December 31, 1958 was a hallmark night for my family, but not in a cheery, greeting card way.
It was the night my parents were in a car accident and my mom went to the hospital with a broken hip.
The story went this way, although I'm open for corrections since it's been so long ago that I heard the first-hand version of it:
They had gone to a New Year's Eve party, but, atypically for them, left early because the weather was getting bad. Sure enough, a freezing rain had already iced up the streets, but apparently Dad thought everything would be fine when he pulled in behind one of the city trucks spreading cinders.
Unfortunately, it was only an illusion of a safe passage home. I don't know if they hit a slick place on the pavement, or if Dad got impatient and tried to go around, but somehow they slammed into the truck, hard.
Mom might have not have been hurt so badly except for the fact that she tried to put on the brakes even though she wasn't driving at the time. Bracing herself on the floor, like she was slamming on the brakes, was too much for her, and the bone that broke in her right leg had to be operated on to insert a steel pin that she ended up taking to the grave with her.
I was 12 at the time and in junior high. My brothers were 8 (in 3rd grade) and 9 1/2 months old. I don't know, but I guess my dad's family got together and decided we were too much for him or my grandparents (who only lived blocks away from us) to handle on their own, because we were quickly parceled out to his siblings for the weeks while Mom was in the hospital and in the early stages of recuperation.
Dad's sister, Sue, her husband and three children lived near my school, so it was decided that I stay with them. My brothers went to his brother, Dave, with his wife and daughters. The boys loved the farm and my uncle's family loved them. I heard they would have liked to keep them forever.
I can't imagine a nicer family than my Aunt Sue and Uncle Lloyd's. Still it was not easy for me to live with a family so different from my own.
There were rules, of course, but they weren't tough or confusing. We did our homework after school every day, and didn't put Friday's off until Sunday night. All the kids, including me, had chores, but everyone helped each other. When homework and chores were done, we could and did play, and when it was too cold to go outside, we could even skate on the concrete floor in their basement.
Most odd to me, the adults didn't go out drinking, or stay at home to argue or fight. I kept waiting for them to drop their "company manners," but that was just the way they were, all the time, hard as it was for me to believe or understand.
I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of trouble and on the good side of adults when I was growing up. It's not that I was a bad kid or anything, but I was uncertain about what it took to keep adults from being angry, with me or each other. Without anyone ever telling me, I felt it was my job to keep things around my house as calm and peaceful as possible.
I didn't have much success in that area.
Neither did I learn to trust adults to be constant and consistent in doing their job of taking care of me. I grew up knowing that they had a lot of responsibilities and that it was up to me to take care of my own needs as much as possible and bother them as little as I could. It wasn't until I stayed with my aunt that I discovered there were some adults I could trust.
One day while I was staying there, I forgot to take either lunch or lunch money to school. When we were dismissed for lunch, I simply left school in the freezing cold and headed in the direction of her house. I got lost along the way, but somehow I finally got there.
Instead of having her get angry or upset with me for forgetting my lunch, leaving school without permission, and getting lost, all she did was fuss at me for not calling her. I was surprised that not only was I not in trouble, but that I even had the option of asking for help. She fed me and took me back to school, but she never once raised her voice nor teased me about it at all!
Living there, even for a short time, was a real eye opener for me. I didn't know people who lived in such a different way than my parents and their friends or who day in and day out treated each other with so much kindness and consideration as a matter of fact.
I don't mean this to be a criticism of my parents in any way, but life with them, though loving for the most part, was almost always volatile and full of drama. It was a jolt to come home and become my mother's right-hand helper again.
Not only was I back to watching the boys, I had to help Mom with nursing duties that I really didn't want to do. Wheelchair-bound, Mom wasn't her usual blur of activity, and I had to spend more time with her than I wanted to at the time. It was an opportunity that could have brought us closer, but didn't.
I wish I'd known then what I know now, but, of course, I didn't.
I think it's a lesson most of us learn too late--to appreciate, enjoy and get to know the people we love before we lose them. We take for granted that someone so important to us will always be there, whenever we need them, no matter what. Then the day comes that they're not, and we can only think of all the what-ifs with regret.
