A Summer's Theme

I'm starting to think that the sign of an aging yearbook adviser is the constant craving for a theme.  Not even a good one.  Just a handful of words, tossed together like spinach and arugula, in the hopes that I won't have to remember too much to frame the moment.

Maybe that's why, halfway around Holmes Lake this morning, I found myself face to face with a summer's theme.  I guess I needed half a lake and all those fishing poles, taut and hopeful, to nudge out a few words to identify this brand-new summer of mine.

"Make time," whispered the wind as it wended its way through my hair.

And so, I let myself get lost in the moment, swept away by the sight of vultures taking flight from the treetops across the dam.  And I delighted as I realized a small stick figure was moving below them.  What sounds that man must have heard, the flapping of great, black wings!  What fear his heart must have felt, as the flock dipped and dived around him.

"Make time," sniffed the Saluki as it stopped to check out Finn.

And so, we lollygagged at the bridge, Finn and me, watching a sleepy bullfrog puncture the mossy surface.

"Make time," smiled the young family as--twice--we crossed each others' paths.

And I did, pulling to the side of the path, crouching to get a good look at a half dozen flowering plants--purple and blue and white--few of which I knew by name.

"Make time," said the waddling Mallard mom, stepping off her nest of eggs for a breather.

That's when Finn looked up at me, sharing some unspoken moment and letting me know how glad he was to be there, with me, breathing good air and smelling great smells, even as the low hum of distant traffic spoke of life in a faster lane.

"Make Time" .  .  .  yes, it has a nice ring to it.

Don't Get Too Attached

For someone who's taught high schoolers for nearly 25 years, you'd think I'd be pretty shock proof.  How to explain, then,  my dropped jaw when I saw Time Magazine's cover last week?  You know the one where the preschooler parked his Cozy Coupe so he could fill up at the mommy pump.

Maybe it's because I've taught high school for so long that I had the reaction I did.  When I pulled out the magazine from our mailbox, I immediately pitied the boy, seeing--with crystal-clear vision--what his future would hold for him.  All the name calling.  The teasing.  The friends begging to come over after school for a little snack. . . .

I spent the next three nights reading the article about attachment parenting, something I had never heard of before then.  I would have gotten through the article a lot faster had it not been for my annoying children and their ridiculous "needs."

"MOM!  We're out of toilet paper!"
"MOM!  The milk's turned!"
"MOM!  Are we having dinner over the sink again?!"

My God.  Had I known how taxing parenthood would be, I would have found myself another hobby.  Like horseback riding or something.

Anyway, back to the whole "attachment parenting" thingy. . . .

Frankly, I can't imagine anything worse than the idea of me as the "be all end all" to my children.  No.  When it comes to Eric and Allison, I much prefer a little benevolent neglect.  How else, pray tell, will I get them out of the house by age 20 unless I keep screwing things up or ignoring them?  Seriously, the last thing I want to be is one of those all-inclusive resorts that white people love so much.

No, I want my children to live among the natives.  And, frankly, the sooner the better.

...in fact, it looks like there's an opening late next week.

Mother May I

My mom looked beautiful the other night.  Her skin was smooth,--surprisingly so, considering she'll be 85 next Sunday--her clothes were impeccable, and even her glasses uttered "classy" behind the fashionable frames. 

What made me pause as I took it all in, though, was the fact that she was laying on a hospital bed in the emergency room.  She'd spent much of the afternoon there with my stepdad, Dick, whose heart gave him a fright (he's now home and well).  Because my mom has had bum luck with her back and a series of procedure-disrupting infections, of late, I convinced her to let the doctors check her out, as well.

By the end of our three-hour stay, my mom was cleared to go ahead with her procedure, offering her the chance at real pain relief after weeks of agony.  

That alone made it worth the visit.

