Space Age Housewife

Contentment

2008-05-18T18:20:00.002-06:00

It was unseasonably warm - hot, really - and the kids ran through the sprinkler, smeared with sunblock and laughing over the sound of the running water. The dog chased a tennis ball, occasionally running through the path of the sprinkler just in time to avoid being doused himself.

The screen door slammed, and my son burst into the kitchen, asking for a peanut butter sandwich.

"Supper will be ready soon," I said mildly, slicing zucchini and yellow squash on the wooden cutting board.

"But I'm hungry," he protested. I gestured to the table, indicating the snack mix sitting there, and told him he could help himself. I handed him flatware from the kitchen drawer, asking him to place the forks and knives by the plates I'd already set on the table.

Munching snack mix, he agreeably did as he was asked.

Mustard, ketchup, sliced pickles...corn waiting to be heated...zucchini and yellow squash sauteeing in a pan with some olive oil.

The smell of hamburgers wafted into the kitchen as my husband slid open the screen door and stepped into the house carrying a half-empty glass of Summer Shandy.

"Will supper be ready soon?" my son asked.

"Yes, in just a few minutes," I told him.

"Then I think I'll go swing." He fixed me with a grin and ran back outside, again pulling the screen door shut with a clatter. I walked to the door and looked out, watching him pump his legs to sail higher and higher, the grass a rich green beneath his feet and the sky bright, cloudless blue behind him. His toes seemed to reach to the tops of the ash and oak trees, and then he stopped, jumping from his perch to run inside just as his daddy slid the last of the burgers onto a plate.

One of THOSE days...

2008-04-18T16:41:00.003-06:00

I burned my hand.

I made a cake, a beautiful cake using vodka and Kahlua, and it smells like warm heaven.

The hot pad slipped when I was pulling it out of the oven, and I have two burns on the palm of my right hand. It stings, and I'm a big baby. It's also hard to type when one's hand is wrapped in bandages.

No, I did not consume any of the vodka before pouring it into the batter.

No, not the Kahlua either.

Now, perhaps, would be a good time for that drink.

It's a Space Age Grandson!

2008-04-14T19:42:00.001-06:00

My older daughter had her ultrasound today, at eighteen weeks of pregnancy.

"There's no doubt," she said breathlessly afterward. "It's clear. We have pictures. It's a boy!"

The Space Age Grandson is expected to make his appearance the second week of September or so.

Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

2008-04-11T14:19:00.002-06:00

Choose a city in a country other than your own, and tell us why you would like to visit there.

That was the blogroll topic this week. Despite the fact that it was I who came up with this theme, I was stumped on the subject of my own entry.

Would I go to Greece - Athens, perhaps? Corinth? Would I sail the Mediterranean and bake in the hot Greek sun and eat lamb and stuffed grape leaves? Would I choose Paris, with its laundry list of cliches: because I wanted to see the Eiffel tower, eat cheese, and buy hats? Would I go to London? Glasgow? Dublin? I could go to Oslo or Stockholm and see the countries from which my roots sprang, or I could see the mountains from Salzburg or the beautiful architecture of St. Petersburg. Perhaps I'd leave Europe altogether and head to Christchurch or Wellington or Sydney or Brisbane.

In truth, I would gladly visit any of these cities - all of these cities.

The other day, I watched Hans Christian Andersen with my daughter, a favorite movie starring Danny Kaye, one I'd seen many times already.

That's it! I thought later. I'll go to Denmark and visit wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. I'll go in the summertime so that I can attend the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. I'll bike along the island and lie on the beach. I'll have my picture taken in front of the Charity Fountain, and I'll spend days prowling museums and admiring architecture and trying to lose myself in the history of the centuries-old city. I'll recreate scene after scene in my head, daydreaming my way along well-worn streets, and when I've had enough, I'll cross the bridge over the Sound and continue my tour in Sweden.

Some day, maybe. Some day.

Sad

2008-04-08T23:12:00.003-06:00

My girl left me a text message earlier. We had talked on the phone this evening, and some time afterward, she sent me the message. She wants her Mama.

She hurts.

I hurt.

We are separated by some 1500 miles, and while she is halfway through her first pregnancy and in the midst of planning her wedding, I am much too far away. She wants to share these experiences with me. She wants me there.

And I want to be.

How could I not? She's my baby. Her message was anguished, and I felt it acutely. We talk all the time, but it's not the same. It will never be the same. It hurts like hell to have one foot in Idaho and one foot in Minnesota.

New Story At The Writer's Block

2008-04-05T21:47:00.002-06:00

I've joined a fiction writers' blogroll, forcing me to hit the keyboard a little more often for the made-up stuff. The elements to be present in this week's assignment were a blue car, a man named Dominic, a clock, and 2:00, AM or PM.

Check out my new story posted at Writer's Block, and click on the blogroll links to read the other stories as well!

Baby Update!

2008-03-24T19:53:00.002-06:00

The Space Age Grandchild is well on his or her way now. My daughter had a doctor's appointment today - she's almost 16 weeks and has lost another pound, but as she put it, is "expanding in all the right places." The baby's heartbeat was 160-ish. The old wives' tales will tell you this is a girl, but I'm an old wife, and I'm not sure I believe the tales.

This Gramma business looms ever closer. It's really a baby!

They say they can make dreams come true...

2008-03-19T20:48:00.003-06:00

And maybe that's a little bit true.

We went to Disney World last week. It was a Space Age family reunion, including my parents, my siblings, and their families. I had once visited Epcot many years ago, for just a couple of hours at the tail end of a business trip. I had never explored fully, nor had I ever been where dreams are supposed to come true: the Magic Kingdom.

I'm over forty. I wondered if the magic would still work for me. It's just princesses and cartoons and silly roller coasters...or is it?

Though I will never see the Magic Kingdom as a child, I did get to experience it through the eyes of four children - two of my own, and two of my nieces. I had the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of soaring through the skies and space next to my own father, just as we might have thirty years ago when I was still just a kid.

We flew on magic carpets, roared through mountains, sang with pirates, and rocketed beyond the stratosphere. We found volcanoes and singing birds and dancing horses and glittering carriages. We walked on stones trod by millions before us, their collective history making real what our own eyes saw.

Somehow, it worked. If there is such a thing as pixie dust, it drifted above and around us for that one week. I'm left now to wonder if my original family - scattered to the winds once again, living our own lives - will ever be together in such a way. Maybe we will, and for that I can hope.

For now, I have warm and balmy memories of a few days spent suspended in a magical time warp that dissolved the barriers of time and distance. We are lucky, and even better: we know we are lucky.

Some dreams do come true.

The moving finger writes...

2008-01-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

...and time marches on. Or something like that. I'm mixing my poems and axioms.

Age will do that to you.

I've often written about my parenting exploits. I've been a mother for almost exactly half my life, and nearly all of my adult life. Much of my identity is tied up in the apron strings of motherhood. "Mother" is a title I'm happy and comfortable with.

I'm about to get a new title. A new and unfamiliar title, heretofore reserved only for women of another generation, women older and wiser and even more motherly than I. Women like my mother and her mother, whose ranks I am about to join.

"Grandma."

The word looks suddenly odd to me.

When I think of Grandma, I think of my own Grammas, women born very early in the 20th century, women who had gray hair before I knew them, comfortable women who wore dresses and tiny curls in their hair, who knew all sorts of history before it was history. I'm stuck on that. Those are grandmothers. I'm only a mother.

A mother whose daughter is about to become a mother.

From where I sit, her becoming a mother is even more surreal than my becoming a grandmother. My baby? The darling toddler who sat on a dark-stained wooden chair in front of the washer and dryer, waiting for her cloth doll to be freshly laundered? That little girl with the blonde curls cascading down her back, wearing a blue denim jumper and little white Mary Janes?

When on earth did she get old enough to have a baby?

*sigh*

I don't remember.

She'll be 21 when the baby comes. She lives in a townhouse with her significant other, her intended, and it's there they will bring home their baby. He works and she works, and they buy groceries and keep house and cook. They aren't children, but they seem so young.

I was just shy of 21 when she was born. I don't think I felt as young as she seems. How our perceptions change. Twenty-one years ago this month, I donned my first maternity blouse, awaiting the day when my baby would come.

Now, full circle, we wait for hers.

I Lied

2007-10-10T22:00:00.000-06:00

Okay, well, I didn't lie.

I changed my mind.

I'm back.

It was hamburger and onions that brought me back, rereading an old entry inspired by a thread on a forum I visit. Hamburger and onions and kidisms and Dean Martin and a feeling that something's not quite with out practicing Space Age Housewifery.

Right now I'm relaxing with a nostalgic candle scent in every room and recapturing that elusively comforting autumn ambience that is the essence of October.

You don't have to welcome me back. You might say "I told you so," and that would be all right. It's better than lying the couch with my feet up playing Bubble Breaker and wishing there were something to say over a slice of pumpkin pie and a late-night decaf coffee.

Good night for now. I hope it rains tomorrow, so I can feel guiltless about making leaf-shaped cookies and hot cocoa with real chocolate marshmallows.

Goodbye...

2007-04-29T18:56:00.000-06:00

The time has come for me to close up shop here at this version of The Space Age Housewife. These pages have served their purpose for me. I'm not going to delete the blog or its archives, but I will no longer be posting here.

If you are still interested in the midlife crisis of a Space Age Housewife, you can find me at my new location: Space Age Housewife.

I have also created a new blog, a place I'd like to use for writing fiction, essays, articles, and whatever else comes to my brain. You can find it at Writer's Block.

Thank you for reading.

Yeah, it's a mid-life crisis!

2007-03-29T23:51:00.000-06:00

Turning forty was fine for me.

Okay, well, there was a little anxiety.

A little.

I decided to be thirty-ten for a while, but after only a few hours, it had gotten old. It wasn't cute. Neither was I.

Still, it was fine and not too troubling. Inside I still felt twenty, so what difference did it make?

That was before my daughter's twentieth birthday began looming. It's still more than two months away, but I find myself flashing back more often to my pregnancy with her, the unusual warmth of that spring, and my own innocent youth.

I've occasionally struggled with the idea that I am my mother's age (isn't she 40? 38? Something like that), but this is the first time I have struggled with the idea that I am my daughter's age. Those who say that age is "just a number" are partially right. Age is also in the perception. Old is relative. We all know the old saw - you're only as old as you feel. How do we perceive ourselves? How do I perceive myself?

I find it odd and fascinating that I can consider myself a peer to both my daughter and my mother when 48 years separate the two of them. Perhaps that's what they mean by "sandwich generation." I can relate to Kayla; I can relate to Mom. I feel the experiences of both and can nod and smile and say, "I know just what you mean."

This feeling is not unwelcome. I'm glad to know there are still new feelings to explore, that the dusty past can become new again seen through someone else's eyes. How, though, to reconcile that my oldest, my first baby, is about to leave her teens? She has her own life, her own chapters to write, her own feelings to explore and sort. She has dreams, beautiful, blue-skied dreams, and my only dream for her is that she's happy.

No one has ever been able to adequately define a mid-life crisis for me, and I've thought fleetingly in recent years that I was having one. I wasn't. I am now. I no longer need others' definitions, because I'm grappling with the bewilderment of mid-life right now, myself, trying to figure out where I fit in.

Mom turned sixty-eight yesterday. Kayla's careering toward twenty. Somewhere in between, I'm still the middle child.

Ever had a roommate?

2007-02-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

I wrote this as an exercise on a message board, and it's all too, too true:

Dear Former Roommate:

You know, it's been almost 22 years, and I'm still a little angry with you. Maybe a lot angry. Maybe I should get over it, but the way you treated me and my belongings was horrendous, and I hope you have managed to grow up and learn some responsibility since then.

That jewelry you took with you when did the fly-by-night move? That was mine. You know - the earrings and necklaces that were in my jewlery box on my dresser in my bedroom. I know, I know. They weren't labelled as mine, but I had thought perhaps the location might give a clue to ownership.

Remember the rent? That monthly charge for living in the apartment that you never paid? The one-third that I kept covering, along with my own one-third, because you hadn't been "able" to find a job yet? Can I get that back yet? You did, after all, set up that complex repayment plan so I'd be sure to know you fully intended to make good on taking advantage of my ~~stupidity~~ generosity in paying your share. Just to show you what a stand-up woman I am, I'll forgive the grocery debt. I didn't really want to eat the food I bought anyway. It was just for looks.

The new outfit, though. That really hurt. I had my first credit card - a Dayton's store charge - and I had bought a perfect pair of jeans and a gorgeous purple sweater. When I brought them home from the store, you wanted to know if you could borrow the outfit. Never mind that you were one jeans size bigger than I was, and that you wore a D-cup bra as opposed to my A-cup and therefore would have stretched out my new sweater. Never mind that I hadn't even worn my new clothes yet. You wanted to borrow the outfit, and I said no.

I should have guessed when I left for the evening that you would have just gone ahead and taken the clothes anyway. I should have known, so I suppose it was my fault that you stole my jeans and my sweater. It certainly wasn't my fault, however, that you decided you didn't like your date after all and thought that crying "rape" would be a good way to get attention. That you admitted to me that that's what you had done was unbelievably insensitive and offensive, considering you knew that I'd been an actual victim of such a crime just a few years earlier.

When you told me the police had taken the clothes as evidence, I know I exploded. And you deserved it. "I didn't think you'd mind," you said about "borrowing" my clothes. Didn't think I'd mind? Didn't think I'd mind? I specifically told you not to take my clothes. How could think I wouldn't mind.

Your night flight wasn't long after that. I suppose you "didn't think I'd mind" about your taking my jewelry either.

You don't know this, but I went to the police station to recover my new clothes. Because I was not the one who signed the paperwork as the owner, the police would not release my property to me. I couldn't prove that it WAS my property. Your false rape case went nowhere, you disappeared, and I never, ever got those clothes back. They were my first purchase on my first charge card, and when the bill came later, I was bitter over writing out the check for a sweater and jeans I could never wear.

But it's not thanks for nothing, old roommate. I learned more life lessons from a few months sharing an apartment with you than I could ever have thought possible. That venerable old teacher Experience surely did sock it to me, didn't She?

'Bye.

Who am I?

2007-02-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

For years, I was a WOHM.

For years, I was a SAHM.

Now I have a job again, and I've gone to M-F noon to 3, with the occasional Saturday thrown in. That makes at least 15 hours a week, putting me solidly in the part-time arena.

So does that make me a PTWOHM? But if I'm a PTWOHM, and I also spend many hours each week at home or school doing SAHM stuff, does that make me a PTSAHM?

I seem to recall that one of the "rules" is that you can't work AND be a SAHM, so while there might be a designation for PTWOHM, indicating that she does not work full-time, there can be no designation for PTSAHM.

Now, if I calculate the number of hours spent at home, school, and children's activities, and they overwhelm the number of hours I am at work, am I a SAHM or a WOHM. Whoops, no, there again is the rule that any amount of work negates the SAHM label.

Does it change if I can bring my children to work with me? I work during the hours that Space Age daughter is normally in school, but it's after Space Age son's school hours, so he comes with me.

Does that make me a SAHM? No, because we're not at home. Does it make me a SAWM (stay-at-work mom?)? Does it make Space Age Son a WOHS (work-out-of-home son?)?

Maybe I am a PTSAHWOHM?

:)

(As a note, I really don't want or expect answers to my questions - this was just a bit of fluff meant to poke fun at the labels we often insist on giving ourselves and how, unlike men, our identities seem to be wrapped up in parenting vs. working, as though somehow the two were mutually exclusive.)

We interrupt this program for an important message

2007-01-09T21:41:00.001-07:00

It goes without saying that what I miss most about Minnesota is proximity to my family, the important people who helped shape my life and love me no matter what.

I must admit, however, that there is something else from Minnesota that I miss with a startling amount of regularity. I want some right now. I want Old Dutch potato chips. And some French onion dip. And a Dad's root beer in a glass bottle.

I don't want much. Just Old Dutch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Happy New Year

2006-12-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Strange days it's been recently.

December was busy - we threw a party, the oldest Space Age daughter visited for a week, we traveled over Christmas, and we spent three days in a row feasting and celebrating with large crowds of people. There was no one quiet, moving moment, no tiny break in the action when I could allow myself to be washed over with peacefulness, if even for a minute.

I'm going to try to take that minute tonight, somehow, at some moment.

The Space Age husband is spending the afternoon cleaning the garage. It's his mental cleansing time, his fresh start for the new year, his way of feeling organized and grounded and strengthened for new challenges.

The Space Age children are playing with puzzles upstairs. All they want to know is when we will break out the rootbeer and potato chips for their New Year's celebration - for them, we do the countdown a few hours earlier than the calendar change actually takes place.

Me? I'm cleaning. I need that fresh start feeling too. So many pressures and stresses have been weighing on my brain. I wasn't able to enjoy the Christmas season as fully and wholeheartedly as I would have liked. I've made a new resolve to work more on my own physical and mental health and my own peace of mind. My husband must have sensed this - two of my Santa gifts this year were jigsaw puzzles. It was his way of saying, "Take some time for yourself."

Cleaning helps. I'm putting away most of the Christmas decor, though I'll leave up some remnants of festivity until the Ephiphany. I like a clean house for New Year's. Later, when our work is done, we'll make some fondue, open a bottle of wine, give the kids their treats, and celebrate the new year with music and games and enjoying each other's company. I will try to grab that moment of peacefulness my mind and heart are craving.

To you and to yours, my best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous, and very happy New Year.

Seven

2006-12-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

The middle Space Age child turned seven yesterday.

Seven!

When time speeds by at a dizzying blur, and the baby with the side part and the plastic barrettes, just learning to sit up, is suddenly a first-grader with three missing teeth and a stack of books to read. That's age seven.

She spent the day making bead crafts, coloring, and decorating her own birthday cake (it was chocolate with chocolate frosting, pink sprinkles, and tiny colored marshmallows). She chose spaghetti with salad for her birthday supper and afterward we had huge squares of cake with cookies and cream ice cream.

I never tire of looking at her face. It's a small face, tiny-featured, delicate and expressive. Her eyes seem older than seven; behind their guileless innocence lies a gentle wisdom. My chubby baby has grown into a tall and gangly girl with enough love and caring to embrace the world.

She is beautiful in so many ways. And she is seven.

Space Age Progeny...

2006-12-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since my last updates - busy season, anyone? - but I'm going to recommit to the Spage Age Blog.

A bit of a small start here, after a week traveling for Christmas. This is the oldest Spage Age daughter, the apple of my eye, and me, on Christmas Eve...

Don't Forget to VOTE!

2006-11-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's Election Day in the United States. Don't forget to exercise your right to make your voice heard: Vote!

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate!

I'm looking forward to ham soup for supper, trick-or-treat, then some warm cider with kettle corn and apples while we watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"

Stay warm and be careful.

Six Years

2006-10-10T09:43:00.000-06:00

Happy anniversary to me. We've been in Idaho six years now. We left Minnesota early on Saturday morning, October 7, 2000, arriving in Idaho late in the afternoon on Monday, October 9, 2000.

Six years ago today, I was arranging things in our temporary corporate housing, setting up cell phones, talking with the real estate agent from the relocation company, and enrolling my middle schooler in classes. She started school that week on Thursday, after I jumped through hoops to get her admitted 'to a school in the neighborhood in which we hoped to buy a house; our temporary apartment was not within the district boundaries for that school.

We did find and buy a house before the end of the month, the house I'm sitting in even as we speak. It looks a lot different than it did six years ago - window treatments, carpet, paint, landscaping, and a deck. We've gradually stamped our own personalities on what was once and empty shell of sheet rock and plain putty-colored carpet.

When we arrived in Idaho, I thought perhaps we'd be here two years. Maybe three. While I was pregnant with my son in 2001, I thought certainly he'd be born in Minnesota. We'd move back before his birth.

He's more than four-and-a-half now. We're still here.

As the years have passed, my angst over leaving Minnesota has lessened. I still miss it. I miss living within shouting distance of my parents and my siblings. I miss standing on the soil of my grandparents and great-grandparents.

Somehow, though, it doesn't hurt as much anymore. We visit, and the roads travel both ways. We've established new, fledgling roots here. We have friends, our children have friends, and for lack of a more colorful term, we have a network. And finally, finally - I've come to love the house that once felt cold. I achingly longed for the house we'd left behind, the 1964 rambler with the basement and the real woodburning stove and the built in bar lovingly sanded and finished by my husband. That was home. This was...something else.

For years - two or three, maybe - I felt as though I were visiting in someone else's space. Not mine. Something different somehow, and I never felt settled.

Today, six years after we pulled out of my parents' driveway in a green minivan, bound for parts unfamiliar, I can say that this two-story house with the brick-red front door feels like home.

If you drive up today, you'll see the autumn harvest wreath hanging on the front door, the jaunty scarecrow in the yard, surrounded by the biggest pumpkins we could find at Albertson's, and the planter boxes on the front porch festooned with pumpkins large and small. The mums have grown big, and the pear and juniper trees stand three times as large as they once did.

Home has more than one definition, I've learned. I've also learned that there's enough love and affection in my heart to embrace them all.

Still thinking of Jon

2006-10-09T16:06:00.000-06:00

I can't help but continue thinking of him, particularly in light of the recent discovery in his case. I don't want to appear as if I'm obsessive about the life of this young man I barely knew, but my brain has yet to make sense of his apparent death.

I can picture him as clearly as yesterday, sitting at my table, joking with my children, wearing his green t-shirt, thoughtfully listening to his camp colleagues describe their lives and their goals. He remained quieter than the young women; seemingly content to listen and observe. His manner with my children - treating them as intelligent beings, equals and friends - earned their respect and regard, as well as that of my husband and me.

My six-year-old daughter still asks about Jon and the other camp counselors.

"Will they come back next year?" she asks, eagerly awaiting another week of vacation bible school and in particular the water games with buckets and balloons.

"Somebody will," I answer gently, wondering if I can avoid ever telling her about what happened to Jon.

It seems incomprehensible that we spent a genial Tuesday evening with Jon, bid our farewells that Thursday, and then on Saturday he went up a mountain from which he would never return. It's incomprehensible that this mountain took Jon, plucked him from the arms of his loving family, took him from the work he so obviously loved, and kept him, refusing to give him back to the dozens of searchers who blanketed the area in the last two weeks of July.

The world was blessed to have Jon Francis, and my heart aches for him and his family and all those for whom and with whom he worked and lived and prayed.

I can't make sense of it. Perhaps I never will.

Jon Francis News

2006-10-05T10:31:00.000-06:00

For those who remember the story of Jon Francis,
there is news. Please see the website established in his name for updates. My prayers are with the Francis family and all of Jon's loved ones.

Evil dwells in the supermarket...

2006-09-29T14:20:00.000-06:00

During today's grocery shop, I found an evil beyond all evils. Something truly decadent, something that has the potential to wield unfathomable power over me.

It is Pumpkin Spice Egg Nog.

Things were bad enough when the retailers sold egg nog only during the Christmas season - remember when the mistletoe-and-holly cartons began appearing in supermarket refrigerators no sooner than December first? Then they started pushing it back to Thanksgiving. Now? Egg nog is becoming as much a Halloween tradition as it is Christmas, the September and October versions of the cartons featuring pumpkins and silhouettes of witches. I try to avoid buying egg nog before Thanksgiving. I'd like to at least make a pretense of keeping it for Christmas.

But this stuff I had to have. It called me with its spicy siren song, "Take me home!"