I do not blame myself for being thoughtless and selfish at times; I was young and immature. Like most kids, I did no more, no less than was expected of me--good grades, clean room, politeness and obedience.
We were a classic family of the times. Dad went to work; Mom stayed home and took care of everyone. It came as a shock to all of us when she suddenly needed us to take care of her, even a little bit, for a little while. I will always believe that the major reason she died so young was that no one took care of her enough to keep her healthy and hopeful.
Mom finally got back on her feet and back to her usual role, but somehow the world was a bit different for all of us after that. We didn't take our status quo as much for granted. We didn't take our family dynamics as much for the norm. We didn't think of our extended family as much as the familiar strangers they had been before we had lived with them as part of their family.
My mother had lived though the nightmare of having her children scattered, as she and her brothers had been after her mother's death. We had all been shaken with the brush of a new kind of uncertainty and change. Like mom's leg, our family had been broken apart, and knitted back together. We had been separated, and finally reunited, but our view of family had been forever altered because we had lived a new truth.
Sad to say that while I greatly enjoyed my stay at my aunt's, I was genuinely relieved to return to life as I understood it. I was used to being the odd duck at school--the kid who was home sick with asthma almost as much as I was in class, the awkward child in public who needed a joke book to make conversation, the imaginative recluse at home who found comfort in books while an emotional storm raged outside her room. I wasn't used to "normal."
Who can figure out why their life takes all the strange twists and turns along the way? Who defines what's normal for one family and what is right for another? Who knows how all the things we experience will eventually influence and form our characters, but it's surely true that we are a product of everything that touches us, our lives, and the people in it.
I think the lesson in all of this is that you can't be too careful when you find an opportunity to love, learn and be loved. Those are the opportunities you need to grab hold of. You can't be too frightened to live your life to the fullest and you can't take your life or the people you love for granted
I believe we would be better people, more real, honest and in the moment if we really did live as though we were dying, because the truth is that we are. Every day we live we are one day closer to our death, and how we live it is up to us.
None of us know how long the thread of our life is or when it will unravel or suddenly come to an end. While I have it, I want to live it. While I can, I will tell the people in it that I love them, because tomorrow they might not be able to hear it.
I want to relish all the moments I'm alive, whether I'm contently alone or spending time with the people who are important to me, even if it's only through a phone line. And when the day comes that the essence that makes me who I am is ever gone, please let my body go and remember me as who and what I am and was.
I would not change my life if I could.
There is no guarantee that a second chance would help me do a better job or make me a stronger, kinder, better person. It was hard enough to live through it the first time. I don't know if I'd want to attempt to change anything even if I could do it all over again.
There are moments I would like to revisit, faces I'd love to see, words I'd love to hear, and any number of things I wish I had noticed, paid more attentions to, and remembered more deeply and clearly
Perhaps, someway, somehow, someday, I will,
if I pass this way again.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Hot Time in the Old Town
Well, it's late July in the Mississippi River Valley and it's hotter than hammer hell!
I don't care what anyone says--
it's the Heat and the Humidity!
Naturally, on a day like this I'm just where you'd expect to find me at lunchtime (which is around 6 p.m. for me)--sitting in the shade on a bamboo mat on the grass at the back of the store where I work, eating a ham on rye sandwich and sipping a raspberry tea from our competitor down the road.
I had not planned on being here tonight, in fact I was looking forward to resuming my usual a.m. grocery shift. However, since we're down 4 people again--2 hard workers, 1 new recruit, and 1 horse's patoot--and training 2 newbies, plus 1 of our regulars taking night classes at the local junior college, I was the only available for this shift. So much for well-laid plans; mine had to go on hold.
Once again, on my trip down for my tea tonight, I was amazed by the number of people who are seemingly incapable or overwhelmingly inconsiderate in navigating the traffic circle (otherwise known as a roundabout) between here and there.
Come on, folks, this is NOT brain surgery!
A traffic circle is supposed to make driving easier; NOT be yet another way of making you want to strangle the people who don't understand how they are supposed to work!
The general rules go this way:
1) A traffic circle is just like a blinking yellow light. Yield and proceed.
2) If there is no one at any of the other entrances, you may proceed, with caution, around the circle to your desired exit.
3) If another car / or cars have arrived before you, you all must take turns entering and exiting the circle in the order of your arrival.