But what I most appreciated in spending that evening with her, there among whirring machines and antiseptic ointments, was the chance to just hold her hand and talk with her.  The conversation flowed easily, despite its occasional focus on realities that are neither fluffy nor fun.  Several times in the evening, her laugh--her throaty, easy laugh--punctuated the stale hospital air, eventually resting happily upon my shoulders. 

It has been strange, this past year, watching my mom grow older.  It has been hard, realizing that her edges have grown softer, her needs more pronounced, her presence less of a certainty.  I have rather enjoyed my first 50 years on this earth, framed by a mother who is at once both classy and good-humored. Like a smooth stone, I like how she feels in my hand.  I like all the things she represents to me.

There are days, though, when I realize that her youthfulness is like a clever fox, tricking me into believing that she is something she is not--young, for instance.  It is an odd Shepard burden, this youthful demeanor, because it catches the rest of us off guard.  Surely, Sally Shepard Raglin Marshall is not almost 85.  Surely, that is a master's typo.

Is it wrong to say that I enjoyed myself the other evening, tucked away in a back room in ER, my mother by my side?  No.  I rather think it was something else altogether.

Mother-daughter time, the loose skin of my mother's hand tucked safely into mine.

Stirring the Pol Pot

I consider myself a bit of an animal lover.  So you can imagine how embarrassed I am to admit that I killed seven or eight animals yesterday.  In a ten-minute span. 

First, there was the mouse family—the very NEW mouse family--that had taken up residence in my birdseed container. I saw the mama when I lifted the lid and I gently scooted her out.  But I kept hearing little peeps emerging from the safflower, so I picked up the container and swished it back and forth, back and forth.  Eventually, I saw six or seven pink things surface.  Yeah, I’d been rattling the life right out of them.

One or two managed to writhe for a minute or so, but then, the slate was pretty much wiped clean.  My soul, however, is another matter. 

Appalled at what I’d done, my nose was to the ground as we headed for a walk a few minutes later.   Hooded eyes focused on my feet, it was hard to ignore my earlier, as-yet unrealized brutality.  There, spread out in a pulpy pile were the remains of some baby birds I’d managed to run over as I pulled into the drive a few minutes earlier. 

Let’s just say the Pol Pot of Woods Avenue has had better afternoons.

An Embarrassment of Britches

For all I know, Calvin Klein is dead.  For all I know, Calvin Klein is the Beanie Baby of the fashion world, laughably out of date and an embarrassment to own these days.  Yet,  my Calvin Klein jeans still manage to utter to me "You are fashionable, Jane!  Fashionable AND very nearly fancy!"  . . . even though you can see me underwear through the ever-burgeoning holes along the waist.

And, frankly, I can't take the pressure of having to worry about my jeans AND my underwear.  Not at the same time, at least.  So I am slowly making my peace with the fact that this pair of jeans--purchased almost a decade ago after months of unending harassment from my school "friends"--is neither new nor particularly stylish anymore.

I will never forget how proud I was after I left T.J. Maxx with these jeans, imagining what my "friends" Marti and Laura would say when I showed them my right rear pocket, the one that usually had words like "Wrangler" or "Lee's" above it.  It's possible I have never shaken my white ass so sassily as when I first donned those jeans at school, knowing that all eyes were on me and Calvin, as we traipsed down the hallway, our attitude uttering "All That!"

I don't know what it is about me and pants, but the Calvins are only one chapter in My Embarrassment of Britches (now in its 30th printing, coming out in paperback this summer!). 

The worst pants I've ever owned were sewn by my own loving mother, a woman for whom a needle and thread typically were like paint and pallet, producing beautiful things to drape across the landscape of my awkward body.  Alas, pants were a challenge for Sally.  And, as such, for me, as well.  Especially that pair she made me, the one whose crotch hung comfortably around my knees.

So immense was the crotch that I could wear a soaking swimsuit underneath these pants and still manage to air dry the suit by noon.  As I recall, I actually didn't buy a backpack for school that year, choosing, instead, to simply balance all of my books and pencils along the generous mesa that hovered between my knees.  I also didn't date much that year, as I recall. . . .

