The Baby and the Boudreaux's

This is a good week to have thunderstorms, which we do again. There's nowhere I need to go, having run all my critical errands during last week's beautiful weather. We're well stocked with human food and dog food, and I have lots of unread ebooks. If the patter of rain makes me sleepy, well, I can take a nap if I want to. Life is good, mostly, but sometimes little glitches pop up.

One of last week's errands was a trip to the auto shop to get my car inspected and get the oil changed. The shop was crowded; I ended up being there for an hour and forty-five minutes. For most of that time I was entertained by a twenty-month-old girl who kept bringing me items out of her diaper bag. She was cute as could be, and we got along fabulously, but the longer she played with me, the more concerned I became. She had a bad cold. Her mom tried her best to keep her nose wiped, but every time the tiny girl returned with a chapstick, a thermometer, or a baggie of Goldfish, the snot made another run for it. Bless her heart, she'd give it a wipe herself with her free hand, then that hand would be the next one to fish around in the diaper bag.

After the breathing difficulties I had during a bout of bronchitis early this year, I did not want to catch that baby's cold. More than that, though, I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I kept a smile on my face, my worries to myself, and, for at least half an hour, a germy,  economy-sized tube of Boudreaux's Butt Paste clutched in my right fist.

That hour and forty-five minutes felt like a long time. When my car was ready, I blew off the rest of my errands and drove straight home. I sanitized my hands first, then grabbed a handful of Clorox wipes and worked my way backward through my purse, the inside and outside door knobs, the door handle on my car, the seat belt, the steering wheel, the door of the glove compartment, and the cover of the little book that holds my insurance and registration papers. Better safe than sorry.

What about you? What kind of rigamarole would you go through to keep a baby happy?

Word Origins

My life-long interest in words and their meanings has given me a great appreciation for the near-miss words that children sometimes use, mistakes that often make as much sense as the correct words they replace. For example, one of my young daughters, upon hearing a new bit of information, responded by saying, "The clot thickens." The same daughter, who was undeniably hard on her toys, once opened a box containing a new toy or game and suggested that we begin by reading "the destructions." Both of those errors  made their way into the vocabulary that our family still uses today.

Last week, in line at a grocery check-out counter, a small girl stood with her mother directly in front of me. At the child's eye level was an upright, plastic display of Bic lighters. I could tell that the girl had been warned about the lighters, because she was careful not to touch a single one of them. Instead, she poked one small finger into each space between the lighters--the empty spaces from which other lighters had been removed--and accompanied every tap of her finger with a single spoken word: "Fireable!"

"Fireable, fireable, fireable, fireable!"

Her word made me smile. It made perfect sense to at least two of us.

A Labor of Love: The Owen Poems

My granddaughter, Kalyn, will turn thirty this week, and just over a month later her son, Owen, will turn four. When Kalyn was Owen's age and spent the day or night with me, I loved making up silly rhymes and singing them to make her giggle. She thought they were funny enough that they became a routine part of our time together. To this day she remembers all the words to one song that started out simply as lunch menu suggestions:

You can have pimento cheese

Or ABC's & 123's,

I'm begging you on bended knees,

Please don't make me eat green peas.

Actually, I love green peas; she's the one who didn't.

I don't get to spend as much time with Owen as I did with Kalyn, but during the recent holidays I saw him enough to know that he's developed a pretty good sense of humor. The boy likes a joke. I could tell that by the way he laughed uproariously every time he used the words, "chicken eyeball," which he did repeatedly on Christmas Day.

A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that one way to build a closer relationship with my great-grandson between visits would be to send him letters. That was the start of the Owen Poems. Since then I've been making up short verses and "borrowing" photos from Google images to illustrate them. My plan is to send him a new poem--or something--every week or ten days until he loses interest.

With a little help from his mama, a clearly excited Owen called me after he got this first one:

You'll have no trouble guessing what the illustration is on this next one I'm mailing today:

Owen Poem #2

Owen Asks the Body Question

Owen suggested, "Pick only one thing:

From your hair to the tips of your toes,

What part of your body do you like the best?"

Claire answered, "My eyes, I suppose."

Nicholas said, "I would pick my right arm

Because of the cool way it throws."

Jonathan said, "I can wiggle my ears,

so I think I'm gonna choose those."

Emily's choice was her curly red hair,

And Anthony? He picked his nose.

Rounding out the first three (all I've written so far) is this one:

Owen Poem #3

Up and Down

A dog named Up and a duck named Down

once walked together into town.

They walked along a railroad track

and didn't bother looking back

until a whistle made Up shout,

"A train is coming! Down, look out!"

The train was moving very fast,

but just before it roared on past,

the friends did what they had to do:

down Up jumped and up Down flew.