It's rich. Creamy. Cinnamon-and-nutmeg-y. An evil to transcend all evils.

And so, so, so good.

It's too early for pumpkins and homemade cinnamon sugar doughnuts and popcorn and hot apple cider in front of the fireplace. And it's much, much too early for egg nog.

Isn't it?

It really is autumn...

2006-09-22T16:19:00.000-06:00

...And I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Gymnastics. Girl Scouts. Two PTA committees. Sunday School. Beyond that, a wedding to attend and at least two major scrapbook events.

Who am I, and what have I done with myself?

I have two corkboards above my desk - one for the children's school activities and one for the various extracurriculars. Two calendars. Two coupons tacked up that I will probably never use, one haircut appointment card, and a reminder to call the dentist.

I re-upped at the gym and my husband bought an elliptical. I'm into two books at once, one fiction and one true crime.

All I really want to do sometimes is sit here and goldbrick.

I made pumpkin bread the other day. Two loaves from scratch. It was delicious. I wanted more today, but my trip to the mall during school hours (a vain search for a dressy fall jacket for Little Miss Space Age), five big loads of laundry, and a grocery run with The Boy in tow precluded my cooking it from scratch. Anticipating this, I bought the Williams Sonoma Pumpkin Pecan Spice Bread mix. The whole house smells of it now. I'm saving it for supper though, to be served with chicken chili. Mr. Space Age would never forgive me if he came home to the smell of pumpkin bread and I had eaten it all!

The laundry needs to be finished, and I did leave one of the bathrooms upstairs in half-cleaned fashion, blue Lysol still doing its best to cling to the side of the bowl. I'm wondering how long I can sit here before I give in to the call of anti-bacterial duty.

I'd goldbrick some more for the moment, but The Boy is at my elbow. "Now can I have my Danimals, Mom? Please? Now? Now? Now? Now? Now? Now?"

PTA, pumpkin, Lysol and Danimals.

They'll get you every time.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

2006-09-10T16:46:00.000-06:00

We went to the flea market.

Mr. Space Age was determined. So determined, in fact, that he offered to take the children and let me stay home. Alone.

It was a tempting offer.

I went, though. In the end, I couldn't resist the family outing and the promise of a pumpkin spice latte on the way home. It was interesting, however, that it was I who found many treasures and not Mr. Space Age himself.

We brought home with us a lovely set of silver, service for four, including soup spoons, soda spoons, and a serving spoon. I've always wanted to have silver; my mother uses her wedding silver every day. When I selected the 25 pieces, priced at two dollars each, the elderly woman selling them said, "Oh, I hate to charge you so much for those. I'll let you have all of them for $30." She wrapped them carefully and placed them in a plastic bag for me. It was my first treasure of the afternoon.

Shortly after I completed that purchase, I went to catch up with Mr. Space Age, who had taken the children to look along the aisles of booths ahead of us. As I walked, from the corner of my eye I spied a booth full of Pyrex. More Pyrex than I had ever seen in one place before, all of it vintage. There were at least a dozen patterns, including the Crazy Daisies that remind me of my mother. Nestled in one of the top shelves of bowls and covered dishes, I found some that matched a yellow pattern I have at home. My mother bought a set of nested mixing bowls for me some years back, vintage pieces she'd found on eBay while searching for another, more elusive yellow bowl. Included in this booth were a twin for the largest of my mixing bowls and a small casserole. I asked about the casserole.

"It doesn't have a lid. You can have it for three dollars."

No lid? Okay. I have the same-sized casserole in a 50-year-old snowflake pattern, and the two can share the lid that came with that one.

As I finally rounded a corner and saw Mr. Space Age, he waved me over to where he was standing.

In front of a radio.

I collect vintage radios, and ever since our honeymoon, Mr. Space Age has shared that interest. I guess I can credit him with finding one of today's treasures. It's a Panasonic radio, large, monospeaker, perhaps from the 1960s. It broadcast one of the afternoon's football games, demonstrating its worth not just visually. It's guts are in working order. Twenty dollars for that? Please! Let me take it off your hands!

"If it hadn't sold this weekend," the man said pleasantly as he took my twenty-dollar bill, "I was going to take it home and listen to it. I have one that's stereo." I told him about my 1964 Magnavox console stereo, the one I bought at a garage sale eight years ago in near mint condition for just $25.

I could have made several more purchases from the Pyrex lady, and one booth had a tempting selection of vintage cookbooks. If two young children hadn't asked for lunch when they did, I might not have escaped with any cash left in my purse at all.

I did, however, get that pumpkin spice latte on our way home.

WHAT did you just say?

2006-09-09T14:10:00.000-06:00

Mr. Space Age and I cleaned the garage today, some four and a half hours of going through boxes of stored items, separating those things to be saved, to be donated, and to be thrown away. We combed through items we hadn't seen since they were packed up to be moved from Minnesota to Idaho six years ago. I found books, toys, games and clothes I thought had been lost forever. The Barbie clothes my aunt made for me in the mid-70s? Check. Books that had been hand-me-downs from my sisters? Check. Maternity clothes my mother made for me in 1986? Check.

We managed to reduce the sentimental "to save" piles to a minimum, and we piled the back of my husband's Durango nearly to bursting with clothes, toys, and household items to be donated. I carefully packed to save emotionally valuable items such as sweaters my mother had knit, a tote bag my grandmother made, tiny "home from the hospital" baby outfits, 40-year-old baby shoes, and the logo-emblazoned jacket I wore when I worked for a Wisconsin radio station.

The third stall of the garage has now been transformed from a gigantic closet into an area we can actually walk and move around in. We can get to the freezer and the beer fridge without climbing over, tripping over, or moving boxes, bags, flotsam, and jetsam. The window can be opened. We can see through it! Mr. Space Age's workbench and tools are once again usable and accessible. It's a good feeling. A clean feeling. That feeling after a productive day's hard work.

Leaning against an old dresser we promised to my friend, my husband casually popped the cap off of a bottle of beer.

"So tomorrow," he said, "Do you want to go to the flea market in town?"

The Gardens

2006-09-05T10:41:00.000-06:00

About three weeks ago, while visiting in Minnesota, I took a couple dozen pictures at the Clemens/Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud. These are three of my favorites, though I do plan to post more. I'd like to frame the lantana and the brown-eyed susans.

Being in Minnesota is a tonic for me, and the Gardens underscore that comfortable feeling. We spent the morning there - my husband, my children, my mother and me. Afterward, we stopped at the bakery for fresh bread and treats, which we brought back to my father. It was a lovely day.

September's Winds Of Change

2006-09-04T10:01:00.000-06:00

I wrote this piece in September of 2004, as we neared the third anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001.

I’ve always loved this time of year. The blazing heat of August is left behind, giving way to the cooler, fresher air that signals autumn’s imminent return. Windows are thrown open, the clean breeze softly swirling the curtains and breathing life into a summer-stuffy homestead. There is a subtle change that wafts in on the gentle September wind, a sense of newness and spirited vigor. These days are glorious in their simple beauty, days for tossing a cardigan over a tank top and trading shorts for a pair of jeans and soft fuzzy house shoes. Days when the streets are littered with children going back to school, when the sun seems golden and friendly instead of fiery and angry, when the mountains are in crisp relief against the cerulean blue of the sky.

September holds promise, all the hopefulness and joy of a new start, the school year like a blank page awaiting the script of those who would write it. There shines in September a simplicity and innocence, as if we are stepping in unison onto uncracked sidewalks in sturdy, unscuffed new school shoes. It brings with it the tangy scent of fireplace smoke, the snuggly warmth of a flannel-lined corduroy jacket, and the enthusiastic whoops over the sound of the marching band at the high school football game. The plain green trees of waning summer will parlay themselves into vivid works of art in golds and reds and oranges and browns, the brilliant palette of their branches in perpendicular display to the regal strength of their trunks.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, a wistful fondness for the weightless, soft-focus memories of childhood: the first delight of piling up the falling leaves and crunching them under the heels of hard-soled shoes; the comforting smell of chocolate chip cookies baking on an afternoon early in the school year; the excitement of swinging on the metal jungle gym on the playground on a chilly day, the breeze turning cheeks to salmon pink and putting into young minds the idea of hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Whatever the reason, the turn of the calendar page to September has always brought with it that new-school, fresh-start feeling and washed away the oppressive sticky heat of a summer gone on too long.

Three Septembers ago, the sunny façade whitewashed by nostalgia and sweet memories cracked. No. No, it’s not right to say that it cracked.

It shattered.

Three years ago, the winds of September shifted, blowing in a dark and sinister cloud, blackening the once brilliant blue of a postcard-perfect autumn morning. The comforting safety we enjoyed, the cozy hominess of routine, the golden promise of September, all proved then to be a veneer, nothing more than a happy-faced curtain over our collective body, stripped away in a few horrifying minutes, all of our fears laid open and bare, raw and bloody.

I live in the west, in the mountain time zone, two hours behind New York City. Three years ago, most days would find me awake at six in the morning, puttering around making coffee and breakfast while my husband and daughters slept. I was five months pregnant, half the way to a new baby, and already sleep was coming less easily to me. On this particular morning, I slept on and on while my husband quietly got ready for his day and saw our fourteen-year-old to the school bus. By the time I awoke, the sun was playfully poking around the corners of my bedroom drapes, an action that drew patterns of light and shadow on the sleeping face of my younger daughter, just twenty-one months old.

I arose quietly to find the house empty. I remember feeling hopeful that morning. The hope that was developing and swelling in my heart was the first real hope I’d had in the nearly three weeks since my husband had morosely told me his division at work was being eliminated. This was the day he was attending a career fair downtown, and I knew that he would be seen and noticed by someone important, someone who would make the difference for him. I felt the promise of sunny September that morning even as I felt my unborn child kicking himself awake while I silently padded down the stairs to the kitchen.

I poured myself a cup of the coffee my husband had prepared, hearing my young daughter awaken. Grabbing a cup of milk for her, I returned upstairs and ushered my little towhead into the playroom. It was my habit to watch the morning news, but I decided to put PBS on for her while I caught up with my friends on the computer. The playroom television was always set to PBS.

Except that morning.

As I clicked the button on the remote, the picture that sprang into view was at once puzzling and mildly disturbing: the image was that of a tall tower against a blue sky, black and gray smoke billowing above it. It was just after 8:30am; 10:30am in New York. I was watching NBC’s replay of the footage of the moments directly following the impact of the first airplane, a fact I did not immediately know or understand. The image stopped me in my tracks, my outstretched arms balancing coffee in one hand and milk in the other. In my puzzlement I spoke out loud.

“The World Trade Center is on fire?” I asked myself.

And then, as I stood transfixed, I saw in agonizing horror the second plane hit the tower. I don’t remember what the news reporter said in that moment. I heard him speak, but could make no sense of the words. My heart pounded, and my arms slowly lowered to place the coffee and the milk on the bookshelf in front of me. I watched, refusing to believe what my own senses were telling me, my brain literally unable to process what I was seeing.

This was not an accident, my brain told me. From there, I was lost.

When my feet unlocked, they carried me on autopilot to the computer desk. I logged onto my message board, desperate to reach out to someone who could tell me what was happening and what I should be thinking. Someone who could tell me that what I saw wasn’t really happening.

I was among the last of my boardmates to have heard the news. I saw the title of the thread there and shivered: “Holy holy holy!” it read, the panic in those typed words palpable and frightening. Inside that thread, the voices of my friends, scattered across the country and indeed the globe, holding hands in virtual space, trying to comfort each other and make sense of the new world into which we’d suddenly and unwillingly been thrust.

I called my husband. He hadn’t heard. He’d been in meetings all morning, excited and positive and hopeful over a discussion he’d had with a particular employer. I told him in broken words news that he didn’t quite understand. I begged him to come home. It would turn out later that the convention center closed shortly after that call and he was sent home anyway. No one dared to go or be anywhere.

Turning back to the television, I sat on my knees and cradled my daughter on my lap, choking back my fears for her and the new baby I carried. In those first moments, I wondered if my baby would even have a chance to be born. What kind of Brave New World would I be raising my children in? Would there be a world for them at all?

“Want Tubby Tubbies,” my little girl said stubbornly, looking up at me intently with serious blue eyes.

“Ssh…just a minute, okay?” I stroked her hair, unable to take my gaze from the television. I watched the footage replay. I saw the painful shock on the formerly impassive faces of the news reporters. I changed the station to ABC and saw Peter Jennings, his composure as close to wavering as I had ever seen it. Switching the channel once more to NBC, I saw the familiar and once calming face of Tom Brokaw, with no comfort to be found. There was no talk of legality or morality or criminality. There was only talk of lives and families and tragedy and the tens of thousands who may have been trapped inside those buildings as they collapsed and fell.

“September 11, 2001.” I can still hear Tom Brokaw’s voice resonating in my head as he solemnly repeated the date, observing somberly that it was a date that would forever be branded into the memories of Americans, inextricably woven with the tragic atrocities that had occurred that day in New York City, Washington, DC, and a field somewhere in Pennsylvania.

“Mommy okay?” I felt my daughter’s hand brush my cheek, her fingers wet from the tears I hadn’t realized I’d shed. I took her hand and kissed it.

“No, honey, I don’t think so.”

Abruptly I changed the channel to PBS for her, leaving her happily surrounded by innocent sweetness, chattering to herself contentedly while she played. She was undeterred by my uncertainty, and for that I was grateful.

…..

I opened the windows early this morning, letting in the cool, dewy morning breeze as the sun rose over the mountains on the horizon beyond my backyard. I slid open the patio door and stood outside in the still freshness, sipping on my coffee, enjoying the fleeting solitude while the rest of my family slept.

When the morning rush descended as the full light of day bloomed overhead, I lost myself in the tasks at hand: my daughter’s first day of preschool, my son’s appointment at the pediatrician, a deposit at the bank’s drive-through window. I baked cookies this afternoon, our annual tradition to celebrate the first day of school. The clean slate offered by the new year that comes in September was receiving its first delighted scribbles and happy memory-makers.

But somewhere, lurking in the shadows that always accompany the bright sunlight, the images of another sunny September day continue to haunt me, the slideshow pictures clicking softly behind the veil of contentment in my head and heart. The vague unease invariably gives way to the demands of the here and now, but the grim and sinister lie in wait, simmering just below the surface.

September will never be quite the same.

August 23, 1997

2006-08-23T07:22:00.000-06:00

On August 23, 1997, in a church on a hill, I married the Space Age Husband.

Nine years? In some ways, it seems so. In others, not so much.

Happy 9th Anniversary to the best Space Age Husband a woman could ask for!

MTV is 25

2006-08-07T12:26:00.000-06:00

MTV celebrated its 25th birthday last Tuesday, August 1st.

25.

I remember when I turned 25. It doesn't seem that long ago. MTV was just a child of ten then.

VH1 ran a special on Tuesday and Saturday, replaying the first 24 hours of music videos ever played on MTV. I wish they had shown more of the original veejays, but all we got were small clips. I had hoped to see the first day re-created in its entirety, but I settled for what was shown.

My husband and I watched a portion of Saturday's showing while we ate breakfast and read the newspaper. Some of the videos brought back fond memories. Some of them made us laugh or roll our eyes, and some of them made us cringe. So many of the songs have since faded into the black hole of complete obscurity, never having achieved hit status and many of them not even footnotes on musical history. Some rang a faint bell of familiarity somewhere in the quiet, dusty, unused rooms of my memory, causing vague and indistinct pictures in my brain, memories never fully formed and slipping away as one video segued to the next.

Over buttered toast and a second cup of coffee, I watched the Pretenders' "Message of Love," one of my favorites of theirs. I wondered out loud if anyone has ever seen Chrissie Hynde's eyes. She wore a high-necked ruffled white blouse, the kind that was absolutely de rigueur for the fashion-minded young woman of the early 1980s. Was Chrissie in part responsible for this trend? Maybe. Who knows? Those who appeared on MTV often became fashion icons, some more famous for their dress than their music.

During that hot August of 1981, when MTV was born and changed a generation, perhaps I was influenced by a force I hadn't yet seen - my first viewing of MTV came in early 1982. In August, 1981, I was about to start my sophomore year in high school. When I went shopping for new clothes, I came out of the Fashion Bug near my grandmother's apartment carrying three high-necked ruffled blouses: one white like Chrissie's, one black, one red. I wore them with skinny-legged Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and with the style we called "baggies": pleated jeans with loose thighs tapering down to the ankle.

Skinny jeans are coming back now. Everything old is new again. My friend Deanna and I used to buy our jeans as narrow as they would come, and then Deanna used her mother's sewing machine to narrow them even further; we did not consider the jeans wearable in public unless the ankles openings were so small as to necessitate the removal of our feet before putting them on. If we could zip them without lying back on the bed and employing a pliers, they were much too "loose."

At least we were safe inside those hermetically sealed jeans.

It was early days in the 80s, and we wore our hair feathered, our eyeliner blue, and our skinny jeans dark-rinsed. Soon the feathered hair would give way to gigantic teased hair and the jeans to the ubiquitous acid-wash, and we'd begin tucking our leggings into leg warmers and our feet into pointy Peter Pan boots. I went through my black clothes phase, complete with safety pins in my ears. I went through my preppy phases, with a closetful of alligator'd Izod shirts, deck shoes, and skinny leather belts. I had a New Wave phase, puncutated by bright makeup, purple tights, striped shirts and mini skirts. If it was fashionable in the 1980s, I wore it at some point.

The beginnings of a cultural revolution rang out at midnight, Tuesday, August 1, 1981, and very few people guessed at the far reaching impact it would have, far beyond the boundaries of the music industry, becoming interwoven in the fabric of American pop culture itself. There are young adults today, out of college, pursuing careers, married and parents themselves, who have known no world without MTV. For them, it has always been. For me...well, I can still remember the first time I heard the words, "I want my MTV."

Update

2006-08-06T13:07:00.000-06:00

The update on Jon is that there really is no update.

The search was called off altogether not long after I wrote my earlier entry about Jon. There is a presumption in that action that I can't seem to make myself articulate, but its specter is there nonetheless.

Thank you to those who have thought of Jon and his family, and to those who read his story. All that is left now is to pray for peace and closure for his family and loved ones, and that they would know so very many people were touched by their beloved son and brother.

Jon

2006-07-24T10:41:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while, a person comes into our lives - however briefly - and touches us in some way that leaves a lasting impression. Someone whose presence has influenced us so that we are never quite the same afterward.

Jon Francis is just such a person.

A little more than two weeks ago, I had never heard of Jon Francis. I met him on Sunday, July 9th, and briefly came to know him over the next few days that followed. He is a counselor at Luther Heights Bible Camp in Idaho, and I met him in conjunction with a day camp for children that he was staffing along with three others.

These four staffers were as wonderful with children as any folks I had ever met; their youth and enthusiasm for their project was palpable and contagious. They were kind to my own children, in particular adopting my six-year-old daughter under their broad wings, encouraging her, and helping her to feel comfortable in an environment somewhat unfamiliar to her.

The three other staffers deserve accolades as much as Jon does, but for their own privacy I will not name them here.

Besides nurturing my daughter during those four days, these young people came to our home and shared a meal with us. They were here on Tuesday, July 11th, spending the evening with us, sharing food and fellowship. They each told us something of themselves, and the experience of getting to know each better is something to be remembered. Jon was quieter than the others, seeming to enjoy listening to the chatter of our full house. He laughed at my son's knock-knock jokes, jokes my son told repeatedly with peals of giggles, turning from one person to the next. Jon related to my children as if he genuinely understood them, understood what it was like to be four and six years old in a house full of grown ups.

Jon told us that he hailed from Stillwater, Minnesota, and I told him that I have family near there. I proudly showed him the 1940s radio displayed on a shelf in our kitchen, purchased at an antique shop in Stillwater several years ago. Jon chuckled. "There's a lot of those," he said with a smile, referring to the shops lining the main streets through downtown Stillwater.

Jon struck me as a thoughtful young man, a man who would measure his words carefully, a man of deep faith whose purpose was to share that faith with the very young, the kids he so obviously enjoyed working with.

It was our privilege to have met Jon, to have known him even for such a short time, and that Thursday, July 13th, we bid farewell to him and his colleagues as they concluded the day camp and returned to Luther Heights.

On Sunday, July 16th, I arrived at my home church to discover a handwritten thank you note in my mailbox, a card written by four young people I felt blessed to know. I did not know it then, but by the time I stood in the quiet hallway, reading the note with pleasure, Jon Francis had already gone missing.

You can read about Jon here.

And here.

And if you do read about Jon, please spare him a thought or a prayer if you can. Please remember his family and those who love him. They don't know me, nor I them, but my family had the good fortunate to be blessed by Jon's presence, and we will not forget him.

"I'm just a bill, I'm only a bill..."

2006-07-05T17:54:00.000-06:00

My kids love Schoolhouse Rock. They are watching it right now. We watched it yesterday, too - looking at the American history portions in particular, mindful of the July 4th holiday.

They can sing almost every word to almost every song.

"Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here..."

"Conjunction junction, what's your function....?"

"Mr. Morton is the subject, and what the predicate says, he does..."

"Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five fifty, fifty-five, sixty..."

My son just came downstairs, loudly singing, "Eight times niiiiiiine is seventy-two!"

Yesterday, I told them I used to watch Schoolhouse Rock when I was a child.

"They had that when you were a kid?" my six-year-old daughter asked.

"Yes," I answered. "Way back then."

She paused to consider this.

"On regular TV?" she wanted to know.

"Oh, yes. We only had regular TV when I was little. No cable. No satellite. No tapes. No DVDs. Just regular TV."

"Oh. Did it come on at bedtime?"

"No, it came on between shows on Saturday cartoons and in the afternoons."

"You could only watch cartoons on Saturdays?"

"Saturday morning cartoons. Yes. Cartoons on Saturday only would do you some good."

"What?"

"Never mind."

***

My singing son is now watching me write this, impatiently standing at my elbow and asking for a hot dog bun with Jif. He's looking at my song quotes, telling me repeatedly, "That song is called Naughty Number Nine. Say that, Mom. It's Naughty Number Nine. Put that on there."

He is pleased as punch now to see that I have included his suggestion.

I'm going to the kitchen. Hot dog bun with Jif, anyone?

June 27, 1966...

2006-06-27T18:11:00.000-06:00

...was a long time ago.

Today, I am f....f...f....

I am fuh....fuh....

I am faaaaaaawwwww...

I am fuh...fuh...gak

I am fuh...arrrrrrgh

*clearing throat*

No, really.

I am fah...fuh...faw...foooooorrrrr....

I am thirty-ten.

In My Thirties...

2006-06-26T17:45:00.000-06:00

I'm still in my thirties. I can say that. Today, anyway.

So. I'm still in my thirties.

I went to the DMV to renew my driver's license this afternoon. I waited 36 minutes for my number to be called ("Now serving A-Four-Six-Four at window three!"), and 13 minutes after that for my new license. I'm pleased to say that this picture turned out much better than the one taken four years ago. My teeth are whiter, my hair longer and lighter, my smile less weary-looking.

A man who appeared to be a little older than my father - pleasantly grandfatherly - was waiting for his new license just as I was, and he turned to me with a twinkle in his blue eyes. "Did you smile?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered, smiling again.

"Then I'm sure the picture will be beautiful." And he answered my smile with one of his own. His name was called, he accepted his license, and he walked past me out the door, giving me a little salute as he went.

