Author Archives: mkea

Digger

My mom once saved a hamster from being roadkill.  It was a fall evening, and my mother, my sister, and I were on our way to Montgomery Ward, which for those of you under the age of 50 was a discount department store.  There was a major intersection near our house, bordered on three corners by pear orchards, with a shopping center on the fourth.  As we waited at the stoplight, we saw a small critter in the streetlights, skittering back and forth in the middle of the intersection. 

“What is that?  Is that an animal?”

“It’s a hamster!  Mom, it’s a hamster! It’s going to get run over!”

So Mom pulled over, grabbed an empty black paper Montgomery Ward bag, and made her way to the middle of the intersection.  Somehow she managed to shoo the rodent into the open bag and avoid being roadkill herself.  We folded down the bag, and Mom drove us home.   To me and my sister, this was all perfectly logical.  Something needed saving, so we saved it.

“Daddy, we found a hamster!”

“Mom saved it! It’s in this bag!”

My poor father was beleaguered his entire life by the shear number of non-human living beings that found their way to our home.  He just hated it, and we ignored his hating it.

With a heavy sigh he took the bag, and looked in.

“Oh for criminy sakes, that’s a gopher!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the teeth!”, he cried, making a gopher face with his front teeth hanging over his lower lip.  “You risked your life for a damn gopher!  Get rid of it!”

“Oh.  Rats.”  Lisa and I were disappointed.  We thought we had a new pet.

We drove to one of the pear orchards, and set our rescued friend free, before continuing our journey to Montgomery Ward.

Fast forward about fifty years. 

Montgomery Ward is history,, but I have a gopher in my backyard!  He’s really cute, and he does look a lot like a hamster, except of course for two huge long teeth.  

I don’t begrudge the gopher a little space.  Our dog Ziggy, however, thinks Digger, as I call him, is here to play.  At first, there were just one or two gopher holes.  But then Ziggy would stick his nose in a hole as far as it would go, and start frantically digging.  At one point he dug so deep his entire head was in a hole.  Digger doesn’t like the intrusion, so every time Ziggy digs, so does Digger.  Add to that Roy, who is much like Ziggy, maniacally running around shooting airsoft pellets down the holes, and you’ve got one very busy gopher.

There are two problems with this.  One, my lawn is a mess of holes.  And two, Ziggy keeps bringing a ton of mud into the house and it’s a heavy job keeping up with the transfer of topsoil indoors.

He actually caught Digger once, and we all frantically ran outside to rescue him from Ziggy’s jaws.  Well, Julia and I were on a rescue mission. Jackson and Roy were just bloodthirsty.

“Drop it!” I commanded in my mom voice.  Ziggy does not like my mom voice.

He did drop Digger, it was my mom voice, after all, and one of the kids corralled Ziggy and locked him in the house.  We were terrified Digger was mortally wounded.  His fur was wet, but we couldn’t tell if he had been punctured.

“You should have just let me shoot him!” Roy said hopefully, lifting his airsoft gun.

“Let me put him out of his misery,” Jackson said, grabbing a shovel.

“No, it wouldn’t be quick, you’d have to keep hacking at him!” I cried.  “Let him go home and die in peace.”

So we watched as Digger dug just a little, then stopped and stared at us, although I understand gophers have very poor vision.  Then he turned, and dug a little more, stopped, dug some more, until pretty soon he had a small depression, and he hunkered down in it.  Then he frantically dug at one end of his little depression until he connected with one of his tunnels, and disappeared.

Ziggy still sniffed the holes, which we tried to fill in, but Digger was gone.

Until…he was back.

Digger was only gone for a few days before he returned full force, and Ziggy was on the prowl.  As Ziggy dug into Digger’s fresh holes, Digger would just move along with new holes, thus spreading the destruction, and the dirt, like before.

Jerry bought a “Gopher Hawk”, a trap that drives a spike through the gopher like a stake through a vampire’s heart.  I forbade him from using it.  I didn’t want to kill Digger, I just wanted him to move along.  Instead, I bought two live traps, baited them, and set them outside fresh holes. Following the instructions, I was careful to use gloves so the traps didn’t smell like human.  Every couple of days I moved the traps to whatever holes looked freshest.  Jerry had also bought stakes that make noises only the gopher can hear, and moved them periodically. 

This went on for some time with no progress, and Jerry was foaming at the mouth to use his Gopher Hawk.  Then, we saw fresh holes on the far side of the lawn, quite a distance from the original mess.  Ziggy was immediately sniffing and digging for gold.  Um, gopher. 

And that’s the last we saw of Digger.  I was pretty sure the new holes were just a stop on his way under the fence to our neighbor’s yard.  The old woman who owns that house had a major stroke a couple of years ago, and no longer ventures outdoors.  Her pot smoking grandsons and their girlfriends have moved in.  No way they will even notice any holes in the yard. 

Well, so long Digger.  Maybe the neighbors are growing pot back there and you can get yourself some good cannabis roots.  Mellow out, chill in your tunnels.  Party on, dude.

Except…it was a clever gopher ruse.

Observe along the rose bushes that border the house in the other direction, through the weeds and to the other fence. 

Little piles of dirt in a line.  Then, a perfect gopher hole, and another, closer and closer to the fence.

No, Digger, no!  Abort, abort!

Not that direction!

Because on the other side of that fence, is the most perfect yard ever.  If I took a photo, you would think it was photoshopped. Pests don’t dare cross the line.  No weeds dare grow. Nobody will be furtively trying to return a Gopher Hawk to Amazon in that house.  They probably have an entire arsenal of extermination weapons.

I put out the humane traps again, but obviously Digger’s tiny brain works better than I gave him credit for. 

Ziggy showed no interest in these holes, not even sniffing, so it could be too late.  I’m still keeping a close watch, however.  Because in that area of our yard are raised vegetable beds.  You see where I’m going with this.  If I find vegetables being eaten from the roots up, we are going to have a problem, my little friend and I.  Don’t mess with my food source, dude.  I have food aggression.  There’s still an unopened Gopher Hawk in my entry hall. 

Don’t make me use it, Digger.  Don’t make me use it.

Wrapping Up Christmas

My kids ruined Christmas for me.

Or maybe they just ruined me for Christmas.

When they were small, I made a concerted effort every year to remind my children of the true meaning of Christmas.  We had an advent calendar with little pockets.  I drew an outline of a stable and taped it to the wall next to the advent calendar.  In each little pocket would be stickers I had made to complete the scene: stars, the star, sheep, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph, and of course, baby Jesus.  They each would remove a sticker and stick it onto the make-shift nativity scene. Naturally, they fought over who got what sticker, or who removed a sticker first.  “Christmas,” I would say, ‘is a birthday party for Jesus, where everybody gets presents.” Santa? He was a good soul who loved Jesus and children so much that he flew all around the world to help good little children celebrate.

We had a real nativity scene, too.  By “real”, I mean little clay figures.  Not real people.  But those little clay figures look like toys to kids, and mine were no exception.  They couldn’t keep their hands off, and frankly, I was happy they noticed it.  Unfortunately, the inevitable happened, and baby Jesus broke.  I glued Him back together, but He was never the same.

Regardless of how I phrased it, there were presents to look forward to. So, three kids.  Maybe 10 presents each, plus stockings.  Five or so for my husband, gifts for my sister, my dad’s sister Niki, my mother’s brother Joe and his wife.  Every year, we spent Christmas Eve at Niki’s house.  This was a lifelong family tradition, but it meant getting home late and still having to wrap presents, even though I always tried to get as much done before Christmas Eve as I could.  I would literally be up all night trying to finish the wrapping.  I’d get an hour or two of sleep before the greedy little bast….uh, little darlings came in to wake us up to see what Santa brought. 

I wasn’t willing to let some fat old man take all the credit, so there would always be three presents each, wrapped in different paper, and placed away from all the others, that Santa would leave in the living room.  Of course, all the coolest stuff came from Santa.  But the rest came from Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas day would be spent first at church, then cooking and cleaning, since the family came to our house Christmas day.  It was a formal meal with fancy tablecloths, real napkins, china, crystal,  and silver.  That’s how my mom always did it, so that’s how I did it.  I don’t have a large formal table, or even a small formal table, but I would set up folding tables and chairs in the family room, and bring out the finery.  

In between all that fancy stuff, I helped Jerry wrestle toys out of packages, and assemble. Have you tried helping a kid get a toy out of the box it came in?  There are endless plastic sheathed wire ties.  It takes forever.  Heaven help you if the thing then needs to be put together.  And you’re in deep doo-doo if you forgot to buy batteries.  There is nothing like a kid getting the toy of his dreams Christmas morning, and not being able to play with it because his exhausted parents forgot to buy batteries.  Hell hath no fury.

My aunt eventually passed away, and then everybody also came to my house Christmas Eve, although it was casual, since I would still host a formal dinner the next day.  Nevertheless, it meant a late start on finishing the wrapping.  Up all night.

Add a couple more kids to the mix.  We are talking some serious wrap loads, now.  Over fifty gifts every year, kids, husband, parents, sibling combined.  Eventually the Christmas Eve tradition fell away as my parents became too elderly to come to my home, and my sister and I split Christmas and Thanksgiving duties.  But I started moving slower, too, and caring for my parents filled the hours I would have spent wrangling little ruffians, so it never seems I have any more time.

I also have a little cottage industry, sewing a product for ice skates.  It all started when my daughter was figure skating, and it makes a great gift.  A great Christmas gift.  So I get a ton of orders from November 1-December 20, and I’m exhausted every year.  And all the sewing makes it hard to keep up with the wrapping.

My point?  I’m still working my ass off right through the Christmas season! 

It ends a little earlier, though.  I can come home from Christmas dinner and not have to wash china or build toys.  I can sleep.

But I long for the day when I can sit back and enjoy Christmas.  When I can slow down, enjoy picking out a reasonable number of gifts, sip a hot toddy by the fire Christmas Eve instead of being up until dawn wrapping.  I don’t know what’s in a hot toddy, but it sounds good.  And our fireplace doesn’t draw well, so unless we renovate, there won’t really be a fire.  Not even the fake yule log on TV because we ditched cable service as an unnecessary expense.  I guess I could find it online.  And if you read “No Place Like Home”, you know the seating options here are limited…

So we are really talking about sitting at my computer at the kitchen table, sipping something that isn’t as cheery as a hot toddy, but hopefully alcoholic.

Except what does that mean?  There is no one to give gifts?  All the kids are grown and gone, and we are alone?  There are no grandchildren?  Santa isn’t real?

And if I’m honest, I really, really miss having little kids, and not just at Christmas. 

And I miss the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, the fancy kind my aunt always had.

I miss hearing an excited little voice cry out, “Just what I wanted!”