4) At no time are you to disregard the yield signs at the entrances just because you the most selfish person on the face of the Earth!
5) Nor are you allowed to follow a string of cars from your entrance through the circle--UNLESS you are in a funeral procession or plan to be the BODY in the box in the NEXT funeral. Get the drift?!, you $%*!#@ dodo!!!
Simple rules, I think,
not even close to rocket science,
so please
try to get a clue,
learn how to drive
or take another route.
Now before you jump to the erroneous conclusion that I have succombed to the effects of the heat, I would like to assure you that I feel exactly the same way about the same set of bozos in the winter!
They are going out of their way, to make this a whole lot harder than it has to be, and they are in the way of people, like me who actually know how to drive, and grew up with a double-sized roundabout where you have to know how and when to merge into the inner circle and how to get out of it in less than one complete circuit unless you want to admire the colored lights in the foundation at the hub!
Like I said in the beginning, it's pretty darn hot in the Mississippi Valley, and just in case the humidity wasn't already knocking you to your knees, the weatherman just announced that they're tracking a new set of thunderstorms headed our way.
You gotta love it around here, because if there's one thing we have plenty of, it's weather, and if you don't like what we're having, stick around because it's been known to change seasons in the blink of an eye!
I spent six and a half years near Phoenix, and the whole time I lived there I passionately missed the green, green hills and valleys of home. Mentally I tried to accept life in the desert, but emotionally my heart and soul were embedded in the deep, black soil of my birthplace. I never realized how many shades of green there were until I moved away from them.
And oh, how I do love it here, hot, cold, humid as all get out and everything in between.
;-D
I don't care what anyone says--
it's the Heat and the Humidity!
Naturally, on a day like this I'm just where you'd expect to find me at lunchtime (which is around 6 p.m. for me)--sitting in the shade on a bamboo mat on the grass at the back of the store where I work, eating a ham on rye sandwich and sipping a raspberry tea from our competitor down the road.
I had not planned on being here tonight, in fact I was looking forward to resuming my usual a.m. grocery shift. However, since we're down 4 people again--2 hard workers, 1 new recruit, and 1 horse's patoot--and training 2 newbies, plus 1 of our regulars taking night classes at the local junior college, I was the only available for this shift. So much for well-laid plans; mine had to go on hold.
Once again, on my trip down for my tea tonight, I was amazed by the number of people who are seemingly incapable or overwhelmingly inconsiderate in navigating the traffic circle (otherwise known as a roundabout) between here and there.
Come on, folks, this is NOT brain surgery!
A traffic circle is supposed to make driving easier; NOT be yet another way of making you want to strangle the people who don't understand how they are supposed to work!
The general rules go this way:
1) A traffic circle is just like a blinking yellow light. Yield and proceed.
2) If there is no one at any of the other entrances, you may proceed, with caution, around the circle to your desired exit.
3) If another car / or cars have arrived before you, you all must take turns entering and exiting the circle in the order of your arrival.
4) At no time are you to disregard the yield signs at the entrances just because you the most selfish person on the face of the Earth!
5) Nor are you allowed to follow a string of cars from your entrance through the circle--UNLESS you are in a funeral procession or plan to be the BODY in the box in the NEXT funeral. Get the drift?!, you $%*!#@ dodo!!!
Simple rules, I think,
not even close to rocket science,
so please
try to get a clue,
learn how to drive
or take another route.
Now before you jump to the erroneous conclusion that I have succombed to the effects of the heat, I would like to assure you that I feel exactly the same way about the same set of bozos in the winter!
They are going out of their way, to make this a whole lot harder than it has to be, and they are in the way of people, like me who actually know how to drive, and grew up with a double-sized roundabout where you have to know how and when to merge into the inner circle and how to get out of it in less than one complete circuit unless you want to admire the colored lights in the foundation at the hub!
Like I said in the beginning, it's pretty darn hot in the Mississippi Valley, and just in case the humidity wasn't already knocking you to your knees, the weatherman just announced that they're tracking a new set of thunderstorms headed our way.
You gotta love it around here, because if there's one thing we have plenty of, it's weather, and if you don't like what we're having, stick around because it's been known to change seasons in the blink of an eye!