What about the pre-schoolers you know? What kinds of things do they find funny?

Mothers and Others

Last Sunday was Mother's Day, a holiday that brings out my cynical side because it's always been so heavily promoted by card companies and florists. I'm embarrassed by the idea of Mother's Day. It feels as though the second Sunday in May has been set aside as the day when all the mothers of America line up, united like organized union members, and present our bills for services rendered. No matter how many pretty flowers you stick in it, it feels like extortion.

And yet . . . and yet I love those cards, obviously chosen so carefully, and even more than that I love the words my daughters have written in the cards, cherished messages I keep and reread again and again, reminding me that our bond is as important to them as it is to me. I don't need the cards to know that, but I love the reminders nevertheless.

We spent Sunday afternoon the same way we've traditionally spent Mother's Day in the past few years, with a crawfish boil at my younger daughter's house. I loved being with my two warm, beautiful daughters, my delightful grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and those of their significant others who weren't somewhere else working or spending the day with their own moms. We sat at long tables spread with newspapers, chatting and laughing as we feasted on crawfish, spicy boiled potatoes and corn on the cob, followed later by shamefully full bowls of chilled banana pudding. My son-in-law's music played in the background, music that always surprises me because most of his songs are my songs, too, and I like the fact that we share a cross-generational, mutual fondness for soulful sounds.

We all became lazier after we ate, leaning back in our chairs under the shade, hiding our laughter as 21-month-old Olivia pitched a fit when the limits of her dexterity frustrated her independent spirit. She tried and failed a few times to put a bubble wand into its narrow-mouthed plastic jar of soapy fluid, then threw the wand as far as she could throw it (not very far). She didn't cry, but her anger was apparent in the scowl on her face. She cast a quick, spiteful glare at those who sat near her, then, in case no one had noticed she was angry, marched over to the sudsy wand, picked it up, and threw it again for good measure. All of us thought it was funny, but we were careful not to let her see us laugh. She's a baby and she acted like a baby. In that moment every adult there loved Olivia enough to let her express her feelings. Most of us, I believe, silently cheered her on. Yes, she'll need to learn a better way to handle her disappointments someday, but there's plenty of time for that later on.

The little ones, Olivia and three-year-old Owen, wanted to get in the swimming pool. Though the day was warm, the water was chilly, but there were still a few adults willing to get in to let the floaty-armed babies have some fun. My younger daughter, Kelli, their grandmother, stayed longest in the water, frequently having both babies in tow at once. I watched her holding on to them, keeping them safe, playing with them, instructing them, calm, unruffled, smiling. Owen will remember her that way long after he forgets that the pool got colder as the sun moved and cast it into shadow, that he cried and protested vigorously, repeatedly saying, "I'm not cold!" through blue lips and chattering teeth as his mother and grandmother pulled him flailing out of the pool. He and Olivia will remember the happy times with their grandmother when they're grown, and they'll always think of her as a safe port in a storm, the way I, as old as I am, still think of my mother's mother. Kelli is showing them in every way possible that she loves them unconditionally, and they'll feel that--they'll know that--for the rest of their lives.

The strength of my passion for genealogy and family history sometimes makes me wonder if I'm living too much in the past. On Mother's Day I felt that I was on the opposite end of the spectrum, as if I were living in the future, seeing the three generations after mine coming into their own, glimpsing the kind of good people who will carry on after I'm gone, also watching them fulfill their present roles as if they were born to them, and understanding that, yes, they were. This is exactly who they are and where they're supposed to be at this time in their lives. There really is no past, present or future when it comes to families, only a continuous cycle of life that ties all of us together with those who came before us and those who have yet to arrive. All of us--mothers and others--are eternally linked to the rest of us.

Mother's Day is a good day to remember that. Any day is a good day to remember that. There doesn't need to be a special card for it.

Music City

My favorite new TV series of the past season is Nashville. It's an intriguing, behind-the-scenes look at politics and the music industry in Tennessee's second-largest city. The story is interesting, the characters are well drawn, and the music has been consistently good since the beginning. This week's episode featured a number by Lennon and Maisy Stella, 13- and 9-year-old girls who are sisters in real life and also on the show, playing daughters of the show's main character. What a treat!

With that brief introduction, I'll make their performance this week's Saturday Song Selection. You go, girls!

_______________________________________________________________

The song is "Ho Hey" (by the Lumineers), performed here by Lennon and Maisy Stella.
Thanks to LGH1993 for posting the video on YouTube.

Click here to read the lyrics.

Simple, Bright and Bold

In this week's Acrylic Exploration class, while I was working in tiny, stingy strokes to try to replicate the detail in a famous painting of three peaches that are past their prime, my mind wandered back to an earlier experience with drawing and painting. I was a more confident artist in those days.