I miss fighting over the advent calendar stickers.  I even miss broken baby Jesus.

I guess I don’t really want things to change after all, but they already have, and they will change more.  However, I have five children.  And one can assume they will each have children.  I’m going to have a heck of a lot of grandchildren.  Which means a lot of gifts.  And parents who would be happy to have some help wrapping, and fighting toys out of boxes and putting them together.  The wrap load isn’t going to get lighter, it’s going to increase exponentially. 

So fix me a hot toddy, and make it a double.  I’ll drink it while I wrap. 

No Place Like Home

My children come from a broken home.

Literally.

Our home is broken. 

The microwave doesn’t micro any waves.  The glass stovetop is held together with duct tape.  The washing machine sounds like a freight train, and it costs less to buy a new one than it would to repair this poor thing that has lived such a hard life.

All but one of us uses the guest bathroom to shower because the master bath is almost exactly the same as it was in 1964, except no longer new and shiny.  Try old and nasty.  We did change the toilet to a Toto many years ago, since the company’s claim it could flush a golf ball erroneously made us think it could handle this family’s output.  Toto toilets have different insides than the standard chain and valve toilet.  There is some sort of plastic tube shaped gadget that is responsible for the flushing.  Something is wrong with ours because when you flush it, it sounds like a fog horn, and is just about as loud.  Or maybe it’s just howling in distress.

Six people using the tiny guest bath with poor ventilation has led to the entire bathroom rusting.  The faucet handles are rusted and can’t be removed without breaking the porcelain.  Same for the pipes that lead from the wall to the pedestal sink.  All around the edges of the medicine cabinet mirror is, you guessed it, rust.  The bathroom window is cockeyed and the seal broken between the double panes, so there is something funky living in that space between.  However, it is very easy to open if you forget your keys and need to break in.  I can attest to that personally. 

There are two pocket doors in the house but the tracks to both were broken years ago by boys roughhousing.  Since fixing them means cutting into the sheetrock to replace the tracks, the doors remain stuck forever between the walls.

I don’t have enough chairs to seat people at the kitchen table even if the table were available for seating.  The matching wooden chairs broke one by one over the years, and then most of the folding chairs.  In the living room, our lovely sofa made it through three cats until Toby came along and shredded it to pieces.  I keep covering the shred with a throw blanket, and the should-be-grown kids keep pulling it down to use as a lap blanket, and never replace it.  The matching chair started to fray at the arms and someone who refuses to confess picked at it until all the stuffing is exposed.

In the family room, the sliding glass door has no handle.  There’s a finger sized whole where the handle should be that works great for opening and closing, unless you have sausage fingers.  Then you have a problem.  The lock is a 2×4 cut to just the right length to fit behind the closed glass pane.

The box spring on my bed has also been shredded to pieces by my fat cat, and the mattress has a Jerry-sized valley on one side.  I cuddle up to my husband at night but then I roll downhill into his valley and can’t get out.  It’s safer to stay on my side. 

The decay has spread from major installed appliances to small appliances.  I took out our blender when preparing desserts a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and it was broken.  I bought a new one at Best Buy, but the motor burned up as soon as I plugged it in.  And it didn’t even blend first.  Thanksgiving morning, our trusty coffee maker wouldn’t make any coffee.  The green light came on but the machine moved no water.  I ended up boiling water and pouring it slowly through the filter. 

We had so many plans for this fixer of a house when we bought it almost 20 years ago.  We fixed some things right away, but those things now need to be fixed again.  Five kids and years of crisis after crisis have taken their toll on the house and on our finances (not to mention our psyches, but that’s another story).  No repairs are in sight.

My kids don’t care; they have friends over with no shame.  But me?  If you come to my door, I’m going to block your entry.  We can chat on the porch.

I know it’s all surface nonsense.  The roof is sound, thanks to my dad paying for a new one once we could see daylight when we looked up in the attic.  The walls are solid and the doors all close (well, except the pocket doors).   

This house has raised three kids which became five, seen the birth of a child, four high school graduations (fifth pending, he’s a senior), been home to many beloved pets, and witnessed untold laughter, tears, celebrations and arguments. 

It’s been a home.  And really, what more could I ask?

That’s Right!

My husband said I’m a “know-it-all”, but he’s wrong.  A know-it-all is someone who expounds with great detail on every subject as if he (and I say “he” because, let’s face it, they’re usually men) were an expert, regardless of his actual expertise.  I, on the other hand, do not claim to know much about very many subjects.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  My husband has arrived at his misguided conclusion not because I present myself as an expert on all things, but because I’m always right.

Yes, you read that correctly.  I’m always right.  Not that I never make mistakes!  No, no, I’m hardly perfect.  I’m just right.  This is the privilege bestowed upon wives by God as compensation for all the stress, frustration, hurt, and anger that are the by-products of  loving a man.  It’s also a little salve on the wound from that whole apple incident.  The snake was a male, after all, who talked a woman into doing something she wouldn’t have done otherwise, all with false promises.  Sound familiar, ladies?

But let’s get back to my being right.   You cannot win an argument with me, especially if you are my husband.  I stick to my subject, I do not enter the battlefield unprepared, and I never surrender.  And because my husband constantly antagonizes the enemy without even realizing it, I usually also have the advantage of surprise.

Now my husband, on the other hand, will stray from the subject, and go for the personal attack.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  Silly man.  That tactic simply strengthens my stand, and adds to my arsenal.  If the argument is about subject XYZ, then stick to XYZ.  Don’t attempt to disarm me with arrows to the heart.  I will simply pull them out and use them against you. 

Even when I’m wrong, I’m right.   If I am in the midst of discussing an issue about which I feel strongly, and my husband points out an area of weakness in my stance, I can accept that, and I will.  And that, my friend, is his mistake.   When I admit fault on one aspect, but do not concede the battle, my sincerity makes the rest of my argument even more convincing. 

But truly my greatest strength is stamina.  When I am passionate in my belief, I will not surrender.  Men are stronger physically, but when it comes to pure endurance, us ladies have ‘em beat.  Literally.  My poor husband will eventually become so exhausted he will simply concede.  So therefore, even if I were wrong, which I never am, I would be right, by default. 

Fortunately, I never use this privilege of right for wrong.  I only exercise this right to be right when my husband is clearly wrong.  Which, of course, is any time he disagrees with me about any serious issue.  Also, any time he does or fails to do something that results in my feelings being hurt.   But I never, ever abuse this privilege just to puff up my feathers.  That would be wrong, and because I’m never wrong, that would make it right, and making something that wrong right, would be wrong.

Right?

Ziggy

My “dog” Ziggy is a little…well…he’s weird, OK?

I say “dog” in quotes because we’re not really sure he is a dog. 

Think Lilo and Stitch.

Dog?

Ziggy is a mutt.  To our knowledge, he is part pit bull, dalmatian, and Labrador.  White with very pale brown spots, except on his ears where the spots are prominent, he has a huge black nose, and is fair skinned.  His neck is oddly long, sometimes making me think he might be part Loch Ness Monster, too.

A little over a year ago, we said goodbye to our dog Maggie.  She was a one hundred pound black lab, very smart, and so sweet.  This was the dog my children grew up with.  It was obvious she was growing frail and nearing the end of her life, but I kept praying nothing catastrophic would happen while our oldest son was away at college.  It was not to be. 

When she could barely walk one morning, and her always thumping tail was down and still, we knew we had run out of time.  My daughter rushed back from San Francisco, my other daughter skipped class, and we all gathered around Maggie at the vet’s to say our final goodbyes.  We said a prayer together, thanking Jesus for the years of joy she had given us, and asking him to welcome her into his kingdom.  I whispered into her ear, “My grandfather will take care of you.  He loves dogs.  His name is Joe.”  She raised an eyebrow, and turned her head to look me in the eye.  And we pet her softly as she passed from this life.

Now, Maggie was a couch potato.  But Ziggy?  Ziggy is constantly on the go.  It’s exhausting. We think he has ADHD, hyperactive-impulsive type.  His favorite thing of all time is to chase the damn ball, chew it to pieces, and chase it some more.  He won’t exactly bring it back to you, but he will drop it nearby.  Then he takes off running before you’ve even thrown it.  Jerry says that’s cheating. Ziggy will scratch at the door, go out and immediately turn around to look at you, crouched, ready to take off.  If you don’t throw a ball, but shut the door instead, he scratches at the door again.  When you open it, he looks at you and gets into position to run.  So you close the door.  And he scratches again.  This can go on indefinitely, so we often end up just leaving the dag-burn door open.  It’s easier.

Jerry got so tired of going out and throwing balls that he would throw the ball out the open door from his armchair.  Except he kept missing.  There were ball marks on the ceiling, on the wall, and any number of times I thought he would break the glass door.  For Christmas I bought him a dog ball shooter, so he can sit in his chair and fire a more precise aim out the door.  Twice Ziggy ran so fast chasing the ball that he didn’t pay attention to where he was going and ran headfirst into the fence, breaking a board.  Twice.  Twice, he hit his head so hard against the fence that a board broke, kung fu style.  Then he returned with his ball to play again.  He was completely unaffected.  How could that be?  Is his skull really that thick? Was he trained to use his head as a weapon?  Is he a genetic mutant?

Sometimes Ziggy is so happy when he goes outside, that he leaps for joy, like a gazelle.  He launches himself into the air, front legs forward, rear legs stretched out behind him, and floats through the air in pure joy.  It’s odd and beautiful.  I want to feel that kind of joy!

Another activity he enjoys is spying on our neighbors.  He peaks through a crack or knot hole in the fence, and just stares, not moving a muscle.  It’s like he’s catatonic, he becomes so entranced.  He doesn’t bark or pace back and forth, he just freezes and stares.  I’m tempted to find my own knot hole to see what’s so interesting.

Ziggy’s ears are bent at the top, but sometimes his left ear pops up straight.  And he winks his right eye. There’s a message there, but I’m missing it.  Katie studies American Sign Language, ASL.  Is this some sort of dog sign language, DSL?   I asked her what he was trying to communicate, but she just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, Mom.  He’s weird.”

But by far the strangest thing this guy does is sit on his bucket.  There is a large green plastic bucket with a lid in the backyard that is now officially his.  He likes to knock it around, then when it is on its side, sit his butt down on it, with his front legs on the ground, like a person would sit on a bench.  He has done this many times.  We have seen him playing with his ball, then stop to sit on his bucket, gazing lovingly at the ball in front of him.

Now, Ziggy came from Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF), which is within walking distance of our home.  Just down the street from ARF is the Joint Genome Institute.  Originally this organization was the Human Genome Project, but that Rubik’s Cube has been solved, so they have moved on to other mysteries of DNA.  The Joint Genome Institute is part of the Department of Energy, but I’m pretty sure this is just a ruse.  Does anybody really know what they do?  Their website uses a lot of words to tell you nothing specific.  Wikipedia says “the JGI has been a user facility that advances genomics research in a broad range of disciplines where DNA sequence information is likely to drive scientific discoveries”.  Well that leaves the door wide open, doesn’t it?

