushroomtumbler

My Perfect Ten for Sirius XM

Sirius XM is playing selected listeners' Perfect 10 lists on October 10 (10/10). 

I think the lists they choose will be spun on Classic Rewind. 

This might not be your cup of tea but it's mine so these are the songs/artists that I selected and submitted today for my Perfect 10.

 1. Soul Kitchen – The Doors

2. I Feel Free - Cream

3. You Keep Me Hangin’ On – Vanilla Fudge

4. Traveling Riverside Blues – Led Zeppelin

5. Let Me Roll It – Paul McCartney

6. Loving Cup – The Rolling Stones

7. Satisfaction Guaranteed – The Firm

8. Bell Bottom Blues – Derek and the Dominoes

9. To Love Somebody – The Bee Gees

10. Mandolin Wind – Rod Stewart

 

Every career assessment I ever took said I should have been a Medical Doctor and a DJ. 

Maybe I can realize one of those dreams with this list. 

#siriusxm

#mushroomtumbler

Not Drowning, Just Waving

 

I saw his companion first, left hand hidden behind her waist and right hand jostling a gigantic Styrofoam cup of gas station soda. She was shaking it repeatedly, like when your ice is melting and you want to blend the tasteless tap water with the underlayer of sweet syrupy Coke. 

But moments later I glanced again and saw that her hand continued to fling and flutter, long after the soda would have mixed with the ice dregs. 

Her other hand came out from the pocket of her black and gold hippie-style sundress, and it was jiggling and joggling, too. Bending to set the drink on the sand, they played invisible air tambourines and her long gray braid flopped down, obscuring what I saw later as unmoving and rather emotionless facial features. 

Her partner came into focus next. I don't know if they were married, or friends, or if she was some sort of helper, though based on what followed my best guess would be all three.

Shuffling behind a walker onto the beach, he stood shoeless and grimacing. It could have easily been the searing heat of the noontime Carolina sand beneath his crinkled toes but, more likely, it was his physical condition which led to his frowny scowl. 

I somehow intuited a sense of the general unfairness of life informing his pain. 

Walking was a herculean task and I found it both difficult and intriguing to watch. Other  beachgoers spied him and then begin busying themselves with their cell phones or grandchildren or Fritos, depending on what was nearby, in an effort to appear distracted by their own miserable lives.

I did the same for a minute, unfolding and folding the towel in my lap.  

I figured I should make Hubs aware, but he'd already shifted his weight to the balls of his feet in his beach chair, at the ready, primed to stand and assist as soon as the scowler's legs went out from under him. 

Steadying himself nicely next to a tall wooden pier pile, he left his walker in the soft, deep dirt near the dunes and exhaled measurably. His companion helped him remove his shirt and motioned silently, devoted and measured in her actions; lips firmly set in a steely, pale line.

He began to move toward the water. Stopping and flashing a wobbly thumbs up to us and to whomever else made eye contact, he traded the scowl for a look of determination and like a sea turtle making its maiden crawl, trekked toward the shore. Platinum-haired and ponytailed like his lady, the map of lines upon his face showed years of outdoor exposure without benefit of sunscreen or shade. 

His slow descent left all of us mesmerized. Alarming unsteadiness gave us cause for common glances and matching group-think. Those of us seated at the edges of his chancy corridor banded together wordlessly, believing we'd be up and helping within seconds. 

A long amble to the shoreline, he grasped at his body, all the while the inconsistency of his gate showed his hips were bone on bone. Hampered by the hot sandy surface, he hadn't gotten to the flat part where the coolness marks relief and the waves roll over your toes. 

But as he got closer, he started moving more quickly toward the water. She, with the salt shaker hands, traveled both next to and in front of him, silently using her body as a nudge for people to make room for the man. 

Groups parted. He got there. We breathed the air we'd been unaware we were holding. 

Onlookers next to the water popped the tops off their beverages and raised them congratulatorily in his direction. The determined look became a grin. But then, due to his frighteningly bad balance, or lack of good judgement, he fell...smack into the sea. SPLOOSH!

A rough wave day, he was pulled asunder and emerged five feet off shore, flapping and sputtering. It was a mad display of alternate dunking and emerging. He snapped his neck like a marlin on the line to flip his hair around so that he might see for a moment through rolling wild eyes before being pulled down again. 

He was the helpless marionette of Poseidon, a most sadistic puppeteer. 

Hubs and I looked to his companion, seated on the shore's edge, for clues. How do we respond? Was he waving or was he drowning? Resting stone faced, her eyes stayed with him while bobbed like a cork. Fishermen continued to cast giant baited hooks atop the pier, unaware of him directly below, their lines weighted with coal black sinkers shaped like arrowheads.

