Who Needs the Pressure?

One-a-Day Redux
Day Seven:  Favorite

Favorite? I have to write about a favorite something? And I'm supposed to write something new? That seems impossible. I've been writing this blog for seven and a half years, so you know I've already written about most of my favorite things. In fact, a keyword search for "favorite" turned up pages and pages of posts.

I've thought and thought about today's topic and have thus far drawn a blank. I've run through numerous categories in my mind, and every time I've tentatively chosen a favorite something or other, that idea has been followed immediately by a second thought: "Okay, but what about ... ?" Then I'm back to trying to decide between two or more things I like equally.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I like too many things. It would be easier to write about least favorite things.

I'm reminding myself now that one of my favorite parts of getting older is that I feel freer to say no, freer to change my mind, and freer to break silly rules, especially silly, self-imposed rules. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm choosing not to post about today's topic.

So there!

". . . Yet You're My Favorite Work of Art . . ."

I've spent most of this day at the emergency room with one of my favorite valentines, my older daughter. She is at home now, recovering nicely from an unbearable headache that may have been caused by dehydration, stress, a migraine, or some combination thereof. The doctor couldn't be sure, but at least other, more serious possibilities have been ruled out, and an IV cocktail of fluids and medications got rid of the nausea and turned down the headache several notches.

Her sister, my other favorite valentine, spent her lunch hour at the E.R. with us, a thoughtful, pleasant visit that reminded me once again what it means to be a family. We stick together. When one of us hurts, we all do. And when we're together, even the sickest among us joins in the laughter.

I dropped off my ailing daughter at her house (where I hope she is sleeping soundly now) and came home to dig out some Valentine's cards my girls made when they were children. These letter-sized, cardstock Valentines--indeed, all the cards and drawings they made when they were little--are unquestionably my favorite works of art. I'm sure every mother among you understands why.

The card in the lower left-hand corner of the photo reads:

To My Family
I love you!
You are the 3 best and lovable people I know. I will love you all as long as I live.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Thank You
(inside) for being a wonderful family.

The card isn't signed, and I no longer remember which daughter made it. I guess it doesn't really matter. The number 3 has expanded over the years to include another couple of generations of family, but the sentiment remains strong. Any of us could have written the same thing today.

Happy Valentine's Day to those of you who firmly believe in the power of love and to those of you who need to believe in it. That should cover everybody.

Taking the easy way out

Do you feel guilty when you've neglected your blog for several days? I do. I feel as if I'm reneging on a promise I made to myself, although there never was actually any such promise.

Sometimes I get in a mood where I don't feel like talking, and that mood apparently carries over to writing, too. To be more specific, sometimes it feels as if communicating by any method whatsoever takes more energy than I have available, and the best thing I can do at those times is plop myself down in a quiet spot, plug myself in to one mindless activity or another, and let my batteries recharge.

So, because I'm feeling guilty, and because I haven't recharged enough to write (or even enough to power a pocket flashlight), I'm taking the easy way out with a meme.

I don't remember what this one's called or where I found it. The only rule is that all answers have to be exactly three words long. I won't tag anyone (which would require too much thinking), but help yourself if you like it--or if you have guilt issues of your own to assuage.

01. Where is your cell phone? On the charger.
02. Boyfriend/girlfriend? Long gone, thanks!
03. Hair? Cut it myself.
04. Your mother? Did her best.
05. Your father? Mostly wasn’t around.
06. Your favorite item(s)? Old family photos.
07. Your dream last night? Sorry, can’t remember.
08. Your favorite drink? Icy Diet Coke.
09. Your dream guy/girl? Handsome professor type.
10. The room you are in? Needs more light.
11. Your fear? Losing my independence.
12. What do you want to be in 10 years? Busy with hobbies.
13. Who did you hang out with last night? Two silly dogs.
14. What are you not? Energetic, neat, mean.
15. Are you in love? With my doggies.
16. One of your wish list items? More reading time.
17. What time is it? Fast approaching bedtime.
18. The last thing you did? Folded clean laundry.
19. What are you wearing? Comfy soft knits.
20. Your favorite book? Tademy’s Cane River.
21. The last thing you ate? One perfect banana.
22. Your life? Very few regrets.
23. Your mood? Is usually better.
24. Your friends? Few in number.
25. What are you thinking about right now? Chores still undone.
26. Your car? Unexciting imported sedan.
27. What are you doing at this moment? Limiting word usage.
28. Your summer? Heat, humidity expected.
29. Your relationship status? Content without one.
30. What is on your TV screen? Diamond jewelry commercial.
31. When is the last time you laughed? Today on telephone.
32. Last time you cried? Monday, March 19th.
33. School? Always wanted more.

New year, new beginning, clean slate, do-over

Back in November I wrote that Thanksgiving Day is my favorite day of the year. I must have been living in the moment or I would have remembered that New Year’s Day is my actual favorite. Thanksgiving runs a very close second.

New Year’s Day edges out Thanksgiving only because I get so excited when I anticipate the arrival of a new year. As much as I enjoy Thanksgiving, I don’t think much about it ahead of time. And when it gets here, my gratitude always seems to be about what is or has been.

New Year’s Day, on the other hand, is all about looking forward. I pretty much keep a running tally in my head of things that need changing in my life, so I don’t have to do a lot of reflection as the new year approaches. I know exactly which things I’d like to do better, more of, less of, differently. I enjoy wallowing in my old ways on the last few days of the year, knowing that once that magical calendar page turns, it’ll be a whole new ball game.

I fantasize that I will instantly become more energetic, more health-conscious, and better organized, and that I will vacuum more frequently. Those goals have carried over from one year to the next for several years now.