Supposedly they work on plant and fungal genomes, and I’m sure they do.  As a cover.  But I think there’s some really strange shit going on there, and my dog is proof.

We are convinced Ziggy is the result of some weird-ass DNA experiment.  Maybe he escaped, maybe they send their living lab rats, er, dogs, to ARF for further observation in the human world.  Maybe when the dog is staring through the fence, he’s being controlled by another source we cannot see, that is downloading information from the pet microchip implanted in his neck that they told us was to identify him if he were ever lost.

We may never know.  We are all probably participating in some larger purpose for humanity. Or warfare.  Or something.  But it’s big, and it’s important.  Probably.  Or he’s just a weird dog.

He fits right in.          

Welcome home, Ziggy.  If that is your real name.

Katie and Roy

Our family was transformed in the summer of 2008.  It was then that my husband and I met our two children, Katie and Roy, and the three children we already had – Julia, Jackson, and Jamie – welcomed two new siblings.  Technically it didn’t all come about so quickly, and it would be four more years until Katie and Roy shared our home for good, but they were a part of our family long before that.

I met them first.  Katie was a wild thing, like an animal uncaged.  She used each minute to have as much fun as possible, to live as much as possible.  You could see the energy coming off of her in waves. Roy was clingy, desperate for attention and affection.  Both were extremely thin, and very hungry.  Roy was eight years old, had just finished second grade, yet he was only as tall as Jamie, who was six.  He had just lost his two front teeth, whereas most children I knew had lost them in kindergarten or first grade. 

It was clear from the beginning that something was wrong with their home life.  The more time they spent with us, the more obvious it was that they were neglected, at best.  Possibly more than neglected.  They spent a lot of time at our house, and never wanted to leave. 

Roy, who couldn’t say his r’s, cemented himself in my heart permanently the day he asked, “Can you buy me fwom my dad?”

“Well, I would if I could, but it’s against the law to sell children,” I explained.

He thought about this for a minute, then asked, “Can you give them away?”

When I explained that yes, in some circumstances you can go to court and a judge will say if a child can live with somebody else, he said “I’m going to ask my dad tonight to give me to you.”

I can still see his snaggletooth grin, his skinny body in his borrowed swim trunks, planning a way to come be with us forever.

This is a long story of abuse, neglect, drugs, and other ugliness, and all the ways in which the system did not work.  Said system is geared to protect the rights of the parents more than the rights of the children, despite horror stories you hear of the reverse.  The ugliness has been told elsewhere in writing, to the court.  It doesn’t bare repeating here.

Child Protective Services was involved many times, but it is difficult to prove neglect.  Each time they would give parenting advice to the custodial parent, their father, check up for a few weeks, and then close the case.  The children had been primed on what to say, warned that they would be sent separately to live with strangers, and their father would go to jail if they ever said anything other than what they were told to say.

As summer gave way to fall, weeks turned into months, and months became years, we struggled to give these kids all we could, without having the rights to truly change their lives.  My husband taught Roy to play baseball.  We bought him gear and paid for Little League.  We put him in soccer.  We paid for soccer camps and baseball camps. I helped both kids with homework.  I talked to teachers.  I bought Katie maxi pads when she started her period, and I bought her her first real bra.  We bought both kids clothes, fed them, and had them over our house as much as possible.  We celebrated birthdays, and had belated celebrations together for Christmas and Easter.  Katie called us Mom and Dad.

Years before meeting Katie and Roy, I had felt as though our family was not complete.  I wondered if we should adopt, or maybe foster a child.  But our own children had so many needs and special issues, I wasn’t sure they could handle an addition being thrust upon them.  Our house was too small for any more people, and we didn’t really have the funds, so I put those thoughts away, thinking maybe when our three were older it would be a better time.  I remember asking God to lead me if he had plans for us.

Frankly, I didn’t think Katie and Roy would ever get away from their father.  My husband had to constantly remind me that they were not our kids, not legally.  We prayed for them.  We thought the best we could do for them was to provide a better example, take care of them when they were with us, and give them a respite from their stressful lives.  It wasn’t easy, as they both had emotional issues which affected our family dynamics.  But, our three biological children accepted that Katie and Roy were a part of our family, understanding that they needed us.  I can’t count the number of times Julia said, “Let’s just not take them back.”

Fast forward to 2012.  Things were not going well for Katie and Roy.  But in the span of one hectic 24 hours, things came to a head and they were here.  Living with us. There was a court dependency case that lasted almost two years, and a lot more ugliness.  Yet within that ugliness, just as nature reclaims with new growth areas devastated by disaster, tiny seeds sprouted and grew.

Our house is very small, still we somehow managed.  We bought a loft bed for Katie, and Julia made room for a sister in what had been her private domain.  In order to fit three boys in one room, we had a custom three-layer bunk bed made. We were officially a family of seven.

I don’t’ know how to explain what came next except to say it was very, very hard.  For all of us.  We were crammed into our house like sardines, and our biological children suddenly had to share everything, including their parents, all the time.  Katie and Roy had to adjust to new rules, and Roy particularly suffered as the move brought home to him the fact that his biological family would never be a functioning unit.  A lot of childhood hopes and dreams were obliterated overnight. 

Kids who have had trauma in their young lives do things that are strange to the rest of us. Katie would fill her plate to the brim, leaving nothing for others, then not finish what she had taken.  She hid food in her bed.  Actually, she kept all of her belongings in her bed, and hoarded everything. 

She was a sophomore with almost no hope of graduating, ever, let alone with her class.  She had no sense of who she was, did all sorts of things that we had to make clear she understood were not allowed while living in this house, and entertained no thought beyond the present moment.

Roy was argumentative, desperate for affection and attention, and prone to tantrums.  He was so hyperactive he would watch TV, play with a moving toy, and play a handheld video game all at the same time.  He was 12 years old and could barely read.

Katie had to go to adult school every day after her regular high school classes, and had to go to summer school every summer.  It was touch and go, but she graduated with her class.  She is now slowly making her way through college, studying psychology and American Sign Language, and working in the floral department at Safeway with her sister.

I fought tooth and nail to get Roy tested for special education.  After being told endlessly he would not qualify, once tested he qualified in three categories.  With the proper support, he slowly made up for lost time.  Today he is in college in Minnesota with his older brother, where they both play baseball.  He works on campus, and is academically sound and independent.

Sometimes I look back and wonder how all of us made it this far.  And yet, we are all so blessed to be a part of this bumpy journey.  Our biological kids learned compassion, forgiveness, patience, hope, and to love when loving isn’t easy.  For Jerry and I, it has been a fascinating process, watching all of our kids grow.   Many times we get so bogged down in the day to day struggles that we don’t see the progress, but when we get a chance to breathe deep and step back, it truly has been amazing every step of the way.  I marvel that God placed such trust in us.  We are so ordinary.  We are not out to save the world.  Shoot, sometimes it seems like a miracle we even get through the day!

Katie and Roy are still a work in progress, as are we all.  But this is a story of what may lie hidden in every kid who seems like he or she is going nowhere.  Every kid who gets in fights, skips class to get stoned, has no friends, has too many friends of the wrong sort, acts out, shuts down, and is academically light years behind, has a spark inside that just needs a little fresh air and fuel to brightly blaze. 

The story here is what stability, unconditional love, and a safe place to call home can do for a kid. This is Katie and Roy’s story of courage.  Jerry and I are the supporting players.  We opened the door, but they had to walk through it. 

On Second Thought

Apparently there is a serious sexual crisis in the country.  I am inferring this from the amount of emails I receive offering to help solve the problem.  Since I get about 40 of these a day, and have never responded to a single one, I can only assume that somebody, lots of somebodies, are responding, or there would be nothing in it for all these “companies”.  

Well, let’s crunch some numbers.  This is purely unscientific, mind you.  I receive 40 a day.  There must be more providers that do not have my email address.  I am going to guesstimate that out of the entire country, my 40 are only 1% of the total.  Therefore, there are at least 4000 email providers of this sort of service.  This is excluding legitimate medical services, commonly referred to as “doctors”.  I found companies on the internet willing to provide email lists containing from 1 million to 300 million consumers.  So being conservative, let’s say our 4000 providers each email daily, 5 days a week, to only 500,000 prospects.  That would be a total of 2,000,000,000 emails daily!  Now let’s say that each provider gets a purchase rate of only  ½  % on average each day, or 2500 purchases per day.  For all 4000 providers, that would be 4000 x 2500 = 10,000,000 purchases daily.  That is 50,000,000 per week, or 200,000,000 purchases of medical aids for sexual dysfunction per month!  Just from spam! 

Holy smokes!  The future of humanity is at stake.  If that many men, and I say men since most of the products are directed at male sexual dysfunction, can’t get the horse out of the barn, we are looking at the eventual extinction of the human race.  I am so fortunate to have found my husband before all the working models were taken!  My children are an even greater miracle than I realized! 

OK, so that is all fun and games, and we know the numbers cannot be right, but clearly somebody is buying these drugs, and a lot of it, or all these people wouldn’t be peddling it!  It is interesting to note the different approaches used.  Some of them have misleading subject titles, like “your application”, and then when you see the email, it is a list of prices for Viagra, Cialis, etc.  Others are truly odd.  Try “overtask repugnant”, or “don’t blame on me”.  Clearly the foreign market has caught on to the vast opportunity here. 

Other subjects are cleverly disguised spelling of the drugs, to fool our spam blockers.

V!@gr@, for example.  And then there is the soft porn approach.  “Don’t be humiliated.”

“His buy apparatus.”  “Enlargement for you.”  And, of course, the direct approach, which cannot be reprinted here. 

I’m sure I am not the only stay at home mom, of the female variety, receiving such messages.  Obviously these entrepreneurs do not know how to sell drugs to tired mothers and wives.  Why not try a subject line like “Make husband hire maid”, or “No cook, eat out”.  I’d click on those links.  I might even buy!  How about “Husband help kids, mom sleep”.  Wait a second…now that I think about it, that might really work.  I mean, consider it, if my husband was as chemically wired as these ads claim, I could get him to do anything.  Dishes, dust bunnies, homework, field trips, foot massage, change the litter box…the possibilities!  The whole family could benefit!  Yes, yes, I think I like this idea…worth a try… 

I need to go get my credit card.  I have a purchase to make.

Silver Stars Go Gold!

title

February 4, 2011

Rochester, MN – The Silver Stars Synchronized Skating Team, representing the St. Moritz Ice Skating Club, took first place in the Pacific Coast Sectionals, the highest level competition for this Pre-Juvenile team.  Five teams competed for the title, which took place early Friday morning, Februray 4, 2011, in snowy Rochester, Minnesota.