I spent six and a half years near Phoenix, and the whole time I lived there I passionately missed the green, green hills and valleys of home. Mentally I tried to accept life in the desert, but emotionally my heart and soul were embedded in the deep, black soil of my birthplace. I never realized how many shades of green there were until I moved away from them.
And oh, how I do love it here, hot, cold, humid as all get out and everything in between.
;-D
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Imagine That
Things have been crazy at work, again,
and we're shorthanded, again,
and I'm working too many hours, again,
without downtime between workdays, again,
to really rest up and recharge, again,
but I'll get through this week and next, again,
and things will change, again,
but I'm off today, and that's a very good thing.
I started a beef stew in the slow cooker around noon so I'm guessing I'll be able to dig into it sometime tonight in 6-8 hours or so. I filled the pot with beef tips, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes and beef stock. Once it cooks down and gets tender, I'll transfer it to a larger pot and add green beans, corn and maybe some peas. Yum. I'm making myself hungry.
I pulled the footstool that matches my faux-red leather, swivel recliner and the little, cherry-colored table off my faux-oriental, mostly red carpet and ran the Dyson over it, pulled the throw rugs out of the kitchen and steam mopped it, did a few dishes, chatted long-distance with two friends, washed my bed linens and other dirty clothes, and played Facebook games.
Now I'm ready for a nap.
I passed some of my neighbors in the common area when I went up to do my laundry. They wanted to know if I was joining them for their twice weekly exercise session.
I snorted, "Yeah, right!"
I didn't think it was necessary to tell them that after four straight nights of eight hours on my feet, waiting on 200-300 customers a night, washing windows, cleaning the deli area, mopping the entire store, throwing buckets of ice for fountain drinks, bagging even more ice, straightening up the shelves, putting out overstock, and training a new employee, plus a little bit of grocery shopping and cleaning my apartment, I was too tired to bend and stretch.
My friends already know that!
I think it's obvious to them that I'm stretched to the limit because they've seen so little of me lately. I go to work, come home, eat and sleep, and do it all over again the next day, and will have to do so until the rest of the new crew has been hired and trained, or transferred from other stores. I'm soooo ready to get back to my normal schedule of 2 1/2 days a week. I'm too tired to write, even though the dreams that fuel my blogs and book keep coming.
I was talking to my best friend last night about imaginations and how much fun we used to have when we were kids--without all the toys, computers, cell phones, Wii's and whatnots kids have now. I don't really think kids have time to play any more, unless it's in organized sports and I think those are more fun for the adults than they are for the kids.
We used to get one big gift for our birthday and Christmas and not the deluge of toys kids now expect as their due. One year it was a baby doll and a Howdy Doody, the next a dollhouse and a train set. (That was a big year; we spent days moving dollhouse furniture in the box cars.) Another year it was a fancy doll and a homemade barn (by Dad) and tractor set.
Yet another Christmas it was two-wheelers. One the typical, open-frame girl's bike in blue and the other was a boy's bike in red with the cross bar. I still remember that mine didn't get fully assembled until the day after Christmas, but I named it Cheyene and rode that bike for a long, long time so it turned out fine after all.
I remember playing farm under the big old oak tree in our front yard. We scraped rows in the dirt with sticks and then ran the tractor with its plow over the loose dust and stuck grass in to look like my uncle's crops.
We played in the creek with leaves and sticks and the waterwheel my dad made for us. We walked in the woods and did all kinds of things with few or no toys and without our parents watching our every move.
Mom wouldn't hear the words, "I'm bored" from us. We were expected to entertain ourselves until lunch, dinner and bedtime. "Go play," was all she had to say for us to take off on another adventure, or at least get out from underfoot until she wanted us back inside.
In cold or wet weather we had plenty to keep us busy. We had cards and board games. My brothers had cars and I had a box of different sets of paperdolls. I preferred the books that only had one or two dolls because those had more clothes.
Mom would take out her long, black handled scissors and snip out the curves and ruffles in a way that never ceased to amaze me. It never occurred to me that she didn't get to have paperdolls when she was my age. I guess she didn't mind playing with me that much after all.
Maybe she got to cut out the models in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, but those aren't as much fun because their arms never match the other clothes. I know because I tried it once after she said something about it and got in trouble because it was the new catalog.
