Conversation with the Dr.

The other day I went with my son to his dr. appointment. My son has an aortic aneurism (a complication of a bicuspid aortic valve) which forced him to quit all competitive collision / contact sports. Normally people have a three flap valve. My son has a two flap valve hence the bicuspid term. Sometimes this will lead to complications similar to what my son developed.

He played hockey, football and soccer; pretty much all his favorite activities, but no question, hockey was his favorite. The disease was diagnosed a couple of years ago. It was both very sad to discover, and difficult to transition our high energy athletic son to a different lifestyle with new interests. No matter, we consider ourselves fortunate to have stumbled onto it. Complications from this condition are the fifth most frequent cause of sudden death in young athletes on the field during sporting events. Most individuals are unaware that they have the condition as there are no symptoms. John Ritter, the actor, died when his aortic aneurysm burst, at least this is what I read at one time, I cannot say for sure that it is true. And, at the time I don’t believe he or anyone knew that he had this health risk.

We were always aware that my son had a heart murmur, and the doctors all said he would grow out of it, except that he never did. The heart murmur, long arms (possible marfans – President Abraham Lincoln was though to have Marfans), and a breathing episode during hockey, resulted in a recommendation to get an echocardiogram from our local doctor. My son had nothing wrong with his heart, but they discovered this out lying condition that they would only let our family doctor discuss with us. Now, my son has annual medical visits to check his cardiovascular system, along with regularly scheduled CT scans, and I am joking about starting a “heart” fund for future complications (valve replacement, periodic scans etc. at one grand a pop) at a time when my son is no longer covered under my insurance. Well, I guess I am sort of joking.


My son’s doctor (also my husband’s doctor) is a stereotypical small town doctor you see in movies or on TV. He gives discounted sports medical exams for the kids over the summer. He can do anything and knows everything as far as I am concerned. One time I stopped in his office for some reason, and the nurse went to get him and he comes out holding the snow shovel, saying “what, what? Does the sidewalk need clearing again?” They’ve since hired another male staff member, but at the time he was the only man in an office full of women and the sidewalk was his responsibility. On the occasions when he had to discuss our son’s condition with me or my son, there were tears in his eyes. He really cares a lot. And Harry and I have always joked about doctor visits in general, because he’ll take the time to tell you all the technical ins and outs of whatever condition you have, what he checks, why he checks, and so on. While it was great for this particular situation with his heart, for things like tetanus and other infectious diseases we would usually leave feeling far worse than we came in given all the gory details he provided.

So on this most recent visit we were talking about Harry’s senior year and I was complaining about all the solicitations by every branch of the armed forces, and how they were un-phased by Harry’s medical condition, and went even so far as to schedule visits to our home after Harry mentioned his condition to them.

The doctor began to explain that teenagers were vulnerable and made easy prey because of their ignorance and lack of experience. Teenagers do not realize that when they signed up for service, the government owned them and their bodies. He said that these young men could be court marshaled simply for getting hurt or sick to a point that they are not able to serve. Then he talked about WWI and foxholes.

There were high incidents of infection during WWI because there was a prevalence of uncircumcised men and the difficulties of keeping clean under conditions that existed in foxholes. For the next war, per the doctor, men were given shots, hair cuts and circumcised on the spot, and that this led to an increase in babies being circumcised, so that the next generations son’s would be able to avoid this if they were called into service. (I currently know at least one man who served in the Vietnam War and was not circumcised going in. It is an interesting story anyway. As a side note, there is a rise in un-circumcised boys again because insurance companies are defining it as a religious preference rather than a preventative health measure. )

The doctor talked about being a medical doctor in the armed forces, and some of the “tricks” the government played to encourage one to re-enlist. It was clear that he did not care for the armed forces and he was none too happy with how he or his patients during this period were treated while serving their country. That brought us to the current government. The good doctor did not disagree with my opinion on the war, nor the state of our government, though he did not add to it. And then I was on a roll against our current government policies. I feel we’ve lost twenty years on the fight for a cleaner environment, and with the changes in laws regarding terrorist activity; we are taking away the hard won rights of individuals. This country was settled by slaves, bonded servants and criminals (unfairly prosecuted no doubt) who had no rights in the countries they left. It is no wonder our constitution is based on the necessity of presumed innocence and certain inalienable rights, and this was all part of the declaration of independence. I also got a call from the State Troopers auxiliary or association or whatever it was last night. I told them I wouldn’t give them any more of my money because I’ve given them plenty (inference meaning traffic stops on state highways)! I’ll get off my soap box now.

