S is for Stories—the Ones I Didn’t Tell

I came up with four words for the letter S in the A to Z Challenge: secrets, stuff, snow and serendipity.

Serendipity was the first to go. It’s one of my favorite words in the English language, and I’ve had plenty of serendipitous moments in my life, but none of them fit my theme of the humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world. Still, who doesn’t love a story about the universe lining things up just right? That thought reminds me of the day I got myself in trouble at book club by using the word serendipity in the wrong company.

The book was My Mrs. Brown. As the facilitator went around the room, women offered comments like, “It was a sweet book,” and “It was a feel-good book.” When it was my turn, I said I thought it was mostly boring. Someone laughed and said, “We can always count on Jean to have a different opinion.”

Then the next woman gushed about how the book was full of divine interventions. “It was so inspirational!”

Say what?

I asked her for an example. She said it was a divine intervention that the main character took a job packing up the house of a wealthy woman who had died. Finding a dress in the closet was a divine intervention. Someone giving Mrs. Brown a book about fashion was a divine intervention.

I couldn’t help myself. “I’d call all those things serendipity. How do you define a divine intervention?”

She bristled. “I don’t believe in serendipity. Everything is divine intervention!”

I took that to mean only non-believers use the word serendipity. Since I’m an agnostic and it’s one of my favorite words, I would have let it drop before we wandered into religion—but someone else asked if I thought serendipity was always happy little events. She threw me a life-line.

“Yes,” I said. “I just don’t think God has time to help someone find a dress when there are more important things going on in the world.”

“So you’re saying divine interventions are more like miracles,” she said, clarifying my words.

Bingo. She won the Kewpie doll.

Next I tried snow as my prompt, but that went nowhere fast. Long-time readers know my husband plowed snow for over forty years and I did it for seventeen. It’s well documented in this blog. But newcomers might enjoy hearing about a game we occasionally played in the middle of the night when conditions were just right. We called it Rat Hockey.

Yes, real rats.

They’d venture out onto the mall parking lot and we’d escort them across it with two or three trucks, turning our plows back and forth to make the rat slide across the icy surface. We’d “steal” the rat from each other mid-slide, and you scored if you were the one who ran it into a snowbank. As far as we knew, none of the rats were harmed. We’d see them dig their way out of the snowbank and look around as if to say, “What the hell just happened?” It’s a wonder none of us ever collided. Imagine explaining that to an insurance adjuster.

Then I moved on to stuff, but that got cut too. I’d just watched a couple episodes of Hoarders, and I didn’t want readers thinking I had—or ever had—stuff in that quantity or quality. But lately I’ve been scaring myself with my inability to throw out three glass jars that once held Meijer-brand peaches. They’re such a pretty shape. Surely I can find a use for them. I’m almost afraid to go to Meijer this week for fear one of those peach jars will jump in my cart like a stray kitten no one could leave behind. If I buy peaches every two weeks, you do the math. Hoarding has to start somewhere.

The last word I crossed off was secrets. As much as I up-chuck my life online, one could assume I’ve already dissected every minute of my time on earth. I haven’t. Not by a long shot. One secret in particular I've been keeping since 1969. I finally told my youngest niece a year ago. She said all the right things—“I’m so sorry that happened to you” blab, blab, blab—but it didn’t make me feel better. It wasn’t cathartic. Remembering that made me realize I can’t write about secrets. Not this year.

Having eliminated all my S word prompts I have nothing left in my writer’s tool box! I guess I’ll have to skip forward to my T topic for tomorrow. Please come back. ©

R is for Romance—And the Kindle Under My Pillow

Why did they put all the hard letters near the end of the alphabet, making the A to Z Blogger Challenge harder as we go along? My prompt word for the letter R was an easy choice, but looking ahead to V, W, Y, and Z has me shaking in my proverbial boots. You may have noticed that I overuse the word proverbial. But then I also lean on trite little sayings like “shaking in my boots.” So the root solution is for me to quit being lazy in my writing.

Okay, I’ve filibustered enough. Time to explain why I picked Romance for my word prompt. I have three answers.

One: I was boy crazy in my teens. I mean really, really boy crazy—so much so that if one so much as looked at me, I’d break into giggles that telegraphed the fact that I was jailbait. I’m sure my mother appreciated that.

Two: I was hooked on reading romance novels in my 40s and 50s. I don’t remember how I found my first one, but I do remember being shocked at how fast I could read in my 40s compared to college. My mom always had Regency romances in the house, so maybe that was my gateway “drug.” But that sub-genre reminds me of Hallmark movies where the main characters don’t kiss until the last five minutes. I quickly moved up the sensual ladder where I discovered historical romances. (Don't tell anyone but I even tried writing a historical romance once.) 

Like men who claim they bought Playboy for the articles, I was quick to say I liked historicals for the history. But all kidding side, they often sent me to the library to fact-check because I didn’t always believe what I read. Soon I learned which authors did solid research and which ones didn’t. When I downsized nearly five years ago, I had hundreds of romance “favorites” to dispose of. I kept only three: Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer, The Outsider by Penelope Williamson, and The Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux. The next time I downsize, I’ll only keep the latter. Not that I’d need to—I have it on my old Kindle, which I keep under my pillow. 

Until recently, I used to listen to bits of that book to fall asleep. I’d set the timer for a half hour, and when I got up in the night to pee, I’d reset it for ten minutes so I wouldn’t start thinking about the day past or the one ahead. I’ve logged so many hours on that book that Amazon sends me emails that translate to: Hey, lady-in-a-rut, Jude wrote other books. We think you’d like such-and-such.