More realistically, I promise myself I will drastically decrease the number of times I say “a--hole” during morning drive time, even though the people to whom the term applies will still be on the road. I will drink no more than four Diet Cokes a day, and none after six p.m. I’ll use the DVR to record must-see TV that comes on at nine p.m. or later. That way I can go to bed earlier, read for half an hour or more, and still be able to get a good night’s sleep. Getting enough sleep is problematic for me, and I'm resolved to make it a priority this year.

Yesterday I stripped the bed and washed all the bedding, including the mattress pad, blanket, and bedspread. I wanted to go to sleep in 2007 and wake up in 2008 in fresh, clean sheets. Can you appreciate the symbolism of that gesture?

There were fireworks last night, of course. From just after dark until two in the morning, bombs burst in the air, each one accompanied by a whistle or an explosion of the sort that normally freaks out Butch and Kadi. I felt fortunate that the dogs seemed to be managing their fear better than usual. Butch found a good spot and stayed there without moving, asleep or pretending to be. Kadi’s eyes were visible, her pupils dilated enormously. She stayed close to my side but, in spite of her fright, didn’t attempt to climb on top of my head or shoulders even once. I thought that showed great improvement.

At bedtime I took the dogs outside one at a time, on an extra-long lead, to do their business. In the past they’ve refused to go, but last night they risked it, and at least one of us went to bed happy.

Butch curled up on his bed, and Kadi lay in her usual spot on mine, snuggled close to the body pillow that lies between us. She shivered and panted as the fireworks continued, but her behavior wasn't panicky. At midnight, when the outside noise was at its greatest, I stretched out my arm to pet her. Reaching for her in the dark, my hand encountered a giant wet spot right under her rear end. She may not have panicked in her usual way, but she’d peed in my nice, clean bed and lain right there in it for who knows how long.

So, my symbolic fresh start ended right there in the soiled sheets. But I will not view the peeing incident as an omen.

Happy 2008, everybody!

It's harder than it used to be

Blogging, that is. And dealing with changes, too.

My retirement gift to myself was a new computer. Having nearly pulled my hair out over repeated virus problems at home and at work, I took my daughter Kim's advice and bought an iMac. I'm very satisfied with the computer itself, but what I failed to realize was that some of my favorite software isn't available for Mac systems.

I like to write my blog posts in a word-processing program (where editing is easier) and transfer them to Blogger for posting. There used to be a version of WordPerfect (my old favorite word-processing standby) for Mac, but there isn't anymore. When I bought the new computer, I had to decide between Pages and Microsoft Word. I knew I wasn't nuts about Word, so I chose the less expensive Pages. So far I've been able to do everything I've needed in Pages, but it's always taken longer than it would have in WordPerfect. (Maybe I need to read that manual I bought instead of relying on the trial-and-error method.)

Also, the little keyboard that comes with iMac, streamlined and quiet as it is, isn't as comfortable for me as an older style keyboard. The keys are full-sized on the new keyboard, but they're closer together, too. The problems were worse because the arthritis in my right hand has increased during the last year. When I hold my hand flat and try to put my fingers together, there's a distinct "V" space between my middle finger and ring finger from the fingertips to the second joint. That made it very easy to type a semi-colon instead of an "l" on the closely spaced keys. For example, if I'd had the holiday spirit, I might have typed: "Deck the ha;;s with boughs of ho;;y; fa ;a ;a ;a ;a ;a ;a ;a ;a!" Fortunately, Kim came up with a spare, older-model keyboard that has made it much easier to keep my fingers where they're supposed to be.

Today I decided to do a little blog housekeeping and clean up the sidebar. Much to my surprise, somebody apparently broke Blogger while I was gone. The "drag and drop" page elements neither drag nor drop. I was able to edit existing elements, but I couldn't add anything to the sidebar, and I couldn't move anything from one spot to the other.

Have you experienced this problem, too? Do you know of other things that have changed about Blogger in the last year? Any good new features I might enjoy? Or bad things I may not have discovered yet?

Any tips will be appreciated.

Yesterday We All Died Laughing

Yesterday nine women--eight students and one instructor, all over the age of sixty--squeezed around an oval table in a pleasantly decorated room at the local center for senior citizens and took turns reading aloud to each other. It was the last class of our six-week session of Life Writing, and we were reading the homework that had been assigned at the end of the previous class: to write our own obituaries. Does that sound like fun?

You can't imagine how much fun it was. For one thing, we had snacks, brought from home to celebrate the completion of our writing course. We filled Halloween-themed paper plates with hummus and carrots, crackers and dip, caramel popcorn and fun-sized candy bars, then we chomped and chewed through eight recitations of death notices and the boiled-down biographies that accompanied them.

I think most, if not all, of us approached the assignment reluctantly, and, judging by the end results, we each approached it from a unique perspective. There were basic similarities, of course--names, dates, and lists of survivors--but there was so much more than that. The collection of readings ranged from poignant to humorous, from brief to expansive. There were burial instructions, last wishes, expressions of faith and love, and even some softly sung phrases from favorite funeral hymns. The experience we'd expected to be morbid turned out to be beautiful.

In between the readings, we talked. We talked about mortality, our own and that of loved ones, about special moments we'd personally experienced at funerals, about final gestures of love for the deceased. We spoke of the ridiculously high cost of publishing obituaries in the newspapers. We laughed about how squeamish our adult children are when it comes to discussing death and the decisions to be made in its aftermath. Somehow, in the years that have passed since we were their ages, we've begun to make peace with the inevitable. It was freeing to discuss end-of-life issues and ideas openly, to bat them around with no greater sentiment than if we were discussing plans for an upcoming ladies' luncheon.

