The Mother of all my Other Pivotal Moments

 I got a call from a woman who likes to talk which is fine, I’m a good listener. Or at least I used to be. I kept wishing we were doing a Zoom call so she could see me giving her the classic hand signal to wrap it up. I haven’t had the urge to do that since my husband had his stroke in 2000. He was long-winded but she takes too many 35-40 second pauses in between her words stretching her short, boring stories into epic novels. Her story about a trip the store, for example, was as long as the recorded version of Melville’s whopping fish tale and it could have been written on a grocery list. I think at one point she was reading me her grocery list. I don’t know for sure because I was giving myself a manicure and got distracted by how strong my nails have gotten lately. She’s always had that same speech pattern but on that particular day it was driving me to Crazyville. I had the same problem with her monologue holding my interest as I did when I first tried to read Moby Dick and Melville had the sub-text of good vs. evil within his 752 pages. Her sub-text was the price of eggs and milk went up.

“Call me Ishmael,” Herman Melville wrote on page one of his epic novel. “Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”  Okay, why would anyone call him anything but ‘Ishmael’ if that was his real name? Why didn't he just say, "My name is Ishmael" inquiring minds want to know? And yet American Book Review rates “Call me Ishmael” as number one on the '100 Best First Lines in Novels’. 

My favorite opening line is rated at number nine:  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...."  Charles Dickens wrote that sentence in 1859 for his A Tale of Two Cities. If he had been in my high school English class back in the 1950s the teacher would have been up his butt about his “lack of proper punctuation” and would have made him change some of those commas to periods. Run-on sentences were my specialty back then. I still write a lot of them, but my reading habits and tastes have changed since the days when I struggled (and usually failed) to read the classics from start to finish. Now, an opening line that holds my interest goes something like: “He was so hot my panties melted." Just kidding! I'm not that shallow although one peek at my Kindle library might argue otherwise.

Did you learn how to diagram a sentence when you were taking English grammar in high school? I nearly flunked all my English classes back then but when I had to take a zero credit class that we students affectionately called “Dumbbell English” in my first semester at college it all clicked in place and I got an A out of that class. I learned how to diagram the stuffings out of sentences and it was fun. I don’t know if it was the enthusiastic instructor that made the difference or if my dyslexia was on the verge of sorting itself out or a combination of both, but I loved that class. My ‘composition workbooks' from the class survived the drastic purges this past year. The covers are torn and heavily taped, one has a barely readable spine, but I still love them.

In everyone’s life there are pivotal moments that change the trajectory of our lives and looking back I can see clearly that that class was a pivotal highlight in my life. I could write as many crazy-long sentences as I liked and not get disapproving red marks on my pages as long as I kept my subjects and verbs and dependent clauses where they belonged. Diagramming became like auto-correct to me, showing me the errors of my ways.

Some might ask how I got into college if my grades in anything that required reading and writing were so bad. Simple. I got straight A’s in the art classes and in classes like mechanical drawing. I was the very first girl to take mechanical drawing classes in our high school district and it had an instructor who (along with my mom) fought for me to be allowed in the previously all boys classes because, he said, I had a raw talent. What he didn’t know is it wasn’t so raw. My dad had taught me how to draw blueprints and schematics since I was old enough to hold a pencil and I wanted to know what he was drawing. I had four semesters of mechanical drawing and the instructor even had my drafting table taken down to the wood shop to get it sanded smooth because it was always giving me runs in my nylons and it's just now dawning on me to wonder how he knew that. I suppose my legs were more interesting to look at than the boys he'd been teaching since Columbus departing Spain in 1492.

In my first three years of college I continued getting mostly A’s in art but before my third semester when I went to my adviser to get approval for classes that would lead me to a career in architecture he flatly refused to okay them. “You girls are only here to get a Mrs. Degree,” he told me, “and I can’t allow you to take up a seat in a class a guy will need to earn a living.” I was young and dumb back in those days and didn’t fight for myself like I would have in the post Feminine Mystique era that came shortly after those days. I let him put me on a path toward a teaching art degree. But I never made past that third year.

…Until twenty-five years later when I finally went back to college and got a degree in fine arts. Walking across that stage to collect my diploma was the mother of all the other pivotal moments in my life. It didn’t lead to a career change. That ship had sailed with the invention of computers taking over the lower level drafting jobs and the projection for jobs in the field of architecture showing a decline for the foreseeable future, but finishing collage gave me a special kind of pride in myself, that after all those years I wasn't a failure anymore. I was a college graduate! To this day it ranks in the top three of my proudest accomplishments. 

My other two proudest accomplishments? The way I handled the twelve and a half years after my husband's stroke counts for one. The other is me finally getting to have a house built starting with a plan in my head to watching it get built. Oh, yes, it's going to be hard to leave here but houses should work for your life-style and my life-style needs to change.