I stopped at the liquor store on the way home, buying vodka and Kahlua. Drinks? No. I found a recipe in Southern Living for Black Russian cake, and so that's the cake I want to make for my birthday. It will have butter and chocolate too, decadent in the style of so many Southern Living recipes. I haven't allowed myself a decadent birthday cake in years, so this time it's a treat.

Anyway.

The liquor store lady was white-haired, her face gently lined, her eyes as blue as those of the man back at the DMV. She smiled at me too, those eyes taking the features of my own face without question; she had correctly assessed that I was older than thirty, the age under which the red-lettered sign announced they would ask for identification.

"Customer must have been born on or before June 26, 1985 to purchase alcohol" read the crawl across the top of her computer screen.

On June 26, 1985, I was one day away from being able to make my first legal purchase at a liquor store, though I didn't make such a purchase until quite a while later. Thinking of that briefly at the liquor store counter this afternoon, I realized that babies born the day I became "legal" would just now be becoming "legal" themselves.

My. Time flies.

For the present moment, however, I am still in my thirties. "In my thirties" has a certain cachet. It sounds wordly and sophisticated, without being time-worn. Turning thirty was exciting. I felt liberated (liberated largely from worrying over turning thirty), old enough to be taken seriously but still young enough to be considered young.

I assumed turning forty would feel the same way. I know I've discussed it right here, though I haven't gone back to read my previous posts on the subject, because all that matters is how I feel about it right now. It was easy to be philosophical six months or a year ago. I haven't decided how I feel now.

Heather Locklear is 44. That alone should make it okay, right? I have sisters in their forties, sisters who never seem any older to me than they did when they were in college and I was still just in high school. It's as if in my mind, the nuclear family in which I was raised stays the same age as when we were all living together in the house my parents bought in 1964. It's not denial. It's just sort of...well...sort of a soft-focus view of life. It's not a bad thing at all.

"Is this your oldest?" the barista asked this morning when we stopped for coffee after a trip to Target. I'm a frequent customer, and she has met my younger children many times.

"Yes, she is," I said cheerfully, ordering drinks for both of us.

"How old are you?" Melanie asked my daughter.

"I'm nineteen."

Melanie looked at me.

"No way!" she said. "No way!"

"Tomorrow is my fortieth birthday," I answered.

"Wow! I'd never have guessed."

Melanie is my favorite barista.

...

What was today's topic again? People who are in their thirties (barely) sometimes lack organizational thinking. Sometimes.

Hamburger & Onions

2006-06-24T15:53:00.000-06:00

There is little more comforting than the smell of hamburger browning with onions. One of the first recipes I learned to make is, in my heart, the quintessential comfort food: a simply, homey meal known as hamburger hotdish. It's hamburger, onions, salt and pepper, canned tomatoes (ideally homegrown and home canned, but we do the best we can with what we have), and cooked macaroni. Someone a little more adventurous might add some paprika or chili powder or cheese or peppers, but the simple basic is still the best.

I can remember coming home from piano lessons late in the fall, when it would be growing dark and chilly by the time I got to our front door. The lights would be on, and I could follow the smell of the hamburger cooking right up the front stairs to our bright and cheerful kitchen, my mother there at the stove with her back to the counter. Suppertime in our house was often messy and noisy, but there'd never been anywhere else I felt safer or more secure. I can still see Mom in the kitchen as clearly as if I'd been there yesterday. I can hear the chattering parakeet mimicking children in and out of the room: "I'm hungry!" or "What's for supper?" I can remember sitting at the counter doing homework or writing stories, watching my mother cook. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies or homemade buns spread with butter and brown sugar can evoke such images as well, but nothing brings the feeling of the joy of homecoming quite like hamburger and onions.

I was thinking this as I stood over my own stove the other day, my back to the counter where my oldest daughter sat copying recipes to take with her when she moves out. I'd had a yearning for old-fashioned hamburger hotdish, the kind my mother made, the kind my dad's mother made. I fanned the skillet in front of me, savoring the aroma, wondering how many hundreds of times I'd eaten that hotdish in all these years. I told my daughter some of my stories, in particular those chilly fall nights coming home from piano lessons. I couldn't have been older than ten or eleven.

All five of us sat around our supper table not very much later that evening, digging into hotdish, bread and butter, and a salad of cucumbers and onions. We seemed closer somehow, and for once, neither of the little ones tried to get up to play in the middle of the meal. I felt bonded, warmed, and right - all through simple hamburger hotdish and a brightly lit, noisy kitchen full of people I love.

It's the smell of hamburger browning with onions. There's nothing like it.

Happy Birthday, First Born

2006-06-18T21:05:00.000-06:00

She's making progress. My eldest, my heartbreaker, my baby born with the platinum blonde hair, the one who wore a barrette at just ten hours old.

She's got a plan of action for her life, one step at a time, and she's finally make some specific, measurable goals for herself. Baby steps, but my baby is taking them.

It's her nineteenth birthday today, this girl of mine, and I'm having trouble believing nineteen years have passed so quickly, in the measure of a baby's cry. I remember my own nineteenth birthday clearly, as if it were only a few years gone by instead of nearly twenty-one. It was a blue-sky day much like today, and I went to work wearing the new dress my mother had sewn as a birthday gift.

Me as a mother? I settled for buying her a new cellphone and a photo album, but her pleasure wasn't any less than my own had been for receiving the gift of the beautiful dress, so I'll guess I did all right.

Her face looks the same to me as it did those many years ago, cradled in my arms and just getting to know the world. Her eyes are still alert, still watching, still knowing that something wonderful must be waiting out there for her.

She's sprouted her own wings now, but I'd like to have that day nineteen years ago back again, if only for just a few minutes. Just a few.

Happy Birthday, First Baby Girl.

That's Amore

2006-06-07T17:55:00.000-06:00

It's been a wonderful afternoon.

Today was Little Miss Space Age's last day of kindergarten. She calls herself an official "going-into-first-grader." We took pictures, we gave her lovely teacher a .thank-you gift, we cried. A little. A lot.

After school, I took both small Space Agers to the library, where we selected two books apiece, and I gave them ice cream sundaes when we got home. I washed and folded laundry, vacuumed and dusted, washed and put away dishes. As a rainstorm gathered in the not-too-far-distant distance, the house looked cozy and tidy. Homey. Inviting.

Inspired, I put Dean Martin on the stereo and began a batch of my homemade lasagne, something the Space Age Husband has been asking me to make for weeks. I cooked and stirred, tasting the sauce, mixing the cheese, and occasionally sipped on a glass of red table wine, singing along to the comforting sounds of Dino. The children danced. They sat at the table, coloring pictures for me.

When the lasagne was ready for the oven, I stopped and danced with them before washing another round of dishes. We did a mambo around the living room - theirs a bit more freeform than mine - laughing until we were out of breath.

It's that peaceful, quiet time now, the time between the activity of the afternoon and the arrival home of my husband. The children have repaired upstairs to the playroom, undoubtedly sitting at their little drawing table making more pictures and stories for me. I'm still listening to Dean, recorded live at Lake Tahoe in 1962, and leisurely sipping on my wine in the bright warmth of the kitchen.

When Mr. Space Age returns home from his long day, we'll sit down to our favorite Italian meal and listen to our favorite Italian singer. We'll have a little Neopolitan ice cream for dessert, and by then the stresses of the day will have receded.

Indeed, "Memories Are Made of This."

Space-Age Wear Redux

2006-06-03T13:09:00.000-06:00

The younger Space Age daughter recently helped her Girl Scout Daisy troop hold a mother-daughter tea to round out the Girl Scout year. We all dressed in our summer finery, hats mandatory. So what does a Space Age Housewife wear to such an affair? A brand-new hat.

I didn't have a hat, so my little Daisy and I trotted ourselves to Macy's for an afternoon of hat-shopping. We tried on style after style, giggling, preening, and admiring row after row of pretty hats, some plain, some beribboned, some broad, some narrow.

Finally, we settled on one, a light straw hat with a sage green ribbon, tied in a bow in the back. Wanting to treat the Space Age Girl to a new hat of her own, we followed our jaunt to Macy's with a stop at Gymboree, where we found a floppy rainbow-hued straw hat for her.

We made quite a pair at the tea, where my dainty young lady served me cookies, fruit, fancy red punch, and homemade candies.

Contradictions

2006-05-14T20:13:00.000-06:00

I'm mobile. Free! Unplugged!

For Mother's Day, my darling husband and children presented me with a new notebook computer with wireless connection. I'm sitting in the peaceful evening atmosphere of my kitchen right now, surrounded by family. I can take this thing to the living room...the bedroom...the deck...

First it was the iriver and now the notebook. My Spage Age Husband is bound and determined to bring his wife fully into the 21st century.

Jane Jetson has nothing on me.

More Def Leppard: Thoughts From An Old Lady

2006-05-09T13:43:00.000-06:00

"Thank you for your patience, ma'am," he said as he handed me my double tall nonfat toffee nut latte through the drive-up window. His eyes were brown, twinkling, his smile sincere. It felt like looking into the eyes of my own son sometime in the shadowy future. All I could do was smile back and drive away.

Being called "ma'am" has never particularly bothered me. After all, it isn't an age thing, really. Really. It's supposed to denote a married woman, not necessarily an old one. Unfortunately, perception is reality, and common use of "ma'am" has turned it into a word synonymous with old. As in, you could be my mother or my teacher, or the lady at the library with the tortoise-shell glasses.

Well, why shouldn't he call me ma'am? I'm easily twice his age. I was driving a minivan loaded with two young children, littered with empty Capri Sun pouches, cracker crumbs, and a crumpled note from the PTA. My sunglasses couldn't quite disguise the tiny lines on my face, the little marks that betray more than just the passage of time.

Ever since my Saturday afternoon on the couch, I've been listening often to my Def Leppard CDs, and that moment was no exception. Even "Armageddon It" couldn't save me from the truth, and that truth was that in all likelihood I'd been listening to that same song before the young brown-eyed man's father had even met his mother.

I wonder how that can be. I haven't changed so very much, have I? The breeze through the open car window still whips blonde hair into my eyes. The sky seems as blue as it ever was, and if I listen carefully enough, I can still hear the sound of the traffic behind the big screen at the France Avenue Drive-in.

Time doesn't confront us with a shout. It doesn't wave an orange flag in our paths, and it doesn't phone ahead. It sneaks up on us, surprising us, and we're left to wonder if it had been following us all along. It's in the moments when we look into the innocent eyes of a toddler and reach out to clasp his chubby hand before realizing that his hands have grown strong and lean, his body tall, and his eyes knowing. "When did that happen?" we think, straining to reconcile this new person with the flannel-wrapped package we brought home from the hospital not so very long ago.

Time starts and it stops, capturing like a snapshot one small moment and another, and it starts again, moving faster and faster, leaving in its wake breathless confusion.

I took a sip of the latte as I rounded the corner, headed for the bank to make a deposit, resisting the urge to shush the young children in the backseat, preferring instead for that moment to hear their voices, recording each giggle and squeal to replay later, over and over.

The sound rose and fell over the stereo, mixing with long-familiar guitar riffs. Today the door of time was a revolving one, and as the coffee shop receded behind me in the distance, I smiled at the thought that it was indeed possible to be two places at once.

Def Leppard, Steve Clark, and a long time ago...

2006-05-06T17:49:00.000-06:00

I became a Def Leppard fan the first time I heard "Let It Go" from the High And Dry album at age 15. Some time after that, they were cemented in my heart with the release of Pyromania.

And...I'm a sap. Maybe. I don't know.

I was on the living room couch this afternoon, nursing a headache, and a I caught a showing of VH1's Hysteria: The Def Leppard Story. I'd seen it before, some time ago when it was first aired. The show was near it's end, focusing on the triumph that was the Hysteria album and its promotional tour. Afterward, in the ten-minute gap between the end of the movie and the start of the next show, they aired two Def Leppard videos ("Hysteria" and "Photograph"). I watched the images of Steve Clark with a sense of wistfulness that grew to full-blown sadness. I thought about the difficulties he'd faced in his life - "difficulties" being an altogether inadequate word - and the senseless, tragic way he died. It's been more than fifteen years since his death. Vivian Campbell has been with the band now longer than Steve himself was. And still I can't get over that vague feeling of sorrow over what once was and what might have been.

It's more than just my affection for Steve. It's particularly about my affection for the band in its earlier days, its heyday, and about the visceral memories the music can still bring to the fore.

Hysteria was released at a time when my life was undergoing the biggest changes I had ever experienced. The summers of '87 - when the album was released - and '88 - when its biggest singles became monster hits - were summers of simultaneous joy and dissatisfaction, times of beginnings and endings, possibilities and regrets. My favorite music remained constant, and many nights I'd lie on my sofa bed, the stereo on for company, my eyes closed, and the songs enveloping my entire self, seeming to come from inside. I was lonely often. Steve and Joe and Phil and Rick and Rick kept me company on many a balmy night in a ground floor apartment, a baby sleeping in the next room.

Even now, the music takes me back. I can hear one note and be overcome by an almost intoxicating sense of time suspension, surrounded by a strong sense of blue skies, thick humidity, and my friend Lynn and I good-naturedly arguing about which one of us would get Joe Elliot. If I lost that argument, I always chose Steve Clark next. I was young and uncertain. The music always returns me to that vulnerability.

After Hysteria, Def Leppard began work on a new album. During the recording of that album Steve died, early in 1991. Released after his death, Adrenalize was the last album featuring the work of Steve Clark.

And so...as I lay there on the couch this afternoon, the whole rush of it came back to me at once - the me that I was those summers eighteen and nineteen years ago, the flashes of memories like a slide show, one after the other, rapid and never quite complete, and the sadness for the death of a man I didn't even know.

The tears came.

For me, for Steve, for what might have been...I don't know. And somehow I didn't feel any better when they stopped.

Seven years ago today...

2006-04-24T12:53:00.000-06:00

Seven years ago today, I was standing in the bathroom of our suburban St. Paul home, looking down at a pink stick. Very pink.

Later, my husband and I went to Old Chicago to play darts and have a bite to eat. He drank beer; I drank lemonade. He didn't make the connection.

I told him that evening about the pink stick.

Oh, the little things we remember...how did I remember the date? I don't know, really.

Today there is a six-year-old girl on her first real field trip, riding a school bus for the first time, carrying a sack lunch and wearing her long blonde hair in a thick ponytail.

She's old enough to read, do math, giggle with her friends, be dropped off at birthday parties, earn patches in Daisy Scouts, and be embarrassed by her mother.

We've come a long way, baby.

What would a Space Age Housewife wear?

2006-04-22T21:08:00.000-06:00

Most of the time, just what any other woman my age might wear: jeans, capris, sandals, t-shirts, sweater sets, yoga clothes.

I do have a pretty good collection of vintage clothes, though, and I happened to be wearing part of my collection earlier this evening - a navy blue dress circa 1960, and a handmade apron from sometime in the mid-to-late 1950s, perhaps once worn by a real Space Age Housewife.

Both items are, of course, older than I am. Here is what happens when the 21st century meets Mrs. Cleaver...

I had a crinoline on with it for a while too, but in truth, my crinoline is too big and it kept sliding down. One thing I don't need is an "Oops, your slip is showing" moment. ;)

I am SOOOOO old...

2006-04-20T16:10:00.000-06:00

My 4-year-old son just asked me how old I am.

"Guess," I said.

"60?"

"Uh...no."

"80?"

"Not quite."

"90?"

"No!"

"20?"

"That's better."

My 6-year-old daughter just interjected."She's 39. On her birthday, she's gonna be 40."

His answer? "I think she's 99."

Eggs and iPods

2006-04-17T21:22:00.000-06:00

It was a good weekend, as weekends go. The Space Age Husband offered to take the children out to breakfast while I went to the gym, giving me some extra time to get a good work out in. The three of them dropped me off at the club before heading out for sausages and pancakes. I'd had shredded wheat and had tucked a large bottle of water into my gym bag. (Ah, the price we pay...)

I sweated for a good ninety minutes. When they picked me up, SAH had a fresh hot cup of coffee for me, and a surprise.

My own personal MP3 player. It's not an iPod - it's an iriver - but the former sounded better in the subject line. Didn't it? At any rate, I've been pulled further into the twenty-first century with this most popular of space-age gadgets. I've got four hours' worth of songs loaded up - Scorpions to ABBA to Depeche Mode to Dean Martin - and haven't even made a dent in the available space. In just two days, I've gotten used to the "ear buds." This could work.

Today I sped through sixty minutes of cardio and twenty minutes of strength training without checking the clock seventeen times. Music is magic.

Anyway. After arriving home on Saturday afternoon, my first project - not loading up the iriver - was coloring Easter eggs with the children. Because they wanted to do an egg hunt, a tradition that was not part of my upbringing, we decided to make lots of eggs. Many many eggs. Many many more eggs than I would normally cook and color for a single Easter weekend. I now have more than two dozen eggs to use up. Twelve? Easy. A few deviled eggs and some egg salad. 26? What am I going to do? Egg salad. Deviled eggs. Eggs a la Goldenrod. Creamed eggs on toast. Eggs in potato salad. Eggs in Caesar salad. Purple, yellow, and orange eggs coming out of my ears.

That's an idea. I'll turn them into earrings. I can start a trend.

Right after I bring back new Easter hats for women.

It's going to be an uphill battle. Maybe I'll just pop in the ear buds and go for a run instead.

A Post About Nothing

2006-04-10T18:00:00.000-06:00

I had a post in mind. It was days ago, but it was valid. I was going to post about "looming 40" angst. I composed the post in my head, mentally rolling this way and that way the words I would use to describe the seemingly complex but utterly simple - and common - emotions I was feeling at that moment.

Ten years ago, "29" by the Gin Blossoms was my favorite song. I listened to it over and over and over and over for nearly a year, wallowing in the impending end of my twenties, fearing the unknown of turning 30. It was, ultimately, much ado about nothing. I turned thirty and...liked it. It was liberating. I no longer had to worry about turning 30; I was there. My twenties were a blur. I got pregnant with my first child at twenty and went 90 miles an hour for years afterward, at times working two full time jobs just to earn the money to pay my rent and go to school.

Turning 30 brought a new confidence, a new sense of being a part of the world. I met my husband when I was 30, and in retrospect, maybe I don't need to wonder why. I was finally at peace with myself.

So days ago I popped in my old Gin Blossoms CD, thinking I would listen to "Allison Road" or the "Cajun Song" but finding my fingers pressing "29." I listened. I wallowed. I had flashbacks of near-summer a decade ago, and I allowed the angst to wash over me again, as if I were reliving the entire experience, except with a larger, older number this time.

I mentally blogged it.

By the time I finally had a free moment to sit down and actually write the post instead of thinking about it, I realized it wasn't relevant anymore. The angst was gone. It was the angst of a moment gone by, and it no longer meant anything.

If it comes back, I'll be sure to let you know. ;)

Springtime For Hula Hoop

2006-03-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

We went to Target yesterday. I had some spring cleaning projects to do, and I needed a few supplies (metal baskets for pantry organization, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, bleach, paper towels...that sort of thing), so I loaded up the Space Age Kids into the flying car and took off for Target.

Somewhere north of Mr. Clean and west of the bleach and the Dryel, I got sidetracked by OUTDOOR TOYS.

There was something alluring - irresistible - about the call of OUTDOOR TOYS. It was a sunny day. It was downright springlike with blue skies and a whisper of humidity. I swung my kid-heavy cart into the miles-long OUTDOOR TOYS aisle, marvelling at the brightly colored plastic and happily recalling recent springs past. The OUTDOOR TOYS knew their appeal and began jumping into my cart seemingly of their own volition.

Sidewalk chalk. A jump rope. No, two. We must have two. Six bottles of scented bubble solution. Two large bubble blowers. A bouncy ball. No, no. Two.

Finally, two hula hoops. Sparkly hula hoops with sparkly solution inside that swirled when the hoop twirled. The Space Age children were as fascinated by the sparkly hula hoops as I was. They raced me through paper towels, drawer organizers, Dustbuster filters and laundry degertent to get to the magical checkout lane and the card reader that would make the hula hoops ours.

When we got home, I sent them outside in spring jackets, arms laden with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, jump ropes, hula hoops, and little packages of rainbow-colored goldfish crackers. I heard their shouts and squeals and cheers as I gamely settled myself in to scrub the under-sink cabinet in the kitchen. My hands worked quickly, apparently with no help from my brain, which was occupied with the joy taking place on the other side of my kitchen window.

When cabinet was clean and the last Brillo pad and box of dishwasher detergent had been placed, I threw off my rubber gloves, abandoning the rest of the long list I'd stuck by Post-It note to the counter. I slid open the patio doors and ran outside to the children and their OUTDOOR TOYS.

Spage Age girl says that if I practice "for a million thousand hours," I might be able to hula hoop as well as she.

How Dino Joined Our Family

2006-03-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

I originally posted this in answer to a poll question on a message board I frequent. I've told an abbreviated version of this story before.

How Dino Joined Our Family...

Last November, a cat came to our backyard. He was a pretty gray tabby with a red collar and a friendly nature. It was freezing out, so I let him into the house. There was no tag on his collar, so I had no idea where he belonged.

I came to this board for advice, and after reading suggestions, decided I would take him to a nearby vet to have him scanned for a chip. Not wanting to try taking the cat in the car with two little kids, I figured I'd wait until my husband got home. I gave the cat water and let him play with my children. He made himself at home immediately, purring and snuggling and sitting in my husband's chair.

Later, after my husband came home, my teenage daughter and I took the cat to the vet. She held him on her lap, petting him and speaking to him in soothing tones. He did not seem to like the car ride. We got to the vet's office just before they closed; unfortunately, they were unable to help. He did have a chip, but their scanner revealed no identifying information. It was suggested that we take the cat to the Humane Society and have him scanned there.

Fine. This necessitated an overnight stay at our house. I wasn't turning that cat loose to freeze or worse. We stopped at the store on the way home. My daughter cuddled the cat while I ran in for a litter box, food dish, and some food.

As he stayed overnight, we were growing attached to the cat. He was friendly and affectionate. He slept between my husband and me, purring nearly all night.

The next morning, I was reluctant to bring him to the Humane Society, fearing that we would find his owners and have to give him back. We'd even started thinking of names. Still, if he were my cat, wouldn't I want him back? Wouldn't I want those who found him to do the right thing? We brought him in. Sure enough, the Humane Society was able to pull his information from his chip, and I was given the name and phone number of his owners. I called the number immediately. When a woman answered, I explained I had found a cat I believed was hers - had she lost one? I described him to her, and she said, "Oh! That's Boots!" She said she hadn't seen him for a while, and they wondered if he was ever coming home. The Humane Society people gave us a cardboard cat carrier, and we reluctantly loaded Boots up to bring him home. The children were very sad. We drove all the way back to our own neighborhood - Boots' owners lived just down the block from our house. After we dropped him off, my husband drove right past our house and up the street that would take us to the freeway.

"We're going back," he explained.

It was time to find a cat of our own.

Once back at the Humane Society, we were let into a roomful of cats to observe and talk to. Way in the back was an orange tabby, two years old, without a single prospect. It was the kittens who commanded the attention of most people looking for a new friend. The orange tabby looked at us blankly with his big eyes, but he came to the front of his cage. He sniffed my hand and blinked, a little more life coming into his expression.

"This is the one," I said firmly.

The Humane Society woman opened his cage and handed him to me.

"He's a sweetie, but he's shy," she offered.