The six-week Life Writing course that ended yesterday was the second session I've attended, the third for some, the first for others. Our instructor drives a long way to and from each class, but she keeps coming back, keeps urging us to dig deeper, write more, go into detail, tell our truths so that those who come after us can learn who we were and how we lived. And we do. We write about things that matter to us; in that way we get to know each other better and faster than we might if we were to meet under other circumstances. We write, we read, and along the way we build trust and friendship.

We're all different, the nine of us, and it's those differences that keep our stories fresh and interesting. What's most important about our stories, though, what makes us care about them and their writers, is that they remind us of the countless ways in which we're all the same.

Yesterday's class was reminiscent of the time just after a funeral's over, when family members and close friends gather at home, pull off their neckties or kick off their high-heeled shoes, eat comfort food from covered dishes delivered by thoughtful neighbors, and swap favorite anecdotes about the dear departed. They know there'll be plenty more crying in the days to come, but right at that moment it feels so darned good to laugh again.

Sixty Years Ago

Come with me today and let's travel all the way back to 1953. Dwight Eisenhower replaced Harry Truman as President of the United States in January 1953, a disappointment to my grandfather, who was a staunch supporter of Adlai Stevenson. That was the year Queen Elizabeth II was crowned queen. A polio epidemic in the U.S. frightened all of us, and the Korean War--never more than a blip on my underdeveloped radar--came to an end. Click here for a fun, closer look at 1953.

For a big part of that year I was ten years old and in the fifth grade at Phelps Elementary School. My teacher was Mrs. Challis, who lived directly behind us a few streets over, close enough that I could walk to visit her at home, which I did on more than one occasion.

This path led from the Phelps playground to my friend Leila Kammerer's

backyard. We met up at her house each morning and walked the path

to school together. (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the path

 was still there when my sister and I visited the school in 1996.)

My great-grandmother, Dora Elliott, passed away in October 1953. She was the first person I knew personally who died. I remember standing beside her open casket, hesitantly extending one forefinger to touch her lightly on the cheek. What a shock! That one touch of her body told me Grandma wasn't in there anymore, forever changing my understanding of death and making it less frightening. I have no memories of Grandma before she was senile, but I must have known her in better days, because I can still say the alphabet backward as quickly as forward, and some part of my brain remembers that it was she who taught me that.

Dora Hetherington Elliott in 1950

Movie theaters were great places to be in 1953, when 3-D movies became very popular. My favorite one, because it was so scary, was House of Wax. I'll bet you can smell the popcorn while you watch this movie trailer:

We got our very first television set sometime in 1953. Until then we gathered in the living room every night, each of us with something to keep our hands busy, and listened to our favorite radio programs. The big console radio kept us company in the daytime, too, first with my grandmother's soap operas (including Oxydol's Own Ma Perkins) and then with music, songs that evoked emotions and stirred dreams in me even as young as I was.

This picture, taken about 1956, is the only one I could find of our

big family radio, shown at left. My little sister and I are seated in

the chair. The young man on the phone behind us is a college student

who rented an upstairs bedroom. The birdcage behind him holds our

beloved Sugar, an avian character who deserves a blog post of her own.

  

I remember a lot of radio songs from 1953, some of which you probably know even if you weren't yet born then. One of them was particularly inspiring--possibly the first spiritually uplifting song that ever captured my attention--and still moves me today. In fact, that song is the inspiration behind this entire post and, yes, it's today's Saturday Song Selection. I hope you like it as much as I do. I believe you will.

The song is "I Believe" by Frankie Laine.

Thanks to texpaco for posting the song and its lyrics on YouTube.

Thanks also to Helpmemakethisfilm for posting the House of Wax trailer on YouTube.

Fulfilling Audrey's Ambition

Yesterday was delicious! The combination of warm sunshine and a gentle breeze tickled my senses and enticed me to stay outside and play ball with Levi and Gimpy slightly longer than I should have. Today I'm paying for it with a stuffy nose and watery eyes, and my shoulders and neck are a little pinker than they should be, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And that wasn't even the best part of the day.

Do you remember that I wrote last month about starting a blog to publish my Grandma Audrey's stories? Now that my own writing class has ended, I have time to tackle that project, so I began to think about what that blog should look like. I wanted it to reflect Grandma's tastes and personality, so I called my Aunt Shirley in Missouri early in the afternoon to ask her some questions. (Actually, because my eyes skipped up the page while I was dialing Shirley's number, I ended up talking to my Aunt Carol, too, which was the most delightful mistake I've made in a while.)

"What was Grandma's favorite color?" I asked Shirley. Hm. She didn't remember, but she has a picture of Grandma wearing a red blouse, so she may have liked red. And she wore a lot of prints. "Did she have a favorite flower?" Shirley said that Grandma didn't have time for gardening, having nine children and all, but there was definitely a spirea bush in the yard, because that's where the switches came from. Nine children, six of them boys? I guess Grandma did need a switch occasionally.

We talked and talked about Grandma's stories and about which of her children or grandchildren might be in possession of certain documents and photos Shirley remembered. Of particular interest were some letters Grandma found in her late Grandmother Amy's trunk, letters written in Amy's hand which were supposedly dictated to her by spirits. Yep, Amy was a spiritualist. Grandma wrote about her, and I'd love to see those letters. Shirley has already sent me lots of family photos and writings, and she promised more as soon as she can get someone to scan them. She's into this project as deeply as I am.