Inspiration

I just finished reading a great book: “We Are All Welcome Here” by Elizabeth Berg. It is the story of a girl who is being raised by her mother Paige, a victim of polio, paralyzed from the neck down. It is a wonderful story that addresses many issues regarding human nature, growing up with a disabled parent (like my child and stepchildren), and how normal changes. I found it inspiring, and given my current situation I need inspiration.
There is a moment, toward the end of the book where the disabled mom, Paige, lectures the social worker for accusing her of taking advantage of her daughter to help with her daily care.


“Was it fair what happened to me? Of course not, but here I am. And let me put this the simplest way I can: if being paralyzed is my fate, helping to take care of me is my daughter’s.”

My son is obligated (as were John’s two stepchildren) to do more in our family than I suspect is required in most families. The difference now for my son is that John was much more able when he was younger, and provided more guidance to his older son and daughter and better emotional support. John has always done a lot of remodeling in basements, garages, you name it. Johnny used to help John wire electrical fans, do plumbing, carpentry and electrical work. Later, Harry helped John put up drywall, insulation and fertilize trees and they all did things like walk John places or do chores with him around the house and yard. Harry takes care of John’s meals and medicines when I am traveling on business trips or visiting family on over nights. There is very little that John can do independently, and with his strokes, that ability has been reduced further. The key, to our survival and his, is acceptance, on many levels.

And that reminds me of two movies that are absolutely my favorite in this regard. One is “My Left Foot” starring Daniel Day, and the other is “Regarding Henry” starring Harrison Ford and Annette Benning. What I loved about My Left Foot was again the family, and the way they accepted their son’s, brother’s disability. My favorite scene though, was where it showed the four boys sleeping in one bed, two up and two down. I just loved that.


What struck me most about Regarding Henry is how much Henry’s life changed, and what he lost. Regardless of how they portrayed it, he did lose a lot. The scene that stands out most in my mind in this movie was a cocktail party that Henry and his wife attended after he was back at home(long recuperation from brain damage after being shot in the head). The Hostess was making some comment about Henry and his disability to a group of her guests that was negative and condescending, and she was making a cruel joke at his expense. The wife overheard, and she let the hostess know she overheard, and then she and her husband left and that was it for the wife’s friendship to that woman I would guess.

When John was younger he talked to me more about what it was like to lose his sight (he lost his sight when he was thirty) and how his life changed. Before he lost his sight he was very active. He lifted weights, played pickup football on the weekends, golfed, tennis, repaired his cars, he loved to drive, painted his house, remodeling, gardened, you name it he did it all. He had lots of friends and was very social. When he lost his site he kept fairly active, and that was the only comment that he made to me that I remember regarding what life was like after he lost his sight. He said he lost a lot of friends. Having a disability can be very lonely and isolating, no matter what anybody says. He does not talk about it and he does not complain.


John retired from the phone company in 1998, after having had a mild stroke. He worked for at least 20 years with his disability, in Chicago, Maryland and Minnesota as an Account Executive. I think he did a pretty good job of accepting the change. He moved on. He made new friends and he has had a pretty good life so far considering.

Mud Flap

When Harry was young, every dog we had was bigger than he was. I realize now, this must have presented an impossible situation for him. In the country our dogs live chain free and loose out of doors. Harry was “hounded” the minute he walked out of the house, and as his mother, yours truly, I never quite understood that this could be a problem for him.


Mud Flap was our first dog. We’d just moved to Minnesota from Chicago. She was a four month old blue heeler; a very popular breed in these here parts, what with all the cows and cold weather. Blue heelers are skilled herders by nature. I watched her once move a group of Herefords into a tight knot and away from us when we were trying to feed them carrots over the fence. All most dogs would manage to do is upset and disarray and I’ve seen that happen with dogs too, but not with Mud Flap. She was short legged and compact, not weighing more than 50 pounds as an adult. At the time Harry was about three years old and maybe weighed more or less, nearly the same, but with less strength and less mass. Mud Flap would stand on two legs, press Harry up against the garage wall, give him a smooch and take whatever toy he had, which she did regularly. I remember dressing Harry to go outside. I would bundle him in his sweatshirt and windbreaker with a hood, and then on his signal, like a nurse handing the doctor scalpels on TV shows, I gave him his toys. He would have a toy under each arm and one or two in his hand. I’d open the door and out he went. Sometimes, the minute he was out the door I would hear milk curdling screams, and there would be the dog and Harry locked in a death grip on a toy. Harry was a screamer so I tended to ignore it, or ask him to lower his voice. Like talk about under reacting to something. The dog had a major chew fetish which he applied to all of Harry’s toys and some of our other things as well. So I discovered all the attributes and qualities of various types of tape from electrical, to hockey tape, to duct tape, in order to resuscitate Harry’s favorite play things, being that they were mostly plastic. Other stuff, like my leather gloves never survived. Ufdah, as they say in these here parts, the things we tolerate for a “family member”.