There was something familiar about this orange guy, but I chalked that up to our having had an orange tabby before, when we lived in Minnesota. Something about him tugged at me, however, and I knew he was the one. My husband agreed, and before too long we were filling out the paperwork.

As I signed form after form, I noticed one that listed an intersection near my house.

"Is this where he was found?" I asked the worker.

"Yes, it is."

"That's in my own neighborhood!"

Suddenly, I flashed on a memory from two months earlier, near the beginning of the school year. There was an orange tabby hanging around my daughter's elementary school. I had seen him three or four times - he had no collar and appeared to be a stray. On that day, he decided to follow us home after my son and I had walked up to school to pick up my daughter. The cat trailed behind us by several feet, but he was definitely following us. After we'd walked a couple of blocks, I had decided that if he followed us all the way home, I would let him in.

He turned and disappeared just two houses away from ours. I did not see him again.

Until that day at the Humane Society. It was him! It was the same orange tabby who had once nearly followed us home! I knew then that that was the familiarity in him, and that it seemed we really was meant to be our cat.

He spent the first week or so hiding under our bed all day, but as he grew more comfortable, he spent more and more time out of hiding and sitting or playing with us. He's a regular fixture around here now.

Boots came to visit us often after that - at least once a week he'd show up at our house asking to come in and play. It's been months now since we've seen Boots...I hope that he's all right. I believe he came to us that first day in order to lead us to the orange tabby, Dino, who became a member of our family.

So. What's going on?

2006-03-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

My husband just called.

"What's going on?" he asked pleasantly.

Let's see. What is going on under Chaos Roof today?

Moments before the phone call, I heard Space Age Girl call out in a pitiful voice, "Mom! Come and help us!" I ran up to the playroom to find every stick and stone of Barbie equipment, four hundred and thirty-three Barbie outfits, five thousand and one Barbie shoes, and a few hundred Barbies littered all over the floor. The two young children were sitting in the green Rubbermaid tote that had once housed the Barbies, crammed in together and apparently stuck. There were three large - very large - drenched spots on the carpet, the result of a tea party held with water from the bathroom sink. The cat screeched in dismay and shot out from under the futon, escaping as soon as the door was opened, leaving a trail of orange hair in his wake.

I rescued the children. I picked up Space Age Boy's jacket from the floor, intending to hang it up in his closet. I stopped short at the threshold to his room. Every DVD in the children's DVD case had been removed. They were all strewn about the floor. Space Age Boy's jeans were on the floor also, as well as his discarded socks. I do not know why there were three discarded socks. To the best of my knowledge, his feet still number just two.

I paused. I went back to the playroom, where the children were busily avoiding putting the Barbie items back into the Rubbermaid tote, and noted that the boy was indeed running around in a t-shirt and a pair of Spongebob underwear. That explained the jeans on the floor.

Returning to the bedroom, I collected each DVD, slid them all back into the case, zipped it shut, and brought it downstairs. I hid it.

Hearing the children running up and down the hallway shouting "Giddyap!" I hollered back up to continue putting the Barbie things away lest the items be confiscated and placed in time out.

"It's too much work!" they yelled simultaneously.

I was rummaging through the pantry for the bottle of Cabernet when the phone rang.

So. What's going on with you?

Finding Johanna

2006-03-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is another piece I wrote for my writers' group. They may recognize sukiyaki as having been one of the assigned words that week.

FINDING JOHANNA

“What exactly is sukiyaki anyway?” Steve put down the newspaper and frowned across the breakfast table at me. I was going through recipes and cookbooks, muttering to myself and preparing a grocery list. I glanced up at him absent-mindedly.
“What, honey?”

“Sukiyaki. You said something about sukiyaki. What is it?”

“It’s a Japanese dish, dear. Layered vegetables and meat and bean curd, all fried together.”

“Bean curd?”

“Tofu.”

“Oh. Tofu. You’re not planning to make that are you?”

I sighed. “No, Steve, I’m not going to offend your sensitive palate by offering you sukiyaki. I might just as well try serving you fried eel or pork rinds. I just happened to see a recipe here and thought it looked interesting.”

Steve pushed aside the rest of his Swiss and tomato omelet.

“I’m full,” he announced, leaning back in his chair and burying his face behind the Saturday real estate supplement.

I scribbled the last few items on the list – milk, cheese, yeast, wheat flour, eggs – and stacked the recipe books. I stood up to clear the breakfast dishes, taking my recipe file with me. This was so typical of my relationship with Steve these days. He was either critical or detached, and I was left feeling awkward. Or worse – ignored.

As I rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, I wondered what was wrong with me lately. I was much more sensitive to Steve than ever before. I was acutely aware that neither he nor my children seemed to need me very much these days. Certainly I was necessary for their comfort: I did the shopping and the cooking and the wash. I ironed. I changed sheets. I picked up basketballs and dirty socks and milk glasses with crusty rims. I made sure the pantry was stocked with Gatorade, Power Bars, Cheerios and chocolate chip cookies. And I never, ever made anyone eat sukiyaki.

Was this what it felt like to be taken for granted? I wondered. Or maybe I was having a mid-life crisis. Isn’t 36 too young for a mid-life crisis? Yes. Too young for a mid-life crisis and too old for an identity crisis. I wasn’t sure what to call my crisis.

What was I? Just another worn out 36-year-old housewife. I had a handsome 42-year-old executive husband who earned enough money to give me the privilege of staying home to raise our boys. Those boys were now ten and fifteen, and perhaps my being home all day was beginning to be superfluous. And maybe the modern world had passed me by.

The truth of the matter was that I didn’t have many aspirations beyond being a good homemaker, hearthkeeper, wife and mother, and now I was worried that those roles didn’t mean much to anyone besides me.

I looked around the kitchen, now immaculate and sparkling. I caught a glimpse of my face reflected in the shiny stainless steel of my mixer bowl: it was tired, listless, and marked by those tiny lines that sneak up from nowhere when you realize you’re not twenty-five anymore. Although I shouldn’t have been, I was shocked to see that weary face looking back at me. It surely was a hoax of Mother Nature’s, wasn’t it, that I was no longer the soft and supple young woman I once was?

I felt Steve’s hand on my shoulder.

“I’m taking Ben to REI,” he said. “Want me to pick up anything for you while I’m out?”

“At REI?” I laughed. “Hardly. Have fun.”

“I want to buy some camping gear for next weekend,” Steve explained. He tossed his car keys in the air and caught them again, smiling at me broadly, looking youthful and vibrant and handsome as ever. Why didn’t he have the same time-weary lines I did? Why did the hint of silver in his hair make him all the more attractive while mine just made me look dull? Another of Mother Nature’s cruel little jokes, I supposed.

Ben, our long and lanky fifteen-year-old, came bounding up the stairway from the basement family room, all legs and sneakers and teenage sweat.

“I just beat Andy three times in foosball,” he laughed to his father, brushing past me and barely acknowledging my presence. Andy, our ten-year-old, the smaller carbon copy of his brother, appeared behind him, howling, “I never win! I want to go to REI too! Can I come, Dad?”

The three of them tumbled out the door, laughing and talking all at once, slamming the kitchen door behind them. I peeked out for just a moment, watching them pile into Steve’s Durango and roar off up the street.

The silence in my normally noisy house seemed louder than the noise it replaced. It was Saturday morning, the house was clean, my boys were out, and I had no idea what I would do to occupy my own time. Make cookies? No, I didn’t really feel like making cookies. Call my mother? No. I didn’t think she’d ever had a crisis of self in her life and would surely look on mine as a fundamental character flaw. Grocery shop? Yes, that was what I should do, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm for the task.

I wandered around the house aimlessly for a while, trying to resurrect the comfortable feeling of security in my home. It was a beautiful house, carefully decorated with pieces Steve and I picked out together. There was love in every hardwood floorboard, every stitch of the quilts on the beds, and in the small touches of matching towels and fully stocked bookcases. I had everything I could possibly hope for. Why in this moment did it feel like “not enough”?

I found myself heading for the bedroom with the intent of cleaning out and organizing the closets. Subconsciously, I suppose I knew that I wanted to inspect, reread, and wallow in the faded memorabilia of my life before Steve and the boys. I’d been married for 16 years, and my impetuous teens seemed light years away, a life lived long ago by a pretty young girl, a life I’d seen pictures of but couldn’t remember participating in.

Diving into the closet, I pulled out dusty shoeboxes filled with stiletto heels and long forgotten boots. I rummaged underneath the extra linens that weren’t quite as fresh-smelling as I would have liked. I found textbooks from Steve’s graduate school days, and moved past cardboard boxes full of family photos I’d promised myself would go in albums one day. I finally unearthed a dark green cardboard box tied with double-knotted twine. It had been buried underneath the accumulations of married life for more years than I wanted to think of. I slipped down the hallway back to the kitchen and pulled the shears out of the junk drawer. I stopped to fill a wineglass with Riesling, casting a guilty glance at the clock as I did so. It was just before eleven. Who was here to care if I had a glass of wine in the morning? Who would have cared if I’d had the whole bottle?

Back in the bedroom, I closed the door, hesitating only momentarily before locking it behind me. I sat on the floor with the big box and sliced through the twine with the shears. The scent of faded potpourri and old papers wafted to my nose and tempted me inside. I took a long sip of the Riesling, leaned back against the dresser with my knees pulled up, and placed a stack of papers next to me.

A few pages of high school poetry, stapled together in book form. A manila folder of essays written my sophomore year in college, before I dropped out to marry Steve. An article for the school paper. Another one for the local weekly, written just after Steve and I rented our first apartment. I read a little and laughed a little. I flipped through the pages of poems, sighing over the raw angst in the verses of my youth:

Late last evening, I
Cried for a time because you
Said, “I don’t love you,”
And how can I keep living
Knowing that I still love you?

I stopped reading for a minute to wonder if, like twenty years ago, I was drowning in my angst and allowing the problem to balloon to greater proportions than it warranted. I took another long sip of the wine and continued thumbing through the pages.

A paper on illegal immigrants written at age fifteen. Love notes from someone in my journalism class in college. A list of my favorite songs. More poetry. A few childish short stories and one ambitious play.

I reached into the box and pulled out more of the puzzle pieces that were my life: my high school diploma and tassel, a leatherette folder of pictures from a college party, a crumpled brown paper sack filled with letters from a soldier I’d written to.

I glanced again at the stack of essays and short stories and the play I’d written at seventeen. I stood up and gently opened the door, peering out into the hallway. It was still and quiet. Steve and the boys were still enjoying their testosterone outing. I padded down the hallway toward the kitchen and retrieved the rest of the bottle of Riesling. It was eleven-thirty. Who cared? I had a past to live in today.

I returned to the bedroom, once more locking the door. Refilling my glass, I settled in on the floor again and spread the stacks of paper in front of me. Before I lost myself in the long-forgotten words, I wanted to get an image of my former self. I opened the leatherette folder of pictures, fanning them out and looking for an individual shot of myself. There I was: young and pretty, rosy-cheeked and smiling, hamming up a pose for whoever had been behind the camera. I wasn’t just pretty then. There was life there behind those mischievous blue eyes and brilliant smile. I hastily restacked the photos and crammed them back into the folder.

My eyes lifted to the framed wedding photo on Steve’s nightstand and saw the same smile, this time aimed adoringly at the face of my new husband. Had I been too young to get married, at twenty? I supposed not; we’d done well enough in our marriage and I loved my husband. Over the years the occasional tempting thought to have an affair popped into my head – I was intrigued with the idea of a relationship that was all passion and longing, and no dirty socks and televised golf games and Tuesday meatloaf. The ideas always went as quickly as they had flitted into my head, and it had been a long time since I’d even thought of it.

I turned back to my reading, slipping easily into the other worlds created in my own brain long dusty years ago. As I read on, I gained a new perspective on who I had been and who I could be. I felt myself lifting from the funk that had held me captive.

As I took the last swallow of wine in my glass, I heard a tap at the bedroom door. I opened it to find Steve on the other side.

“Johanna? Hey, what are you doing locked away in here?” he asked, looking quizzically at the papers and folders strewn on the floor.

“Oh, just looking for something.” I flashed him the same brilliant smile I’d admired earlier in the photos.

“Well, we missed you this morning, hon. The boys and I wanted to know if you’d like to go out and join us for lunch.”

The invitation touched me. I thought again of how I had everything I’d ever dreamed of, and the feeling that something was missing dissipated as a new and welcome thought occurred to me that I couldn’t wait to share with Steve.

“I’d love to,” I answered brightly, linking arms with my husband and heading back to the kitchen, where our sons waited near the door. Was reality really all about perception? Where earlier I’d felt taken for granted, I now felt like the belle of my own ball as I gazed on the expectantly happy faces of my family. Perhaps my journey down memory lane had positively altered my perception.

“So,” Steve asked, holding the door open for me to step outside, “did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think so,” I said.

“What was it?” he asked as he locked the door and motioned to the boys, who had started tossing the basketball around.

“Myself,” I whispered under my breath.

“What did you say, sweetie? Ben! Andy! Get in the car now!”

As I reached the door of the Durango, I turned to face my husband.

“Steve,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’d like to start writing again.”

Because she's bad, she's bad...

2006-03-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have been informed via space-age email that my writing "sucks" and that my short fiction is "boring." Those are two of the repeatable words from the email - sent by someone who appears to be a stranger to me - that describes the writer's dim view of my words.

To the unknown correspondent: Thank you for your thoughtful review. I'll keep your suggestions in mind, and I will no longer be hog-tying you and forcing you to read my blog. That was very inconsiderate of me, and I'll be more mindful of your sensibilities in the future.

Does anyone have an eye-rolling icon for me?

Slave Driver!

2006-03-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

Tooth Girl is a slave driver.

I kept her home from school today with a cold. She's coughing, mildly feverish, and a bit out of sorts. She's also very needy.

Is there any more demanding taskmaster than a sick child? A sick child who is upstairs while most of my work is downstairs? Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. All day. Up, down. A hundred times, perhaps. I wonder how much cardio I can add to this morning's five-mile workout. Up and down the stairs all day long.

She wants a different DVD. She wants some yogurt. Is it time for her medicine yet? Can she have some more orange juice? Did I get her a new coloring book? Where is the cat? Is Daddy home yet? Another different DVD? Will I read her a book? What smells good in the oven? We read two books, and that smell is lemon squares.

Oh, wait. I'm being summoned again with a howled "Moooooooooooooooooooooooooom!"

She wanted to ask about Daddy again. When will he be home? One minute? Will he read to her?

I suggested that maybe Daddy can read her new library book to her while I make some supper.

She's sick rarely and has never missed school before, so I've indulged her slave-driving tendencies today. I did get her the new coloring book, and some stickers, and some drawing paper. Her sister babysat while I ran to the grocery store for the cough syrup, the orange juice, and the keep-her-occupied supplies. I was reminded of a time when I was a sick little girl in bed and my mother bought me a new coloring book (mine was The Archies; Tooth Girl's is Disney Princesses). New coloring books make lots of things more bearable when you're six.

She's sitting up now, her lap desk in front of her, wiggling her loose tooth and waiting for Daddy to come home. Maybe I'll let her have a lemon square before supper.

The Old Little Girl and the Tooth

2006-03-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

My six-year-old daughter finally has a loose tooth. She's among the last of her classmates to experience this particular little thrill, and it's obvious she's excited. Unfortunately, her little thrill comes with an unexpected side effect. It hurts.

She likes to wiggle the tooth with her tongue, but she gets frustrated when that hurts sometimes. She can't eat crunchy food. It's too uncomfortable.

"When will my tooth fall out, Mama?"

"I don't know. Soon."

I explained that if she wiggles it a little bit here and there it will get looser and looser and then fall out.

"Will it fall out when I'm eating?"

"It might."

When I saw her proudly pushing it outward with her tongue, showing off for her brother, I told her I was so excited for her.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it's your first loose tooth. It's very exciting!"

"I didn't know you were excited. I thought you might be sad because your little girl is growing up."

That kid.

All I could do was hug her. Does she have to be so wordly wise at six?

Oh, my aging brain...

2006-03-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

I opened the Blogger Dashboard oh, about an hour ago. Before I had a chance to write anything, I served leftover birthday cake to two of my children, ate a banana, took a shower, and put Whitestrips on my teeth (hey, these things really DO work!). I was summoned downstairs once more to serve beverages to two of my children. In my bathrobe, still not finished with my post-shower toilette, I popped in here for a quick scan of my messageboards.

I saw the Dashboard open. I remembered that I had been about to blog something before succumbing to the multiple distractions I often face (I'm so easily led astray, you see).

No clue.

No clue whatsoever what it was that I was going to write about. Was it the near miss we experienced earlier when the kids' dresser tumbled forward to the floor? No. That's not it. That was a terrifying experience, and not one I care to relive in the written word just quite yet. What was it?

The world may never know. Or care.

I'm getting old.

What did I come in here for again?

And just who are you?

Happy Birthday...

2006-03-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

...to the Space Age Husband.

:)

Inside The Box

2006-03-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

“You don’t understand!”

This must be, what? The two-thousandth time my teenage daughter has leveled this accusation at me? But who’s counting?

Her level of self-absorption is staggering, though I suppose it's nothing more than typical of girls her age. Her inability to grasp that some modern teenage experiences are near universal and that sometimes I really do understand is normal as well. I accept this normalcy, but it doesn’t make these well-worn arguments any less frustrating for the parental side of the equation. I wonder if this is how my own mother felt when I was the teenager some twenty-plus years ago?

“Yes,” I reply with a weary sigh, “I do understand. Sometimes when I say ‘no’ to a thing, it isn’t because I don’t remember what being a teenager is like. It’s because I do remember.”

I should have known this answer would not only be unsatisfying, but that it would trigger another tirade. Times have changed! Teenagers in the eighties (said with an inflection implying that “the eighties” is roughly equivalent to “the Middle Ages”) didn’t face the same issues that twenty-first century teenagers do! I don’t know her! I don’t know what it’s like! Just leave her alone!

I answer pleasantly enough, but firmly: “Disrespect isn’t going to change my mind. Take it somewhere else if you’re not going to talk calmly.”

My attitude is guaranteed to send her further into fury. And indeed, she is furious. Furious that she can’t get her way, and furious that I won’t engage in an argument. She flounces out of the kitchen and stomps up to her room, muttering under her breath words I don’t care to repeat. I consider letting her know that I can hear the obscenities and their attendant insult, but promptly discard the idea. Her obvious purpose in speaking that way within earshot is to rile me up and draw me into a confrontation, so I’ll deflate that balloon by not reacting. I have to empower myself as parent by whatever means possible, after all.

I find myself wondering if there's any way I can convince her that I occasionally know what I'm talking about. She won’t listen when I talk about my experiences. She refuses to entertain the idea that my teenage self underwent the same growing pains and anxiety that she suffers. After all, she’ll lash out with a stab, I had perfect parents. I had an idyllic upbringing. I never had the kind of social troubles she has. Mmmhmmm, I’ll tell her. And if that’s so, I belong in a museum – a display of the only perfect child raised by the only perfect parents in existence.

Well, no. Sarcasm never gets me anywhere with her, so I suppose I wouldn’t say that after all. I’d only get defensive, and then round two would begin. No, simply telling her about some of our common experiences won’t convince her. It would all be so much lip service to her, calculated words designed to get her to shut up.

I feel sad that I can’t seem to connect with her on a plane of common ground. I’m haunted by it, in fact, because I see the pain where she tries to hide it, and my hand hits an invisible wall when I reach out. I’m not looking for parental conquest. I just want a way to show her I’ve lived some of what she lives too.

I hear the music booming from behind her closed door, and I smile a little sadly. She’s replaying songs of wretched love and broken hearts. How well do I know that feeling. I can even guess that she’s probably sitting cross-legged on her bed, propped up by pillows, scribbling angsty poetry into a well-worn spiral notebook.

As that image comes to mind, so also does an idea that might work. I cover the stairway two steps at a time and slip into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. From the closet I withdraw a heavy cardboard box sealed with fraying duct tape. It is the vessel for the memoir of my life. The dated notation on the outside of the box indicates I sealed it up for a move several years ago and haven’t opened it since. I wonder why I didn’t think of this sooner.

Opening the box unearths a wealth of information, much of it detailing the inner workings of my then-teenaged mind. I pull out several hardbound volumes of my teenage journals, rich in the handwritten details of the life I lived then. If I let her read these, will that help her see me as not just her mother but as a whole person who lived a very real life before she was born? Will she see that my attempted words of comfort are more than just words? I can hope so. I select the volumes that represent the year I was her age and hesitate only a minute before knocking on her door.

She looks sullen when she opens the door. “What do you want?”

I hand her the books. “Read these.”

Shoving the books back at me, she says, “I don’t want to read that.”

I’m trying not to be hurt. Really. Her rejection of the books feels very much like a rejection of me, and I have to remind myself that it’s not personal. I had, however, counted on her being nosy enough to be interested. I think we both have unpleasantries to atone for here, and I had hoped the journals could serve as a peace offering.

I don’t say this to her.

Instead I say, “Please. Read one, at least. I’m really just a human too.” I put the books on the floor outside her door and head back downstairs without looking back.

Some time later, returning upstairs with a basket of laundry, I see that the books are no longer sitting on the floor.

When she emerges from her room still later, she has a smile for me. I know she won’t say that she was wrong, and I know that she won’t discuss what she has read. But I can see the understanding in her eyes, and I hope that she now can see the understanding in mine.

Thinking about the cardboard container in my bedroom still stuffed with journals, notebooks and day planners, it occurs to me that to bridge this gap, all I had to do was think inside the box - an old box on a high closet shelf.

It's The Little Things

2006-02-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

I was in the kitchen a short while ago, cooking supper - roast chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, green beans, and brownies - and unloading the dishwasher. My daughter, age six, was at the kitchen table coloring.

"Butterflies come from caterpillars," she said suddenly.

"Mmmhmmm. Is that so?" I asked absently, stacking drinking glasses in the cupboard.

"Yes," she continued. "Caterpillars make a chrysalis or cocoon, and after they're done sleeping for a while, they come out and make a butterfly."

I smiled, looking at her happy face and seeing how proud she was to share this tidbit with me.

Moments later, her brother called from upstairs, where he was playing a computer game. She put down her crayon and ran up the stairway.

"What?" I heard her say, banging open the playroom door.

"Tree frogs have red eyes," came his reply.

"I know that," she answered.

"Lions live in the savannah and chase prey."

"What kind of prey?"

I couldn't hear the answer to that one. The playroom door had closed, leaving me with temporary quiet and the smell of the brownies baking.

When the door burst open again, two pairs of feet came pounding down the stairs, and I wondered if they were playing elephant.

"Mom!" cried the girl. "Do I smell brownies?"

"Yep," I said. "Brownies with peanut butter swirls."

"Oh, my! I love peanut butter! You're the best brownie-baker in the world!"

"I want some too," her brother chimed in.

I looked at them both, caterpillars and tree frogs and lions all pushed out of their heads with the thought of warm brownies for dessert after supper. I heard the pouring rain slap against the kitchen window, and was all the happier for the sweetness of enjoying the little things in life.

Gifted

2006-02-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in June, 2004.

GIFTED

Kurt read back what he had written and frowned. He pounded the desk with his fist.

“It’s crap,” he said disgustedly, his own voice echoing in the emptiness of the house. He clicked and highlighted the text, stabbing the delete key with more force than was necessary. He rested his elbow on the desk, placing his forehead in his hand, utterly weary physically and mentally.