The next paragraph was written just to prove I could condense my greatest accomplishment down to one 88 word, run-on sentence. (Okay, I admit it doesn't take much to amuse me these days.)

Call Me Jean. Some years ago—never mind precisely how many—having no upcoming wedding plans on the horizon like all the other girls in my high school I put myself through three years of college, then dropped out and spent the next twenty-five years feeling like a failure until I returned and two years later walked proudly across a stage to collect my diploma, with no thoughts whatever of sailing about the watery parts of the world that I finally did finish reading about in Melville's epic novel. ©

Skin Care, Roommates and Bulletin Boards --- Oh My!

Every so often I get a bug up my butt about taking better care of my skin. Actually, it seems to be an annual event that lasts from January to spring when I realize I’ve dried out my skin too much. Dermatologists don’t recommend daily showers for old people if we’re not doing stuff to get sweaty and dirty. Our thinning skin apparently is chronically too dry which exposes us to all kinds of nasty skin ailments, the least of which is wrinkles. I don’t care about wrinkles but I’d like to avoid cracking skin and eczema, thank you very much, so I listen to my doctor. On days when I don’t shower I do what Victorian ladies referred to as ‘performing their morning ablutions’ which involved a servant bringing the lady of the house a pitcher of warm water and removing her chamber (aka pee) pot. The lady of the house would brush her teeth and wash her face, her arm pits and what I'll refer to euphemistically as her "nether region." Old school historical romance writers were fond of morning ablution scenes and you can use your imagination as to why. My husband had a more colorful term for doing morning ablutions. He called the process “taking a whore’s bath.” Google doesn't seem to know the etymology of that term but---again---put your imagination to work and it's not hard to believe that it's a term as old as the oldest profession itself. Boy, have I digressed!

If you’re a long time reader of this blog you may remember me lamenting the fact that I had great skin when I was younger but old age brought me teenage acne. Not a bad case but this time of the year I’ll look in the mirror and scream, “Holy cow, those blemishes are bigger than my nipples!” And I’ll make The Promise right there and then: “Cross my heart and hope to die, I’ll wash my face twice a day until it cries.” This week I made The Promise and also ordered some products. Not the hundreds of dollars an ounce yuppie stuff. Nope. I’ll break the promise before I get to the bottom of the jars and tubes plus I don’t buy the argument that they work any better than the cheap stuff. I’m pretty much an Alveeno Girl---or rather an Alveeno Old Lady---and I like Beauty & Planet products like their sugar and roses scrub. My husband had the biggest crush on Jennifer Aniston that lasted from her days on Friends until he died. Every time he'd see one of her commercials for Alveeno he's sit up straighter and pay closer attention to the TV. I was okay with that because I also had a 'Freebie List.' Did you and your spouse have a ‘Freebie List’ which is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “a list of 5 celebrities who, should the opportunity arise, one is allowed to sleep with without it being considered as cheating by your significant other?” Don’s list had Jennifer at all five bullet points. Mine has Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Gerald Butler, Kevin Costner and Bill Gates. Yes, Bill Gates. Brains are sexy and I know how to close my eyes.

Years ago I used to be a Neutrogena Girl and once I bought their ‘P Cleaner’ that was supposed to deep cleaner your pores. When I put it on that it dried blue and made my husband laugh out loud. He was raised with four brothers and two farm hands and wasn't used to seeing girlie things on faces back in the good old days of learning how to share a bathroom. I threw that stuff out because it reminded me of my college roommate. She modeled clothing for a large, Chicago department store and she spent an obnoxious amount of time on her “morning ablutions.” She’d walk around with skin care masks on every night and literally spend more time on her looks than her homework.

Everything she did was obnoxious, a snob from day one and she ended up getting me kicked out of our room. I was an art major who was taking figure drawing classes which creeped her out. I never tried to draw her or anyone else in the dorm but apparently she thought that anyone who’d sit in a class drawing naked people had to be twisted sick. She went weeks without even acknowledging that another person was in the room. No “good mornings” and “Hi” when coming back from classes. No eye contact. No answers to my pleas, "Why won't you talk to me?" "What did I do wrong?" I had no clue. Turned out good for me, though. I got moved out (at her request) and another student got moved into my old space. The room I was moved to was a tiny room for one on the top floor. It was in a converted 4^th floor attic dormer with crazy, sloped ceilings that the artist in me loved. It also had a window that overlooked the football field while the room we shared overlooked a parking lot. I feel in love with bulletin boards in that room and I've had one ever since.