I told Aunt Shirley and Aunt Carol it would be a while before the blog was up and running, but while my mind was on it, I decided to go ahead and see if the url I wanted was available, which it was. I nabbed it, then put the title in, and the next thing I knew it was after one o'clock in the morning. Grandma's blog was up with photos and first posts and a poem she wrote about writing. The header is beige, representing the somber side of her I knew best, but the quilt in the background (Grandma was an avid quilter) has flashes of her fiery red side that others remember.

The name of Grandma's blog is Audrey's Ambition. I probably won't post there more than once a week, because the supply of her stories ceased in 1987 when she died, but I hope you'll visit there and read what she wrote. Most of her stories are presented as fiction but are actually autobiographical, with the names changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent.

There's a link to Audrey's Ambition in the sidebar (under "My Other Blogs") and another one on a tab under the header above. If those aren't easy enough for you, just click right here. Maybe it's just a wacky trait I inherited from Great-Great-Grandmother Amy, but I truly believe Audrey will know you're reading her stories. And I know that if she does know, she'll be so proud.

Audrey Smith Barclay

This little light of mine...

When my granddaughter was little, she used to visit my apartment and play on my computer. I'd draw pictures in the Paint program, and she'd color them right on the screen. We created characters of all shapes and sizes from the selection of facial features available in another favorite program. We could play for hours that way, and even before she could read, she could navigate her way through all of her favorite programs. Nothing she tried to do was difficult enough to make her give up.


One day when she was four, I left her playing at the computer while I went to take care of (ahem) pressing business. A moment later she hollered through the wall that the mouse had quit working, and I hollered back that I'd be right there. When I went back into the computer room, I found her crawling out from under the desk. "The mouse was unplugged," she said, "but I fixed it."

She's always had that adventurous, can-do attitude, and it's made her my hero. Where I was fearful and cautious as a child, she was born ready to take on the world. Where I was tentative, she was full speed ahead.

She's all grown up now, and she still radiates light and joy. Today's her birthday. I hope she feels as special as she is.

Favorites: a matter of taste

I keep a loose list of things to blog about; otherwise, I'll forget them. Apparently, that practice isn't too helpful, because a recent review of old posts proved I've already written about some of the things on my current list of blog ideas.

Okay, so I'll scratch 'em off. For now. I can't promise some old theme won't show up again.

I did discover, in going through the old posts, that some of them feel special to me, and I decided to list them as "favorites" in the left sidebar, underneath the archives. It wasn't too difficult to differentiate between the posts I "phoned in" and the ones I really wanted to write. But it was tough choosing favorites. So many old posts seemed as comfortable and familiar to slip into as the old pair of sandals I'm wearing now.

I made a long list and winnowed it down to twenty-five, not at all sure I'd come up with the same list if I were to do this exercise again. These posts are "favorite" only because they're special to me in some way. Some of them are about feelings or experiences, some make me nostalgic. Some were just plain fun to write, and some wouldn't be special at all except for the wonderful comments left by you, dear readers.

I tried to list these posts chronologically, with the oldest posts at the top so there wouldn't be any spoilers, but Blogger doesn't seem to offer that option. So, they're in alphabetical order, which, I guess, turns out to be pretty random after all.

I know that the fact these are my favorite posts doesn't mean they'll be yours. But maybe, if you're new to this blog, you might enjoy some of them. Or, if you're a long-time reader who visits here on a day when I haven't posted anything fresh, instead of hurrying to click the back-button, maybe you'll read something you've forgotten and give me a pass.

Elementary School: Before We Took the Blinders Off

Yesterday I registered for the September-October session of "Life Writing." It'll be my fifth time taking this class, and I can hardly wait to get started again. It's been difficult coming up with blog post ideas this summer, so I'm hoping that the assignment of specific topics in class will reawaken my writing muse.

In looking through my class notebook, I realized that I haven't shared with you my story on the subject of elementary school. You may recognize one or two incidents from earlier blog posts, but this was the first time I put it all down chronologically, grade by grade.

Depending on your age, parts of my story may closely mirror parts of yours. Please let me know if they do.

**********

The playground at the rear of Phelps Elementary School was five blocks west and one block south of the house my grandparents shared with us in Springfield, Missouri. Sometimes I switched up the route, placing the southward jog earlier in the journey, but I almost never walked the extra distance required to enter the front of the building. I started school there in September of 1948. The youngest student in my class, I wouldn’t turn six until the day after Thanksgiving.

Phelps School.

Photo courtesy of the Springfield-Greene County Library District.

Mother told me years later that she had walked to school with me every day of my first week in first grade, taking the most direct path to help me learn the way. The second week she walked a few steps behind, letting me take the lead. The third week, she said, she walked half a block behind me and carried a switch to keep me from turning around and heading back home. Fortunately, my opinion of school improved; it was soon my favorite place to be.

All the teachers at Phelps were women. So was the principal. The only man in the building was the janitor. All of the staff and all the students were Caucasian, most of us with surnames that originated in the British Isles. Nearly all of us were Protestant, predominantly Baptist. If any of my schoolmates were Catholic or Jewish, I wasn’t aware of it; we hardly ever compared notes about religion. A boy named Tony Robertson and I were the only two students in my class whose parents were divorced.

We started each day at Phelps by placing our right hands over our hearts and reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance,” changing our recitation in fifth grade when the words “under God” were added to it. In an era that was largely peaceful, we filed outdoors two-by-two for fire drills and occasionally practiced ducking under our desks in case the Russians bombed Springfield.

During the Christmas season the entire student body sat around an enormous tree in the main hall and sang Christmas carols. Once a week the music teacher rolled a piano into our classroom and taught us to sing “Oh, Susannah,” “The Erie Canal,” “The Marine’s Hymn,” “America the Beautiful” and other traditional songs. We also sang “Dixie” without giving a single thought to its history or its lyrics.