The day I remembered was a March day in 1967. Kim attended a church-sponsored kindergarten that year, and her class was getting ready to put on an Easter presentation for all the parents. Sunlight streamed through the windows of the church where the kids practiced their songs on the first floor of the sanctuary and I listened from the balcony. My younger daughter, Kelli, was up there with me, watching as I painted bunnies, chicks, colored eggs, and flowers on wide, white paper pulled from a roll. My finished work would serve as a backdrop for the children's Easter program. I was happy that day, painting in bright colors and big, bold strokes, not the least bit worried that it wouldn't turn out right.

I'm happy now when I paint, too, but the paint doesn't flow as freely. I wonder if I'll ever feel that easy comfort with painting again. Maybe, if I'd stick to chicks and flowers instead of overripe peaches.

In the Afterglow

It was Two Thousand Twelve, twenty-fifth of December,
A day that it fills me with joy to remember.

Our families came to spend Christmas together

In spite of some terrible, threatening weather.

The skies, they were black, and the rains were torrential,

Yet Christmas lost none of its magic potential.

The weather forecasts for Christmas Day were dire at best, with violent storms, possibly including hail and tornados, predicted for precisely the time of our own Christmas gathering at my daughter Kelli's home. I don't like to leave my dogs at home alone in bad weather, and I don't like to drive in it, but there was no way I was going to miss a chance to be with that particular group of people on that special day. 

I decided to leave early and see if I could get there ahead of the storm. I just made it. The skies opened up and dumped rivers of rain, then, oddly but quite nicely, fizzled to a drizzle as each new carload of family members arrived.

The young and the older, arriving in shifts,

Brought smiles and good wishes and armloads of gifts,
And inside the house, with its lights all aglow,
The merriment rose with each paper and bow
Tossed aside by a toddler, a sweet girl or boy,
Whose eyes shone more brightly with each unwrapped toy.

The youngest of the grandchildren is twenty now, so the excitement torch has been passed to the great-grandchildren, Owen and Olivia. Olivia was more interested in the bows than in the presents, but Owen, at two and three-quarters now, enjoyed the whole shebang. He played Santa's helper, happily delivering gifts as directed by his Popeé, Troy. Among Owen's own gifts was a kid-sized tool bench. He, having a small amount of nasal congestion, promptly dubbed it "the tool bitch," and you can imagine how often we tried to work that phrase into the conversation over the course of the afternoon.

On Dasher, on Dancer, on Donder and Blitzen--

Just smell the aromas that come from the kitchen!

There's shrimp fettuccine and crisp crawfish pies,

And pot roast and meatballs and audible sighs

At the display of cookies and candies galore.

Taste one, then another, then sample some more.

There was so much good food that I didn't even get around to tasting all of it. God knows I tried. Last night, for the first time in over two years, I had to unzip my pants after I got home, just to find enough comfort and breathing room to last until bedtime.

The kids were the focus till late in the day
When we knew it was time for the grown-ups to play.
A Christmas Day game is traditional now,
So we pondered the options that time would allow,
And decided charades would be given a go--
There's an app for that now, in case you didn't know.

According to an earlier post, the Christmas games tradition began about 2004, with the men and women on opposite teams playing Battle of the Sexes. Charades, though an old game by almost every standard, was new for us.

This year we chose teams by size instead of by sex, playing tall against small, and the teams turned out to be fairly evenly matched. The best-acting Oscars would have gone to Jeremy on the tall team and Kandis on the smalls. Both of them seemed to have remarkable abilities to zero in on the most important aspects of their allotted words or phrases and act out clues that conveyed them almost instantly. The words weren't easy, either: claustrophobia and turbulence, for example.

It's often a leap of faith for people to step outside their vulnerable skins and throw themselves into the spirit of a silly game. It's an exercise in trust and, in the best cases, a heartwarming demonstration of love and acceptance--all played out amidst riotous laughter.

The echos of laughter, the joy that still lingers
From down by my toes to the tips of my fingers,
Remind me that love is where everything starts--
The thoughts in our minds, the peace in our hearts--
And if we let love guide the actions we take,
The words that we say, the decisions we make,
Though storms may rain on us and strong winds may blow,
Love will see us through safely, wherever we go.

If You Say So

In reply to a comment on my last post, I mentioned that sometimes I "rein in" what I say or write about controversial topics. Those who know me well might be quick to point out that I haven't mastered the skill of self-censoring, but they're basing that opinion only on  what they've heard me say. They have no idea how much I've held back.