As the Silver Stars took the ice and prepared for their warmup lap, the small parent contingency rocked the stadium with their clanking cowbells and “S-I-L-V-E-R” cheer.  Finishing the warmup lap, the skaters prepared to take their starting position. Silence suddenly reigned. As they took their positions, a loud cry of “We love you!” echoed through the still arena.

The team skated to “Once Upon a December” from the movie Anastasia.  With the first graceful notes, the Silver Stars elegantly transitioned from balletic arm movements into a circle with complicated footwork. 

The audience tangibly held their breath as a slight break occurred in the circle, but it was quickly closed with no interruption of the flow of the program.  Without stopping, the skaters reversed direction and performed a steady and swiftly moving traveling circle.

The remainder of the program was completed without error.  A traveling wheel just over halfway through the program moved with impressive speed and shape.  As they approached their finale, the skaters formed a solid line, broke into two, and two spiral lines glided to a graceful stop.

The crowd erupted.  Coaches, parents, and fans recognized a possible gold medal performance.  But this was figure skating, and in the end, it always comes down to the judges.

Said Jean Fahmie, SMISC Vice President and Membership Chair, who was at the competition to perform the duties of Accountant for other events, “Well, I knew who I thought deserved first place, but the judges never ask the accountants!  The Silver Stars had by far the most difficult program.”

Back in the stands, now wearing team travel jackets, the skaters watched the next event and nervously awaited the results.  Finally, it was announced that the final standings of the Pre-Juvenile competition would be next.

The results began with fourth place, the South Suburban Stars from Colorado.  The tension was palpable.  Third place, Fire Crystals, also from Colorado. Now the moment of truth…would they be first or second?  Would Epic Edge, from La Jolla and always a strong competitor, grab the gold away from them?

“The Silver Medalists…”, said the announcer, to a perfectly still arena, “from the La Jolla Figure Skating Club…”. Cautious screams began to erupt from the Silver Stars, as they realized the only positions not announced were fifth, which is not a medaled position, and first. 

“And our gold medalists, from the St. Moritz Figure Skating Club…” The rest of the announcement was drowned in screams and cheers.  Parents, coaches, and skaters cried and hugged.  Coaches Liana Martin and Laura Erle wiped tears from their eyes as they hastily pulled out cell phones to tell relatives the good news. 

This was a remarkable day for a team that shows tremendous promise for the future.  What’s next? Quipped coach Laura Erle, “I’m going to Disneyland!”

Lessons from Oz

UPS isn’t going to leave it at your door in a plain brown box.  Of this I am certain.  Oh, the UPS man (or woman) might leave you something that gives you a fleeting taste, but it doesn’t fit in a box, so no shipping service is going to deliver it.  The wizard doesn’t have it in his black bag.  And it won’t hit you like a stray meteor from some random act of the cosmos.  If you are lucky, once life has pushed you around a little bit, you learn this.

I am speaking of, dare I say it, happiness.  I hesitate to even use the word, it is so overexposed.  Once you have adequately suffered, you realize that happiness is merely a state of mind, an attitude.  It is always available to you.  At least that’s my theory.  Don’t get confused with joy, that euphoric state that we experience when grand and wonderful moments color our lives, such as the birth of a child.  I am talking about everyday, garden variety happiness.   How would you answer the question “Am I happy?”?

During a very low time in my life when I was bemoaning the events that had left me so miserable, and the cruelty of this world to leave me feeling thusly, a dear friend told me “You are responsible for your own emotions.  It’s your decision to be unhappy.”

Huh?  I don’t think so!  I was unhappy because I had reason to be unhappy. 

“I’m not saying it’s unreasonable to feel bad,” she explained.   “I’m saying that you have decided that this is worth feeling bad about.  It’s OK to feel bad, you just have to take ownership of your emotions.  The world is not responsible.”

Now that took a very long time to digest.  I actually coughed it back up a few times before I could finally hold it down.  This friend of mine had had her own challenges in life:  alcoholic parents, a failed marriage at a young age, date rape, and more.  Yet somehow she overcame it all, and pulled her life together.  She was the strongest person I knew, and I valued her perspective.  I thought about what she said for a long time, and then I finally got it. 

You can’t do something or get something to make you happy.  You might decide that you like your new something so much that you are happy about it, but that new something didn’t make you happy. 

Conversely, when unpleasant things happen, our reaction is the product of our evaluation of the situation and our own personal determination whether or not we will be sad over this thing.  What happened didn’t make us unhappy, even though we may be unhappy because this thing happened.  Nor are we at the mercy of the happiness gods that allow happy and unhappy to strike without warning or cause.  And, most importantly, good things and bad things happen to everybody; the world owes us nothing.  It’s how we choose to feel in spite of all that life dishes out. 

That said, it doesn’t mean of course that we always have control over ourselves.  Mental illness, such as depression, cannot be overcome just by singing “High Hopes.” And when we lose someone dear to us, we can’t just say to ourselves, “Well, I don’t want to be sad so I’m not.”  But it does mean, however, that most of us have control over our everyday attitude. 

Haven’t you ever known someone who has “a bad attitude”?  “Nothing ever works out for me,” they may say.   “Something always happens to ruin things.” Or even, “My life is terrible.”  Nobody’s life is exactly as he or she would like.  There are things we need, things we want, situations that just don’t work out very well, and annoyances up the ying yang.  And for all of us, some very, very bad times.   But I have never known anyone yet who didn’t have something worth celebrating, however humble.   I have come to realize that it is the quiet celebration of what is good in our lives that not only leads to general happiness, but that builds strength to endure the worst in our lives.

Think of the biblical Job on his dung heap, praising God.  If we can be happy with where we are at the moment, then it really doesn’t matter if we are not where we would really like to be.  I am sure Job would have preferred to be somewhere else, yet he chose to glorify God despite his hardships.  The happiest people I have known are probably those that most people would say had suffered the most.  There were many things they wanted to change, or wished had never happened, but they saw with such clarity and brilliance all that was good in their lives.  The unhappiest people I have known are generally those who have had rather ordinary lives, with their share of hardship, but nothing shocking or unusual.  Most of these failed to see all the wonderful aspects of their lives, or could not appreciate what they had.

We can choose to appreciate what is good and to tolerate the day to day hardships.  It is not always easy to do, especially if that has not been your pattern.  It takes work like a good marriage. But if you let the little things knock you to the ground, you will never be on your feet, and you will be simply swept away by the big things. 

This is what unhappiness has taught me.  That happiness is being OK with who you are at the moment, even while striving for something else.  That happiness is your child’s smile and a sunny day, even though the car is in the shop, you’re late for a job you hate, and the toilet is clogged.  You may be worried, tense, frustrated and annoyed, but you are not overcome.  It’s OK.  You are OK.  And little by little you will work on all these things and more, but doesn’t the sun feel good as you walk out the door?

Beware Old Men with Sporting Goods

Travel with my family is never uneventful.  There is always a story to tell, and usually a pretty good story, too.  Living it isn’t so great, but the telling is good.  I am going to have to take a trip soon, to Anaheim, for a synchronized ice skating competition.  I’m remembering last year’s trip to Anaheim, and thinking maybe I should just stay home.  Holy smokes, that one was for the record books!  Read on, and you’ll be glad we are not related (unless you, the reader, are a family member, in which case it’s too late for you).

          I made friends last year with a very nice Japanese lady, whose daughter was skating on the beginning synchro team.  Even though Chizu has lived in the U.S. for many years, her English is still halting, and she struggles sometimes for vocabulary.  Chizu’s family lives in the same city as mine, and we carpool to the ice rink, which is a 30 minute drive on a good day.  She asked me about travel plans to Anaheim, and I told her just Julia and I would be going, not the whole family.  She decided to book the same flight so that we could travel together, since I was the veteran skating mom.  I was renting a car, and I also offered to transport her to the hotel.

          We met at the airport gate around ten in the morning.  I had my Starbucks, a book, and a magazine to pass the time.  I was an old hand at this.

          “I am so nervous,” Chizu told me in her heavy accent, “I check Ayane suitcase many time for skates!”

          I smiled reassuringly, and as I flipped through my magazine, thought back to my crazy morning.  I remembered hurrying to cut new skate guards to fit Julia’s blades.  She had lost so many pairs at the rink that she rarely used them anymore, but they were needed for the competition, where the skaters would have to walk a good way from the locker room to the ice.  My boys had been interrupting me every two minutes, and I was pulling my usual super-mom routine (which has been steadily going downhill), trying to do everything for everybody, all at one time.

          I pictured in my mind Julia’s skate, and dropping it into her suitcase along with the new guards.

          Wait.  I could only picture one skate.  I put the other one in there, too, right?

          We have to pack the skates with our luggage, because they usually won’t let you take them on board, although I hear some security agents are more lax than others.  To be safe, we unload the skate bag into the suitcase for travel.  I was sure I had packed both skates, but of course now I had to worry about that, because it wouldn’t be a day in my life if I didn’t worry about something.

          Just to be sure, I called my husband.  He was returning from a trip to the batting cages with the boys (sheesh, they didn’t waste any time starting their bachelor weekend, did they?).

          “Just check Julia’s skate bag and make sure both skate pockets are empty, okay?  I left the bag in the kitchen.”

          We boarded, and the plane was being pushed back from the ramp when my husband called.  I wasn’t supposed to be using my phone, but I had left it on hoping he would call before we took off.

          “Yeah, it’s here,” he told me calmly.

          “What?!!, “ I cried.  “It’s there?  There’s a skate in the bag?  A skate there at home?”

          “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

          “Oh, crap! Oh my God!  Jerry, you have to get that skate to Anaheim.  You have to find a way to send it down overnight!  I need that skate!”

          “Can’t she just rent a pair?”

           Okay, how long has this guy been a skating dad?  Does he pay attention to anything the females in his household do?  No, you big oaf, you cannot rent a pair!  Skates are fitted precisely to your feet, and it takes weeks to get used to a new pair.  Get with the program!  We’re in full blown panic mode!

          “NO!  NO! No, she has to have her skates, or she can’t compete, and the whole team will be in trouble!  She has to have that skate!”

          By this time, my husband was really annoyed.  Hey, he didn’t expect the ladies to take a trip without somehow involving him, did he?

          “Fine, get off the phone so I can figure out what to do.”

          That was the worst flight of my life.  I cried like a baby almost the whole way, because I just couldn’t believe how stupid I was.  I was so tired, and I worked so hard, and here was the result.  Total meltdown.  Chizu offered me tissue, and kept looking at me with a worried expression.  That poor woman.  Her Japanese upbringing just didn’t teach her anything about overtly emotional Greek-Italian peri-menopausal women.  I can’t even imagine what she was thinking.  Okay, I can, and it’s not pretty.