In art class we dabbled in poster paints, clay, and papier-mâché on brightly patterned oil cloth brought from home to protect our lift-top desks. The distinctive smell of the oil cloth was a favorite scent, as was the minty aroma of the white paste we used for art projects. Each February we decorated shoeboxes and cigar boxes with red and white crepe paper and passed out Valentines, but only to the kids we liked.

We joined after-school organizations that encouraged good citizenship and taught us important life skills, such as how to make Rice Krispie Marshmallow Treats. In second grade I was a Blue Bird. Instead of progressing to become a Campfire Girl, I dropped out and later switched to the Girl Scouts. No matter how many friends I made among the students, it was the teachers who meant the most to me.

Me, wearing brand-new Girl Scout uniform - 5th grade - 1953.

In this photo I was facing our house. The buildings behind me were

part of what was then Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

My first-grade teacher was Miss Davis. (We called them all “Miss,” though many of them were married.) Miss Davis was a grandmotherly woman with a kind face and fluffy silver hair. Wanting to learn the names of all those children I’d never met, I concentrated each morning as Miss Davis called the roll, beginning with Jimmie Paul Allen, on to me and then Jane Kay Burke in the B’s, and on through the alphabet as far as Edward Lee Wheeler. To this day, if I think of a child who was in my first grade class, I usually remember his or her middle name.

I took learning seriously and was apparently distressed when it didn’t go fast enough to suit me. Miss Davis once reported to Mother that she’d found me crying because I didn’t know how to spell elephant. She showed me how that day. Writing and arithmetic were fun, but it was reading that excited me. We whipped through the books about Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff and I wanted more, more, more. In April of 1949, near the end of first grade, I read for myself the newspaper article about Kathy Fiscus, a three-year-old California girl who fell into a well and died while the nation waited and prayed for her rescue. That’s my first memory of being deeply moved by something I’d read.

Second grade is a bit of a blur. I remember that my teacher was Miss Hutchinson, a perky young woman with a blonde pixie haircut, and I remember having a boyfriend, Bruce Crane (Alan Bruce Crane), a crush that carried over from first grade. Bruce was the son of our postman, and I liked him off and on all through grade school.

Compared to the other grades, third grade was the pits. Miss Butler stood only about half a head higher than her students and was as big around as she was tall. She couldn’t reach her feet to tie her shoes, so she’d show up each day wearing slippers and appoint one of us children to assist her into her work shoes. She was never without her wooden stick--one I now recognize as a conductor’s baton--and didn’t hesitate to use it. Miss Butler rarely smiled. What she did do, for which I’ll forever be grateful, was read to us every afternoon from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder that year and received a handwritten answer from her. I wish I knew what happened to that letter.

Miss McDonald taught fourth grade. She was tall and slim, with collar-length brown hair parted and swept to one side. She liked the theater and directed our class in two plays we presented to the whole school. The first was a Christmas pageant in which I played the non-speaking role of the innkeeper’s wife, and the second was Blue Willow, an adaptation of the Doris Gates book about the daughter of an impoverished migrant worker and the Blue Willow plate that was her prized possession.

By fourth grade I was riding my bike to school. Local ordinances prohibited bicycles on sidewalks, so I rode in the street, near the curb. One day, returning to school after I’d gone home for lunch, I saw a man come out of a house half a block away and get into his car, which was parked in my path. He didn’t start the car immediately, so I continued riding until I was about a car-length behind him, then stopped to wait until he drove away. I expected the man to drive forward, but he didn’t; he suddenly began backing up to turn onto a side street. I jumped off my bike but didn’t have time to pull it out of the way before he ran over it. The man leaped from his car and appeared to be horrified at such a close call. He tried to talk to me, but he was a stranger, so I left the broken bicycle in the street and ran all the way to school.

The lunch hour hadn’t ended yet. I ran past all the children on the playground and up the stairs to Miss McDonald’s empty classroom. She found me there minutes later, scared and shaken. As I tearfully explained to her what had happened, the principal arrived. The man had followed me to school, bicycle in his open trunk, to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I guess the principal had spoken with him and then gone from classroom to classroom in search of a child in distress. After a brief telephone conference with my mother, who was at work, it was decided that the principal would accompany me home to the comforting arms of Mammaw, my grandmother. The stranger who’d run over my bike drove us there.

Miss Challis was my fifth grade teacher. She lived close enough to us that I could ride my new bicycle (a gift from you-know-who) to visit her at home sometimes. The worst day of my elementary school career was the day of our fifth grade Halloween party. I don’t remember what my costume was supposed to be, but I recall teetering across the playground in Mother’s high heels and seeing Jim Burns, a big, strapping sixth-grader, punching on my fifth-grade classmate, Jimmie Allen. Jimmie was the smallest boy in every grade; I was a head taller than he was. I wobbled over to where they were and turned to face big Jim. I must have said some variation of the line about picking on “somebody your own size,” because that’s what he did. He socked me right in the stomach. I remember sitting in the playground dirt next to Jimmie and looking at my outstretched legs, the toes of Mother’s shoes pointing skyward as I sucked in big gulps of air.

By the time I’d recovered and made it upstairs to Miss Challis’s room, the temperature had begun to drop sharply and a light rain was falling. When the last of the jack-o-lantern-shaped cookies had been consumed and the dismissal bell rang, the rain had turned to sleet, and the air was so cold that the sleet was sticking to the ground. I didn’t know that Mammaw had driven to school to pick me up because of the nasty weather. She waited for me to come out the back of the building the way I always did, but I, not wanting to get fresh playground mud on Mother’s shoes, had gone out the front door. Mammaw and I missed each other. I trekked all the way home in those floppy high heels. Every few yards I’d have to stop and balance on the slick sidewalk to hitch up the borrowed nylon stockings that kept slipping out of their loose garters and falling to my ankles. The wet, droopy nylons were sheer misery.