Anyway, it occurred to me as I wrote that reply that I've been struggling my whole life to decide when to speak out and when to hold my tongue. The last time I acknowledged that inner conflict may have been in a brief conversation with my grandmother when I was about ten years old:

Mammaw: "Linnie, why don't you sweep the porch?"

Me (remaining seated on the couch, comic book in hand): "If you want me to sweep the porch, just tell me to do it. You're the grown-up and I'm the kid, so I have to do what you say. But if you want to know why I don't sweep the porch, I can tell you."

After that, as I recall, I immediately jumped up and moved out the front door--out of range--where I swept the porch as if my life depended on it. Mammaw never asked my reasons for not wanting to sweep it, and I never again volunteered to explain them.

When Any Day Could Be Halloween

Subtitle:  This one's for you, Judy.

See these two neatly dressed girls standing on the front porch of their home? See their pretty hair, the result of bobby-pinned curls made by the patient hands of their mother? See the innocent smiles on their faces?

Now picture the two girls in an upstairs bedroom of the same house. They sit cross-legged on the wooden floor, their shoulders hunched, heads close together. They aren't smiling now.

Between them on the floor is a small brown suitcase with a wide beige stripe on top of it. The older girl opens the suitcase and exposes the record player inside. She places a 78-rpm record on the turntable, lifts the mechanical arm, and carefully sets the needle down on the outer edge the record. Both girls lean back slightly and wait, their eyes bright with anticipation.

"Who's that coming down the street?

Are they shovels or are they feet?

It's the new schoolmaster.

What's his name?

Ichabod, Ichabod Crane." 

The girls were my sister and I, and that record I loved so much was the soundtrack of a 1949 Disney animated film based on Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," narrated and sung by Bing Crosby. It was the story of Ichabod Crane, a skinny, timid but charming schoolteacher, the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel whom Ichabod loved, and the big, brutish Brom Bones, Ichabod's rival for Katrina's affections. At the heart of the story was a frightening Halloween legend. My favorite part of the record--the part that never failed to send a delicious chill down my spine--was Ichabod's fateful encounter with that legend's dreaded Headless Horseman.

This morning I found a YouTube video clip from that Disney film. The legend is explained in the first three and a half minutes of the clip, but if you want to go right to the scary part, start listening at the 3:40 mark.

I use the word "listening" deliberately. You can watch the clip if you choose--the animation is colorful and entertaining--but I would challenge you to close your eyes and just listen. Travel to the 1950s and huddle in that bedroom with my little sister and me. Do as we did: listen and let your imagination create the images as Ichabod tries to flee the Headless Horseman. To a child's mind it's the best kind of scary.

Happy Halloween, boys and ghouls!

____________________________________

Thanks to Sherry Cherry for posting this video on YouTube.

Sepia Saturday: Switching Allegiances

In the second grade I had a choice between being a Bluebird (the junior version of a Camp Fire Girl) or a Brownie (the younger version of a Girl Scout). I don't remember why I decided on the Bluebirds, but I suspect it had something to do with the uniforms. Bluebirds wore red, white, and blue, and Brownies wore...well, brown.

In the photo below, taken in 1948, I am the first girl on the left. The girl next to me was wearing a Brownie uniform, and the girl on the far right of the photo was wearing her Bluebird uniform (see the tiny bluebird on her breast pocket?). It was clearly troop meeting day. Now, if you were to call attention to the fact that the expression on my face indicates that my mind was a million miles away, I could only respond by guessing what I was thinking then: "How the heck did I forget to wear my uniform today?" And then I would have figured out a way to blame it on my mother.

(Left to right) Donald Smith, me, Linda Edmonds, Jean Lee Benning

I have vivid memories of two things that happened while I was a Bluebird: One week we made Rice Krispie marshmallow treats. (My carb-free lifestyle doesn't allow them now,  but I can still taste them in my mind.) Another time we went on a field trip. It involved a short ride on a train, followed by the chance to run around on someone's pasture land. There was a large bull nearby, separated from us by a barbed wire fence, and I was firmly convinced that the bull was going to be attracted by my red sweater and charge me on the spot. I thought my death might be imminent (though I didn't yet know the word, "imminent"), but there I was, running around in little circles and figure-eights like a nitwit, holding the red sweater high in one upraised hand, waving it, simultaneously screaming and laughing for my friends' amusement. 

I stayed in the Bluebirds for only one year. Apparently, I wasn't much into commitments in those days. In the third, fourth, and fifth grades I didn't join any groups, but in sixth, when I was 11, I decided to give it another try. That time I joined the Girl Scouts, despite never having been a Brownie. Why the switch? Probably because my best friends were Girl Scouts instead of Camp Fire Girls. Possibly because the green uniform of the Girl Scouts would have emphasized the color of my eyes. As the following photo demonstrates, I was quite a fashion icon by then:

Can you believe I'm actually posting this photo on a public website? (Of course you can believe it; I just told you I waved a red sweater in front of a bull, so you already know I make dumb decisions sometimes.) And can you tell that I was doing my own pin curls by that time? I don't know if the Girl Scouts had a hairdressing badge, but I'm pretty sure I could have been a scout for years and never earned one.