          As soon as we landed and were rolling toward the gate, I pulled out my phone and called home.

          “Okay, it’s taken care of.  Your dad is on his way with the skate.”

          What?  My dad?  Was he kidding me?  What about Fedex, or UPS, or what about my husband flying down with the skate, or loading the kids in the van and driving it down?

          “Nobody will do it overnight, I tried everybody.  I panicked, okay?  I couldn’t think of anything else.  He’s already in the air.” My husband’s tone was turning nasty.

          “Okay, okay,” I backed up. “Thank you.”

          My poor dad was 76 years old, and walked bent with a cane.  Not that he wasn’t up to the challenge, but making him rush onto a plane for us…well, it just wasn’t right.

          My daughter hadn’t spoken to me since I told her we only had one skate.  Now at 13 years old, she really could have checked for her own gear, but I was the one who had made the mistake, and I couldn’t have felt worse.  Her attitude, however, was making the mom police come out in full force.

          “Wipe that snotty look off your face!  Your poor grandfather is flying your skate down!  You’re old enough to pack your own gear, for heaven’s sake.  Everybody’s doing what they can to fix things.  Stop being such a brat.”

          Julia stomped off like she usually does when she’s ashamed, and walked ahead of us as we all headed toward baggage claim.

          I found our bags, and looked for my daughter.  She wasn’t there.

          “Where’s Julia?” I asked the air in general.

          “I think she went to the bathroom,” one of her skating friends said helpfully.  “Upstairs, before we came down here.”

          Great.  Julia was still by the gates, and we were downstairs by baggage claim.  You can’t go back up once you come down.  Well, you can, but security gets very uptight and takes you away to a locked room where they do a cavity search.  Or something like that.

          I knew my daughter had not been paying any attention to what we were doing or where we were going.  She never pays attention.  She probably had no idea where we were, and I couldn’t reach her.  She didn’t have a cell phone, and pay phones are alien to her generation.  Now what?

          By this time I was hyperventilating.  I mean, come on, was this a hidden camera stunt?  Wasn’t the day bad enough already? Nervously, I crept part way up the stairs.

          “Excuse me”, I called to the guard.  “Excuse me!”

          The guard turned.  “Get back down, you can’t come up here!”

          “Okay, I know,” I said, backing down a step, “but I need help.  My daughter is up there and she doesn’t know where I am.”

          “Get back down the stairs!’

          “Okay, okay, but can you help me? “ Tears sprouted again.   “I’m separated from my daughter,” I said chokingly.

          “Get down!”

          I backed to the bottom of the stairs, and looked imploringly up at the security guard.

          She relented, looking annoyed, and called another guard over for assistance.

          Just then my phone rang.

          “Hello?”

          “You have daughter, Julia?” a heavily accented voice asked.

          “Yes!”

          “Mom?  Mom, where are you?  Why did you just leave me?” Julia’s voice came on the phone.  Apparently she had looked distressed, and a stranger had taken pity and lent her a phone.

          I told her where I was and how to get there, and soon Julia was back with us, no longer glaring, now acting silly with Chizu’s daughter.  Wish I had that kind of rubberized rebound in me.

          Deep breath.

          “Okay,” I said.  “My dad is on the next flight.  I need to get you to the hotel because Ayane has off-ice practice,” I said to my patient traveling companions.  “Then I’ll come back for my dad.”

          “Your father come next flight?” Chizu asked.  “We stay for when he come.”

          “But I’ve made such a mess of things already,” I protested.  “I don’t want Ayane to be in trouble because of me.”

          “We stay, okay?   We stay your father.”  Chizu nodded her head, smiled encouragingly, and reached for the tissue in her handbag just in case I started up again.  I thought she was being nice, but in retrospect, she was probably afraid to get in a car with me until I had that skate and had calmed down!

          So we went and got the girls a snack, and when it was time for my dad’s flight to arrive, we returned to baggage claim.  I saw his flight number come up on the carousel light, and people began coming down the stairs, waiting for the baggage to be off-loaded.  My ordeal would soon be over!  I didn’t see my dad, but I figured he probably was waiting for others to get off first, to make it easier for him.

          The luggage started arriving.  I watched each bag, but never saw my daughter’s skate bag.  Soon there were only a few left, and my dad was nowhere to be seen.  I checked the remaining bags, but none had his name.

          And where was Dad?   Oh my God, please don’t tell me something bad happened while he was trying to bail me out!   Like a traffic accident, or a stroke on board the plane!

          I called his cell phone, but there was no answer.  Panic rose again in me.  Had he even made the flight?

          I tried his cell one more time.  This time he answered.

          “I’m here,” he said.  “I’m in the airport.  I’ve got a little problem, but I’ll be there soon.”

          “Are you alright?” I asked anxiously.

          “I’m fine, I’ll explain later.  It’s kind of funny, actually.  Just stay put.”

          Well, I was relieved he was okay, but I knew my dad.  If he had fallen or had some sort of accident, unless it was life threatening, he was going to make light of it.  I put my head in my hands and silently berated myself once again for my harried, hectic ways.

          We waited, and about 20 minutes later, my dad slowly limped down the stairs, carrying my daughter’s skate bag.

          Well, that was unusual.  It never occurred to me to tell my husband you can’t take skates on board, because he already knew that.  I had no idea during that first panicked call that somebody else would be in charge of the skate.

          “I have the skate!” he said proudly, holding the bag high.  “Sorry it took so long, I was arrested.”

          “You were what?” I exclaimed.

          “I was arrested by the TSA,” Dad explained.  “When we got to the gate, the pilot asked us to remain seated because there was a passenger issue.  Six guys in suits came on board, and asked for Mr. Caldis.  I got up, and they escorted me off the plane.  I was being searched and questioned when you called.”

          No way.  No way!  Arrested?  For what?  For not checking the stupid skate bag? Come on, what was he going to do?  I could picture my dad standing crookedly in the aisle of the plane, all 5’ 6” of him, leaning on his cane and waving my daughter’s skate above his head.

          “Everybody sit still and nobody will get hurt!  I’ve got a skate, damn it, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

          I must have woken up in the Twilight Zone that morning.

          As my dad explained, I learned what really happened:

          He barely made it to the airport on time.  He went through security, they took out the skate, examined both the skate and the bag, then put the skate back and returned the bag to the conveyer.

          My dad’s gate was the farthest it could be from security.  He could walk it fine, but he needed to run if he was going to make his flight, so he paid a skycap twenty bucks to grab a wheelchair and hightail him down to the gate.

          He made it as the flight was boarding the last passengers, and rising from the wheelchair, he saw that the skate bag was not hanging off the back as he had thought.  The skycap told him to get on board, and he would run back and get the bag.  Soon the flight attendant was putting the bag in the overhead storage, and they were on their way.

          Well, apparently a skycap running full speed, grabbing a bag from security, and taking off again full speed is not a usual development for the TSA folks.  They didn’t like that.  They didn’t know which bag that was, and were not sure if they had checked it or not.  So, they made a report of a passenger boarding with a bag that had not gone through security.

          But here’s what I don’t get.  If there was something dangerous in that bag, what good does it do to wait until the plane has reached its destination?  I mean, if the bag had explosives or something, the plane would never have made it to its destination!

          Still, it’s comforting to know we will never be hijacked by an old man with an ice skate.  Blown up by a guy with a bomb in his underwear, maybe, but we’re safe from old men with a single skate in a pink and purple skate bag

          Good to know.

          To continue in style, I got completely lost on the way to the hotel because the freakin’ LA freeway system is so difficult to navigate.  Fortunately, Chizu used to live in Anaheim, and she was able to get us back on track.  Can you believe she not only still talks to me, but even carpools with me?  She’s a strong woman.

          So, I hope you see why I’m a little nervous about this year’s trip, although I think I can guarantee that forgetting a skate isn’t in the cards.  That fiasco could only have happened to my family, and I swear, every word is true.  We’re goofier than that funny cartoon dog, and this is the crazy kind of life we all lead.  This is just one example.  I’ve got a million of ‘em.  Give me time, I’ll write them all down.

Mr. Deity Driving

Anybody who knows my dad, knows he is a menace behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.  He’d likely take offense at that, citing his excellent driving record.  No argument there.  He doesn’t hit much.  It’s the years he shaves off people’s lives that make him dangerous. 

When we were kids, we would go up to Clear Lake a lot.  I can still remember my mother sucking in her breath with a whistling sound, like the last breath she would ever take.  She would slam her foot on the floorboards of the passenger side of the car, instinctively reaching for a brake pedal that was not there, as my dad passed “that damn camper” that was keeping him from “making good time”.   We would have the whole family in the car, including a cat, a turtle and a bird.  The cat invariably got carsick and would alternately puke and use the litter box.  Dad would waggle his hand at Mom and tell her to “Relax, and enjoy the view.”  OK, but when the view is distorted by speed, it’s not very soothing.

Surprisingly, those are fond memories.  Hey, don’t judge!  When you come from a family of kooks, you’re bound to be one yourself.

“Making good time” is very important when driving.  The drive itself is not to be enjoyed; it’s a race against the clock.  The destination is irrelevant.   Several years back we all took a day trip to the giant redwoods of the Northern California coast in my parents’ minivan.   When we reached the state park, there was a numbered driving tour, with regular stops about a quarter mile apart.  You could get out of your vehicle and read the posted historical information, and I suppose observe whatever the sign talked about.  I wouldn’t know.  We didn’t stop at any.  My mother and I kept an eye out for the first sign, and had not finished saying “There it is!”, before we were past it.  In a flash we had shouted “There’s another one!”, but that was gone in a blur, also. 

Apparently the ranger station was the destination, because that was when we found a place to eat our picnic lunch.  We took a couple of pictures, and then it was time to head back the way we came, so we could make good time going home.  Well, the rest of us put up a fuss, we went a different direction, my son got carsick, I’m pretty sure we hit a rabbit in the dark on a winding road, and we made terrible time.

But the pièce-de-résistance is the speed boat.  After a disappointing experience as a sailboat captain, my dad bought a speed boat, hoping that would be more appealing to the family than the sailboat (which is its own story).  He judged rightly.  My sister, brother-in-law and I liked to water ski, so we were very enthusiastic.  We have many happy memories getting sunburned on the lake in that boat. 