After a moment, he sat up with a jerk and shook his head.

“Coffee,” he said to no one in particular, standing up and heading for the kitchen to put on a pot. A look at the clock over the stove told him it was just past 2:30 in the morning. He had a deadline to meet. His editor was expecting these chapters tomorrow. Today. In truth, he had wanted the chapters days ago, but Kurt had been unable to oblige. He felt now as if he were in a vise, but he had no choice. He had to write until he had something that would work. Something. Anything.

He filled the coffeemaker with water, measured the coffee into the filter, and flicked the switch. He leaned back against the counter to watch the coffee brew, his mind trying to find the track that would take him back into his book. He felt helpless, as if he had no control over his ability – or lack thereof – to write.

The coffee dripped steadily into the carafe, the popping, dripping sound the only noise in the oppressively quiet house. Nothing had gone right since Olivia had died. She had been everything to Kurt: his life, his heart, his light, and his soul. When she had died, she had taken his Muse with her. His inspiration had been wrapped up in her, and all the music and beauty in his life had died when she did.

For six months, Kurt had been restlessly and aimlessly walking the floors in this empty house, searching in vain for respite from the searing ache in his heart, but there was never comfort. The emptiness weighed on him, threatening to crush him. The silence was a scream that echoed endlessly in his ears. Time had not eased his own screams.

His mother called daily, trying to pull him from the quicksand.

“Kurt,” she would say. “You have to go on living. Olivia wouldn’t have wanted your life to end with hers. She loved you. She wouldn’t want this for you.” Her pleading didn’t help him. Sometimes he’d listen quietly. Other times he’d rage at her.

“Leave me be! What can I possibly have that’s worth having without Olivia! She was everything!” Eventually his mother would hang up, only to try again the next day. There were many days when Kurt refused to answer the phone at all.

The coffee was done. He pulled a mug from the cupboard, filled it, and took a hard swallow, heedless of the burning on his tongue. He wrapped his hands around the mug as if for his own life, hanging on to anything that might anchor him. In his mind he saw her, young and beautiful and healthy, standing in this kitchen the day after he had brought her home from their honeymoon.

She stood at the counter, slicing carrots and tomatoes into a big teakwood bowl of lettuce, her ash blonde hair shimmering in the late afternoon sun streaming through the kitchen window. Kurt sat opposite her, nursing a glass of white wine, watching the sunlight playing on her hair and skin. He marveled that this lovely, lively young woman was his bride. He thought he’d never known a happier moment.

“I love you,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch her. She smiled, her warmth radiating through the kitchen and penetrating the deepest parts of Kurt.

“I love you too.” She leaned over and kissed him with soft lips. He breathed her scent, filling his lungs with her.

“I can’t wait to have a dozen babies with you and fill this house with their laughter,” she said excitedly, a shine in her green eyes.

“And they’ll all be beautiful, just like their mother.”

Olivia blushed at that, finishing the vegetables and tossing the salad with her hands.

“No more beautiful than you,” she said.

Hot tears surprised Kurt. He wasn’t a crier.

She had been beautiful, his Olivia. Even at the end, when the cancer had ravaged her body and taken her strength, she had been beautiful. He’d have given own his life for her if only she hadn’t had to suffer.

They had been married only ten months when she’d developed the blinding headaches that sent them rushing to her doctor for answers. For help. Answers they had gotten; for help, there was none. The cancer had taken her quickly. Olivia had been just twenty-four years old when she died.

Kurt drained the mug of coffee, refilled it, and padded down the darkened, quiet hallway back to the den. He sat in the leather chair in front of his desk once more, watching the cursor blink its rhythm on the blank screen in front of him. His penciled notes were strewn about the desk, some of them crumpled in his frustration and spilling over onto the Oriental rug beneath his feet. The half-eaten remains of his supper lay at the back of the desk. Movement caught Kurt’s eye, and he turned to see a large spider crawl across the abandoned plate. His first thought was to smash it with his fist, but with a muttered remark about karma, he instead scooped it up with his napkin. He stood and strode into the foyer, opening the heavy door and unceremoniously dumping the spider into the darkness outside.

“Go home,” he said senselessly, wondering if he was slowly going insane.

He stood a moment, breathing the sharply chilled air. He wondered if the cold burst into his lungs would clear the dissonance in his head. The still, cloudless darkness renewed his sense of urgency to meet his deadline, but nothing eased the dull ache left hanging in his body. He slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt.

Back in the den he sat in front of the uncompromising computer, the blank page looming there. He took a large swallow of coffee and began again, starting and stopping in dissatisfaction and deleting more than he saved.

“Damn it!” he shouted, hearing the reverb sting his ears. “Damn damn damn. I can’t write!”

He jumped up suddenly, knocking over the mug of coffee. It dripped off the edge of the desk onto the rug, soaking the crumpled papers that lay there.

Kurt knelt, violently throwing the coffee-stained paper into the wastebasket. As the wet seeped into the rug, his own tears shocked him once more.

“I’m sorry, Olivia,” he said ruefully. “I know you loved this rug. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He fetched a thick towel from the closet in the hall and pressed it against the rug, hoping to pull the coffee out of its fibers. As he mopped at the mess, another spider crawled in front of him.

“Where did you come from?” he asked sharply. “Go outside with your buddy.” He scooped the spider up, this time with his bare hands, and tossed it into the cold as he had done before. “Find your friend! Leave me alone.”

“It’s no use!” he bellowed, leaning back against the front door as he closed it. “I give up! I’m not going to write again.”

“Yes, you are.”

Kurt started. He shook his head. What the hell…? Was he hearing things? Where had that voice come from? Had he finally snapped completely, going over the edge to insanity? He heard it again.

“You can write. You have to stop trying to control it.”

“Who are you!” Kurt yelled. “Am I crazy?”

“You’re not crazy. Go sit. Write.”

“I can’t.” Kurt’s voice was bitter. He stormed back into the den and flung himself into the leather chair. As he watched the cursor blink, an idea formed in his head and began to consume his thoughts. A few moments later, he hunched over the keyboard and started to thump out the words, faster and faster until his furious fingers had trouble keeping pace with his brain. His breath was rapid, jagged, and his eyes glazed as the story came with ever increasing speed.

As the first dim gray light of dawn began to peer into the windows, Kurt’s fingers at last rested. He lay his head on the desk and allowed the weariness to take over. He slept. A single spider crawled across the back of his hand and stopped in front of the keyboard to watch him.

……………

“These are great, Kurt,” Barry enthused. “Best work I’ve seen from you in months.” He shuffled the papers, spot reading portions here and there.

“You’re the editor, Barry. I’ll take your word for it.” Kurt gave him a weak smile. “My night took a lot out of me,” he explained at Barry’s look of concern. “I wound up sleeping at my desk.”

Barry laughed. “Worse writers than you have done the same,” he said. His face becoming serious, he placed a hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Do you think you should talk to someone about it?”

“About what? Sleeping at my desk?”

“No. About Olivia’s death.”

Kurt pulled away from him. “No. I’m fine. I’ve – I’ve got to go now, Barry. Get back to me with your revision notes.” Kurt snatched his leather briefcase and left the editor’s office abruptly.

When he arrived home, he went immediately to the den. The chair in front of the desk still felt warm. The large coffee stain on the Oriental rug was gone. Kurt’s eyes were drawn to the computer screen in front of him, the cursor blinking rapidly next to the words typed there. He read, his mouth agape, his eyes widening as he stood up, gripping the edge of the desk and following the words again and again:

I love you, Kurt. Keep writing. O.

In a corner of the room, a spider began carefully spinning a web.

Mmmm! Whitestrips!

2006-02-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have some Crest Whitestrips on my teeth right now. Whitestrips Supreme, from my dentist.

They actually fit pretty well and stay put, but no one told me about the nasty taste they leave on the tongue.

Mmmm. The tantalizing taste of peroxide. Yippie!

I'm scheduled for a crown in a couple of months, so I want to lighten my teeth now and have the crown matched to the lighter color.

Vanity, thy name is Whitestrips.

Highway 10 To Anywhere

2006-02-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

I wrote this story for my writers' club in March of 2004.

HIGHWAY 10 TO ANYWHERE

“I’m hot-headed, check it and see, I got a reefer of a hundred and three!” Joey’s raspy voice filled the car, singing along very badly to the radio.

“You idiot,” I said sharply, glancing over at him as I drove. “It’s hot blooded. I got a fever of a hundred and three. Geez, sing it right, will you?”

Joey was unperturbed. “Ah, whatever,” he answered dismissively. “I errored. Big deal.”

I sighed. “Err, Joe. The word is err. You erred. You did not error.”

“What are you?” he asked. “Are you my sister or the damn English teacher?”

“Maybe with a little luck, some day I really will be a teacher. And watch your mouth.”

“Yeah, well. Where were you when I needed help with my oral report on the norwhale in Mrs. Schiffling’s class last year?”

“Narwhal, Joey.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Joey fell silent, and I drove along steadily at seventy miles per hour, not much more than instinct to guide me. I wasn’t sure where we were going, just that we were leaving Wisconsin. We were headed west on Highway 10 to anywhere.

I was twenty that summer. Joey was sixteen. He was my only brother, and I felt responsible for him. When Mama died, Joey was only nine. I was just thirteen, but I took over caring for the house and looking after Joey. Daddy wasn’t much help. He provided for us, but his work took him away often. When he was at home, he moped around, drinking, crying, and mostly ignoring Joey and me. I guess he never really got over Mama’s death. He used to tell me Joey and I were too much like Mama, that looking at us hurt. He hung on for a few years until I finished school, but eventually life proved to be too much for my Daddy. I came home one afternoon to find him on the floor, dead from a gunshot, the injury self-inflicted.

I don’t know how I got through those next few days. The police came, the ambulance, the paramedics – they all came. There was nothing they could do. The coroner came, and my Daddy was gone. The ladies from church came, all of them bringing food and tut-tutting about my brother Joey and what would happen to him. There was a funeral and there were lawyers. There were child welfare people.

Daddy had some insurance, but there wasn’t much payout for taking his own life, and so they put the house up for sale. After the debts were paid and the lawyers were paid, there was precious little left for Joey and me. The child welfare people didn’t seem to care much what happened to Joey, and so when they let me become his guardian, I decided it was time for us to leave. We had no home and no family. There was nothing to keep us in Wisconsin and every reason to start a new life somewhere else. We loaded what we had into Dad’s old Ford and took off with one thousand dollars and no real plan at all.

I looked over at Joey again. He had dozed off, his head leaned back against the seat. With his mouth open and his face softened, he looked like a little boy as he slept. I hoped I was doing right by him. I was all he had. Maybe we could go to Minneapolis. Maybe I could find a job there and Joey could finish high school. Maybe someday I could go to college. That would be something.

I heard the echo of my mother’s long ago words, words spoken softly to me as she lay dying in a darkened room, her anguish at leaving her children naked on her face.

“Take care of Joey, now, Sharon,” she had said. “He looks up to you. Be good to him. Take care of him. He’s my angel.”

“I will, Mama,” I had said then, and I said it again now. “I’ll take care of Joey, Mama.”

I pulled into a gas station in Marshfield. Joey stirred, sitting up and rubbing his sleepy eyes.

“Where are we?”

“Marshfield. You want something to drink?” It was July, hot and muggy, and the old Ford didn’t have air conditioning.

“Yeah. Get me a beer.” Joey’s eyes were mischievous.

“Yeah, I won’t. A root beer, maybe.” I had forty dollars in my wallet, the rest of our money carefully hidden in a sealed envelope in the bottom of my suitcase in the trunk. I counted out twenty dollars for the gas and another dollar for a drink. I handed the bills to Joey.

“You go on in and pay, will you? And bring me back a root beer too.”

I leaned against the door of the Ford, watching Joey run into the station. He was so eager and sweet, and I loved him. He didn’t talk much about Daddy dying. He never said the word suicide. He never ever mentioned Mama. I wondered what secrets my little brother held inside of him. I wondered if those secrets would ever come out.

My heart gave a little tug when Joey came out of the station, waving two bottles of root beer and a Clark bar at me.

“I gotcha a candy bar,” he said lazily. “But you have to share, ‘cause I didn’t have enough money for two.”

That was Joey’s way of saying he loved me too. If Mama’s death had been a solder for us, Daddy dying had strengthened it. I gave Joey a little punch on the arm as he handed me my root beer and half the Clark bar. He punched me back before getting into his side of the car.

“Put that seatbelt on,” I admonished him as he lounged in the seat, his gangly long legs looking folded up in a space too small.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” Joey said, flashing me another grin.

“You’re a curse on me, Joey. Just fasten the seatbelt, will you?”

Back on the road, Joey sang again.

“Well, it’s eight o’clock in Boise, Idaho, I’ll find my lame-o driver, mister, take us to the show….”

“It’s limo driver, Joe. Limo driver.”

“I know it,” Joey said. “I just like to yank on your chain a little.” He sat up straight, taking a slug out of his root beer. “D’you think we could go to Boise, Idaho? How far is that anyway?”

“I don’t know. Couple thousand miles, I guess. I thought maybe we’d go to Minneapolis.”

“Okay,” Joey said, readily agreeing with me. “What’s in Minneapolis?”

“I don’t know. It’s a big city. Someplace I can find a job and we can get an apartment, and I can enroll you in school.”

“I don’t want to go to school. I’m sixteen. I don’t have to go to school anymore.”

“Joe, I know you don’t have to go to school, but how are you going to get a good job if you don’t finish school?”

“Why do I care?” Joey gulped down the last of his root beer. “Daddy finished school. He got a good job. Look where it got him. He’s dead. He didn’t care if it left us with nothing. He’s dead, and what good did school do him?”

I was quiet. It was the first time Joey talked about Daddy’s death. I was disheartened and didn’t know what to say.

We drove in silence for a few more miles. We came to Osseo, time to leave Highway 10 and turn onto Interstate 94. Joey suddenly spoke just as I entered the on ramp.

“Did Mama wear lavender?” he asked.

I was startled.

“Yeah, she did. Did you remember that?”

“Yeah,” Joey admitted. “I remember she smelled like lavender.” He turned to me, tears brimming over in his blue, blue eyes.

“Sharon, I don’t remember much of Mama,” he continued. “Does that mean I didn’t love her enough? All I remember is her pretty hair and the smell of lavender.”

“Oh, God, Joe! Don’t say that!” I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand, reaching for Joey with my right. I felt his hand slip into mine, and I gave it a squeeze.

“You loved her, Joey. Don’t think otherwise. You loved her, and she adored you. You were her angel.”

“I didn’t want her to die, Sharon.” Joey’s voice was broken now with sobs, big heaving cries I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. All the pent up despair and anger was coming out of Joey, and he clung to my hand as if it were life support.

I drove on, listening to him cry, my heart breaking a little with every sob. I had to take care of him. He didn’t have anybody else. I stroked the palm of his hand with my thumb.

“It’s okay, Joey. I won’t leave you.”

I saw the big brown sign shaped like Minnesota up ahead. “Minnesota Welcomes You!” it said. I was glad to leave Wisconsin behind. For Joey and me, Wisconsin had been nothing but loss and heartache.

“Minnesota,” I said to him, lifting his hand with mine to gesture at the sign. He nodded, his tears dried but his eyes still red and swollen.

“Sharon?”

“Yeah, Joe?”

“I’ll go to school. And when I’m done, I’m gonna put you through college and you’re gonna be a teacher.”

I looked over at Joey and smiled, giving another squeeze to the fingers laced with mine.

I felt the burden on my heart lift just a little when he spoke those words, and the first tall buildings of Minneapolis came into view.

Love & Affection

2006-02-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

When Gunnar Nelson recently started appearing on VH1's Celebrity Fit Club 3 , the memories he brought back sent me running out to the garage in search of a 16-year-old cassette. Way in the back of the storage area, behind the freezer, the workbench, the shelves, and the plastic totes full of old clothes and toys was a cardboard box crammed with old cassette tapes, some belonging to my husband and some belonging to me.

We never listen to tapes anymore, preferring the clearer sound of CDs. It was no surprise the box was buried further back than the rest of the junk. Digging through the old cases, pulling some out for later use, I finally found was I was looking for.

It was "After The Rain" by Nelson, the 1990 album containing the song allegedly written for Cindy Crawford: "Love And Affection."

Sure, you can go ahead and tease me. I can take it. I turned 24 the summer of 1990. "Love And Affection" was a radio and MTV hit late in the season. I remember it distinctly, because in August I moved into a new basement apartment, and the day I moved in I taped MTV's Top 10 countdown just so I could have Nelson on video. I was romantic in the way very young women often are; I had daydreams that someday a man would have for me the feelings described in the song and a dozen other love songs like it. In my wildest dreams, it would be Matthew Nelson himself. Both twins were attractive, of course, but Matthew was the one for me . I loved his long blonde hair. I probably could have wasted an entire afternoon watching Nelson videos.

This morning, after I'd dropped my kids at school, I slid the cassette into the player in my minivan, thinking what a long way I was from the young woman who'd purchased the tape all those summers ago.

As soon as I heard the first note, the intervening time disappeared, and for a three and a half minutes, it was a 90-degree day in the basement apartment of a house in Burnsville, Minnesota, sixteen years ago.

Later this afternoon, with all three kids in the car and on my way to drop my 18-year-old off at work, I popped the song in again. The effect wasn't quite the same as when I'd been listening by myself. I found myself babbling to my oldest about the song, the video, my crush on Matthew.

"You were three then," I said. "We rented a basement apartment from a co-worker who also had a three-year-old.

I chattered on, exclaiming how cute the Nelson twins had been, and could it really be that long ago, and aren't they just the perfect combination of their gorgeous parents?

"Who are their parents?" my daughter asked, clueless.

"Their father was Rick Nelson. Ricky Nelson."

"Who's that?"

I hesitated, feeling a small, sad smile cross my face.

"Never mind," I said. "We're here and you're almost late." She grabbed her bags, flew out of the car, and told me her boyfriend was picking her up later so she didn't need a ride from me. She disappeared inside the building, still unaware of just who Rick Nelson was.

In a few minutes, I'll go into the kitchen and start spaghetti sauce for supper and a chocolate cake for dessert. I'll set out my husband's Valentine gifts and prepare to surprise him. And I'll remember how glad I am that he is the one who captured my heart.

For now, though, I'm going to put that tape in one more time and spend three and a half minutes being 24 and daydreaming about a long-haired blonde pop star.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Volare, Amore, and Memories

2006-02-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

Spage Age Boy, age four, and I stopped at Starbucks this morning after running errands. They were playing a Dean Martin album, and the boy immediately recognized "That's Amore." As we walked out to the car with our drinks and goodies, he asked if we could listen to Dean Martin in the car. Sure! Of course we can!

The following conversation ensued...

Boy: What's volare mean?

Mama: It's Italian for to fly.

Boy: What's "your love has given me wings" mean?

Mama: That just means that the feeling of love has made him so happy, he feels like he could fly.

Boy: People can't fly!

Mama: I know honey. It's symbolism.

Boy: What's symbolism mean?

Mama: That's when you use words or images to mean something else, in order to illustrate a point.

Boy: Oh. Can We listen to Marshmallow World?

Mama: That's a Christmas song.

Boy: No, it's not! It's a winter song. Is it still winter?

Mama: Yeah, it's still winter. But Marshmallow World still makes me think of Christmas.

Boy: Well, Dean Martin sings it.

Mama: Yes, he does.

Boy: And Frank Snotra.

Mama: Yeah, and Frank Sinatra.

I let him listen to it. Why not? The boy did have a point. It's still winter, though nothing resembling a Marshmallow World is going on here. When the song was over, I popped in a Jet CD.

Boy: What's this song?

Mama: Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

Boy: I don't want this! I want Dean Martin! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

Mama: I like this song.

Boy: Please, Mom?

Okay, okay, okay. I changed it.

The Boy spent the rest of the ride singing Standing On The Corner Watching All The Girls Go By.

I need to learn to run faster...

2006-02-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

...because I've been tagged AGAIN. This time, the culprit is that maven of citrus, Lemony.

More answers to more questions. Read 'em and snore...

Four jobs I've had:

Retail slave at Wilson's Leather
Underwriter of high-risk, specialty insurance for those who live on the edge
Paper pusher, salesperson nagger, and holder-of-the-numbers for a wireless broker
Radio Goddess

Four movies I could watch over and over:

Gone With The Wind (yes, really)
Mr. Skeffington
Twister (yes, really)
Dumb & Dumber (no one ever said I was highbrow)

Four places I've lived:

Burnsville, MN
Stevens Point, WI
Inver Grove Heights, MN
The great unwashed West

Four TV shows I love:

The Secret Life Of... (who can resist Jim O'Connor?)
The Flavor Of Love (okay, okay, I don't "love" that show...it's more like a sickness)
A&E's Cold Case Files
The Nanny (who can resist Charles Shaughnessy? )

Four places I've vacationed:

Nashville, TN
San Francisco, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Good old Duluth, MN

My four favorite dishes:

My mother's scalloped potatoes and ham
Spaghetti with homemade sauce and meatballs
Juicy cheeseburgers, made by hand and cooked on the grill
Turkey and gravy served with mashed potatoes, spicy cranberry sauce and lefse

Four websites I visit daily:

Four places I'd rather be:

Minnesota
Boston
Phoenix
SPI

Four people I'm tagging:

Dear Mom...

2006-02-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Remember when I used to go off into the night with Godknowswho to do Godknowswhat and once in a while went away on vaguely defined road trips with people you didn't know to do vaguely defined things in vaguely defined places with a non-existent itinerary and it bothered you a little bit even when I was already an adult and there really wasn't anything much you could do about it if you'd been inclined to say anything?

Yeah.

Sorry.

Love,
Me

Betty Friedan and Erma Bombeck

2006-02-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

I was feeling melancholy over the weekend when I read that Betty Friedan had passed away. I was not one of the women for whom she wrote The Feminine Mystique, and in fact, was not born until three years after it was published. But I am a woman for whom its effects still resonate.

I never knew a world in which feminism and the so-called "women's liberation movement" did not exist. It was outside my consciousness during the movements biggest years in the sixties and seventies, of course, but it was already affecting my life in ways I wouldn't understand for years to come.

My mother stayed home to raise children, as did most women of her generation. She married in 1959, left college to help support my father, and had the first of her five children early in 1962. Mine was a sterotypical suburban childhood of the 1970s, with a stay-home mother, a father who worked in an office, and a house with a backyard on a tree-lined street. Never once, though, when I had my childish dreams of what I would do when I grew up, did I find myself limited to secretary, nurse, teacher, wife and mother. I knew I wanted to get married, and I knew I wanted to have children. At the same time, I knew I wanted to go to college, write books, practice law, become a psychologist, own an advertising agency, live in a penthouse in Manhattan, be a diplomat, report television news, and paint on canvas.

Though my mother was not part of "the women's liberation movement," she nevertheless knew and somehow communicated to her daughters that we could do or be anything. I don't remember any specific conversations where she laid these things out to us; somehow we just knew.

The name Betty Friedan didn't mean much to me until, as a teenager, I was reading one of my mother's Erma Bombeck books and Erma made reference to her. Erma evidently had something of an identity crisis when she turned forty in the late 1960s, suffering from what Friedan had termed "the problem with no name." By the time I was moved in my teens to learn more about the subject, The Feminine Mystique was considered quaint, and perhaps no longer relevant to the times.