My fingers drummed the arms of my chair. I continued to look around at the people near me, most of whom seemed amused by the man's antics. Was he gleeful or was it panic? I couldn't tell. Was he smiling? Was he crying? 

Wait...was he smiling and crying?

A huge wave spat him onto the beach and he stumble-crawled, laughing, to his mate who helped put neon colored water shoes on his puckered feet. Together, they made their way back to the walker; easily a ten minute exercise. Two women offered their assistance but were shrugged off as he made slicing motions with his stick-thin arms, thanking them in a soprano voice, flogged by sand and water, not unlike a quick huff of helium.

I told Hubs that this would make a good blog post but I was quite delayed, trying to figure out how to sum up the story. Then after spending a week with people who are struggling in their own personal and physical ways, the image of the strength and then the surrender of this man kept coming back to me. 

Do I sit idle in my pain or do I go out on the crowded beach, despite the hurt and the hurdles and give the perfection-weary world of Facebook and filters something to be inspired by?

Cheers to those of you who choose to amble uncomfortably down the sand. 

Cheers to those of you who hurl yourself into the ocean. 

#mushroomtumbler

The Referee's Closet

My mom really wanted a downstairs bathroom.

When we bought our house in 1977, there was an unfinished half bath. Plumbed, but without fixtures of any sort, it held the promise of an additional washroom in our single lavatory home. It also held the promise of a monumental task for my father, not the handiest guy in the room, but Mom went ahead and bought wallpaper and cut and sponged it to perfection, fully anticipating a bifold door, new flooring, a toilet, a sink and items from the JCPenney catalog she had picked out and circled to hang on the walls. 

But the bathroom never happened.

You see, my dad was a hockey referee and our unfinished half bathroom, over time, became an equipment closet. 

Now, if you like hockey and you don't mind the pong of last season's Cooperalls wafting out at you as you are carrying your Orville Redenbacher popcorn and Stewart's ginger ale into the den to watch Fantasy Island on a Friday night, it's all good; but if you are my mom, a stinky door-less repository for hockey gadgetry, freshly wallpapered in gold and black Gibson Girls, was not exactly a palatable compromise. 

Our equipment room held pucks, sticks, skates (a.k.a "Tacks"), duffel bags, team jerseys, black polyester ref pants, black and white ref sweaters, extra skate laces, whistles, tape, pads, long johns, and after a few mishaps, a CCM helmet for Dad following one too many concussive discussions of "How did I get home?" repeated throughout the course of an evening.

My girl friends could have cared less about the closet and sauntered by it with their arms full of sleeping bags and Barbie styling heads, giggly and eager for nights of doll hair curling and baby pink lipstick application. With my guy friends, though, it gave me instant street cred to be able to show them what was in there.  

Easy to find due to its odiferousness, the neighborhood boys would tromp in and go straight to the bathroom/not bathroom. They'd touch the skate blades to see how sharp they were, they'd turn the pucks over to see if any were emblazoned with team logos, they'd squeeze the thin plastic water bottles, some still wet, with long, spitty, reedy straws. I hung back, but watched them, careful to be sure they didn't disturb anything that was off limits, but really nothing in that closet was. 

Mom didn't spend a ton of time in the den, despite the fact that she was able to decorate that particular room as she saw fit, with Cape Cod photos and carved wooden souvenirs of peg legged pirates and yellow slickered fishermen, probably because she had to walk by that damn un-bathroom every time she wanted to go watch TV.

One time during a forbidden high school party, a boy who'd never been to my house thought in his blind and drunken state that it actually was a bathroom. We caught him just in time to spin him around, in a retro move borrowed from pin the tail on the donkey, and push him out the back door and down the steps into the yard to york his guts out.

Penalty box for that dude...two minutes for tripping.

Later, when I went back and visited my childhood home as an adult, I saw that the good folks who bought the house from us finally finished that bathroom. It was powdery, and pastel hued and functional and I'm a hundred percent sure it adds immensely to the value of the place. 

But, it was the single room in the house I found unrecognizable. 

Good ol' change, though; yes, I suppose it can be good. Especially in this instance for those who don't fully appreciate the versatility (or fine scent of) of a hockey closet. 

Nowadays, and many moons later, when my husband works hard or exercises like a beast and sweats to the point of total funkiness, I don't mind at all, (though he prefers to shower it away as soon as possible). I try to explain that it's no bother. It's not a problem. 

 "You see dear", I explain, "to me, you smell like home".  

 

 #mushroomtumbler

Wrong

Are you wrong?

Wrong, not for taking everything so personally lately, but for beating yourself up because you feel what you feel?

Wrong, not for crying at the drop of a hat, but for hiding yourself behind the bathroom door while tears run down your cheeks?

Wrong, not for looking at everything you haven't done, but for feeling so much pressure to do all of it?