But of course, my dad was always the driver.  He can control a boat very well, actually.  The problem for us passengers was where he liked to drive.  Like, away from the calm shore and straight into the middle of the lake, where there are nice big waves.  That’s uncomfortable as a passenger, but if you are being towed behind the boat with boards on your feet, well, even the life vest isn’t much comfort.  I can remember thinking “Where the hell is he going?” and frantically pointing back toward the shoreline, all the while bending my knees and preparing for each wave, while the sound of my skis striking the downside of each swell assaulted my ears.  Your skis are supposed to make a pleasing swishing sound as you cut through smooth water, not a harsh “Smack!” as you navigate swells.  Water skiing doesn’t traditionally include moguls.

The depth of my father’s driving mania became clear on the lake.  One weekend, I invited a friend to come up with me and enjoy some sun and boating.  As we lounged in the sun in the cushioned bow of the boat, once again our demented captain started heading into dangerous waters, literally.  You see, the bow of a speedboat is not a good place to be in rough water unless you are strapped in, and unfortunately, seat belts are not standard equipment on recreational boats.  As the front of the boat started to rise and fall abruptly, we hung onto the mooring hooks and braced for each impact.  It wasn’t safe to stand up and move back, either, so we just hung on.  We were young and stupid, and we just laughed, but it was uncomfortable to say the least.  We looked forward to read the waves, but at one point my friend glanced back at my dad, and said to me in a low voice, “Look at your dad.  He looks crazy!”

And there was Dad.  He was bent low over the wheel, his head forward, eyes squinting, with this strange teeth baring grimace on his face.  For all the world he looked as if he were trying to bump us out of the boat.   In retrospect, I think he was actually having trouble seeing in the bright sun, but it was a classic moment, nonetheless.

Wait, there’s more.  None of us will forget the time an argument ensued about how safely my dad was driving.  I don’t remember if it was about tackling mid lake swells instead of hugging the shore, or how close he came to another boat, but the subject was about being cautious instead of overly aggressive.  My sister said hotly “Well, you’re not God!”, to which my dad replied as he once again bent low over the wheel, “In this boat, I am God!”

Well, then, that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?  Dad’s omnipotent behind a wheel.  OK, well at least we understand where we are with that.

Just the same, I think I’m gonna wear a seat belt and a life vest.  You know, just in case God doesn’t know about this.

Do You Smell Something?

My life stinks.  Literally.  I am assaulted daily by the malodor of my life.  My home emits odiferous breath where there should be none.  You will not sense soothing ocean breezes or cinnamon wafting from my Glade Plug In.  Far from it.  In fact, if you plan to visit, I suggest you bring a clothes pin.

To begin, there is an unholy funk coming from my laundry room.  Dirty laundry by definition should smell dirty.  Our laundry, however, surpasses all expectations.  The first problem is the sheer mass of it.  I have a six section sorter and a hamper in the laundry room, but you’d never know it.  They are completely buried in a mountain of clothes, which spills over and out the door.  Unfortunately, my children have a habit of tossing wet towels anywhere on the pile, which inevitably get buried by more dirty stuff, and  begin to stink.  However, I consider my self fortunate that they at least now know that laundry goes in the laundry room, not on the floor, hanging off the back of chairs, or even, heaven forbid, behind the couch.  I’ll keep working on the towel issue, but I’m keeping the kids, so I guess I own this one for awhile.

The next problem with the laundry room is the cat.  I have a 17 year old male cat who has developed some very unpleasant ways of expressing his dissatisfaction.  He yowls, and he pees.  He pees on laundry.   Clean, dirty, he doesn’t discriminate.  If his litter box is not just so, or he is not happy with the catch of the day, he will pee on the laundry mountain.  If he’s really unhappy, he pees in baskets of clean clothes, which then become peed-on dirty laundry in the laundry room.  

You might be thinking, “Close the door, idiot!”, but I can’t.  The mountain spills out the door, remember?  You should see us pushing and cramming the beast back through the door when we are expecting guests.  The laundry, I mean.  Not the cat.  He’s a pain, but he’s been my friend longer than my husband, and I love him. 

Speaking of the cat, there’s a nasty scent that comes with kitties of all ages, which is the litter box.  We have two kitties, hence twice the volume.  The old guy is showing his age, drinking more, which means peeing more, and his poops have developed a truly pungent aroma that is almost visible in its intensity.  I can tell immediately when I walk in the door if there’s a Boo-Boo poop in the box.  But we’ve discussed that; he’s old, and he’s staying. 

My son, on the other hand, is only 10.  He’s very athletic, and just at that age where his body is starting to produce new things, like BO.  Holy Crap, that kid reeks!  He’s got the kind of BO that snakes out from him in a hostile coil of invisible gas that both clings and spreads at the same time.  After soccer practice, I usually have to open the car windows and run the air conditioner full blast just to get home without suffering brain damage.  I know, I know, deodorant is the key, but try to get that into a 10 year old’s head!  He just doesn’t get it, or care, that if you use deodorant after taking a shower at night, you still need to put it on again in the morning!  And if you used it yesterday morning, it’s not going to tide you over until the weekend!  He’ll figure it out when he starts noticing girls, and realizes they don’t like boy stink.  But in the meantime, he’s my smelly guy, and like the cat, he’s staying.  

So you can see that there really is no quick and easy solution to these problems.  I’m not getting rid of the cats, or the kids, or my husband, whose own particular brand of rankness doesn’t make for good story telling.  I love them all, and so here we are in one big, happy, reeking group hug of rancidness.  Because, like the song says, love stinks.  Yeah, yeah.

The Commode’s Its Abode

I believe we have a poltergeist living in our toilets.  There is no other explanation for the irritating, yet overall harmless happenings associated with using our loo, except coincidence, and everybody knows there is no real coincidence.  After seven years in this home, and endless aggravation from the porcelain, I am forced to come to the conclusion that there is some other life force responsible.

 Oh, I see that skeptic look on your face.  I know what you’re thinking.  “She’s a nutter.”  Maybe so, but as long as you’re still reading, I’ll explain.

At first, we thought we had moved into a house with the worst plumbing imaginable.  The toilets were endlessly clogging and overflowing.  We must have had Roto-Rooter, Rescue Rooter,  Pooter Rooter, and every other rooter out here a million times, and they could never find a reason for the constant blockages.  Well, one time there was a plastic Barney stuck in the toilet, but other than that one episode, they just kept telling us to use less paper. 

So we made some adjustments.  To begin, we do a preliminary test flush, to make sure there is no unseen clog.  Then, when we’ve done our thing, we flush again, before using paper.  With each piece of paper in the water, we must flush.  California is always suffering a drought, and this seems like a terrible waste of water, but what choice is there? 

Fighting back, we bought the toilet that’s supposed to be the mother of all toilets, the Toto.  Supposedly this sucker flushes golf balls without a problem.  Now whatever you might say about any of us being full of you-know-what, we are not full of anything as solid as a golf ball.

But would you believe it?  That mother clogs all the time.  And it’s not in the pipes under the house, it’s the toilet itself! 

I know, you’re not convinced, but there’s more.  Every time I take a doo doo, the phone rings.  No, really!  At first I thought it was just Murphy’s law, but honestly, after seven years of pooping and ringing, I’m at a loss for any other explanation.  It seems my taking a poop makes the phone ring.  I don’t know how our resident mischief maker does it, but it’s really kind of creepy. 

Then there is the electronic scale.  Normally, all other things equal, if you drop a few good ones, you unload at least a pound, wouldn’t you say?  Not here.  I’m not kidding.  In our house, if you let loose and then weigh yourself, you will weigh 3-4 pounds more than you did before going.  Honestly, it’s true, and it happens to all of us, not just me! 

So what else am I to believe?  There’s something rotten in our toilets, and it’s not biological.  Something does not like our solid waste, and it makes no bones about it! 

It’s really unclear why anything, even a mischievous spirit, would want to hang out there, but I don’t believe we are the first to have this experience.  After all, J.K. Rowlings had Moaning Myrtle living in the girls lav in the Harry Potter books, and where do you think she got that idea?  Came up with it all by herself?  Did you know that a quick google showed most cities have a J.K. Plumbing?  Another coincidence?  I think not.  She’s had personal experience! 

I’m not sure how to get rid of a poltergeist in the toilet.  We are probably just going to have to live with it, and I suppose there are worse things that could be wrong with your house.  There are certainly more expensive things.  But I wonder about what it will do to our home’s value, if we ever decide to sell.  Don’t you have to disclose everything that’s wrong with your home when you put it on the market?  How do you tell your realtor that there’s an unearthly trouble maker in your toilet?  

On the other hand, who’s going to sue?  “Your honor, the previous owners knew about the bogey in the toilet.!” 

C’mon, what kind of nutter’d believe that?

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I am so “not OK” right now.  If you asked me, I’d say “Oh, I’m OK.  Just tired”  or “Just stressed.”  Just fucking crazy.

It’s hard to remember, but we cannot judge each other by what we see on the outside. 

Every one of us is carrying a cross, even if it doesn’t look like it.  We might smirk and say “Yeah, I’d like her troubles,” but it’s all about what you can bear.  Do you remember being a kid, and thinking your troubles, whatever they were, were so difficult?  Or a teenager?  And yes, often a gentle (please, remember the “gentle”, at least the first few times) reminder of where our troubles fit on the great trouble scale of life helps reign in the terror for a while, but in the end the only person who can truly attest to the weight of our cross is ourselves.

I think of myself as a happy person.  Lively, silly, outgoing, strong.  I am all of those things.  I am also in bitter, bitter pain. 

Not everyday, mind you.  But when the pain comes, it is so very, very draining, on my body and spirit.  The pain I bear has a name, and it carries a stigma.  It is misunderstood, misdiagnosed, belittled, and eye-rolled.  It is a pain of the heart and mind, and I bear it for life.  Here is where you can roll your eyes, or shake your head, say “Oh, that, yeah that’s bad”, but if you don’t have it, you will never really understand.  It’s called depression.

My history isn’t the topic of this discourse, but let it suffice to say that I have every medical, instinctual, and experiential diagnosis to know that this is a physical problem which causes me to feel too damn intensely, and to think too damn much.  There are transient varieties, but I have the chronic kind.  The kind that requires lifelong management, as my body does not have the ability to repair itself. 

If you are uneducated on the subject, have never suffered yourself or loved someone with this condition, then you may think somebody afflicted has sudden, dramatic mood changes without warning.  Or needs to be on 24 hour suicide watch.  Possible, of course, but for most of us, the day to day reality is carrying our loads on our very strong backs with little falter,  But then, an event, or that damn last straw that keeps breaking that poor camel’s back, or simply the passage of time with no ease to our burden, causes a misstep.  And we fall.

The fall is personal.  It is not the same every time.  It may last a day.  Several weeks.  Several years.  It may be obvious, or it may be born with fortitude until the façade becomes part of the burden, and we cannot hide the beast within. 