Right now, my bulletin board looks pitifully under dressed in its downsized mode and it holds: 1) A greeting card with a panda bear, 2) A business card with a cow, 3) A list of people foods dogs can’t eat, 4) A photo of the three untouchable poisonous plants that grow in Michigan and 5) A photo of my two nieces and nephew. Over the years my bulletin board has become a depository for quoted lines I've read or heard and wanted to savor. Today I added, "She's a red string tied to my finger and I can't forget her." Simple but a great metaphor from The Girl in the Painting by Max Monroe. If you don't want to read a risque quote that made me laugh out loud, quit reading here. It was from Charming Co-Worker and the line was, "He's the catnip to my kitty." The book was forgettable but ohmygod how do writers come up with stuff like that? Lest you judge me based on this two quotes don't do it. My saved quotes over the years have run the gamut from Bible quote to---well, to this kitty joke and everything in between.  ©              

Serendipitous Learning Experiences

It’s been a busy week. Wednesday the son-I-wish-I-had spent the morning vacuuming my 1,500 square feet basement and mopping the cement floor and I did some sorting down there, earmarking five boxes for him to take upstairs to the garage. A trip to Goodwill is in my future. I was shocked that Tim only found two spiders as he worked. I hate basements! Even though this one has a daylight window and high ceilings, they are all too dark and claustrophobic for my taste. I would not have made a good cave dweller in a past life…or maybe I was one and that’s why I don’t like basements. Ya, I flirt with believing in reincarnation. It's something interesting to think about and wish for because if we’ve lived in the past then that means we’ll live again in the future, once our current life is over. I hate the thought of dying. I will not go quietly in the night.

The next day I went to a free monthly event put on by a travel club. Usually they’re classic travelogue stuff with a slide show/lecture presented by someone involved in the world-wide travel industry. This time I didn’t read the fine print in the brochure and when I walked in I discovered it wasn’t a presentation about Belgium; it was a beer tasting of Belgian beers. I don’t drink beer! But I was in Rome so I did as the Romans did and I drank six, two ounce samples of Belgian beer. On an empty stomach. Over the hour and a half I learned all about Saison, Golden Ale, Dubbels, Triples, Quadruples and Lambic with lots of wonderful word pictures painted about the quaint places in Belgian where these beers are made and consumed. I couldn’t help laughing at myself for being there in the first place so I was in a good mood right from the get-go and in an even better mood when I left. I found out that the decision I made in my early twenties about not liking the taste of beer still holds true. Except…

Except for the Lambic which was a sweet, fermented beer with raspberries that looked and tasted more like wine. God, I’d walk a mile for a full eight ounce glass of that stuff! Unfortunately, you can’t buy it here in The States. The speaker said the closest to it is a beer named Calabaza Blanca by Jolly Pumpkin and their website says it’s “spiced with orange peel and coriander, refreshingly tart, with a wonderfully dry finish.” Wine and beer aficionado language goes right over my head. All I know is I’d be tempted to suck a Lambic stain out of a table cloth. The internet is a wonderful place when it’s not being a source of disappointment. A Google search pointed out the fact that I’d have to take road trip to another part of the state to buy the American version of Lambic. 

One of the ladies sitting by me at the beer tasting commented on how times have changed. Growing up in our city, it was known as the City of Churches and now we’re known as Beer City USA. The micro brewery’s, the beer tours and the restaurants that offer beer pairing meals has exploded. While I’m not particularly interested in beer or church tours they’re both so popular here it wouldn’t be surprising if the old Polish church in town started pairing home brew tastings with stained glass windows tours. The guy narrating the Belgium beer tasting said over there six beers are made and sold exclusively at monasteries. The Chimay Red Dubbeis we tasted was one of them. 

Sometimes not reading the fine print on a brochure and ending up at an event that initially you have no interest in attending can turn out to be a fun, serendipitous learning experience and I think I’ve figured out why I love it when something like that happens. When I was growing up, every day after school my mom would ask, “What did you learn today?” In my younger years I’d crawl into her lap to answer but the habit of sharing what I learned was a habit that stayed with me until she died. I could never contain my joy of sharing something interesting with her or my husband and now that they're both gone, I do it in my blog. 

As we age I’m guessing most of us spend some time reviewing our lives and trying to figure out how we developed our quirks and personality traits. My mom had to drop out of school at an early age but she was very pro-education, especially for women who she saw as needing to be able to make a living and have her own money so we couldn’t become victimized by hard times or irresponsible spouses. She was proud of me for being the first in the family to go to college and was deeply disappointed when I dropped out after my third year. I felt like a failure for years for not finishing and her death in a large part was instrumental in my decision to go back. Graduation day---twenty-five years after I started college---was one of the happiest days of my life. Isn't it a telling thing how much the absence of someone in your life can still have the power to influence you long after they're gone? For better or worse the imprint of a lost parent, spouse, child or friend stays deep within for our entire lives and maybe beyond. ©

“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” 

Eartha Kitt

I wanted to share some photos of how the nature strip in my back yard looked this morning. The first is a wider view of the other two close ups photos. My nature strip is 185' long by about 20' wide on my side of the lot line, with my neighbor to the back having an additional 10' on his side of his pines. It's well used by critters and birds year-around but especially when a 20' x 20' patch of wild raspberries (to the right of the pink flowers) are ripe.