If talking about it was good enough for Erma Bombeck, albeit in her self-deprecating humorous way, it was good enough for me. Erma Bombeck did, and still does, have a place of high regard with me. I loved her.

I don't live the life of the mid-century housewives Betty Friedan had interviewed in research for her first book. My title of "Space Age Housewife" has more to do with my nostalgic fondness for the good and happy parts of an admittedly difficult era gone by. It's my tongue-in-cheek poke at the happily domestic new-and-improved-scrubbed-with-bleach-squeaky-clean-freshly-baked-cookies side of my personality, a side undoubtedly developed from the subconscious longing to provide my children with the same contented homelife I enjoyed as a child. I am The Space Age Housewife, but I almost certainly operate in a more egalitarian partnership with my husband than almost any housewife of fifty-plus years ago. I have credit and financial assets in my own name. I do not defer to my husband as the head of household: together we operate as heads of the household, each of us shouldering our share of the responsiblities and burdens, and each of us sharing in the rewards of our marriage, household, and family. I've been a mother who works out of the home. I've been a mother who works inside the home. I've done these things as my choices and never because someone said, by virtue of my femaleness, that I had to do these things.

Friedan once said, “For a great many women, choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice."

Women of my generation follow life paths by choice, more choice than ever was available to many of our forbears. Betty Friedan is just one women of many who have blazed that path for us.

That's why now, I'm raising my glass to Betty Friedan, who left this world two days ago, and to Erma Bombeck who left this world ten years gone. Both of them will live forever in my heart.

At Thirteen

2006-02-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

It's a slow news day at the Space Age household, so I've kicked the wayback machine into overdrive once more. I dedicate this one to Miriam Knight, "The Girl Most Likely To..."

At Thirteen

It was 1979, and I was thirteen. Thirteen is often a difficult age, even for the best of us. For me, it was near torture.

I desperately wanted to be like the other girls, seemingly so full of poise. I wanted to have their perfect Farrah Fawcett hair and their cute little figures poured into Calvin Klein jeans. I wanted to be like the girls who seemed to know instinctively how to put on makeup so that they looked the cover of Seventeen magazine, and who drew the admiring glances of the boys in class.

I was none of those things. I was the person for whom the phrase “awkward stage” was coined: I was skinny, and I had stubbornly blemish-prone skin. My clothes were wrong. I had no idea what to do with makeup, and I had no idea what to do with my hair beyond washing the oiliness out every day. I wore enormous glasses. I was too shy to look people in the eye. I was the proverbial ugly duckling.

Adolescent girls can smell weakness. They can smell fear. There’s a certain type of girl who looks for that scent, thrives on it, follows it to its source and torments the fearful. There’s a certain type of girl who needs to have a victim. Susan Richter was just such a girl.

Susan’s methods of torment were many. Her actions were innumerable. I could tell a hundred stories of what Susan did to me and still have stories left to tell. One incident in the fall of my eighth grade year remains crisp and distinct in my memory; looking back now, it is difficult to believe nearly twenty-five years have passed.

Susan was in my science class. Instead of desks, the students sat in groups of four at square, shiny black-topped tables. There was only one other student who would sit next to me, a shy girl named Andrea who hid behind a veil of long black hair and black glasses. No one else dared to sit by me for fear of incurring Susan’s scorn. Susan aimed her viciousness at anyone who tried to stand up for me. It didn’t take long before no one bothered.

Mr. Delaney, the science teacher, was often late to class by five minutes or more. On that particular day, he was very late. On that particular day, Andrea was absent. I sat alone at my shiny black table, the table in the center of the room, visible to everyone else. Mr. Delaney was not there to deter the actions of the malevolent.

The silence that hung in the air between the sound of the bell and the realization that Mr. Delaney would be later than usual was heavy with the bitter perfume of danger. I sensed rather than knew what was about to happen to me Fear permeated my pores. I wished to be home, outside, in Timbuktu, invisible – anything and anywhere but in that moment.

Susan caught my eye, her gaze narrowing as she whispered something in Anna Comstock’s ear. They both giggled, and Anna turned to look at me as well, a smirk forming on her smooth, round face. I wanted to run but was frozen, attached to my seat as surely as if I had been restrained. Susan jumped up from her orange plastic chair and advanced on my table. The class was silent, most of them watching Susan to see what she would do.

She carefully, deliberately climbed on top of my black table, standing over me and compelling me to look up at her. Then she laughed, pointing at me and looking around the room in glowing triumph at her captive audience.

“Look at her!” she cried. “She’s so ugly!” She looked back at me, pointing her finger straight at my nose. “Listen to me. Nobody likes you. Nobody. Are you scared? Are you scared now that Andrea’s not here to sit with you? She smells. Do you like sitting next to smelly?”

I remained quiet, my throat dry and closing. I felt sweat beads form on my forehead and above my lip. My heart pounded and roared in my ears as Susan continued her tirade.

“Nobody likes you! Do you hear me? I know…let’s sing. Let’s sing a song about Ugly Donna.” She raised her arms as if to conduct the class in a choir practice and began singing loudly, using the tune from a McDonald’s jingle:

“Nobody likes Donna, we all hate her so! Nobody likes Donna, we all hate her so!”

I don’t know how long she went on. It might have been thirty seconds, and it might have been two minutes. To me it seemed an eternity, and I fought uselessly to hold back my tears.

Someone coughed loudly. Someone else signaled Susan that Mr. Delaney was on his way. She hopped down from my table and quickly ran to her seat next to Anna, laughing behind her hand at my anguish. Mr. Delaney came into the room, glancing around curiously at his students all sitting in silence.

He hesitated, appearing to want to say something and then evidently changing his mind. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, flipping through his teacher’s text.

“Page 42, everyone,” was all he said.

Susan Richter faded into just a memory as the years rolled past me, but the sound of her voice lived on inside my head. I heard that voice echoing in my brain long years after the final bell sounded at Kennedy Junior High.

Flowers For Violet

2006-01-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

It was deceptively sunny. Louis peeked out the window in the foyer and saw the big spring sun brightening everything it touched. There were a few shadows cast by the pear tree in the front yard, but for Louis there were always shadows anyway.

Louis knew that despite the warm appearance of the sun, it was still early in the spring, and that meant it might still be cold. He went to the closet, pulling out a worn wool sweater and poking his thin arms into the sleeves. He buttoned it carefully and slowly, thankful that the buttons were big enough to manipulate without causing too much pain in his fingers. Over the sweater, he pulled on a windbreaker jacket, zipping it up to his neck.

From his jacket pocket, he withdrew the leash. He jangled it a bit until Tommy came bounding around the corner, eager for his walk this morning.

“Hey there, feller,” Louis said gently, bending down to fasten the leash to Tommy’s collar and give him a scratch behind the ears. Tommy leaned into Louis’ touch, eagerly lapping at his free hand.

“Let’s go get some flowers for Miss Violet, should we boy?” Louis smiled, scratching Tommy’s head once more. Louis couldn’t have asked for a better friend than old Tommy.

When they emerged from the house, Louis felt the breeze on his face and knew he had been right. The sun was deceptive. The warm, inviting appearance from inside the house belied the chilly air outside. He gripped Tommy’s leash firmly and thrust both hands into the pockets of his windbreaker.

Tommy walked slowly, seeming to enjoy the scenery. Tommy was old too, like Louis, and he never tugged on the leash or tried to make Louis walk too fast. Tommy had been with Louis and Violet since he was a pup, and that was seventeen years ago. Sometimes Louis wished there had been grandchildren to play with Tommy when he was a pup, but wishing for a thing doesn’t make it so. Louis knew that as well as anybody. Still, it was just too bad that Tommy hadn’t had any boisterous children around him to toss a ball or run in the fields with him. He’d grown old beside Louis and Violet, content enough in his life with them. He didn’t seem to miss what he’d never had.

Louis and Tommy strolled to the corner, where they stopped at Mr. Harlan’s stand. Mr. Harlan sold newspapers and magazines. He also sold a tiny selection of fruits laid out in wooden baskets, candy and gum, and every day, he had a few bouquets of fresh flowers to sell, bouquets hand picked from his own garden and arranged by his wife. Louis was pleased to see that today Mr. Harlan had some violets.

“They’re beautiful today, Louis,” Mr. Harlan smiled as Louis passed him a few crinkled bills to pay for a bouquet. “Anna was very happy to see the daffodils and the violets this year.”

“I imagine she was, Sam,” Louis answered pleasantly. “My Violet loves the spring flowers. She’ll be happy with these.”

Mr. Harlan bent down to scruff the back of Tommy’s neck while Tommy waited patiently for Louis. In a moment they were on their way again, Mr. Harlan waving genially and calling after them to have a nice day.

Louis and Tommy walked on through the neighborhood and past the park, where several young boys had gotten together a game of baseball. Louis heard their shouts echoing in his ears long after he had passed the park. It made him happy to think of children playing baseball in the early spring, eager to be outside after a long and snowy winter. Sixty-five years ago, Louis had been just like those young boys, tearing outside at the first sign of baseball weather, cracking the bat and sliding in the mud. He remembered long afternoons spent poring over baseball cards up in the treehouse they had built in the woods behind his house. He sighed. Louis’ carefree childhood days were just shadows now, like so many other shadows, pictures of a past that had ceased to exist.

When they finally reached their destination, Louis lifted the latch on the heavy iron gate and pushed it open. He dropped Tommy’s leash and let him in first, leaving the gate open and following Tommy. Tommy knew where to go. He reached her first, promptly lying down and resting his head on his front paws. When Louis caught up to him, he lightly patted the warm golden fur. Tommy’s brown eyes seemed to hold sympathy for Louis as he silently watched Louis’ movements.

Steadying himself on the stone, Louis carefully knelt. He placed the violets tenderly on the earth, smelling the freshness of the awakening grass and the damp soil. His gnarled fingers ran along the front of the stone, feeling the words etched there. He swallowed hard over the lump forming in his throat.

“I brought you some violets, my girl,” he said, his voice growing raspy. “Violets for my Violet. I thought you’d like them today. It’s just right for spring. It’s too cold today. I thought the violets would make it seem warm.”

Louis leaned over, resting his cheek on the stone. It was as cold as it ever was. Tommy stood up and walked over slowly, his leash jingling as it dragged behind him. He put his paws on Louis’ knees, and Louis sat, heedless of the mud. Tommy snuggled into Louis’ lap as far as he could go, seeming to want Louis to take warmth from him.

“Gone too soon, wasn’t she, boy?” Louis spoke wearily. “It’s been a long winter, Tommy. Violet would have liked to be tending her flowerbeds now. That old garden will be full of shadows when the brush gets overgrown.” He scrubbed the top of Tommy’s hair with fingers becoming knotted in pain from his arthritis. “I don’t know if I can take care of her things, boy. Won’t be much of a garden this year.” Tears stung the old man’s eyes. He pressed his cheek to Tommy’s head and let them fall.

………………..

The late afternoon shadows had grown very long by the time Mitch left the park and headed for home. He and the guys had spent the whole day playing baseball and warming up for the season to come. He was happily splattered with mud and his muscles were sore, but he was more concerned about his stomach rumbling. He didn’t want to be late to supper, so he picked up the pace to a jog as he approached the cemetery three blocks from his house. When he came upon it, he saw that the iron gate was open, waiting for someone to come along and close it. Mitch slowed his steps, peering curiously into the cemetery, wondering who would be there at this time of the day.

He stopped short when he saw an old man leaning against one of the stones, fast asleep with a dog in his lap.

“Mister!” he shouted. “Hey, mister! Are you okay?” Getting no answer, Mitch jogged across the lawn until he reached the man and his dog. Something didn’t seem right. Mitch gasped, his instinct telling him to run the rest of the way home and tell his father. He turned, his feet pounding into the softening earth as he ran.

Behind him, just as the last shadows fell before the dusk, violets bloomed.

Coffee Cake and June Cleaver

2006-01-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Coffee cake is a perfect food. Coffee cake is an unsung hero, never quite getting its due in the praise department.

Coffee cake can be anything: breakfast, coffee break snack, brunch, dessert, midnight craving buster, comforter of the distraught. Coffee cake is the most versatile cake in the world. All you need is one basic recipe, some imagination, and coffee cake can take you anywhere. Yesterday I baked chocolate swirl coffee cake, rich with chocolate, coconut, and walnuts. Tomorrow I may make orange coffee cake with orange caramel topping or cherry coffee cake, blueberry buckle, or banana pineapple. I could also make comforting coffee cake with a traditional cinnamon streusel or a homey apple-topped coffee cake for the after school hours.

Coffee cake is easy, too. Easy, easy, easy. So easy, I can do it with one apron tied behind my back...

Someday, I will write an Ode To Coffee Cake. Coffee cake deserves at least that much.

Incidentally, I took the TV Mom quiz this morning. I am June Cleaver. Is anyone really surprised by that? (Not the coffee cake lovers, I suppose.)

I'm the "It" girl!

2006-01-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Okay. All right. Yes. I know it's not as glamorous as it sounds. I'm not exactly the "It girl"...just..."it."

Apparently I have been tagged to answer the following questions, AND tag somebody else. I don't even know who has already been tagged! I don't know that many people! I can serve atomic appetizers for 20 and have the laundry ironed before The Price Is Right is over, but tag games...? *vapors*

I'm not sure I'm up to it.

Nevertheless...Momma Star tagged me, so I'll play.

What were you doing 10 years ago? Lessee...I was 29 years old. I had given up my radio career to return home to Minnesota. I was a working single mother.
What were you doing 1 year ago? Why, exemplifying the Space Age Housewife, of course.

Five snacks I enjoy
1. Bagels
2. Popcorn
3. Pretzels with honey mustard
4. Chili cheese pie with bite size Tostitos (yes, you can have the recipe)
5. Shredded wheat with milk

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics
1. I need A Lover
2. Allison Road
3. Here Comes My Baby
4. Sneaky Snake
5. Ring Of Fire

Five things I would do if I were a millionaire
1. Move to Minnesota
2. Pay off my parents' mortgage
3. Write a book
4. Pay for all of my children to go to college
5. Maybe go to college myself

Five bad habits
1. I talk too much
2. Ummm...
3. Ummmmmm...
4. Ummmmmmmm....
5. Procrastination. Sometimes. Not every day. Maybe tomorrow.

Five things I like doing
1. Reading - books, magazines, newspapers, the 'net, cereal boxes, cookbooks, whatever
2. Cooking and baking
3. Collecting vintage kitchen items/radios/memorabilia/ephemera - post WWII to early 70s mostly
4. Playing darts
5. Exercising

Five things I would never wear, buy or get new again
1. High waisted, tapered leg, light wash jeans
2. Stirrup pants
3. High top sneakers
4. Orangey red lipstick
5. Elastic belts

By the way, if Momma Star doesn't want to wear aprons ever again, she can feel free to pass hers along to me.

Five favorite toys
1. My computer
2. Cutting tools for making scrapbooks
3. I'd say my KitchenAid mixer like others have done, but that's not really a toy, is it? It's a genuine heartpounding necessity.
4. Handheld Yahtzee game...it's perfect for those times I have to wait for something or someone
5. Free weights

So here’s the deal: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot

So, it’s come down to this
OmegaMom
All Hail Suburbia!
Swingin' on a Star
Space Age Housewife

Then select five people to tag:

DesertRat
Halushki's Done
Straight Talkin' Mom
Picture Maven
Shandy Land

Veil Of Hair

2006-01-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

One of my friends liked this picture...

He called it the Veil Of Hair.

I call it "fooling around with the camera on New Year's Eve."

Eighty miles!

2006-01-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Today, I hit the 80-mile mark on the way to my goal. 80 exercise miles since the first of the year. 80. Wheeee!

Thank you, Leslie Sansone!

It's incredibly vain of me to say so - though I'm not ashamed of vanity at the moment - but my back end looks better than it did twenty years ago!

The House

2006-01-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

I was sitting on the family room floor, going through the stacks of CDs, choosing which ones to bring along and which ones to let the movers pack.

“Pantera, no. Anthrax, no. Def Leppard, yes….” I mumbled to myself while I worked, putting the “no” CDs in a big pile to my left and the “yes” disks into a smaller pile at my right.

I stopped for a while, sitting back on my feet and looking around the room. It was my favorite room in the house, a warm and cozy basement room. There was a wood stove in the corner, an office room just behind where I sat, a bathroom, and a full bar. It was the perfect room for just the family and the perfect room for entertaining also. I loved that room. I lovingly ran my hands across the new carpet we’d picked out just five months before. I allowed myself to fall into a daydream, scenes of life in this house playing in my head like a slide show.

It was a bright September afternoon, two days after we moved into our house. I sat at the kitchen table with Dave, my eyes sore and tired from crying, feeling his hand rubbing the back of mine. My mother stood at the stove, scrambling eggs and frying summer sausage for a light supper for me. She had come over as soon as she had gotten the call: the ultrasound that afternoon showed that my 11-week pregnancy wasn’t viable. Nature was playing a cruel trick on me, and I was scheduled for D&C surgery in two days. It was my mother’s instinct to care for her wounded duckling, and for that I was grateful. The smell of the cooking was comforting, as was the solid wood of my table and the cozy atmosphere in my new kitchen. Mom set plates before Dave and me, then she sat down to keep us company for a while before she had to get home to Dad. Buying a house only four miles away from my parents was the best decision we ever made. The warm vibes here gave me a strength I’m not sure I would have felt otherwise.

………………………

I lay on the couch after the surgery, waiting once more for tears to subside. I was in the living room, wrapped in a quilt, listening to the sounds of my husband and my mother painting and arranging the bedroom for my eleven-year-old daughter. She was away for the weekend with her father, and we were going to surprise her with a room painted in an ocean theme. We’d picked out two shades of blue and found a dolphin-and-whale wallpaper border to separate them with. The carpet was the color of the ocean bottom. Once again, Mom had come to help us, bringing a homemade dolphin quilt for Katie and picking up a paintbrush alongside Dave. I was supposed to have complete rest for a day or two, but it felt nice hearing them work, knowing that their labors were helping to make my new house a home. We had been so thrilled at the thought of bringing a new baby home to this house, and while nothing could take away the anguish I’d felt at miscarrying, the house reached out to me and soothed me.

………………………

Dave carried me downstairs to the family room and set me up on the couch down there, bringing along the quilt I’d been using upstairs.

“Use this remote for the TV and this one for the receiver,” he explained, showing me how to operate the new satellite TV system he’d bought. He had hoped to find a way to fill my time while I recovered from the loss of my pregnancy and had bought the system as a gift for me. He tuned in the Game Show Network for me, lit a fire in the woodstove, and placed a kiss on my cheek before heading back upstairs to move the furniture into Katie’s room.

I watched reruns of The Price Is Right, The Match Game, and Password Plus. It was like entering a time warp for me, transporting me in an instant back to a more carefree time in my life, and I was grateful for the emotional escape.

I closed my eyes and rubbed them, shaking my head and suddenly feeling tired. I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the carpet powder I used, feeling again as warm as I had felt in those early days in the house. I was weary of the CD-sorting task, and gathered up the dozen or so that I had pulled out to take in our van with us. The rest could be packed. A dozen was enough. I shoved the others haphazardly back into the CD towers and put the good ones into a paper sack to take upstairs with me later. The prospect of leaving this house was taking its toll on my emotions. It was time for a break. I flopped into the cushiony couch and flipped on the television. Garry Moore’s smiling face and pleasant voice came out of the screen at me as he introduced the panel for “To Tell The Truth.”

“Too bad,” I said aloud, “It’s not cold enough to light a fire.” My mind wandered once more, remembering that first New Year’s Eve in the house. We’d had a roaring fire going then and a buffet of homemade appetizers and goodies set up on top of my 1964 Magnavox console stereo, a garage sale find I’d thought a charming complement to my 1964 house.

My brother stood laughing with my husband, taking a sip of beer and watching my sister throw her darts. My brother-in-law lounged against the bar, sipping his own beer and waiting his turn at the dartboard.

“Jackpot!” I cried as my sister hit the two bullseyes we needed to win the game against the men. My sister-in-law, sitting with my parents at the table around the corner from the stairway, looked up and smiled.

“Woohoo! Way to go girls,” she said, giving her husband a little smirk.

It was New Year’s Eve, our first in the new house and our first party. I’d enjoyed making the food and goodies, and my dad had brought over all the leftover champagne from the wedding. Earlier that afternoon, Dave and I had picked up an enormous – ENORMOUS! – bottle of Spumante, but Dad’s contribution of the champagne made it an extraneous purchase.

I felt complete here, hosting an open house for my loved ones and surrounded by my family. Dave’s parents came by too, sitting and chatting with everyone. The mood in my family room was festive and genial. I felt such a sense of rightness and comfort that I decided I wanted to make this party an annual event. We’d eat and laugh and play games ‘til long past midnight, ringing in the new year with those we loved.

………………………

Three months later, another party, a birthday celebration for my mother-in-law. I was tempted to open the still-unused bottle of Spumante, but Dave’s parents and grandparents had come bearing wine for us to share. I smiled at the big Spumante bottle at the back of the bar, reflected in the giant mirror there. It looked at home among our vintage barware, and I was a little glad we didn’t have to open it just yet. It had become a fixture where it was.

We had rum cake and wine, laughing and talking and listening to music in the basement. My mother-in-law and I got more than a little tipsy, happily engaging in birthday merriment. I tried on three 1950s dresses I’d bought on eBay, showing them off for my in-laws.

“A little tight for me on my bacon butt,” I said ruefully, twirling the skirt, “But just the right housewifely look for me anyway.”

“Oh, piffle,” Bonnie said, shaking her head at me. “They look just perfect on you. The vintage style suits you, just like this house.”

I smiled at this last memory, fondly recalling that birthday gathering and the fun we’d had that night, both during the party and after our guests had gone home. At that thought a new memory washed over me, bringing a smile to my face. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

I knew what would happen even before I picked up the stick, a quiver in my hand as I did so. I’d done this what? Two, three, four times a month since late October? I sensed – no, I knew – that this time would be different, that this April Saturday afternoon would bring me the news I’d been waiting for.

It did. There was a second pink line there, as clear and dark as the control line it paralleled. I was pregnant for certain. I slipped the test into a drawer in the bathroom vanity and briefly wondered about the morality of withholding this information from my husband for a little while longer. He didn’t know I suspected, didn’t know I’d taken the test. We’d had so much disappointment since the miscarriage that I’d stopped raising his hopes every month. I wanted to save the news and tell him in just the right way, clever and creative and memorable. Was it right to keep it from him just a bit more?

We went to Old Chicago to play darts. Dave drank a couple of beers, and I sipped on a bottomless glass of fresh lemonade. We whiled away the afternoon happily tossing darts and listening to the jukebox, but later, after we’d gotten home, he seemed out of sorts. I asked him what was wrong.

“I don’t know. I’m just crabby.”

The right moment had arrived.

“Would you feel better if I told you I’m pregnant?” I stood back and watched the dawning realization cross my husband’s face.

“Are you kidding? Please tell me you’re not kidding.”

“I would never kid about something like this.”

I was sure his whoop of delight could be heard on the next block, so great was his excitement, his previous crabbiness forgotten. He picked me up in the hallway and spun me around. Our prayers had been answered.

My eyes snapped open, and I sat up, sighing. I had a lot to do yet and didn’t need to be wasting time on memories and game shows. I shut off the television, picked up the bag of CDs and headed up the stairs. Halfway up, I turned and glanced back, trying to burn an impression of all the good times we’d had there into my brain and heart. It was going to be very hard to leave.