Do not fear the beast if you are not so afflicted.  If you know one of us, and we are under good medical care, and we have spiritual and emotional support, we are not going to cause you great stress.  Just understand that what we bear is far, far more painful than it appears to you.  And if we fall so hard that we ask for your help, that we ask for a hug, or sympathy, please, don’t turn away.  Chances are if you are a decent friend, spouse, or sibling, you’ve offered the same care to one of us many times before, without knowing it. 

The bonus to loving us is that we will love you back with a loyalty and fierceness that is unequaled.  We will gladly help you with your pain, because we feel.  Our hearts are weary, but huge.  We will joyfully, yes, I said joyfully, share our souls with you, and help you fight your battles without question. 

I like to note that this particular condition is often seen among the great.  Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh.  There is no causality, the lifelong kind of depressive disorder doesn’t make you great (damn!), but I like to think that those who bore greatness as well as depression did so because they both thought and felt so deeply.  I will never be remembered for anything beyond my lifetime, which is fine by me, but I do like to note that I am in good company.

I know what you are thinking…Van Gogh cut off his ear and mailed it to his prostitute girlfriend.  Yeah, that’s pretty off the “normal” chart.  But when you remember that medical treatment during his time consisted largely of cutting arteries, attaching leaches, and administering opiates, plus the fact that he only sold one painting during his entire life, well, you can see why he did not successfully cope with his condition. 

If you are not a fan of Van Gogh, then I urge you, if you ever have the opportunity, to visit the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.  It will convert you.  Reproductions simply do not tell the tale.  When you see his paintings, you will see he left a little piece of his soul (soul, not ear) among the thick palette knife strokes of vibrant paint.  I know I digress, but in his paintings I felt the soul of one who feels too much, thinks too much, sees both the exquisite beauty and crippling pain in his world.

Of course, there are those among us who are jerks, losers, wack jobs, whatever you like to call people who seem to have a screw loose, but I contend that is often the result of personality flaws, not depression.  Just my opinion.  I have no data to share with you, no scientific studies.

As to what leads me to not be “OK” on this Good Friday, I will save that for another day.  It seemed appropriate that on this holy day, although I did not make it to church, I did reflect on picking up my cross and continuing on.  That I begged God for the gazilltionth time to please, let this cup pass from me.   That I asked not for changes in my life but changes in me.  I am nobody’s savior, but perhaps there is some small blessing that in my affliction I turn to mine.

I’m Mean, and I Don’t Get It

Puberty is hell, especially when it’s not yours.  You may think it can’t be worse than going through it yourself, but unless you are a perimenopausal woman with a pubescent daughter, you have no idea what hormonal hell really is.  The mood swings, the acne, the attitude…and that’s just me!  You ought to see my daughter!

Julia keeps telling me I don’t get it, and you know what?  Sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I don’t get it.  I don’t get why she is so snotty, and I don’t get why she cannot remember anything except the words to her favorite songs.  I don’t get why it takes her all the time she has in the morning to get ready, plus an extra ten minutes so that we are late, no matter how early I get her up.  If she has 30 minutes, she takes 40. If she has an hour, she takes an hour and ten minutes.  And what I really don’t get is the total loss of the ability to communicate.  I’m not sure which one of us has lost it, but there’s definitely a problem.  Here is a typical scene at the local ice rink, where my figure skating daughter spends a lot of time:

She walks down to the ice, then comes back up, and stands in front of me.  Her eyes dart anxiously to and fro, her brow furrowed. “I have a problem.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Shhhh!” she says, eyes moving even more frantically.  Angrily she jerks her head at the nearest group of people, who are two tables away and talking loudly in Chinese. 

“Honey, they can’t possibly hear me.” 

“Mom, stop!”  She’s looking really distressed now. 

“OK,” I whisper, “What do you need?” 

“Stop looking like that, and be quiet!” 

I school my face to be as neutral as possible, and as close to ventriloquism as I can muster, I whisper even more quietly, “Are you going to tell ‘e ut is the ‘atter?” 

“Mom, please!” 

“ ‘Isser in ny ear,” I suggest. 

“Oh my gosh, you just don’t get it!” she exclaims, hands clutching her temples in anguish. 

Now people are looking.           

So I say nothing, waiting patiently for her to tell me what’s bothering her.  I look  at her with an expectant, encouraging expression. 

“Well, aren’t you going to help me?” she says accusingly, throwing up her hands in frustration. 

“Julia,” I say in a quiet but normal voice, “I’d be happy to help you with whatever is bothering you, but if you don’t tell me, I can’t do that.  Nobody can hear us, but your dramatics are calling more attention than anything else.  Sit down and talk to me. 

“Why do you always have to be like that?” she says, clearly furious with me. 

Be like what?  Concerned?  Helpful?  Normal?  Now I’m starting to lose patience with the guessing game.  “Look, Julia, if you need to talk to me about something, then I’m listening.  Otherwise, get down to the ice and warm up.  You have a lesson in five minutes.” 

“You don’t have to be so mean!  Just nevermind!” she says loudly, and stomps off to the ice. 

Several parents look our way, and I can see their thoughts in little bubbles above their heads. “Oh, that mean old mother just can’t get along with her daughter.” “Not a nice, respectful girl, like my daughter.” “Tsk.  Must be a dysfunctional family.  How sad.” I turn away and look down at the ice, where my daughter is smiling and laughing with a friend between salchows and toe loops.  

Laughing out loud, I think “She’s schizophrenic!” 

When I was a kid, I remember thinking to myself that I would never forget how it felt to be that age, and that when I was a parent, I would remember and be very understanding. 

But somehow, after all those new neuropathways of adolescence are through developing, some sense of the anguish is lost.  I remember with a grown up mind, not the mind of someone whose body is morphing into some unknown territory.  Well, actually, my body is morphing, too, but in a less pleasing way.  And I’m pretty sure I know what it’s morphing into.  

But back to Julia.   I am trying very hard to be supportive, but also to keep her to boundaries.  We can rage against the world, but we can’t punch our little brothers for laughing about our bra.   We can throw ourselves on our bed in inexplicable tears, but we can’t scream at a baffled Daddy “Go away, you big poop!”.   We can hate our math homework, but we can’t expect to understand how to do it when we spend the entire class time drawing pictures of the math teacher hanging from a noose.  It’s fairly simple, it seems, but I guess that’s because I’m all developed neurologically, and everything.  At least for now.

Lessons From My Children

Parenting is a humbling experience.  Whatever vague notions you may have about how your children will be, God doesn’t really take that into account.  You get what you get.  Leaving egos and expectations behind to find the unique and complex creations with which our lives have been blessed is the journey of parenthood. 

When I was single and childless, I was very critical of other people’s children.  If they were unruly, or rude, or loud, or impertinent, or whatever, I told myself that my children would never get away with that.  They’d tow the line or know the wrath of Mommy.  It was just that simple. 

It isn’t.  It’s not about misbehaving, either.  At least, not always.  Beneath the round cheeks and toothless grins lie complicated little people with all sorts of talents, emotions, and issues.   When I first held each of my children, I promised them I would love them and take care of them, no matter what.  I do, and I have.  But there was no understanding with that first kiss how that promise would change me. 

I didn’t know then how watching my child run after a group of children on the school playground who didn’t want him to play with them would tear my heart in two.  Or how heavy I would feel seeing him happy when they finally agreed to let him be the bad guy in their game, since nobody else wanted to be.  I didn’t realize that a child of two well-educated, reasonably intelligent, avid readers, would suffer severe anxiety about school, and would struggle with basic reading and writing.  And I didn’t know that same child, who couldn’t pass the test, would impress his teachers with his vocabulary and ability to understand and recall details of science and history.  I wouldn’t have guessed that this child would be the most insightful and empathetic of my three, the one who would love and feel the most intensely. 

And if I had known those things, I would still have never anticipated the convoluted mix of emotions when other parents roll their eyes at my child, or lose patience with him.  How many times I have wanted to take those parents aside, and ask them to switch children with me for a month, because perhaps then they would be less judgmental, and would feel compassion instead of impatience.  What a loss to these parents, and to their own children, that they cannot see beyond the surface, that they cannot see the amazing spirit in each and every child.  Who are we, any of us, to judge the worthiness of God’s gifts? 

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a bad little kid.  Yes, they test their boundaries, and that is part of their natural growth.  Those that exhibit extreme amounts of testing are rarely being “bad”, they are coping with something in their lives in any way they can.  Children don’t have the cerebral development to stand back and analyze their feelings, put a name and a source to it, and figure out what to do about it.  Whatever “it” is comes bursting out in ways that seem strange to us adults.  I’m no expert in child development; these are simply my observations and personal experience. 

And in the same strange way that I have ultimately been grateful for the worst times in my life because of the personal growth and eventual rewards that pain brought, I consider myself lucky to have complex children, and one in particular who works very hard at tying my angel wings in knots.  Because if all my children were as happy and adaptable as my youngest, I would continue today with the one dimensional view of children with which I began this journey, and with which I see some other parents still afflicted.  I would have missed so much

.

Doggone Funny

Lately, my humor has been lacking.  The burdens of life have crushed in so close and tight that no gurgle of laughter in response to the goofiness of that same life could escape.  I couldn’t taste the sweetness, or savor the beauty.  It took a big glob of mucousy slobber that leaves a trail of slime like a snail to clear the way, and open up the bubble around me.  God bless slobber.  Especially with a piece of kibble hanging from it. 

This gift came from Maggie, a one year old, 83 pound black Labrador.  She’s a big, furry, undisciplined beast.  Jumping up on her hind legs, she is taller than I am.  Okay, okay, everybody is taller than I am, just go along with the imagery, will ya?  I’m writing a column here. 

Where was I…  

We have three kids, two elderly cats, and two goldfish.  For years the kids and the husband have begged for a dog, and for years I have said, “No more living creatures until something goes to college or dies of old age.”  Hopefully, the kids would be the ones to go to college.  I just didn’t have it in me to care for any other being dependent upon me, or to clean any more messes.  I was empty.  Worn out.  Used up.  Nothing left to give. 

Then my husband started showing me pictures of Bob, a golden retriever featured on the website of Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation. 

“Look at Bob.  Bob needs us.” 

I had to admit, Bob was cute, but my stress-bubble encased heart was untouched.  However, this time Jerry wouldn’t give in to my pained expression or tight lipped response.  One Friday he tracked me down at the playground , and in way of greeting me, looked at my with big morose puppy dog eyes. 

 “Bob needs a home,”  he said sadly. 

Then my daughter got down on her knees, and begged, promising all sorts of miraculous personality changes that would result in me spending the rest of my days soaking my feet and eating bon bons, while she took care of every household detail, if only, if only… 

Ahh, crap.  We were getting a dog. 