In sixth grade I was in Miss Engleking’s class in the same classroom that Miss Butler had used when I was in third grade. Miss Engleking, tall and stout with tight, iron-gray curls, permitted no nonsense. When a boy named Luther annoyed the boy in front of him, John, by repeatedly thumping him on the head, Miss Engleking allowed John to choose the largest book he could find--an enormous dictionary--and give Luther one good whack over the head with it.

One day well into the school year Miss Engleking confronted me in the lunchroom as I passed the teachers’ table: “Someone told me you were singing a song about me being fat, and I’d like to hear it.” I hemmed and hawed, saying that I didn’t really remember what I’d been singing, that it was just something silly I’d been making up on the spot. “I want you to sing it,” Miss Engleking demanded. “Here. Now. Loud.” I did sing it, my head bowed, voice cracking in shame and embarrassment. When I finished, Miss Engleking surprised me. She laughed, and then she encouraged me. She told me the song was “very clever” and that I should write more to develop my writing skills. Then she added one more bit of advice: “Next time try to write something that will make someone feel good.”

We learned so much in the safe cocoon of elementary school. We had no idea how much more there was that we needed to know--or that we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to learn it.

Lazy Day

It's mid-afternoon and here I sit, still in my bathrobe. Here's a list of what I've accomplished so far today:

1. Um...
2. Er...
3. Ahem...

Okay, so it's a lazy day. And it's raining. I went back to bed for an hour at eight-thirty, having risen at six. The dogs have slept all day, scattered around the house in their favorite places. Two are curled up now, one on his back, sprawled out with his belly exposed, the fourth on his side, paws flapping and tale thumping against the floor while dreams take him on some grand canine adventure. 

I've had breakfast (Ritz crackers) and lunch (more Ritz crackers and a Diet Dr. Pepper). I read for a while after waking for the second time, first from a novel on my Kindle, then right here at the computer, checking must-read blogs and news websites.

I told someone the other day that I don't especially enjoy reading biographies, but today I remembered that I do like autobiographies and memoirs--a lot of them, anyway--so I started making a random list of some really good ones: Angela's Ashes, The Glass Castle, The Water Is Wide...

A perplexing question has just occurred to me: If I want to begin a sentence with the word "iTunes," do I capitalize the "i" or leave it lowercase? Either way looks wrong. Anyway, I've had music playing for hours, and I love the iTunes shuffle feature that surprises me by playing classical music after bluegrass or an old favorite hymn after Kid Rock. At this very moment I'm listening to an Irish tune, "Raglan Road," by Van Morrison.

I decided I'd try to work in a blog post because it bugs me when I go from one "Saturday Song Selection" to another one with nothing in between. How lame is that? The best thing about writing on the computer is the world of reference materials available at my fingertips. The answers to anything I'm curious about are just a few keystrokes away. (For example, I've just now learned that, yes, even at the beginning of a sentence, the Apple website spells "iTunes" with a lowercase "i." That's good enough for me.)

Kim is dog-sitting for friends this week. It's funny how different a day feels when no one is expected home at any certain time, and no one is expecting me to be anyplace else. It's a fact that I always have plenty of time to be self-indulgent now that I'm retired, but I don't usually do it with the same wild abandon I feel on days like today, when I'm alone and the hours on the clock are nothing but numbers. It's fun at first. Later on, until I get used to it again, it gets lonely.

The sound of toenails scratching frantically on wood a moment ago alerted me that Lucy is awake now and thought I was in my bedroom with the door closed. She apparently needed me--immediately! Her actions reminded me that there is some accountability in my life, that I'm responsible for feeding these fine, four-legged creatures at a predictable time, that even if dogs don't wear wristwatches, they clearly know when suppertime is approaching, that no matter how reckless and uninhibited I want to be with my own unscheduled hours, I need to rein myself in for their sake. And so I do. As quickly as that. I will not let them down.

Try this if you're so INKlined

My daughter Kim recently turned me on to a design technique called Zentangle®. I read online that it's okay to use that name as long as I include the following paragraph when writing about it:

The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas and is copyrighted. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

The hundreds (thousands?) of Zentangle images online make it obvious that I'm late to this arty party, but I'm enjoying it enough that I thought you might like to try it, too. It's relaxing, it can be done anywhere, and it doesn't require a huge investment in supplies. Paper, pen, and pencil are all you need. The experts prefer certain brands and types of those supplies, naturally, but you can use whatever you have on hand to try it out and see if you like it.

Zentangle basically consists of lines and doodled patterns put together on small sheets of paper, and it's incredibly easy (unless you're a perfectionist, that is). The art is in the overall look, not in the individual strokes. Thank goodness, because I mess up a lot of those simple little strokes.

I'm a little embarrassed to put my first efforts up here where you can compare them to some of the strikingly beautiful designs on the rest of the Internet, but I'll do it in the interest of showing you that even a beginner can achieve some interesting effects. With two exceptions, these are the only ones I've drawn, and they're posted in the order in which they were drawn. One exception is my favorite so far, and I've saved it for the end of this post. It isn't necessarily the best of the lot, but, for reasons I'll explain, it holds more meaning than the other ones. The other exception (I think it was the sixth one I drew) was messed up beyond repair, so I cut it out of my sketchbook and threw it in the garbage. (If you think a one-out-of-nine reject rate is too high for a novice, you should have seen some of the failures I created on earlier projects.)