I dropped out of Girl Scouts after a single year, too. The funny thing is that I know I was a Girl Scout, but I have no memory whatsoever of doing anything with my scout troop. Not a meeting, not cookie sales, not anything. Is it possible that one look at this picture just erased the entire Girl Scout experience from my mind?

********

My older daughter, Kim, followed in my footsteps and became a Bluebird in 1969, when she was in second grade. I still remember the look of exasperation on her face when she returned home from her first candy-selling trip around our block, plopped her carton of candy boxes on the kitchen counter, and said, "Sheesh! Some people just close the door right in your face!"

Kim went on to sell more candy than anyone else in her troop that year. Her prize for her candy sales achievement was a week at sleepover camp, but I, her overprotective mother, thought she was too young. We traded it in for two weeks of day camp instead.

As for that banged-up, cardboard, Camp Fire candy carton, I've somehow managed to hold on to it. For nearly 43 years, through a number of local moves and half a dozen cross-country ones, it has held bits of ribbon and lace, zippers and threads, and lived in a closet next to my sewing machine. I'm careful with my kids and my cardboard boxes.

**********

The song I've chosen for this week's Saturday Song Selection is from 1963. Come to think of it, this song may have unduly influenced my decision not to let Kim go to sleepover camp.

_______________________________________________________________

The song is "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" by Allan Sherman.

Thanks to bohemister for posting this video (complete with lyrics) on YouTube.

_______________________________________________________________

Click the image below

 to find other bloggers who have posted

scout-related photos this week:

Sepia Saturday: Shoes or No Shoes

When I read that the inspiration for this week's Sepia Saturday post is SHOES, I knew it was time to repost one of my favorite pictures. It's a photo of Ruth and Loren Elliott, my great-aunt and -uncle, from about 1911 or '12.

I love this photo. I'd like to believe Uncle Loren actually owned a pair of shoes, but if that's true, wouldn't his mother have insisted he wear them on this occasion?

While I was searching my files for this image, I came across others of cute kids wearing old-style shoes. I had planned to upload them and make children's shoes the focus of this post, but that all changed after I went looking on YouTube for a shoe-related Saturday Song Selection (one less obvious than "Blue Suede Shoes" or "These Boots Are Made for Walking"). The following video made me think about the fact that there are large segments of the world's population for whom the wearing of shoes is not optional:

I don't remember ever hearing about the 2011 event that was the subject of this video. Although I missed the day, the mission is an ongoing one, and it certainly has my attention now.

_______________________________________________________________

The song is "One Day" by Matisyahu.

(Click here to read the lyrics.) 

Thanks to tomsshoes for posting this video on YouTube -- and for showing us another way we can help to change the world.

_______________________________________________________________

Click the image below
 to see a list of other bloggers who have posted
shoe-related photos this week:

Me and you, an open road, and fishing poles

This Saturday's song selection is from 1971. We lived in Miami, Florida then, and many weekend days would find us packing up the family, the fishing gear, cold drinks and  sandwiches and heading out to surf fish in the Atlantic ocean.

As much as I enjoyed the fishing, the feeling that has stayed with me most was the sense of joy and well-being that filled my heart as the narrow, two-lane road played out in front of us on the way home. I can still see my husband at the wheel, our beautiful, golden-haired little girls in the backseat dribbling the juice of fresh peaches down their wrists, and myself riding shotgun, bare feet propped on the dashboard. We were salty, sandy, sun-kissed, a little sleepy and, yes, slightly smelly, but we had fresh fish for supper, that much again for the freezer, and enough happiness to tide us over until the next time.

Today, when I place myself back in that time, in that car with the people I loved most in the world and the setting sun shining through the windshield, I hear this song playing on the car radio:

"Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" by Lobo
Video posted on YouTube by rwells47 (thanks!)

Buthter

The last item on yesterday's word-verification list was "retsub," which happens to be "Buster" spelled backwards. Every time I hear that name, I'm reminded of a three-year-old girl who was our neighbor in Georgia in the early 1970s.  Her name was Shannon.

Shannon was the middle of three children, the one sometimes pushed into the background by the bright chattiness of her older sister and the constant needs of her baby brother. She was about to start pre-school, and her mother was worried that she would feel alone and afraid in a new place, among so many children she didn't know. It turned out there was no need for concern.