So, reluctantly on my part, and joyously on the part of the other four humans in the family (the cats were not consulted), we went to look at Bob.  Bob’s a looker, all right, but Bob has issues.  Seems he’s on puppy Prozac to cope with his anxiety.  Well, he’d fit right in, but Mom’s anxiety was going to cross the line into psychosis if we had a mentally ill dog.  Luckily, or unfortunately, I thought, there was another retriever perfectly suited for a family with children.  This one was a black Labrador, and the shelter was calling her Orangutan. 

I don’t know why they called her that.  It’s not like she has a big red butt, and picks fleas off her friends for entertainment. 

Anyway, she slobbered all over us, grossed me out, and won the hearts of my children and spouse.  Mine remained in its stress-bubble, but I saw how good she would be for our family, and I relented.  We asked if she responded to her shelter name, and were told that was the name they gave her there, but we were “welcome to change it.  Please, change it.” 

So Maggie, aka Orangutan, came home with us. 

She has destroyed the screen door.  Left in the yard with an open window at five feet above the ground, she stretched herself to her full human height, tore through that screen, and pulled a potted plant basking in the filtered sunlight out onto the patio.  She ate my glasses, and digs in the vegetable garden. 

And she adores us.  She slaps the wall next to her bed with her big strong tail every time we walk by, making a huge thumping noise.  She puts her head down so we can rub her ears, then rolls over for a good belly rub.  If we leave her home alone, upon our return she wags so hard her hiney goes one way while her front end goes the other.  Her eyes light up with love and joy, and she scarcely knows which part of which one of us to kiss first. 

That damn dog has wormed her way with those big muddy paws right into our hearts.  Our hearts.  She’s one of the family now. 

So my chewed up specs are looking kind of funny.  The enormous muddy paw prints are clearly ridiculous.  And that piece of kibble hanging from a glob of slobber, well, it’s a downright knee-slapper.  My funny bone has been found, and it’s currently being chewed on by a huge hairball of love.  Who knew.

Reconciliated

Contrary to popular belief, Catholicism has changed in the past thirty-seven years.  Let me take you back, back to 1970, when I was seven years old.  Yes, you did the math right, that makes me 44 years old. Hey, I’ve got nothing to hide.  Besides, you can’t see the 24 ounce mason jar of diet coke and the three empty 100 calorie Chips Ahoy packages that litter my desk, or the spot on my hairline where the hair is really grey and grizzled.  Oh, wait, there’s another empty package under the monitor.  Make that four.

But back to sinning, and Confession.  Because that’s what I was leading up to.  When I made my First Confession, in the embers of the riotous ‘60’s, and the blaze of “free love”, hip hugger bell bottoms, and The Partridge Family, the Catholic church wasn’t buying into the social changes of the times, and was really big on sin, in the time honored fashion of Catholicism.  The pastor at our Church, Monsignor Varni, was educated and ordained pre-Vatican II, which is to say, before the church tried to come into the twentieth century just a little bit.  Some of those changes initiated by Pope Paul included recognizing a loving and forgiving God, versus the angry, penitential deity who’d launch you to Hell in a heartbeat if you didn’t follow all the rules. 

Monsignor had many admirable qualities, but his sermons were not among them.  His were of the “You are truly flawed from birth and God can only forgive a selfish, sinning butthead like you if you cry, pull your hair out in distress, give a lot of money to your Monsignor for his church, and pray every waking moment for forgiveness.  Otherwise, you’re screwed.”  And he was an intimidating presence, in his Monsignor cap, or whatever it’s called (hey, I went to public school, we didn’t have time to learn all the little details in just one hour a week of religious ed).

In those days, Confession meant going into a tiny dark room, no bigger than a small closet, and kneeling onto a padded kneeler that creaked with your weight.  In front of you was a small window, frosted and screened.  The room on the other side, where the priest sat, was lighted, and as you sat in the dark, and it was really dark, you spoke through this window to the priest beyond.  I can’t remember if there was an opening of some sort so that the priest could hear you.  Anyway, he seemed to hear pretty well, so I guess there was something.

As you kneeled, there, shaking in the dark, because what little kid likes to be alone in a dark room, you told the Father your sins.  You were given absolution, and a penance, usually some specific prayers to recite quietly in the pews after you left the confessional.  Monsignor, bless his soul, might have scared the crap out of you, but he gave the lightest penance of any priest.

Now all of this is really odd to non-Catholics, and I could go into religious theology, and tell you why we do this, and what it is that Jesus said that led to all this, but this isn’t a lesson in theology, and I’ve already admitted I’m a little shaky on my theological history.  The point here is that if the experience didn’t scare you into sainthood, you were pretty much a lost cause anyway.

So fast forward to the present day.  My seven year old son just had his First Reconciliation.  That’s what they call it now, Reconciliation.  Because that is what it is supposed to be about, reconciling with God, not beating yourself with a switch and ditching your Gap sweater for a hair shirt.  All of the kids who were to make their First Reconciliation, and all of their families, gathered in the church.  A joyous service was held.  The theme was more “Hey, let’s think about what we might like to do better in our lives, and isn’t it great that God forgives us for all those times we punched our siblings and back talked Mom?”.  When it came time to actually do the deed, several smiling priests sat in chairs at various locations around the church, each with an empty chair next to him.  One at a time, we took our children to a priest, introduced our child, who was warmly welcomed by the priest.  The child was supposed to name one or two things he thought he probably shouldn’t have done. 

At the point where the priest gives absolution, he raises his hand.  Watching from the sidelines, I saw my son look at this raised hand, hesitate a moment, and then give the priest the old high five.  The priest didn’t miss a beat.  He finished his piece, patted my son on the shoulder, said something softly to him with a smile, and that was that.

My son came away with a big grin.  I didn’t tell him he wasn’t supposed to high five the priest.  He was proud of himself, and who was I to take that away?  At the time, I was torn between laughter, and chagrin that everyone would see I had not fully prepared my son.  But now, several weeks later, I think how appropriate this was.  Isn’t this what faith in God is all about?  “Good job, I forgive you, now give me five!” 

Metaphor for Life

I’m changing my address from the nice suburban street where I now live to “Van, Down by the River”.  By rights, that’s what it should be, because although we have steadily been updating our older home, and have added some lovely features, at heart we remain urban hillbillies. 

Our front yard is tastefully landscaped.  We live very near the local elementary school, and many parents who pass our house going to and from the school have commented on our garden.  Oh, if they could only see what lies beyond.  The backyard is a combination of wasteland and landfill.  The automatic lawn sprinklers died years ago, replaced by an ineffective hose sprinkler that is powered by a manual timer called “Whenever I Remember”.  Thus it’s green under the mulberry tree in the corner, brown around the edges, and yellow in the middle, except for the patches of healthy local grasses (i.e., weeds) that pop up here and there.  Beyond the grass is dirt, highlighted by a dilapidated play structure that we have officially condemned, a rather nice raised vegetable box where my husband practices his unfulfilled farming urges, rotten tree stumps, and a contrasting well-groomed line of roses up against the house.  

On the side near the gate is the “basketball court”.  It is a slab of cement with a nice backboard at one end, but it also houses the garbage cans, a barbecue, and a toilet.  Makes for a pretty interesting game of hoops.  The toilet was removed in an effort to find a more powerful model that could accommodate both my husband’s voluminous output and our home’s crappy (pun intended) plumbing..  To replace it we found the mother of all toilets, which has only succumbed once to the plumbing, but unfortunately the cast-off has no place to go.  It’s not a bad toilet, either, and only a couple of years old.  Where do unemployed toilets go to look for work?  

But the pièce de résistance is the patio.  Ah yes, the patio.  The terrace.  The veranda.  The cracked aggregate concrete housing weeds, insects, a lopsided cheerful yellow patio set, stray toys, more roses, and the couch.  Yes, I said “couch”.  Doesn’t every nice home have a sofa on the veranda?  We did have a leather armchair as well, but that went to a new owner for $30 in a garage sale.  

The couch is a casualty of redecorating.  Five years ago it was deep blue, plush, ultra comfy, and seemingly well built.  Today it is threadbare and stained, with broken springs popping up between the cushions, all complements of the Kea children.  I dragged it out the sliding glass door to the patio the day the new furniture arrived.  Although I regularly shifted it to sweep and mop underneath, as I heaved it toward the door, left behind was a trail of crumbs, wrappers, plastic arms disconnected from some long lost superhero, marbles, popsicle sticks, and numerous other sticky detritus.  Apparently the sofa had been gobbling this debris for years, only to regurgitate in its death throws.  To add insult to injury, since moving it to it’s “temporary” spot, we’ve had our first rain.  

So in keeping with the image, we have a dead, moldy, decomposing sofa on our patio.  Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a yucky sofa?  It’s too far gone to give to the poor.  The local dump wants $125 to leave it there.  Which actually I’d be willing to pay if my husband and I could lift the damn thing down our steep driveway and into the truck, but we’ve already tried and failed.   So we are stuck with the only other option, which is to pay a hauling company $225 to take it away for us.   I guess we might as well add another $100 for the poor toilet.  

My husband, who was born and raised in the deep south, had another suggestion.  He’s very sensitive about redneck comments, feeling stuck up Californians look down upon his pan fried roots.  But seeing he’s sort of an “in your face” kind of guy, he is lobbying for moving the sofa and toilet to the front lawn, lighting a bonfire with one of the broken chairs from the garage, and sitting back to enjoy a Bud Lite.  He’d probably suggest having a shotgun at his knee, but I don’t allow firearms.  

He’s only joking (I think).  He doesn’t even like Bud Lite.  He likes expensive scotch.  Actually, I think he just likes to brag that he likes expensive scotch.  Anyway, the presence of a sofa outside our sliding glass doors seems to bother him less than the lawn needing to be mowed, or the condition of his lettuce crop.  I, on the other hand, am mortified.  After years of fearing guests because the inside of our home was so frightening, now I fear guests because they might see the outside.  No matter what I do, I cannot seem to keep up with the feculence of life.  “Feculence”…isn’t that a great word?  I found it in a thesaurus as a synonym for “excrement”.    

Perhaps we should keep the toilet, then, as a symbol of our struggles.  A literal symbol for my husband, more figurative for me.  Maybe my husband can plant a crop there.  And you can interpret that any way you like.

God Only Knows

When payment here is rendered,
And this life not to retrieve,
I’ll seek answers from my Maker
Which I cannot now conceive.
 
I can better comprehend the pain
Of body, than mind and soul.
The doctrine and the theology
Can not explain the whole.
 
Why the haste to repatriate
Those who see His vision purely,
When their beauty offers sustenance
To those who see less clearly?
 
And how is it that the salve and balm
Our bodies eagerly ingest,
Soothe the aching deep inside,
Yet imperil our earthly quest?
 
And most important I must query
Now that we’re clear of earthly debt…
Well, hell, what I mean is,
Does heaven have chocolate?