Oh, another thing: I usually encourage you to click on my posted images to enlarge them and see them in greater detail. Not so in this case. Enlarge this set of images only if you want a close-up look at the hundreds of imperfections in these drawings. Sometimes, it seems, smaller images are more forgiving.

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One more thing I found interesting was that after I had done only a couple of these designs, I started noticing patterns in my environment where I'd never seen them before. There were patterns everywhere, and it was fun to see them pop out at me after years of blending in with the scenery. 

The following drawing is my favorite because I sat in my living room and picked out patterns I could see from right there on the end of the sofa. The connected black squares at the upper left (they're black squares, not white crosses) represent a wall hanging made of laquered metal squares connected by black bars. The top center design is my version of tall dried vines that stand in a vase near a doorway. Next to the vines is a silk philodendron, bordered on the right by a pair of drawer handles. Underneath the drawer handles sits a patch of rattan from the baskets under my coffee table. Below the rattan there are four pine cones like those piled up in a dish on the coffee table (except when Levi messes with them). At the bottom right is a design cast into a bronze lamp base. The shape at the bottom left is a curved chair arm with its nailhead trim. The pattern of the actual chair consists of narrow stripes similar to those shown in the center of this  chair-arm shape. For the outermost portion of the chair arm, I repeated the amoebic shape of a single large leaf from a botanical print on my wall. See what I mean about patterns everywhere?

If you're looking for something to keep your hands busy, you ought to give Zentangling a try. And if you do try it, please come back and tell us what you think about it.

Encroaching

Watch It Grow
The narrow patch of woods across the road from my house looks lush and thick. This summer's heavy rains have produced more greenery there than I've seen in the entire 15 years I've lived here. Beautiful, but as rapidly as these vines and branches are growing, I'm halfway expecting them to reach out and snatch a car off the road any day now.

Have to Go
Of course, those same rains have made the weeds grow faster, including these that are crawling through every little crack in my fence:

Set It Free
This butterfly (or is it a moth?), shown here flattening itself against the inside of my glass storm door, realized its mistake as soon as the door closed behind it. It tried desperately to get back out into the fresh air, but the cruel side of me made it wait until I had taken its picture.

Let Her Be
The neighbor's dog, Jelly Bean, was a guest in our home while her person was on vacation. She decided on her own that Gimpy's bed was the one that was "just right," and Gimpy kindly let her stay there for a long nap.

Can't Be Trusted
This ugly gecko had made its way inside a window screen, and I was concerned that it would somehow get around the edge of the window and into the house.

Oops! I'm Busted
I needn't have worried. As soon as it noticed me watching it, it scurried out the same way it had come in.

Take Care of It
This squat toad, about the size of a large egg, has taken up residence underneath the dogs' outdoor water dish. Since it probably dines on bugs that are traveling across my patio, I decided to let it stay. The dish is a big plastic square with a moulded round center that sits close to the ground, so the only spaces left for the toad are the four corners. This means that every time I pick up the bowl to fill it or to toss the water out of it at night (mosquito prevention), I have to be extremely careful not to set down any part of the bowl on top of the toad. I hope the toad appreciates my caution.

Gotta Love It
This is Kim's dog, Oliver, who has an open invitation to my house. The only problem? His favorite seat in the house is also my favorite seat. Fortunately, he's small; it isn't too difficult to scoot him over, even if he does grumble about it.

Happy Birthday, Wanda June!

Today is my mother's birthday. If she'd lived, she'd be 91 years old, which seems odd, since I can reach into my heart and pull her out at any age I remember her, but I can't imagine her being as old as 91. I don't think she'd have liked it much; the aging process was always her enemy.

Sixty years ago, when she was 31, she was the working mother of two daughters. She'd been divorced from our father for six years, and some of those years were lonely ones. In that summer of 1954 she played one record over and over. She said it was her favorite song and explained to me one day why the little things, the daily kindnesses a good man might show her, were more important than any material things.

Mother remarried in 1957, and she and my stepfather had a son together the following year. She lived until 1999, long enough to see her children grow up and to know and love her grandchildren and her first four great-grandchildren. I'm pretty sure she's still keeping tabs on all of us, including the little ones she never got to meet in person.

I don't know if this song remained her favorite for the rest of her life, but the fact that we had that little talk about it way back when has always made it special to me. A loving, lasting memory is the best kind of little thing.

The song is "Little Things Mean a Lot" by Kitty Kallen.

Thanks to robynfentyfan for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Favorite Words to Live By

One-a-Day Photo Challenge

Day Seven:  Favorite

It's been somewhere around forty years since I first heard Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata" recited by a group of sixth-graders, twenty-seven years that a framed copy of it has been hanging in my home, and nearly seven years since I wrote here about how much it means to me.

It now hangs over a bookcase near my backdoor, where I come face-to-face with it a dozen times a day and stop to read it more often than you'd expect after all these years. It covers many of the basic premises of the Bible, except they're mostly stated as dos instead of don'ts. I like that about it. I also like that it doesn't contain any references to hellfire and damnation. While threats can be motivational, I suppose, they've never inspired me at all.

Here's the text so you can "go placidly" and be inspired yourself:

DESIDERATA

by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.  <<>>  Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.  <<>>  Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.  <<>>  Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.  <<>> Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.  <<>>  You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.  <<>>  Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.  <<>>  With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Chocolate Choices

While washing the dogs' dishes at the kitchen sink yesterday, I noticed a box of candy canes I'd stashed on a window shelf while Kim and I were making Christmas candies last week. I looked at them longingly, then tossed them in the trash. They aren't even close to being my favorite candy, but I knew I might break down and eat some if I didn't get rid of them.