At the end of the first half-day session, the teacher reported that Shannon had taken care of herself very well.  When a little boy showed interest in Shannon's dessert, she scooted a couple of feet away from him, looked him pointedly in the eye, and said, "You ain't a-gittin' none o' mah pah, buthter."

We were new to Georgia then, still fascinated by the cadence of the accent, and when my daughters and I heard that story, we repeated Shannon's declaration over and over to each other. It eventually became a catch-phrase in our family.

Shannon would be about 43 years old now. I wonder if she's still in Georgia and if she has little ones of her own. I wonder if it would make her smile to know that three women in Louisiana still remember her fondly and still quote her words sometimes when the issue of sharing arises.

Tea party talk -- not the political kind

I can't imagine why this popped into my head today, but how many of you remember the Jewel Tea Company? When my children were small and we lived in East Texas, the Jewel Tea man came around every couple of weeks to sell baking mixes, household cleaners, and any number of other items. If I placed an order on one visit, he'd bring the products on his next visit, and I'd pay him when he delivered -- usually.

The only pocket money I had in those days was the little bit I earned typing transcripts for a court reporter friend while my babies napped. My name wasn't on my husband's checking account. Even our groceries were charged and paid by him once a month. So if I'd placed a Jewel Tea order, I had to make sure to have the money ready on delivery day.

One day, when Kim was about two and a half, I was playing with her in the living room while Kelli, about six months old, napped at the other end of the house. I happened to glance out the window just in time to see the Jewel Tea man turn his car into our driveway. He was a couple of days early. I knew I didn't have any money. It flashed through my mind that he'd tried to make a delivery one day a few months earlier when I wasn't home. On that occasion he'd left the items at the back door and had come back the next day to be paid. I quickly decided that's what I wanted to happen this time.

I grabbed Kim around her waist and ran with her to the back bedroom, whispering to her all the way to be quiet. "We're playing a game," I told her. "In just a second someone is gonna knock on the door, and we're gonna pretend we aren't home, okay? Just be very, very, very quiet."

We waited for the knock, and it came. Kim looked at me expectantly, and I winked at her and smiled, putting my finger to my lips to remind her to be quiet. There was a second knock at the door, and that time Kim looked at me and grinned. She was getting into the game. Just when I thought the Jewel Tea man had given up and gone away, I heard the door open. I was shocked, and Kim's eyes got huge. I clapped one hand over my own mouth and one over hers as we waited to hear what would happen. We both listened intently as the man made his way to the kitchen, set our packages on the table, then opened the door again and left. We listened for his car to start, then waited a little while longer to be sure he had driven away.

I carried Kim back into the living room so we wouldn't wake the baby, then I set her down and gave a medium loud whoop.  "Wasn't that fun?" I asked. "We'll have to play that game again sometime."  The two of us had a good laugh together.  We didn't say one word about who had been at the door

So much drama, I thought, but it was worth it. The Jewel Tea man would come back tomorrow, I'd have the money and apologize for missing him, and everything would be back to normal.

A few hours later, while I was bending over Kelli's crib changing her diaper, there was another rap at the door.   I couldn't stop what I was doing, and before I could think what to do, Kim ran to the door and threw it open.  I heard her say in a loud, cheerful tone, her words articulated clearly and precisely, "We hided from you in the bedroom this morning."

"You did?" asked the Jewel Tea man.

"Uh-huh, we sure did."

I could have died.

I still don't know whether Kim saw the tea man's car out the window when I picked her up to run, or if she put two and two together when she saw the things he'd left on the kitchen table.  I'd always known she was a smart little cookie, but I'd apparently underestimated her that day.

There was nothing I could do but face the music.  Holding the freshly changed baby in my arms, I walked back into the living room and pretended I hadn't heard a thing. So did the Jewel Tea man, bless his heart. I smiled and told him I was sorry I'd missed him earlier in the day, that I appreciated his leaving the items I'd ordered, and that I hadn't expected him so soon and didn't have the money ready to pay him.

He was very nice about it. He said he'd come early because he was going out of town, and that if I wanted to place an order, I could pay him for that day's delivery when I paid for the next one.  He let me off the hook.

Would you be surprised to know I ordered lots of stuff that day?  Lots and lots and lots of stuff.

Westward ho, city girls!

Packy, my grandfather whose home we shared, worked at Martin's Furniture Store in Springfield, Missouri. He did a little light carpentry, assembly mostly, and he delivered furniture to customers. Sometimes my grandmother picked Packy up at lunchtime, but some days he drove home in an empty delivery truck.

If he was driving the big van, he'd have to park it on the street. My sister and I would climb up inside it and jump around a little bit, but we grew bored pretty quickly in the van, and it was hot in there, too. The other truck was way better.