Three: While I might be old, I still enjoy looking at eye candy in the form of good-looking men and occasionally daydreaming about what it’s like to be young and in love again. I blame it on being artistic. In college I had to take a lot of figure drawing classes with nude models. Now, I might admire a man’s chest or well-chiseled arms, but only because I can imagine drawing his form in pastel chalk. Are you buying that? You should, because I’m not a cougar type who wants to touch what catches my eye.

And please know that the ages of my preferred eye candy have changed over the years. When I was in my teens, any male over twenty scared the pants off me (another overused expression). And here’s where I should probably admit that eye candy has more to do with sexual attraction than romance. Oops. Forget I wrote this paragraph.

That was fun. Now I need to get serious and explain why I have such fond memories of reading romance novels and how I owe the genre for giving me an amazing turnaround in my love of reading. I shared in my post for E is for Education that I’m mildly dyslexic, and although I still won’t read in public—some words still don’t compute in my brain—I’m no longer ashamed to admit my past struggles with the written word. And maybe that’s the real gift romance gave me. I may not chase romance anymore, but I still chase stories to blog about — and that’s enough of a happily‑ever‑after for me. © 

Q is for Questions—The Ones I Wish I’d asked my Mom

Thanks to fellow blogger, Beth, for suggesting this topic, I have something to write about for this edition of the A to Z Bloggers Challenge. My mom was in her early seventies when she died and I’ve written about that before so I won’t go into detail. But I will quote myself below so new readers will understand why it was traumatic, and why it left me with no time to ask the questions I didn’t yet know I’d want answers to.

“She’d been going to the doctor every week for a dozen weeks complaining of pain. Near the end my brother started going with her to get some answers about what was going on and the doctor told him Mom was just getting old and looking for attention. Mistakes one through ten. Unbeknown to anyone she had a small hole in a kidney and blood was slowly seeping out and filling up her body cavity. Mistakes eleven and twelve came the day she died and the ambulance got lost trying to find my parents’ house. (They lived on a lake in a rural area where the township didn’t keep their maps up to date.) Mistake thirteen through fifteen happened on the way to the hospital when the ambulance caught on fire and they had to wait for another. She died of septic shock ten minutes after arriving a the hospital and a doctor told me later that dying that way is very painful. Her death was a series of human errors and oversights and it was filled with the kind of shoulda, coulda anguish that only comes with hindsight.”

My mom had a way of answering questions that didn’t really tell you anything. (Remember me writing about how when asked what's for dinner she'd say things like, "An old dead cow.") Another example of her non-answers was when I asked her where I came from and I thought I’d get the birds and the bees story I heard rumors about. The idea that the daddy bee stings the mommy bee with his—gasp!—penis was so outlandish that I counted on her to set the story straight. She did. She told me she found my brother and me under a pile of rocks. A few years later she finally did set the story straight—not with a conversation, of course, but by handing me a pamphlet from the health department.

One of those things she didn’t want to talk about was a screw-back, silver and blue Air Force wings pin that I found in her jewelry box. I didn’t have any uncles or grandfathers who served in the Air Force. Where did it come from and why did she let me wear that pin to high school during the period when I had an imaginary boyfriend named Roger who was off serving our country? And did she know about Roger? Did she read my diaries when I was at school? Years later I thought she might have had a boyfriend before she married my dad who died in a ‘dog fight’ in the air space over Europe during WWII. In my golden years I still think she had that boyfriend, but if so, why was she willing to let me wear that keepsake? I would have snatched it out of any daughter of mine’s hands and locked it away. Maybe she trusted me more than I realized. Or maybe she didn’t think of it as a keepsake at all. Maybe she found it under a pile of rocks.

After she died I went through her cedar chest and another mystery was discovered among the mostly photos and knickknacks. A pair of soft pink satin and cream-colored lace panties that buttoned down the side. 1940s boy-cut style. Why did she keep them for thirty odd years? Who does that? My parents were married in the late ‘40s so maybe it was her version of keeping a wedding dress? She was married in a drab gray suit trimmed in brown fir over a weekend spent in Chicago. I have pictures of that trip and she and my dad both looked really happy. Oh, and that drab suit? Mom cut it up to make a coat for a doll I got one Christmas and I still have them both.

What did I do with the panties? You ask. I put them in a fresh plastic bag with a note about when and where I found them and put them in a small trunk that is earmarked to go to my oldest niece. She still has the cedar chest I found the panties in and I suspect they will end up back in that chest for my great-niece to discover one day. Some families hand down grandfather clocks and quilts. I’m thinking I might be starting a tradition of handing down underwear.

In all seriousness. The questions I wish I’d asked my mom before she died are about gaining more details of her childhood and her parents. I know the basics of how her own mother died when she was nine and all seven siblings where separated and sent off to various places. It was like an informal foster care known as ‘farming children out’ that was arranged between families rather than the state. But knowing my mother, she probably wouldn’t have told me very much. Her childhood ended too soon, when she went off to live with a grandmother who ran a boarding house where she was expected to work for her keep. In her teens she was working in other people's homes as a housekeeper and by the time she met my dad she'd been a waitress for several years. 

My mom was not a reminiscing type like I am. Maybe the past held too much pain? She focused on the future, always planning and plotting for ways to hedge her bets against bad luck and foul play, so to speak. We all leave a few blank pages behind; but with the brief outline she did leave, I’m pretty sure I could flesh her story out. But I know the important part: she was a strong woman who loved her family and I wish I'd have told her more often how much I loved her. ©

Photo at the top: Mom and dad on their honeymoon.