The Saving Grace of Wishes Not Granted

I live in the middle of a cul-de-sac. The end of the street that opens up to another street is lower than the other end which gives me a good view of six or seven houses downhill. From a distance I can watch kids playing in the snow, parents going off to work and people walking their dogs on the icy sidewalks. It’s like they’re all living in a snow globe, in a world I’m not part of and can never be again. That’s a false declaration but no one said logic was going to be a part of this post. I’m old and I’m allowed to take liberties with the truth. The fact is no one has me chained to my bed. I could go outside in the winter. I could walk my dog. I could even start a snowball fight with kids a fraction of my age. Sure, I’d have to ignore my osteoporosis, chance falling down and breaking a hip. But old doesn’t translate to stupid, so I stay inside in my safe little cocoon, protected from life… or rather protecting me from a life ending up in a nursing home which usually happens after an elderly woman breaks a hip.

It must be nice to have grandchildren you can use as an excuse to go outside and play. I’m quite sure if snow sculpturing had been as popular when I was young as it is now I’d have been building dragons in my front yard. If I had grandkids I could park a lawn chair in the snow and direct them on how to pack the stuff, carve out a mythical figure, dye the scales and fiery tongue and then soak it all with water to freeze the creature hard so it could greet anyone who ventured up my cul-de-sac until springs comes along. Sometimes when I look out the window and the yard is full of snow I have an overwhelming impulse to go outside and at the very least, build a snowman. I used to love winter---building snow forts with my brother, ice fishing with my dad, ice skating at our cottage, sledding with my nieces and nephew and then after I met Don, snowmobiling on the wooded trails that go on for miles here in Michigan. 

And how could I forget those two years when I was in college and I tried to like snow skiing because I had the worst crush on and was dating a guy who had a passion for the sport. Why couldn’t he have liked cross-country skiing instead? I could have stuck with that sport after we broke up. He never got married, by the way. Turns out he was an in-the-closet gay guy who was trying as hard to like girls as I was trying to like downhill skiing, a fact I didn't learn until a decade later. He’s one of the reasons why I’m so happy that gay people are freer, now, to come out of the closet and be accepted. I think about the unhappy life I could have had if I had married him, been his cover for a secret life that didn’t get exposed until half our lives were over and I’m grateful for the saving grace of wishes not granted. How many women did that happen to, Dr. Phil, back when I was young? How much did that kind of marriage destroy a woman’s self-esteem before the truth finally came out? One could view those years we dated as wasted time but in hindsight they gave me more empathy for a segment of society that could use all the empathy it can get. It’s not easy bein’ green, as Kermit the Frog likes to sing. Although the lyrics of Kermit’s song doesn’t make sense in this context but, like I wrote earlier, no one promised logic and this post would marry and live happily ever after.

I got straight A’s in logic and math classes I took in college. Who would have ever guessed that based on my high school grades? Certainly not me, the “stupid one” who couldn’t tie her shoes or tell time until I was well into grammar school. Certainly not me, the dyslexic girl who couldn’t consistently tell her right hand from left until she was old enough to get hot flashes. Certainly not me, the girl who couldn’t sound out words or spell until---well, I still can’t do those things and I’m on the dawn side of my seventies. If it wasn’t for my thirty year old Franklin Language Master 3000 I couldn’t write unless I got one of those voice recognition programs. I’d come to a word I can’t spell and it would be two days before I could figure it out without good old Franklin. He outshines Spell-Check ten times over. 

Jeez, I’ve got to end this ode to Franklin before I start plastering his plastic casing with kisses. I’ve been known to do that and he doesn’t like it. He’s a serious dude who doesn’t believe in inter-materials dating. I’m flesh and blood, he’s plastic and precision electronics and I have no logical way to end this weird (?) post, so I’ll just quit typing here.... I take that back. I could end it by promising never to take Franklin for a winter walk around my cul-de-sac, wrapping this ending back to the beginning. That’s how I was taught to write essays back in the same time frame that I learned about the saving grace of wishes not granted. And that reminds me I still have to give closure to my post's hook so here's that literary nugget: It's not always what we do in life that gives us our defining moments, sometimes it's what we don't do---the roads not traveled. ©