The second truck was larger than a pickup but smaller than the furniture van, so my grandfather could drive it right up into the driveway and park it under the shade of a nearby tree. There were wooden-rail "fences" along each side of the truck bed, and before Packy could get in the house and sit down to his lunch ("dinner" we called it then), my sister and I would climb the rails and straddle them. They were our horses: beautiful stallions with flowing manes and tails.

We rode miles on those horses during summer lunch hours. We crossed prairies and deserts, watering our horses at streams along the way. We encountered stagecoaches, goldminers, train robbers, and sheriffs wearing big tin stars. Shots were fired sometimes, but we were the good guys, and we usually survived our injuries. Luckily, our trail always turned homeward just in time for Packy to go back to work.

When I think about those days, I can still smell the summer dust and the little-girl sweat, and I can almost hear the strains of the radio music that filtered through the screen door and provided a fitting soundtrack for our adventures. Click on the video link and ride with us for a while.

MUSIC VIDEO: Ghost Riders in the Sky - Vaughn Monroe (1949)
LYRICS: Ghost Riders in the Sky

See any similarities?

My sister forwarded an email to me that included a group of photos of her youngest granddaughter. The pictures cracked me up. They were taken by the toddler's mom (my niece), who had captioned them "THE EGG DYE TABLETS ARE NOT CANDY." Here's a sample:


It's obvious that the "attitude" gene is alive and well in our family. I'm not a bit surprised. The boy babies may not have been as severely afflicted, but I can't think of a single girl child in this family who wouldn't have been able to cock her head and roll her eyes in the hospital nursery if things hadn't gone to suit her.

One photo in particular gave me immense pleasure and sparked a little photo-editing project. First, I took the picture of my sister's grandbaby and turned it from color to black and white. Then I went digging through my files and found a snapshot of my sister, one that was taken about 1949. I blew it up, cropped it, "sprayed" a little "digital egg dye" around the mouth, and placed it side-by-side with the photo of her grandchild.


Voila!



My sister's the one on the right. The apple didn't fall far from the tree in this case, did it?

The battle of the sexes

Apparently the difference between the male and female brain, the disconnect that makes it so difficult for each sex to understand the other, shows up at a very young age.

The walls are thin in my new office. We can almost always hear voices coming from the beauty shop next door, and today I could clearly hear two small children playing on the other side of the wall:

Little girl's voice: "Hello?"

Little boy's voice: "Hello, this is the FBI!"

Little girl's voice: (Muttering too softly to be audible.)

Little boy's voice (much louder now): "NO! I said, 'This is the FBI!'"

Little girl's voice (in a placating tone): "I know you did, but now I want to say, "You have the wrong number.'"

The way we were

Yajeev, whose young male mind sometimes seems to run along a parallel track to my old female one (except that his train of thought eventually steams off into high-intellect pursuits such as biochemistry, and mine chugs happily into all the Nora Roberts novels I can get my hands on) posted about his brother's imaginary friends. Now that the subject has been broached in this corner of the Blogosphere, I want to give credit to the imaginary people who were there for me and my family when we needed them most.

I personally had three of them: Judy Rubberband, Judy Rubberband's mother and Corny James. To be honest, I've forgotten pretty much everything about Corny James except his name and the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I think about him. I'm thinking he must have been a nice boy but one who stayed mostly in the background. The other two, though, were my partners in crime.

These folks were part of my life when I was about three years old, before my real sister was born. Judging from the imaginary friends of other children I've witnessed through the years, Judy Rubberband and her mother must have seemed quite real to me. What's odd in retrospect is that even as I insisted they were real, I must have been aware on some level that my mother couldn't see them. And that obviously seemed like a pretty good deal.

If my mother walked into a room and encountered a freshly made mess, I'd say Judy Rubberband did it. She was a good friend, but I didn't hesitate to rat her out. If Mother walked in and found me in the act of doing something I wasn't supposed to do, well, then, Judy Rubberband's mother told me to do it. I couldn't argue with an adult, could I?

My brother was also about three when we first met his imaginary friend, who went by the name of Father. The bedroom/bathroom area of our house was divided by a central hall, and that whole part of the house could be closed off by a door between the hall and the living room. The door opened into the hall and was mostly left open. Father lived in the narrow space between the open door and the hall wall behind it. I always thought he would have appreciated having at least the whole hallway to call his own.

A few years later, my older daughter had two imaginary friends, Brownie and David, who lived with us when she was (you guessed it) three years old. Both of her friends were based on people she saw on television. Brownie, we learned, closely resembled Peter Noone, lead singer of Herman's Hermits. His name referred to their hit song, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter." And David, we were informed, was David McCallum, then starring on TV in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Those guys might have been famous, but they sat around our living room all the time, and we got in trouble frequently for accidentally sitting on them.