In the kitchen, I wadded up newspaper and packed a few of my vintage kitchenware pieces, things I didn’t feel like trusting to the movers. I set some things aside and glanced at the kitchen door, the casual side entrance we used almost exclusively when coming and going from the house. Again my wandering mind stole me from the task at hand and whisked me into the past, images of us loudly coming in the door late the previous December.

“We’re home,” Dave announced, setting down my bags and smiling at the infant in my arms. Katie followed from the car, shutting the kitchen door behind her.

“It’s cold,” she admonished us, stroking the baby’s cheek. “Do you want her to freeze?” Dave and I looked at each other and laughed, sending Katie into the hallway to turn up the thermostat. It was the day before New Year’s Eve 1999, and we had brought home a beautiful new daughter.

………………………

New Year’s Eve, so different than the previous year’s. With a brand new baby in the house, we’d decided against the open house we had wanted to make an annual event. The four of us sat upstairs on the couch, watching “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” and waiting for the med supply company to deliver a breast pump for me. Jenny was having trouble latching on correctly, and we thought we might have to use bottles to feed her. Dave and Katie sat on either side of me, and I held the baby on my lap, occasionally attempting to feed her. I thought of the bottle of Spumante in the bar downstairs and smiled a little.

I grabbed my box of kitchenware and the bag of CDs and stepped outside the kitchen door. The van was parked in the driveway. I opened the back and loaded in the box, then tossed the bag up front. Slamming the door shut, I looked up at the sky. It was overcast, the capricious October whether turning gray and chilly this late afternoon. My eyes moved over to the spacious backyard where the grill sat on the deck and the clothesline opposite the oak tree.

The breeze was warm against my bare arms as I reached up to hang the laundry from the line. I loved the fresh, sunshiny smell of line-dried clothes, and even more, I loved sunny early-summer mornings out here in the backyard, the baby happily sitting in her saucer watching me hang the clothes. The dewy-fresh morning air reminded me of my own childhood and June's promise of endless summer days stretching before me. Mornings out here with my baby were one of the simplest pleasures I enjoyed. I envisioned hot July afternoons splashing in a wading pool, and balmy summer evenings cooking steaks on the grill under the vast expanse of sky. I could feel my roots settling into this house and this place. The feeling was good.

Enough. I had to stop this daydreaming or I’d never get done. Fast snatches of memory snapped through my brain as I went back into the house to organize clothes for the trip. The day that Dave had come home telling me of the promotion and transfer offered to him. The agonizing decision over what to do. I wandered through the upstairs, peeking into Jenny’s nursery and feeling tears spring to my eyes as I looked at the cheerful Baby Looney Tunes wallpaper border we’d lovingly put up for her.

“Who will love this room the way I do?” I wondered aloud.

I opened the hall linen closet, so very much like the one in the house I’d been raised in, and drank in the smell of fresh towels and sheets. I peeked into Katie's room, my heart giving a little lurch at the thought of the labor of love that turned this room into an ocean fantasy. Would the new owner repaint it, obliterating our mark on the house? The organization of clothes forgotten, I roamed the house, looking out windows, touching the walls, and remembering. I saw the pine rail and balusters my husband and his stepfather had sanded and stained and installed by hand. I looked at the new carpet, the oak floor behind the bar, and the bar itself, that Dave so lovingly and carefully finished. The remodeled bathroom. The tiny corner office. The fireplace. The couch where I’d lain to recover from a broken heart. I didn’t want to leave this house, and, oddly, I felt as if it didn’t want us to go either. It was a fanciful thought, and while it might fascinate a psychiatrist, I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I had packing to do.

………………………

The movers had come and gone, taking with them most of our worldly possessions. A supply of clothes, food, and toys loaded down our van, ready for the long trek across the country to our new location. Both girls were already in the van, waiting for Dave and me. We were going to spend the night at my parents’ house and leave at dawn the next day. Dave walked around the back of the house, making sure nothing was forgotten. I stood just inside the kitchen, the door open behind me. I was to leave the keys on the counter and lock the door from the inside before slamming it shut to go. My feet felt frozen to the kitchen floor, reluctant to leave. Dave stepped inside and touched my arm.

“Donna,” he said gently. “We have to go.”

“I know. Just let me walk through one more time.”

“No. The kids are waiting. We really need to go.”

“Okay, okay. Okay,” I said, tears filling up my eyes. I snapped the key onto the counter and went out to the step first, Dave following and locking the door. As we walked to the van, he put his arm around my shoulder.

“Honey, you’ll be okay. It’s just a house.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, looking back once more and trying not to cry. “I know. It’s just a house.”

The Moving Finger

2006-01-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in June of 2004, just before I turned 38....

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.

I couldn’t remember where the quote came from, but it wound its way into my head this morning as I thought about the passage of time, the passage that grows fleeter with every finished moment.

The constant tick of time preys on me always at this time of year: the time of year when the anniversary of my birth swells forward to catch me up in its bittersweet song.

While I was ruminating on the profundity of the quote that sang a whisper in my ear, I went to the kitchen looking for the soul comfort found there. My kitchen is an oasis in the desert of time, a place where the moving finger seems to stop and somehow suspend its journey, where my purloined years are magically restored to me and the unjust passage reversed. In the aromatic steam arising from a newly baked gingerbread or the first taste of homemade gravy spooned over hand-mashed potatoes, the fresh innocence of childhood comes rushing to the fore, and I can easily feel myself surrounded by the sounds and sights of a hundred things past.

Today I had to satisfy those primal desires for comfort with an omelet and a glass of Ovaltine, but I was willing to take my comfort where it came. I poured the egg into the pan, topping it with bits of chive and peppers and chopped onion and thin slices of ham, listening with relish to the sibilant pop and sizzle, enjoying the wafting fragrance of the vegetables as they cooked. I stirred the Ovaltine into my milk, remembering a past thirty years gone when my mother had done the stirring for me. I smiled a little ruefully, because this was no longer my Ovaltine to love. It belonged now to the children of this house, the children whose memories thirty years hence would hark back to this room, these sounds, these scents, and the sight of their mother stirring chocolate into their milk.

I folded cheese into the omelet and sat with my meal, the source of the quote coming to me then as suddenly as the quote itself had earlier. The Rubaiyat, said a small voice from somewhere deep inside my brain. It’s from The Rubaiyat. The rest of the quote came back to me:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

The words reminded me there is no eraser for the flagrant cad that is Time. He follows his own path, leaving behind in his wake only the memories of what has gone before and some measures of regret, sorrow, joy, sweetness and wistfulness. And I thought perhaps I am a heretic to Time, at once embracing him, in commune with him, and fighting him. I recognized my own struggle and knew that I would continue to tipple from the cup of nostalgia, gaining small mental profit from my attempts to recreate what has already been written.

I ate, and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself change from child to mother and heard from somewhere the rolling march that will bring my own children on their journey to what is yet to be.

Ten centuries have passed since Omar Khayyam’s time, and still we watch his Moving Finger.

"I'm not a food!"

2006-01-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

As often as I encounter it, you'd think I'd have no trouble remembering the strictly literal nature of children. The single funniest example, one I will never forget, occurred when my daughter had just turned five and was still attending preschool.

My older daughter and I were discussing kindergarten, and how different an experience that would be for Little Miss. Little Miss heard us talking, and became agitated over the idea of leaving preschool. Her sister tried to comfort her, pointing out the exciting advantages of kindergarten.

"Relax," I said. "It's still several months away. We don't have to sell her on the idea of kindergarten just yet."

Little Miss howled, hot tears flying off her cheeks and landing in a puddle on the floor.

Baffled, I reached for her. "What on earth is the matter?"

"I don't want you to SELL ME! I'll go to kindergarten! I promise! Just don't SELL ME!"

Upon hearing me say "sell her on the idea" she instantly had visions of becoming the subject of an eBay auction, having seen me sell her outgrown clothes that way.

Poor kid.

Mr. Literal knocked on our door again today. My son waddled in here moments ago, his jeans at his ankles.

"I just had to go to the bafroom," he said.

"Well, pull your pants up, then."

"I can't!" he wailed.

As I helped him, I said gently, "You're going to have to learn to do this yourself, Honey Bun."

He scowled.

"I'm not a Honey Bun."

"Yes, you are. You're my Honey Bun."

"Mom! I'm not a food!"

He turned and marched indignantly upstairs, leaving me alone to giggle and remind myself just how black and white a four-year-old's view really is.

"I would walk 500 miles..."

2006-01-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

That's the goal. 500 miles.

I exercise six days a week. My primary form of exercise is via Leslie Sansone's Walk Away The Pounds workouts, combining cardio activity with muscle strengthening. The workouts are measured in miles.

I'm looking at my 40th birthday this year, and it seemed appropriate to set a goal for myself: something for me, something that would emphasize health, vitality, strengh, and vibrancy. So I looked to my workouts for inspiration. And I got little push from The Proclaimers too.

Walking 500 miles from January first to my birthday in June is an aggressive goal. I need aggressiveness and accountability to make it work, so I'll periodically share my progress here. I'm counting Walk Away The Pounds miles, walks/jogs/runs taken outside or on an indoor track, and miles accumulated via treadmill or elliptical. I'm not counting the miles walked throughout the course of a typical day just doing what I do (housework, shopping, that sort of thing).

Since the beginning of the year, I've got 30 miles under my belt...only 470 to goal...

The subject of 40 itself? That's a post for another day.

The Christmas Party

2006-01-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

The company held the Christmas party after the New Year in 2002. They were just starting up in our neck of the woods and hadn't officially opened for business. Having the party later was to help kick off the year on a high note.

It was Saturday, January 5th. My older daughter was visiting her father in another state and wouldn't be home until after midnight, so we engaged her schoolfriend to babysit the two-year-old.

My husband's new boss hosted the party - his house was enormous: a McMansion of cavernous proportions, decorated just so, the marks of an interior designer evident in every pillow, painting, and carefully arranged book. When we entered, there were about a dozen people mingling about, most of whom I had never met.

There would be no glass of wine or bottle of microbrew to help me over my nervousness. I was, you see, nine months' pregnant, a vision of pudginess in a red Liz Claiborne sweater and black velour maternity pants. Looking around at the sleek, chic, slender corporate wives I was expected to share my evening with, I was acutely aware of my bloated face and oversprayed hair. My walk was ungainly and painful - the baby had settled down in my hips, making each step as unbalanced as if I'd just stepped out of the saddle.

Thank God for artichoke dip and a straight backed chair to sit in.

Game time...there were actual games to play. The games followed the obligatory motivational speech and incentive DVD. Apparently, the idea was for all of the new employees to bond through inanity and humiliation. Each guest was partnered with someone not his or her own spouse. I was partnered with John from North Dakota. Good! Someone who knows that Fargo isn't actually in Minnesota and that not everyone in the upper Midwest punctuates each sentence with a hearty "you betcha!"

All eyes turned to us as we won the first prize of the evening: a Magic 8 Ball. The Magic 8 Ball - yes, that's the one. The one that revealed the mysteries of romance and math scores for you in junior high school back in the '70s. The dime-store psychic.

"Hey! Ask it if you're having that baby tonight!"

Sure. Why not? It's a party, right?

shake shake

"Will I go into labor tonight?"

Signs point to yes.

Hmmm. Interesting. Well, how hard could it be? I was two days away from my due date. Magic 8 Ball didn't have to stretch too far.

"Ask it if you're having a girl!"

shake shake

"Am I having a girl?"

Ask again later.

Later? How much later? Is twenty seconds good?

shake shake

"Am I having a girl?"

It is doubtful.

Hmmm.

shake shake

"Am I having a boy?"

It is likely.

Curious.

Could the mystical billiard ball really know the truth?

We left shortly thereafter, my stomach not feeling well from excessive consumption of artichoke dip and an overwhelming sense of being nine months' pregnant, for crying out loud!

I drove the babysitter home. I don't remember why. Temporary insanity, no doubt. I took the two-year-old along with me. Surely it must have been some form of insanity. After dropping the sitter off, I swung by the grocery store on the corner a mile from home. We'd left the party so early that Mr. Space Age hadn't had enough to eat. I carried my daughter, slung onto one achy, waddling hip, and tossed a couple of packages of frozen egg rolls and tiny tacos into the basket held in my other hand. I made my way to the checkout as quickly as I could, undoubtedly looking wild eyed and ready to drop a toddler and a newborn onto the tiled floor at any moment. The looks I received from customers and employees alike were testament to that fact, though I did make it out of the store and back home carrying everything with me that I'd brought into the store. Including the toddler and the not-yet-newborn.

Later that night, in the quiet after the mister and child had both fallen asleep, I remembered the parting words of Mr. Space Age's new boss: "Don't be afraid to call me at three in the morning when you're at the hospital!" Behind him, a shout of laughter. I had laughed too. "I don't think it will be three in the morning," I'd answered, figuring the watermelon in my belly would take its sweet time.

You're a clever one, aren't you? You've guessed where this is going?

I was, indeed, at the hospital downtown at three in the morning. I'd stayed up late - nearly until two - restless and unable to sleep. Feeling strange. It was my third pregnancy. "Feeling strange" should have been the tipoff, though once again, I didn't recognize signs. As I lay in bed, watching the flashing blue numbers on the clock change to two a.m., I felt small contractions. They came and went with frequency, though not enough to make me start in pain. At 2:15, I wondered how long I'd let it go on before waking my husband. A minute or so later the answer came: my water broke. Hmmm. Yes. NOW would be a good time to wake him!

We braved slick black ice on the way to the hospital some time later, after our daughter had been picked up by friends to spend the rest of the night at there house. I was deposited into a wheelchair and headed for the elevator to the L&D floor at just around 3:00.

The Magic 8 Ball was on to something, and clearly in collusion with the mister's boss.

At 8:18am on Sunday, January 6, 2002, my 10 lb, 9 ounce son was born, as beautiful a baby as I'd ever seen, with velvet brown eyes like his father's.

He's the baby of my babies, the last in line, my round-cheeked little guy. And tomorrow he will be four.

The Girl Most Likely To...

2006-01-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Last night, I watched one of my favorite movies ever, the 1973 made-for-TV dark comedy, "The Girl Most Likely To..." starring Stockard Channing as Miriam Knight.

I love this movie. I hadn't seen it for years. I couldn't tell you how many years; it seems they stopped airing it on television when I was barely out of my teens. My mother shares my love for this movie. It's always been one of those connections we have - neither has to explain to the other what it is about ourselves that we see in Miriam. Having discovered weeks ago that the movie was finally released on DVD recently, I snapped up two copies, one for mom and one for me. After Christmas, Mom told me that all these years, she had been secretly searching for a copy for me. It was time again to visit with Miriam.

Miriam Knight is an overweight, frankly ugly girl, trying to find love and a social life in college. She is ridiculed and embarrassed time and again, culminating in particular humiliation the night of her debut in the school play. After a car accident, plastic surgery, and a liquid diet while in bandages, Miriam emerges a beautiful young woman with an enviable figure. Newly attractive - and, as ever, wickedly intelligent and clever, Miriam exacts revenge on those who hurt her the most and finally gets her man: one who loves her for her mind.

I've never been the overweight and ugly girl. I have, however, been the skinny and ugly girl. Hopelessly awkward, physically and socially, I was inept at everything except my studies. Like Miriam, I was the donkey end of the other kids' jokes. I was Miriam Knight without her pride and courage. There is a perverse and macabre delight to be taken in Miriam's exploits, the underdog's urge to cheer one of her own kind, our baser instincts darkly satisfied with the comeuppances meted out to the beautiful cruel.

For all of us who have been ugly, imperfect, humiliated and tormented, a toast to Miriam and her wicked cleverness, avenger for the wronged.

December 28, 1999

2005-12-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

At around 4:00pm on this day six years ago, I was eating a helluva good ham sandwich. I followed it with apple pie and coffee, the single best piece of apple pie and the single best cup of coffee I'd ever tasted.

I know now why they tasted so good, but at the time I simply marvelled at the quality of the hospital food.

My younger daughter, Little Miss, was born at 3:28pm that afternoon. I'd had nothing to eat since the night before. We were at the hospital at seven in the morning, and at that time, food was the last thing on my mind.

Flashes of memory fill in some of the spaces of that day: sitting in the rocking chair, big and tired, dressed in a hospital gown and waiting for the nurses; my husband across the room in the only other chair, asking if I'd like the television on. Sitting up later on the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a maternal/fetal monitor, marvelling that I was having contractions just three minutes apart that I could barely feel. Playing cards with my husband and watching "The Price Is Right." By the time TPIR was over and the Young and the Restless had begun, I could feel those contractions. My water never broke on its own, but once the doctor took care of it, the pain came in waves and rushes. It had been twelve and a half years since the last time I'd given birth, and I didn't have a clear memory of what to do.

It was hard. Harder than I thought it would be. I opted for pain killers, but only in intrathecal form, rather than the more popular epidural. It wore off as I hit transition, dragging me into brain stretching pain in a sudden, sharp slash.

"You're not pushing this baby out through your feet, honey!"

The nurse, trying to help me remember just how this was done, reminding me not to push with my heels. She laughed - sympathetic, not cruel - when I asked if she couldn't just reach in and pull the baby out for me.

Lots of noise and rushing and activity and a marvelous, nearly audible whoosh - and then blessed relief and the sound of my baby's full and angry cry.

I learned she was a girl through my husband's tears. I saw her, touched her, gasped for breath with her, and shook as the nurses gently took her to be weighed and washed.

And I was hungry. It was a lusty hunger, a craving for food I'd never felt before. My husband said something to a nurse who said something to someone else, who came back with the snack for me.

I still wonder if I'll ever taste a better cup of coffee.

They put the baby in my arms and she stared at me. I stared back. It was a moment I'd waited years for, breathtaking in its sweetness. Her eyes, the striking midnight blue so many newborns share, took me in with a knowing calmness.

She's in her bed now, safely wrapped in red flannel jammies and snuggled up with three teddy bears and a new birthday doll. She has long blonde hair and spring sky eyes, my little kindergarten daughter who pronounces her age "six" with a distinct and charming lisp.

It's another breathtaking moment these years later than the first, and today's cup of coffee carries the bittersweet aftertaste of the passage of time.

Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Peace on Earth, goodwill to all.

Salad Dressing and Pickles...

2005-12-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

I've been exiled to the office from the family room, where I had been happily watching television. My husband and my kindergartener are in there wrapping Christmas presents for me. My daughter has a hard time keeping secrets...she has already divulged that they picked out "two pairs of something" for me. I told her I didn't want any hints, but she was insistent on telling me that much.

I thought I might try enjoying my temporary banishment with a glass of Cabernet, but after the first sip I remembered that my other daughter needs a ride home from work in half an hour, and it'll be me who has to make that run. Best save the Cabernet for afterward.

A check of my message boards revealed very little activity.

A game of Free Cell? Gems? Text Twist? Nah. Not in the mood.

What's left to do but fiddle with my blog? I asked myself if it was possible to blog an entire entry about absolutely nothing of value whatsoever.

Probably. Interesting? Perhaps not.

My in-laws arrive the day after tomorrow. I spent the day yesterday deep cleaning. The master bathroom smelled like white vinegar for hours, but the floor sparkles! Amazing, that - in this day of The Space Age Housewife, vinegar remains the most effective floor cleaner. The eternally wise, efficient and thrifty Betty Crocker would be proud. All I could think of was salad dressing and pickles.

I hear giggling from the family room. Giggling and the Squirrel Nut Zippers' version of "Sleigh Ride."

Salad dressing, pickles, and "Sleigh Ride." And I haven't even had the wine yet!

"Melly Kameekimaka"

2005-12-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

My kindergarten daughter is joyfully, loudly singing - in childish mispronunciation - the song "Mele Kalikimaka" from our Bing Crosby Christmas album. It's one of her favorite holiday-time songs, along with "Marshmallow World" as performed by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.

Generations of family holiday celebrations are embodied now in this one little girl, illuminated by her excited smile, dancing by the Christmas tree in her own family room. I can watch her and listen to her and think of my own childhood Christmases, still living in grainy moving relief on the old home movies, carefully preserved from the old reel tapes onto DVD.

I'm spending more time these days sick with worry over our finances and less enjoying what should be the brightest spots of the season: the cookies we've baked, the delicate process of making lefse, the time-worn but well-loved Christmas specials we watch, and the quiet peace of sitting in a firelit room in the glow of Christmas lights.

I can help worrying. Someone has to.

May it never have to be my glorious, featherlight, carefree girl - the one who sings with such joyous abandon and lights up my heart.

Cookies and cats and evergreens, oh my!

2005-12-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, yes. I'm still here. It's just that I'm buried under Russian tea cakes, raspberry thumbprints, three different kinds of nuts and a vat of eggnog the size of Rhode Island.

I have wrapped three thousand two hundred and forty-seven Christmas presents. Okay, not really, but I think I've gone through enough tape for that much. They didn't call me the Scotch Tape Queen when I was growing up for nothing.

My children are running around the house after our cat while Frank and Dean giggle their way through "Marshmallow World" on the stereo.

The cat. Yes, we acquired a cat. Though, as the story goes, you might say he summoned us . A week ago today, my children were playing in the backyard when they discovered a cat in our backyard. It was plenty cold outside, so I let him in. He had a collar but no I.D. tag. The kids and I fell in love with him immediately, as did my husband when he came home. We knew we had to search for his owner, but it planted the seed of an idea in our heads. Two days later, via the Humane Society, we found Boots' owners. His family was happy to have him back, but we were left feeling empty-armed. After delivering Boots to his rightful home, we turned back for the Humane Society right away. There, we met a two-year-old orange tabby, a shy but loveable fellow who looked familiar to me. After reading the information card that indicated he was found just blocks from my house, I realized where I knew him from: he'd followed my children and me nearly all the way home from school some weeks ago. I'd decided if he followed us the whole way, we'd let him in. He disappeared just two doors short of our house.

If you believe in Cat Karma, you might suspect that our new pal, Dino, had sent Boots to our house in order to get us to the Humane Society to find the cat really meant for us.

If you don't believe in Cat Karma, then...well...I guess it's just a sweet little coincidence.

...

The tree is up. We have tinsel this year! I've never had tinsel before. Tinsel is an enormous pain in the neck to put on the tree, but it looks beautiful. It reflects all the lights, and is especially pretty at night. There's a smaller tree here in my office, looking cheery with its green and red glass ball ornaments and red cluster lights.

This year marks the 40th time my favorite elf ornament, given to me by my grandparents for Christmas, 1966, has been placed upon a tree. He goes on first, taking the place of honor front and center.

Back to the kitchen for me. If you haven't heard from me in a while, come on over and dig me out of the flour, sugar, and dried cherries.

Thumbprint cookie, anyone?

Halloweenies

2005-10-22T13:26:00.000-06:00

The Halloween party was last night.

I couldn't wear the costume I'd bought.

When I pulled it out of the package, I could see there was a problem. The top was too big, the bottom was too small, and you could see through everything. Because Mr. Sloane was dressing as a blonde version of Eric Carr of KISS, I thought I'd try to dress like a groupie, circa late 1970s. With pink hair. I definitely wanted to wear the wig.

Using clothes I actually already had around the house, I managed to put together an acceptable little number with shorts and boots. I was gratified when, at the party, two people asked me if I was supposed to be the woman from Alias.