Wrong, not for standing up for yourself, but for thinking that maybe you shouldn't have?

Wrong, not for wanting to take a day off and go swimming in this heat, but for deciding you don't have time for that enjoyable activity in your life? 

I've decided I am indeed wrong. 

I AM Wrong, not for driving past my favorite house of all time like a stalker, but for never sending the homeowner a note asking her to give me the right of first refusal should she ever decide to sell it.

I AM Wrong, not for ordering the ice cream, but because I didn't savor it; too busy counting calories while I numbly ate it. 

I AM Wrong, not for feeling so lost and lonely after a recent death, but for attempting to put my grief on a timeline. 

I AM Wrong, not because my writing, my self care, my time spent exercising, and my time devoted to learning has been almost zero on the priority list lately, but because I have not faced my reflection in the mirror and kindly asked myself why.

W.R.O.N.G. - Ok, now flip that shit. 

Here is how I'm making WRONG acceptable, for me at least:  

Willing to 

Really listen to my voice

Openly and honestly and without ego. 

Nothing, including my old patterns, can make me feel a particular way unless I agree to it.

Growing pains at 50 are something to run to, not run from. 

#mushroomtumbler

Eulogy for Moo Moo

 

Most people I knew growing up had a Grandma. A Nana. A MeMaw or even an Oma, but I was the only girl in the crowd with a Moo Moo.

Grandmas bake for their grandkids. My Moo Moo baked 50 pies at Thanksgiving.

Nanas buy their grandkids presents. My Moo Moo bought me a Barbie Van and a navy pea coat so that I could honor my Grandpa while I stayed warm.

MeMaws have their grandkids on the weekend. My Moo Moo took me to camp for weeks at a time letting me run all over hell and creation; barefoot and dirty with a pocketful of quarters for the game room; no curfews because she knew I would learn more by setting my own.

Omas move to Florida. My Moo Moo lived within an hour and a half from me my whole life and when I was in college she was a only a 10 minute ride across the bridge where I’d come to do laundry, eat Sunday dinner, watch Murder She Wrote, and visit with all the people who routinely dropped in, everyone welcome, the door was never locked.

One of the most important and influential people in my life, I think of Moo’s legacy with me in two distinct parts. From birth to age 7, I had her to myself. Christian Armond Palombo wasn’t born until 1977 so I received all the attention and spoils that a first and only grandchild gets. I got all the Christmas mornings. I got the Judy Blume books. I even got her engagement ring, which I swiftly passed along to Lucas so that he could marry Chloe with a proper sparkle on her finger.

Once the rest of her grandkids came, I had to learn to share and things changed for me, but I always knew how much she loved me, right up to the end, because she stayed in touch like no other person in my life with the exception of my husband.

Moo Moo checked in on me constantly as a teenager despite the fact that she was caring full time for my Grandpa.

She came to every important function of mine. Every dance recital. Every birthday party. Every graduation. Every celebration. She made me feel noticed and important. That was one of her greatest gifts to us, she noticed people.

She eventually took on the challenge of AIDS/HIV education and advocacy. Now this was in the early 90s when those who’d contracted the virus were still stigmatized, shunned, and misunderstood. But Moo Moo volunteered in all kinds of places letting people know (a.) that she noticed and (b.) that she cared.

She was a surrogate parent to people who needed one. She brought Eugene, her special friend with the virus, to many of his daily medical appointments even though she was in her 70s and might rather have spent that time crocheting Moo blankets. She was proud to have helped so many with her volunteerism. She routinely asked all of us what we were doing to give back.

For those of you who don’t know, Moo Moo has been sick for a while. She had a blood disorder and suffered the effects of it for seven and a half years. It has not been easy for her nor for those closest to her. But every time I asked her how she was she said “Not too awful bad.” She wanted to live.

To honor Moo we can visit her grave, we can pray for her, we can tell stories among ourselves about her shenanigans and idiosyncrasies, but above all, we can try to live a life reflecting her values:

Here are a few ways:

Be generous when you can.

Notice people.

Root for the underdogs, the dark horses, and those at the back of the pack.

Offer the joyless and afflicted some hope.

Treat the dying with respect.

Dance with a butt wiggle.

Cheer loudly from the sidelines.

Keep the traditions.

Wave the flag.

Lift high the cross.

Say your prayers.

Make friends wherever you go.

Put aside material wants for other people’s needs.

Make room at the table.

Tell the old stories.

Don’t fear the mincemeat.

Keep in touch.

Never be too busy to spend 5 minutes with whomever is walking through your door.

Stop and smell the roses but don’t place so much importance on those roses that you fail to help the lonely, flea-bit cat in the alley way next to them.

Hers are tough shoes to fill.

It might take all of us to do it.

Thank you for coming today. She loved you all.

#mushroomtumbler