I find it interesting that all the imaginary friends of our family were hosted by three-year-olds. Another weird thing happened when I was three, and I wonder if it's related in some way to whatever psychology lies behind the imaginary-friend phenomenon. I changed my own name. My older cousin Sandra had a real-life friend named Dorothy. Soon after I met her, I announced to my family that my name from then on would be Dorfy. Afterwards, I've been told, I refused to answer to my own perfectly good name. They could call me Dorfy or they could be studiously ignored; it was up to them.

I don't remember the actual name-change incident, but I clearly remember being Dorfy, and I remember that Dorfy had a near-death experience. I was at the grocery store with my mother, and a piece of candy became lodged in my throat. I remember feeling very distressed, then the grocer grabbed me up by my feet, held me upside down with one hand and whacked me on the back with the other. There's a very clear picture in my mind of that little store and of the green Lifesaver that popped out of my mouth, bounced once on the counter, then rolled across the floor.

That might have been Dorfy's experience, but the scars remained with me. For a long, long time afterward, I'd eat all the other flavors of Lifesavers, but not the green ones. Those, I'd generously give away. I'd share them, then sit back quietly and watch.

Love letter

Yajeev left a funny comment about my last post. In part he wrote: "The first house belonged to the Smiths. I was friends with their daughter. I had a crush on her and even played Barbies with her just so she'd hang out with me." As soon as I read those words, I knew what I'd write about next.

In 1970 and 1971, we lived in Miami, Florida. One of my daughters' most frequent playmates was a little boy, Andy, who lived directly behind us. Andy was seven when my girls were six and eight, a cute little guy whose freckled face radiated innocence.

I used to watch from the window as the kids played in the front yard. I understood why Andy might like to join in the high-energy games, but when the girls set up a complete Barbie village near the front sidewalk, it surprised me that he seemed so interested in that kind of play. It surprised me for several days in a row. Then I stepped outside quietly and got close enough to discover that Barbie and Ken were naked. It could have been worse, I know, but that was the end of playing Barbie with boys.

Andy, bless his heart, stayed around anyway, and in the first months of 1972, when we moved to Georgia, he seemed sad to see us go. We gave him our new address before we left, and it was only days later that I got a letter from him, a letter that brightened my day and still does, thirty-five years later. When I read Yajeev's comment, I knew I had to dig this out and share it with you (click to enlarge):


Isn't that the sweetest thing ever? This is the best letter I ever got from someone not in my family -- certainly sweeter and more heartfelt than anything ever written to me by any in the series of men in my life. I like Andy's letter even more because he included our whole family in his affections, even though his early man-training led him to "like" instead of "love" my husband. And because he erased the word "girl" and replaced it with "lady."

Andy would be more than forty years old today. He was a sweet, sensitive boy, and I'd love to know what kind of man he grew up to be.

What was I thinking?

Betty (Sister-Three) of Galla Creek Ephemeris posted a picture today of her little granddaughter riding in the kind of red-and-yellow plastic toy car that's been a favorite of toddlers for years. My grandson had one when he was small (he's 17 now), but the one I remember best belonged to my niece when she was about three years old.

On the occasion I'm thinking about, the family had gathered in my sister's living room in East Texas. As the adults took advantage of the opportunity to visit in person for a change, I noticed that my niece seemed to be a little frustrated that she wasn't getting the attention she was used to. She was riding from person to person in her little car, trying to engage someone in her game.

When she "drove" up to me, I told her how much I liked her car and asked her where she planned to go next. She announced that she was going to the Dairy Queen.

"Oh, good," I said, "I'm really hungry. Would you mind picking up a couple of things for me?" She told me she'd do it, so I reached in my pretend purse, extracted some pretend money, and counted it out into her hand. I asked her to bring me a hamburger and a Coke, and I peeled off a couple more imaginary bills and suggested she might like to get something for herself.

My niece smiled as she drove her car to the far side of the room. I watched her climb out of the car, give her order and her pretend money to the imaginary Dairy Queen worker beside the draperies, then wait for her change and the food. Once that transaction was completed, she drove back to where I sat on the sofa and handed me the food I'd ordered. I thanked her profusely.

Her smile was so bright I decided to extend the game. "You know what?" I asked. "I'm thinking some ice cream might be good for dessert. If I give you some more money, would you go get us some ice cream?"

My niece's smile evaporated instantly. She rolled her eyes and gave me a look of exasperation. "I just got back," she said. "I'm not going again."

Heh! She's all grown up now. I can't wait for her to have a little girl of her own.