"Uh...yeah. Yeah, that's it," I answered with a wink.

What a party. It looked as though our hosts had spent a week decorating in Late Modern Creepy. There were candles on just about every available surface. Even the food dishes sported plastic spiders on top.

We ate. We drank. We laughed. We stayed out much too late, and that pink-haired chick had just a leeeeetle too much of that cranberry/vodka/lemon concotion...it was an ideal party.

Next week? Children's parties!

Shredded Wheat: It Does A Body Good

2005-10-20T16:23:00.000-06:00

So, yum! I'm having a bowl of bite-sized shredded wheat for my afternoon snack. I love shredded wheat. It's one of the best foods ever.

I did three miles' worth of Walk Away The Pounds workouts this morning, plus some weight lifting. I walked to and from the public library with my son's preschool class. I trudged all over Target with my two younger children, searching for Halloween costumes for their father and me to wear to a party tomorrow night (I finally settled on an 80s rocker chick for myself...that'll be a sight to see, I'm sure!). I also took the two young'uns to the grocery store and walked all over, pushing a heavy cart. I've got almost 12,000 steps on my pedometer at 4:30 in the afternoon.

So...yes. I was starving, and a bowl of shredded wheat sounded like just the thing.

Don't worry about me being too good, though, with all the exercise and healthy food I like. Don't worry one little bit.

There's a pumpkin eggnog pie in the oven even as we speak. There'll be time enough later on to be baaaaaaaaad.

You've no idea how bad I can be. ;)

Spam, spam, spammity, spammity, spam...

2005-10-14T15:04:00.000-06:00

I was born in Minnesota. So was SPAM! I'm okay with that. A little diced Spam scrambled with some eggs? People like that. I haven't had Spam in...oh...I don't know...twenty years? Twenty-five? But I understand that people like Spam. Some people even collect Spam memorabilia (Spamorabilia? Did I just coin a word? Cool!). I wouldn't go that far. I'm Betty Crocker, not Samantha Spam.

Anyway. Spam. Hormel. Austin, Minnesota. It's all okay with me.

Spam on my blog? NOT OKAY with me. Nothing sucks donkey rocks more than seeing that one, two, three, ten(!) people have commented on a blog entry, only to discover that every last stinkin' self-serving one of them is biologically removed from pond scum only due to the fact that there is no pond here. The Space Age Housewife is not a violent person. I thrive on vintage aprons and favorable comparisons to Donna Stone, not Sylvester Stallone. Spam tests my pacifist nature, though. SOMEONE is gonna wind up Mulligan stew, and it ain't gonna be pretty!

I should be baking pumpkin bread instead of ranting about good-for-nothing blog spammers, but uncapping the steam is a good idea from time to time.

Besides, I just dropped a boat load of money - in the four figures - to prepay for my son's upcoming oral surgery. Ouch.

Maybe I ought to bake after all. At least send out for pizza. I deserve it.

It's October? Already?

2005-10-08T16:53:00.000-06:00

Tempus fugit.

Especially this time of year. The first full week of October is over. Almost all the days on my calendar have some event, appointment, or reminder on them. How did THAT happen? Girl scouts and dentists and harvest fairs, photo appointments and fundraisers...thank goodness there's a party pencilled in as well, and I'm not hosting yet.

I love autumn. It's my favorite time of year, when the jack-o-lanterns and scarecrows and harvest wreaths go up, when the leaves crunch underfoot, and the unbearable oppression of late summer heat breaks into the kind of cool day most people would describe as crisp.

It's a gingerbread day today, I think. Under a deceptively sunny, blue sky, the air is cold. A good kind of cold. Somewhere in the neighborhood, someone is mowing his lawn for the last time of the season before the irrigation water is shut off and everyone shuts down their sprinklers for the year. It's somewhat incongruous on this gingerbread day, the distant sound of the lawnmower. It brings back almost wistful memories of spring days and the smell of damp, freshly cut grass. Almost wistful, but not quite, because today is a gingerbread day. And I love autumn.

Tastes like crackers...

2005-09-23T09:26:00.000-06:00

My three-year-old son asked for a snack this morning. He requested "white milk and Ritz crackers."

"Mmm," he said as he bit into a Ritz. "Tastes like crackers."

"I guess that's a good thing, isn't it?" I answered, trying to stifle a smile.

"Yeah. Mom?"

"What, honey?"

"I love you is a good thing too, right?"

"Right. It is."

"Okay. Because I love you."

*sniff*

That's my sappy moment for today. This same little boy said a few minutes later, when I told him I was going to make a big pot of soup and a pumpkin pie for supper: "Maybe no soup. Maybe just plain pumpkin pie with no syrup."

Syrup?

"Do you want whipped cream on the pumpkin pie."

"No, just plain. No syrup. No soup."

Maybe he'd like it better if it tasted like crackers.

I made brownies today...

2005-09-21T17:26:00.000-06:00

Brownies cure everything, right? Good for what ails you, right?

Well...maybe not. But Betty Crocker and I have always had a good relationship, and times of trouble tend to send me scurrying to the kitchen to make all manner of comfort food from meatloaf to pumpkin cake to soup to cookies.

Today it was brownies. With almond extract and white chocolate chips stirred in.

I ate one. Okay, two. And a piece of pear pie.

I may have negated my workout this morning, thirty minutes of intense cardio and thirty minutes of strength training. Do I care? A little. Not much. Not today.

Today was a brownie day.

Anyone want one?

So here's a question...

2005-09-20T10:19:00.000-06:00

What do you do when you find that you have a serious ideological break with a person who had previously been a close friend?

What do you do when you believe that difference in ideology has caused your friend to make a choice that you perceive as a rejection of your friendship?

Maybe the friend doesn't see it that way. Maybe the friend believes the relationship can survive this basic difference. Maybe the friend doesn't realize how such a choice hurts you, especially when the choice appears to say in big, flashing neon letters:

It doesn't matter what you think or what your truth is!

Is this a political difference? No. Those, we got through. Our political differences didn't seem to matter.

No, this is personal. There was a choice made that clearly rejected my point of view as invalid.

So then what do you do in such a situation? What do you do when you know that person cannot or will not change that line of thinking? The choice has been made, and it's not going to be unmade.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Memories Are Made Of This

2005-09-14T20:20:00.000-06:00

It's amazing how music can trigger such visceral memories. Some songs are so powerful, I can almost physically feel myself jolted into the past, suspended there for a moment's time, reliving a long ago instant as fully as if it were the here and now.

Everyone has songs like these, and I unexpectedly heard one this evening while on my way home from an errand. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I blindly grabbed an unlabeled mix CD my husband made for me, pushing it into the CD player.

Instantly I heard a woman's giggle, then the music.

Dark in the city, night is a wire....

Suddenly, I wasn't a 39-year-old mother driving a minivan out of a shopping center. I was a high school junior, in my bedroom, listening to the radio and getting ready for a date. I could feel the warm spring breeze from the window. I could feel the blue eye pencil sliding along my lids, and I almost detected the faint aroma of Aqua Net. I was there, just as surely as I was sitting in my minivan on Eagle Road. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find the next song was "On The Loose" by Saga, a song I haven't heard or thought of in years.

So many memories wrapped up in music. I can hear one note of "My Sharona" and be transported back to the eighth grade choir room, the KQRS blasting on the stereo before the teacher showed up. I can see kids running up and down the carpeted risers, all singing more fully and loudly than they ever did during classtime. I can see Kris G. in the middle of it all, Metcalf Junior High School's answer to Farrah Fawcett. And then I remember how much I wanted to look like her, and how awkward I felt next to her.

"You Should Hear How She Talks About You"... it's early June of 1982, and I'm just a few weeks from my 16th birthday. I'm at Valleyfair with my best friend and her boyfriend, and I've met someone. His name is David. He's visiting from Texas. It's 70 degrees out, but he complains about the cold and wonders how I can stand it. We're riding the Ferris wheel together, and he's wearing a blue v-neck velour sweater. He has feathered hair and the most beautiful hazel eyes I've ever seen. I know he's going to kiss me, and he does.

"This Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide"... it's the spring of 1983, and my school's hockey team has made the state high school championship game. Far too many of my crowd is crammed into my best friend's boyfriend's 1974 Mustang, speeding down the freeway to the St. Paul Civic Center for the game. It's Saturday, and we feel like the whole world belongs to us. The windows are unrolled, and I'm sitting on a boy's lap in the cramped backseat of the Mustang, laughing as my hair continually whips the side of my face. I have never felt as free as I do in this moment.

I have dozens more memories just like these. They are quietly filed away in my brain's back room, waiting for one note to release them to the forefront, flooding my present and pulling me into a time warp if only for the flash of the instant it takes me to recognize the song.

The Mouse In Our House

2005-09-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

The Space Age Housewife still seems, in the aftermath of the hurricane disaster, to be a shallow exercise in self-absorption. I'm not sure when I'll be able to resume my sometimes serious, sometimes self-deprecating little glimpses into the workings of my feeble suburban brain.

Still and all, I want to write. Until such time as the Space Age Housewife regains her sense of self, I'm going to post here some of my previous writings in the hopes that someone will enjoy them.

This little vignette was written in February of 2004:

THE MOUSE IN OUR HOUSE

“Noooooooooooooooo! Ew! Ew! Ew! MOM!”

The alarmed screams bring me flying from my office chair to the kitchen, where I come screeching to a halt at the sight of my teenage daughter standing atop a stool near the refrigerator. Behind her, the cheerful local news anchor delivering her story on my portable kitchen television seems incongruous and almost funny.

“What on earth…?” I ask, puzzled by my daughter’s apparent fright.

“It’s…a…MOUSE!” she shrieks in answer, gasping for breath between words.

“A mouse? Are you sure? Maybe you just saw a shadow. Or some dust. Or something.” I step into the kitchen and cautiously peer under the cabinets and the refrigerator.

“No. It’s a mouse! It’s under the stove!”

Trying to instill in my daughter a sense of confidence I do not feel myself, I sidle up to the stove and gingerly kick at it with one foot. Nothing. Feeling braver, I bend down to have a peek under there myself. I am sure my daughter imagined the whole thing. There is no mouse here! Vermin? Disturb the purity of my kitchen? No way. Suddenly, as if to challenge my faulty perception, something scurries past me from the stove and shoots underneath the dishwasher, behind the base of the cabinets. Squealing in disgust, I leap away from the stove and jump on top of the other stool.

“I told you!” my daughter cries in a voice still high-pitched with nervousness. “I told you it was a mouse! Do something!”

Do something? Like what? A preliminary run-through of my options brings me right back to what I an actually doing: perching on a stool with my heart pounding at an abnormally high speed. A glance at the clock tells me it will be at least an hour before my husband will be home.

“Er…what do you want me to do?” I ask.

“I don’t know! You’re the mom here!”

“Yes. Yes I am,” I agree. “And my relationship with mice and their ilk is somewhat marginal. They offend me, I offend them, and therefore we try to stay away from each other. Do you think it’s still under the dishwasher?”

“I didn’t see it come out. It’s just waiting down there to get me!”

At that, my four-year-old wanders into the kitchen.

“Hi, Mom,” she says curiously. “What are you doing on the stool?”

“Um, nothing, honey. Nothing. Go play in the living room. Watch Sponge Bob.”

“I heard it!” my older daughter screeches, nearing hysteria. “It was making a scratching noise!”

“What?” my younger daughter asks again. “What is it?”

“It’s a mouse,” the older one blurts before I can stop her with a frown and a warning shake of my head.

“A MOUSE?” the littler one yells. “Is it a BIG mouse?”

Just then the phone rings. I lean way over from my spot high above the floor and tip the receiver off the hook, dragging it nearer to me by the cord. When I am able to reach it firmly in my hands, I put it up to my ear.

“Hello?” I say, my own voice tinged with the same high pitch as that of my older daughter.

“Hi. What’s going on?” It’s my husband.

“We have a mouse!” I cry into the phone. “Can you come home?”

“What do you mean, we have a mouse?” he asks. What does he mean, what do I mean? What does it sound like I mean? A mouse, man, a MOUSE! In my house!

“I mean, we have a mouse.”

“Where is it now?”

“It ran under the cabinets. Behind the dishwasher.”

“Oh. Well there’s access to the subfloor there. It’s probably outside under the deck by now. Unless it has a nest in the subfloor.”

“A n-n-n-est?” I croak. “Under…my…floor…?”

“For crying out loud, honey. It’s not going to hurt you. I’ll take care of it when I get home. I just called to let you know I have a late appointment.”

“How late?”

“I don’t know. Another hour or two.”

“We’re on top of stools.”

“What?”

“We’re standing on stools. How long do you think we can do this?”

Without giving him a chance to mull that over, I continue in a rush.

“You have to come home. I can’t put my feet on the floor if a mouse is going to run over them.”

Behind me, I hear a medley of voices as both of my daughters cry out at once:

“Mother! At least you have shoes on!”

“Daddy! There’s a mouse in the house and it’s going to come out AND EAT KAYLA’S FACE!”

“Listen,” my husband goes on. “If you can’t wait for me to get home, call an exterminator. There’s a voucher in the phone book for a free consultation.”

“I don’t want a consultation,” I answer sourly. “I want the mouse gone.”

“I’ll bring some d-Con home with me.”

“What if it goes into the subfloor and dies down there? Won’t it stink up the house?”

It is obvious my husband’s patience is wearing thin.

“Honey, I have to go. I’ll take care of it when I get home. You do not have to stand on stools. It isn’t going to hurt you! It is probably hiding from you.”

He hangs up before I can make any additional protest.

“Well, Mom? What are you going to do?” My daughter, half-standing and half-sitting on her stool, changes the television station from local news to “Jeopardy!”

“Mommy?” my younger daughter asks from her newly acquired seat on top of the dining table. “Is the mouse going to eat us?”

“No, silly, no, no. Mice don’t eat people. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Nothing. Right?

“Then why are you standing on the stool?”

She has me. I’m stumped. If I want her to believe me, and if I don't want her to be terrified of mice and traumatized forever, I am going to have to get down.

Cautiously, I step one toe onto the floor, then slowly ease myself off the stool until I am standing on my own two feet. So far so good.

“There it goes!” shouts my older daughter. “There it goes!”

I turn just in time to see the mouse duck under the door to my pantry.

“All right, that’s it!” I say, snatching my preschooler off the dining table and bounding into the living room to retrieve my young son from his spot in front of Teletubbies.

“Jump!” I holler back at my teenager as I hurriedly pull coats out of the hall closet.

Just in case that mouse does turn out to be of the face-eating variety, I am taking no chances.

We’re going out to supper.

Whatever you do for the least of these...

2005-09-04T19:26:00.000-06:00

Today's entry will be short.

I can't bring myself to resume my own self-absorbed silliness just yet, sitting here in my comfortable chair, in my warm and dry home in the high desert, far from the destruction of a hurricane.

No, today I will reflect on that greater world that surrounds me, and not the narrow world in which I live.

I am a Christian. Perhaps you are not, but I am. As such, these are the teachings that stick with me the most today, the most basic of a loving, Christ-like attitude:

Whatever you do for the least of my brethren, you have done for me.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

If you have a dollar to give, please do. If you have a hand to lend, please do.

Please help the victims of Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-02T10:59:00.000-06:00

This isn't a time for me to talk about me and my life. This is a time for me to take a break from blogging my own petty concerns about my insulated world and to ask you to take a moment from yours to help those whose lives and homes have been utterly devastated.

If you have already given, thank you.

The baby birds are learning to fly...

2005-08-29T14:51:00.000-06:00

It happened.

My little girl went to kindergarten this morning, her face awash in the glow of the kind of excitement that only children know. She seemed to know a whole new world was about to open up to her, and she was facing it with anticipation and innocence.

The whole family walked her to school today: both of her parents, her little brother, and her older sister. She clomped up the sidewalk in her new fashion boots and knee-high socks, her backpack looking oddly big on her little-girl frame. She held hands with her sister, maybe afraid of looking too babyish if she had held mine.

"I hope no one teases her," I said to my husband as we lagged a little behind the kids.

He didn't respond, but his mouth tightened. I knew he was feeling the same.

She's so innocent. So full of exuberance and enthusiasm. At some point, some time, somewhere and somehow, someone will pierce her bubble. It happens to all of them, doesn't it? And all I want to do is stand in front of her and take the pain myself.

I realized, halfway to school, that I was holding my breath.

She was the first student to arrive. She dutifully hung up her backpack, and then she found the seat that had her name on it. Her seat tag was written in bold green-markered letters. She liked the green.

Her teacher is young and sweet, teaching her first year of kindergarten. My little girl liked her right away too.

Sometimes I remember exactly what it was like to be in kindergarten. Some of what I remember is scary and confusing. I know I have to let her grow up and find her own way, but I hope the path is smooth for her. I hope she makes friends. I hope no one teases her. If they do, I hope she stands up for herself. I hope it's all good for her.

I didn't expect to feel this way. I didn't expect to wish I could keep my baby bird shielded just a little longer.

One kid out of school, one just starting, and a little one heading to preschool next week...all of my birds are learning to fly.

I guess I should too.

When is a house a home?

2005-08-14T16:38:00.000-06:00

Most people who know me know that I have had a strong hankering to return to my homeland, Minnesota, for years. When I look at happy family pictures taken in the house my husband and I shared in the suburbs of St. Paul, I almost always get weepy. I loved that house. Loved it. It was a 1964 rambler with full basement in a quaint 1960s neighborhood. During the two years we lived there, we lovingly fixed it up the way we liked it; new carpet and paint, new rails and balusters for the stairs (built by my husband and my father-in-law), and the beautiful built in bar my husband hand-finished.

Yes, it was small, and by now we'd have been cramped for space. But it was also once my ideal house, the first house my husband and I bought together, and the source of much of my nostalgia.

We bought our current house in October of 2000. It's a nice enough house, but it was never quite good enough for me. I thought we'd bought too hastily. We didn't look around enough. We didn't get all the features we should have, and we didn't get enough bedrooms (though at the time we only had two children). In the nearly five years we have been here, we have completely fenced the backyard, built a huge backyard deck, landscaped the backyard with trees and dogwood bushes and lilacs, and added to the plants and trees in the front yard. We have painted the entire main level, and upgraded all the carpet on the main level, stairway, and upstairs hall.

Still, we always look. For a while, we were looking at new subdivisions and new homes at open houses every weekend. Always, we saw something that was better than what we have now, but nothing was ever just right in size, style, or price.

We went out again this afternoon. We found a house that would fit us perfectly. It has the ideal layout, lovely colors, just enough bedrooms and spare rooms, and a dream kitchen. Financially, we could swing it, but it would be a very tight fit.
We must have spent and hour in that house today, talking about where the furniture would go, who would have what room, and what the place would look like decorated for Christmas.

The house isn't in Minnesota, of course, and I wondered out loud what would be the point of moving at all if we weren't going back there.

When we got home, I looked around the front yard at my mums and trees and impatiens and felt the warmth of familiarity. We came inside, and the first words out of my mouth to my husband went something like this:

"What are the advantages of staying here? I like living in the same subdivision as J's school, so she doesn't have to ride the bus. I love our huge backyard with the deck and the dogwoods. I like my kitchen. I like the work we've done. We're settled here, we're used to it, we're comfortable, and we've lived here together longer than anywhere else."

He smiled, and so did I. And I realized for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, that this house, though it's not the original place I chose to raise my children, is indeed a home.

What's my age again?

2005-08-06T16:39:00.000-06:00

What does it say about a woman of my age that I have a strong fondness for Blink 182's "What's My Age Again"? What does it say about me that I listened to it at top volume on my way home from the dentist this afternoon (in my bland suburban minivan, no less)?

The guy in the song is twenty-three. Sometimes I feel twenty-three. I remember what it was like. Haven't I progressed since then (by, oh, say...about sixteen years)? This dilemma confounds me from time to time. I must have talked about it on my birthday entry, but I'm too lazy to go back and read it now. Bottom line: I don't feel like I ought to be my mother's age, and my mother is only 36. Right? Isn't she?

Damn. That makes me OLDER than my mother.

But I still feel - sometimes - like that early twentysomething with a little to look forward to, a lot to prove, and all kinds of dreams that maybe didn't mean as much as they should have.

If you were here, you'd see me pause. Sigh. Think about a glass of wine. Think about going upstairs to get ready for my date with my husband. But maybe I'm not done here.

On the age note, my oldest daughter is eighteen. She's a high school graduate. She's looking for work, planning to start college late, in the spring semester. Her boyfriend leaves a week from Monday for college a six-hour drive from here. I think she's feeling at a bit of a loss, a loose end. I think she wishes she didn't have to think about being a grown up just yet, that she could have that last year in high school back. Her buffer year. One more year with her boyfriend before different paths separate them.

If I'm honest, I'll admit I rather wish for that buffer too. I drove past her high school two days ago on my way home from some errand or other. I was unexpectedly struck with feelings of loss and nostalgia. How did her four years in high school speed by so fast? Shouldn't I have stopped and looked around at her more? Shouldn't she have? It seems just last year she caught the bus for her first day of freshman year, but the whole world has changed since then.

I wouldn't mind one more year of my kid being a kid. One more year of high school before everything changes.

So I'm 23, my mother is 36, my daughter is 18...and what does it mean? What's my age again?

Starbucks. Customer service to aspire to!

2005-08-04T19:38:00.000-06:00

My husband had a class team meeting this evening, and they met at a Starbucks. After the meeting was over, he picked up a toffee nut latte to surprise me with.

When he handed me the toffee nut latte, I knew it was going to hit the spot. I love toffee nut lattes. I'm a toffee nut NUT!

I took a healthy sip...and there was no toffee nut. I swirled the cup around, optimistically thinking that perhaps it just hadn't been mixed in. Another sip.

No toffee nut.

I looked at the receipt...decaf, check. Extra shot, check. Nonfat milk, check. Toffee Nut syrup, check. Paid for, but not included in the drink.

Not knowing what on earth I expected them to do, I went ahead and looked up the phone number of that Starbucks location and called there. I spoke with a lovely young woman named Dana, and explained what had happened.

"I'm not sure what I expect you to do, but I just wanted to tell someone there what happened. It was so...." I trailed off, searching for a word.

"Disappointing?" Dana asked.

"Yes, that's it. Disappointing!" (Because I really do love that toffee nut!)

Dana asked me for my name, promising me a free drink next time I was in that store. I happen to have an errand to run tomorrow in that very neighborhood, so maybe I'll be able to take her up on the offer then.

A free drink for a thirty-cent shot of syrup that went missing. Now that, my friends, is outstanding customer service.

Bad Blogger! What vacation?

2005-08-03T21:44:00.000-06:00

I was going to blog the entire vacation. No, really. I thought I would.

I didn't.

I meant to, honestly. But I was doing things. Shopping for clothes, tax-free! Taking my children to the pool. Letting them run around in their grandparents' yard. Playing Parcheesi and sifting through recipes with my mother. Helping my daughter make a scrapbook for my husband. Attempting to get my fill of Caribou coffee while it was close at hand.

And sometimes...just sitting and being. Breathing in the damp Minnesota air and savoring every tiny moment of something or nothing with the people and places of my roots. Trying to memorize every line on my mother's face, the colors of my father's beard, and the smell of the cinnamon rolls baking in the morning.

I meant to blog it all, fresh in my mind. I meant to save it that way. But I was too busy saving it in my heart.

*sigh*

We just got back this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day to write it all down.