Mom made lots of clothes for my real dolls, and my friends and I tried it a few times, but weren't very good at it. I got my last doll when I was 13, much too old for a doll, although 12 was just fine. I still have her. Mom's sorority ladies made clothes for her and held a raffle. We won.
I named her Teresa, I think after a singer my mom liked, and she was the most unusual doll I'd ever seen. To begin with, she wasn't a baby. She had pierced ears with little pearl earrings, high heel shoes, eye shadow, lipstick and breasts!
Keep in mind this was long before Barbie.
I think she originally came in a wedding dress, but the ladies made her a wardrobe of different kinds of dresses. The one Mom made was a beautiful, green, strapless evening gown. I wish I knew what happened to all those clothes.
All I have left is a tattered pair of green striped, cotton overalls, a mouse-chewed, flannel nightgown, and a stained, white, crocheted lace gown. The shoes are gone as are the earrings, but I thinking about correcting that situation. So far, thinking about it is as far as I've gotten.
I cannot say that I would want to be a kid again in today's world. They are usually so buried in heavy schedules of organized sports and school work, computerized games and communication systems, they don't have any free time left to just be a kid.
When I was growing up we had a lot of time to play, and we had to figure out what to do for fun with not a lot of resources.
Ewww! Echoes of old parent laments..and, we all know how those go, but I think this bears saying again--kids these days don't have as much fun as they did when I was growing up, and I think it is because their parents are doing too much for them.
Parents give their kids things they would have liked when they were young. They work hard to one up their parents, and often mistake the value of the material things they can buy for the value of things money can't buy. Kids today not only do not use their imaginations (much, if at all), they are encouraged to use someone else's in a game program or whatever. They are pushed and prodded from one activity to the next and never have time to lay in a wheat field and imagine that the ocean would sound just like that.
Our world was safe enough to take off for most of the day on foot or on our bikes to find tadpoles and beaver dams and the open road without our parents thinking we'd been kidnapped. Talk about the ransom of Red Chief!
It is true that all work and no play makes one dull, and, in my family, we were anything but dull! Still true today.
Another thunderstorm rolling in tonight, another workday tomorrow. Stew turned out great!
I'm snug in my cozy abode and tonight
Life in the Midwest is wonderful.
and we're shorthanded, again,
and I'm working too many hours, again,
without downtime between workdays, again,
to really rest up and recharge, again,
but I'll get through this week and next, again,
and things will change, again,
but I'm off today, and that's a very good thing.
I started a beef stew in the slow cooker around noon so I'm guessing I'll be able to dig into it sometime tonight in 6-8 hours or so. I filled the pot with beef tips, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes and beef stock. Once it cooks down and gets tender, I'll transfer it to a larger pot and add green beans, corn and maybe some peas. Yum. I'm making myself hungry.
I pulled the footstool that matches my faux-red leather, swivel recliner and the little, cherry-colored table off my faux-oriental, mostly red carpet and ran the Dyson over it, pulled the throw rugs out of the kitchen and steam mopped it, did a few dishes, chatted long-distance with two friends, washed my bed linens and other dirty clothes, and played Facebook games.
Now I'm ready for a nap.
I passed some of my neighbors in the common area when I went up to do my laundry. They wanted to know if I was joining them for their twice weekly exercise session.
I snorted, "Yeah, right!"
I didn't think it was necessary to tell them that after four straight nights of eight hours on my feet, waiting on 200-300 customers a night, washing windows, cleaning the deli area, mopping the entire store, throwing buckets of ice for fountain drinks, bagging even more ice, straightening up the shelves, putting out overstock, and training a new employee, plus a little bit of grocery shopping and cleaning my apartment, I was too tired to bend and stretch.
My friends already know that!
I think it's obvious to them that I'm stretched to the limit because they've seen so little of me lately. I go to work, come home, eat and sleep, and do it all over again the next day, and will have to do so until the rest of the new crew has been hired and trained, or transferred from other stores. I'm soooo ready to get back to my normal schedule of 2 1/2 days a week. I'm too tired to write, even though the dreams that fuel my blogs and book keep coming.