It occurred to me this morning that giving up sugar and other carbs may not be a resolution, but it's clearly a re-solution--something that has solved a problem once and now must solve it all over again. I totally blew it over the past couple of months. I cheated big time at a Halloween party, overindulged at Thanksgiving, and didn't pay close attention to staying on program in between. Then came the Christmas holidays. We made cookies and candy, and Kim made a cannoli-filling dip (OH-EM-GEE!), and if you'd seen me stuffing all those sweets into my mouth, you'd have thought I was in training for some nationally recognized eatathon.

Anyway, candy is what I wanted to write about today, but the two paragraphs above are not what I intended to write about candy; you may disregard them if it's not too late.

 

What I wanted to discuss is store-bought candy, specifically, the kind of assorted chocolates that come in a box with a neatly labeled flavor diagram in the lid. A neighbor brought us a box of those this year, and they started me thinking.

When I was a kid and my mother worked at the stock exchange, the wealthy old men who visited her office daily to watch their investments were a rich source of boxed chocolates every Christmas. We're talking big boxes, most of them with more than one layer. Candy boxes didn't come with diagrams in those days, which is why Forrest Gump's mother was able to say, truthfully, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

That uncertainty was a problem at our house. I gagged at the thought of accidentally biting into a jelly-filled chocolate, and I don't know if the jelly or something else was my little sister's least favorite, but she and I both had our dislikes and preferences. We learned early on that we could pick a chocolate out of the box, plunge a small thumb far enough into the bottom of it to expose the filling, and, if we'd been careful, nobody could tell from the top that it had been disturbed. There would come a time in the life of each box when the only chocolates left in it were the broken-open rejects that even the adults didn't like.

I'm pretty sure I continued the chocolate-poking practice into adulthood, probably passing the technique along to my children, but it's been years and years since I've done that disgusting thing. Probably, I'd say, about as many years as it's been since candy companies started putting diagrams in the lids.

So, here's what I want to know from those of you old enough to remember when assorted chocolates didn't come with labels: Did you gratefully accept whatever flavor life imposed on you, or did you find a way to work around that?

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In keeping with tradition, I wanted the first Saturday Song Selection of the new year to reflect the theme of the post, so I started looking for songs about sugar or candy. The best one I found, musically speaking, is good enough that it just this minute became the first song I've downloaded in the new year. If you like your music (and maybe your chocolate) on the dark side, you can click here to listen to The Grateful Dead sing "Candyman." That one doesn't fit the mood of the post, though, so I'll go with one that's super energetic, the way a good sugar high ought to be: 

The song is "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies.

Thanks to Todd S for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Saturday Song Selection: Shenandoah

One of my all-time favorite songs is one I first heard when I was really, really young. The lyrics refer to the "wide Missouri"--the river, not the state where I spent my childhood. Nevertheless, every time I hear the song, it takes me to the state of Missouri again. It takes me home.

The song has been recorded by so many different artists I can't count them all, but I've never heard a bad version of it. This rendition just might be my favorite:

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The song is "Shenandoah" by Sissel.

Many thanks to Somewheremaybe--especially for the beautiful images--and for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

What do you make of the election returns?

If you're like me (and happen to live in the U.S.) you're gonna be glued to the TV tonight, watching election returns with your fingers crossed. If you want to take a break to stretch your legs--and your mind--join me in one of my favorite childhood games.

What do I make of the election returns? Well, here's what I made out of the word RETURNS: nest, nets, nuts, rents, rest, reruns, runs, runes, rust, ruts, sent, set, stern, stun, sure, tens, terns, true, turns. (Ha! Some of these words seem appropriate to the context.)

Add to my list if you want, or start your own with words made from ELECTION or POLITICIANS. You don't have to do it all at once. Put up a few words, then come back later and add more.

If you aren't sure about a word, here's a link to one of my favorite resources: dictionary.com.

My other option for a blog subject tonight was how I think everyone should have voted and why. Somehow, the word game choice seemed a whole lot safer.

Have fun!

Picture perfect weekend

What a great weekend! It included visits, phone calls and e-mail chats with some of my favorite people and a trip to one of my favorite places. In addition, my son-in-law came over on Saturday and gave my lawn its first haircut of the season. The monster dandelion is gone, the fig tree is sprouting new leaves, and the tangelo tree has tiny blossoms. All is right in my little corner of the world.

On Sunday my daughter invited me to go with her to either the zoo or the plant nursery, and I picked zoo. I loooove the zoo. When I was a kid, I used to sniff the telephone poles on our street because the smell of creosote reminded me of the monkey cages. The Baton Rouge Zoo is missing that terrific monkey/telephone-pole scent, but it more than makes up for it. It's so clean and beautiful that I'd pay to see the flowers and plants. The animals are just a wonderful bonus.

We went mid-morning and thought we'd beat the heat by going so early in the year. That didnt' happen. After a couple of hours we were both miserable and red in the face from the humidity, so we decided to cut out early and leave some animals unvisited (sorry, otters and giraffes). All day long I assumed that I must have become an even bigger wuss than I'd previously admitted to, but last night the weatherman reported that the day's high temperature was a record-breaking 90 degrees. In the middle of March? You've got to be kidding me!

Despite the heat, we had a great time. My daughter recently bought a camera just like my new one, and between the two of us we took almost 700 pictures. Last night I combined her shots and mine into one computer folder, where I oohed and aaahed while I sorted them until after midnight. Hope you enjoy these samples.


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