To be fair, though, I have dished it as well as taken it in this lifelong war with pants.  It was my decision to temporarily clothe son Eric in my own Chic jeans, in fact, that lead to my eventual purchase of the Calvin Kleins, not to mention some Levi's for Eric.  I'm not sure either purchase ever completely healed the wounds of my earlier decision, though.

Even today, pants continue to harass me.  A key button on one tan pair, a pair I still think of as my "good" pants, hangs by a thread so thin that could not floss a baby's tooth.  It is dangerous to pee while wearing those pants, so uncertain am I of the fate of that button.  More than one of its closet mates live without that all-important button, long ago replaced by a bloated, overworked safety pin working fervently to keep the world safe from my marauding underwear.

Maybe I should throw out all my pants and just start over.  Maybe I should become a "skirt" girl or a "dress" lady or, better yet,  a P.E. teacher and put all of this behind me.

A Sunday Morning Poem

Sometimes, this life is too big for me
   both fettered and floating
its edges just beyond my fingertips.

These are the times I reach deep into my pocket
    pulling out the tiny, soft things I love most
the fuzzied motes within which my life finds balance and meaning.
too small for cosmic microscopes too rich to be ignored.

Resting my head upon my daughter's chest
    her heart magically beating
White toast bathed with creamy peanut butter
    deep pools sunk into its yeasty surface
That single note of a great song
    the one that breaks and heals my heart again
The first bite of a perfect pear
    its sweetness dribbling happily towards my chin
The unapologetic joy of boys playing football after dark
    their shouts drifting through my bedroom window
A look exchanged in silence
   one that speaks of understanding

These are not the moments of great literature
but rather the gentle anchors that keep my boat from listing.

These are the sparks that fire me in this joyful, small life I'm living
    infinitesimal and unknowable
lived against the backdrop of the enormous unknown.

Of Venn Diagrams and Spirographs

I woke up thinking of Venn diagrams and Spirographs this morning. I'm not sure whose pencil nub is turning all these gears, but I do know that the intersections where my life meets the larger world are always interesting places to gather and learn things.

"Interesting," though, as the old Chinese saying goes, isn't always a shiny, happy thing.

And so, these days, I am walking through the miry muck of my mom's aging life, trying to learn this new vocabulary, wishing I had a GPS to set me straight.

I was not a particularly good parent of a newborn. I hope that I will be a better child to an aging parent who, in many ways, offers similar challenges. Mostly, what I need is a heaping helping of kindness, wrapped in a package of perpetual patience.

While medical procedures and prescriptions may very well improve my mother's life, it is kindness that will save us all.

I am just learning all of the forms that this particular kindness takes. As my own circle intersects the "old age" circle, I am surprised--as always--to discover a previously-unknown world of services geared strictly towards the end phases of one's life. Yes, there is money to be made in this intersection--heaping helpings of it, I suppose. But, if you look hard enough, endless kindness resides there, too.

From local aging agencies operating on a dime to luxurious retirement homes with large deer statues in their lawns, aging is a thriving industry in this country. Ironic, considering the waning nature of its clients.

I don't know how my siblings and I will do as we wend our ways through all of this. I do believe that kindness and concern are fueling us, though. We ache as we watch our mom struggle to rise from a chair. We share quick, concerned glances as misfired synapses tumble down her shoulders. And we convince ourselves that more phones, more food, more family time will ease this transition.

Mostly, though, we lean heavily on kindness, counting on it to soften the hard edges of too little sleep or of important paperwork lost in a pile.

I have no idea what next month will look like for my mom and Dick. But I do know that I wish to see the hamster wheel go away, the one that spins round and round, yet never moving, while everyone pants to catch his or her breath.

There is no meaningful movement on that wheel, no intersection where it meets up with kindness or fresh ideas.

Ah, but the still-larger wheels turn, as another circle--as yet unseen--slowly makes its way towards us. I, for one, am holding my breath.