I was talking to my best friend last night about imaginations and how much fun we used to have when we were kids--without all the toys, computers, cell phones, Wii's and whatnots kids have now. I don't really think kids have time to play any more, unless it's in organized sports and I think those are more fun for the adults than they are for the kids.
We used to get one big gift for our birthday and Christmas and not the deluge of toys kids now expect as their due. One year it was a baby doll and a Howdy Doody, the next a dollhouse and a train set. (That was a big year; we spent days moving dollhouse furniture in the box cars.) Another year it was a fancy doll and a homemade barn (by Dad) and tractor set.
Yet another Christmas it was two-wheelers. One the typical, open-frame girl's bike in blue and the other was a boy's bike in red with the cross bar. I still remember that mine didn't get fully assembled until the day after Christmas, but I named it Cheyene and rode that bike for a long, long time so it turned out fine after all.
I remember playing farm under the big old oak tree in our front yard. We scraped rows in the dirt with sticks and then ran the tractor with its plow over the loose dust and stuck grass in to look like my uncle's crops.
We played in the creek with leaves and sticks and the waterwheel my dad made for us. We walked in the woods and did all kinds of things with few or no toys and without our parents watching our every move.
Mom wouldn't hear the words, "I'm bored" from us. We were expected to entertain ourselves until lunch, dinner and bedtime. "Go play," was all she had to say for us to take off on another adventure, or at least get out from underfoot until she wanted us back inside.
In cold or wet weather we had plenty to keep us busy. We had cards and board games. My brothers had cars and I had a box of different sets of paperdolls. I preferred the books that only had one or two dolls because those had more clothes.
Mom would take out her long, black handled scissors and snip out the curves and ruffles in a way that never ceased to amaze me. It never occurred to me that she didn't get to have paperdolls when she was my age. I guess she didn't mind playing with me that much after all.
Maybe she got to cut out the models in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, but those aren't as much fun because their arms never match the other clothes. I know because I tried it once after she said something about it and got in trouble because it was the new catalog.
Mom made lots of clothes for my real dolls, and my friends and I tried it a few times, but weren't very good at it. I got my last doll when I was 13, much too old for a doll, although 12 was just fine. I still have her. Mom's sorority ladies made clothes for her and held a raffle. We won.
I named her Teresa, I think after a singer my mom liked, and she was the most unusual doll I'd ever seen. To begin with, she wasn't a baby. She had pierced ears with little pearl earrings, high heel shoes, eye shadow, lipstick and breasts!
Keep in mind this was long before Barbie.
I think she originally came in a wedding dress, but the ladies made her a wardrobe of different kinds of dresses. The one Mom made was a beautiful, green, strapless evening gown. I wish I knew what happened to all those clothes.
All I have left is a tattered pair of green striped, cotton overalls, a mouse-chewed, flannel nightgown, and a stained, white, crocheted lace gown. The shoes are gone as are the earrings, but I thinking about correcting that situation. So far, thinking about it is as far as I've gotten.
I cannot say that I would want to be a kid again in today's world. They are usually so buried in heavy schedules of organized sports and school work, computerized games and communication systems, they don't have any free time left to just be a kid.
When I was growing up we had a lot of time to play, and we had to figure out what to do for fun with not a lot of resources.
Ewww! Echoes of old parent laments..and, we all know how those go, but I think this bears saying again--kids these days don't have as much fun as they did when I was growing up, and I think it is because their parents are doing too much for them.
Parents give their kids things they would have liked when they were young. They work hard to one up their parents, and often mistake the value of the material things they can buy for the value of things money can't buy. Kids today not only do not use their imaginations (much, if at all), they are encouraged to use someone else's in a game program or whatever. They are pushed and prodded from one activity to the next and never have time to lay in a wheat field and imagine that the ocean would sound just like that.
Our world was safe enough to take off for most of the day on foot or on our bikes to find tadpoles and beaver dams and the open road without our parents thinking we'd been kidnapped. Talk about the ransom of Red Chief!
It is true that all work and no play makes one dull, and, in my family, we were anything but dull! Still true today.
Another thunderstorm rolling in tonight, another workday tomorrow. Stew turned out great!
I'm snug in my cozy abode and tonight
Life in the Midwest is wonderful.
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