Mud Flap came to a very unfortunate end, but it wasn’t until a few days after the dog was gone, and I was preparing Harry for play outside, that I realized the true nature of their relationship. I had Harry bundled in his sweatshirt and windbreaker with a hood per usual, and on his signal, I began handing him his toys to tuck under each arm. I gave him the dog phone pull toy gift from my dad, (red electrical tape very cleverly wrapped around chewed sections of the phone handset), the dump truck under the next arm (duck tape around the joystick lever for operating the shovel), and then his shovel (black electrical tape all over). I could feel him stiffen with resolve as he faced the door and solemnly nod to me to let him outside. He was ready. And then I realized why the posture. “Harry, Mud Flap is dead.” Harry’s shoulders relaxed. His face visibly lightened. He loosened his hold on his toys. “Oh!” He had this sweetly pitched little three year old voice and a sing song inflection. “Mud Flap’s dead.” And that was it. He went outside. We had been going through this ritual for an entire season and it never dawned on me, till that moment, that I had been sending Harry out to battle everyday. I wonder if he’ll need therapy when he gets older. (The reason I say this is because I am afraid this isn’t the only thing I need to confess.)

Rude Power

This is LeRoy and his truck (the dog in the back is ours).

Although LeRoy lives and works in San Diego, he spends certain times of the year in this area to maintain his family’s home place and do farming. He actually kept a trailer on our property which he lived in part time for many years. It was rustic, but as we improved our property, added a well and electricity, and eventually built a house, we hooked him up to all our services, and charged a one dollar rent (for legal purposes). LeRoy is now retired, and built his own house in the area, which continues to be part time.

I talked LeRoy into letting me paint his truck, being that it was old and rusty, and this was the end result. I bought a bunch of Rustoleum paint in various bright colors, to blend with the original orange color of the truck. I sanded the rust with an electric sander and then I put a crew of neighborhood kids together to do the painting. We had a boy from Northern Ireland staying with us that summer, the same age as my son, so this was the perfect way for him to get to know us.

I am sure you are curious about the mix of symbols and graphics, and how we came up with the theme. Well, there were a couple of middle school girls who participated, hence the flower power kind of seventies overall graphics style. It was popular that summer and I used to love the stuff myself when I was their age. And you know how teenage girls are, they have tremendous power to influence, love decorating, and give major attention to small details. Some younger siblings, preschoolers actually, did the hand prints. Their moms were a bit stressed out by all the oil based paint. One of the boys is a farmer’s son and all the branding commonly associated with a certain green tractor is his contribution. Not sure if you can tell, but there is a map of Ireland on one side, green of course, and LeRoy’s phone number is on the back of the truck. Le Roi is single and the kids were trying to help. They were pretty sure this truck would be a chick magnet. Think so?

The next summer LeRoy registered the truck as an entry in the Covered Bridge Festival Parade and the kids and I put on roller blades and skated around the truck and threw candy to the crowd as we went by. I don’t think anybody called him. They probably couldn’t read the phone number.

Welcome to the 80's

When I was visiting Chicago a couple of weekends ago my mother gave me this picture. It was taken sometime between '82 and '83 I think. The car’s name is Bill in honor of a guy I was dating momentarily. I was living in Lakewood, Ohio and this was my first car. It was an upgrade from my mother’s old schwin ten speed. The bike had baskets on the sides which were useful for carrying groceries. I used the bike for shopping and running errands around town. Now, with this car, I was no longer tethered to public transportation, and was able to get yet a third job, working as a waitress at the Colony Restaurant on Wednesday nights after work at my first job as a receptionist at the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, all in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. I needed the money. Weekends I worked my second job usually on Saturday, cataloguing the insect collection at the Natural History Museum at University Circle, free of charge and for the love of biology. My younger sister was living with me at the time. She worked part-time for a temporary agency. We bought a six pack every night for a week one summer and I couldn’t pay the rent that month. I think a six pack was $ 2.50? It was bad. Then she got a real job that paid decent and she split. She upgraded to a flashy condo on the east side. It happens.

As you can see from the picture, my sisters are piled on top of the car, plus my brother in law, with me on the door. Standing next to me is my brother, and then my future brother in law. I left Bill with my mom and moved to Chicago, which happened rather impulsively the following spring. I had a friend at the theatre that was moving to California so he gave me a lift. I took two trash bags of dirty clothes and was dropped off at my older sister’s house. She was already living with her husband in Chicago beginning a few years earlier. It seems like my older sister, whose only three years older than me, has been married forever. And we, my younger sister and I, were forever either drinking her beer (me) or using her washing machine (Laura), so it was no surprise to my older sister that I showed up in Chicago with dirty laundry. Anyway, I gave my jobs in Cleveland four days notice (they were thrilled for me) and my roommate a months rent (she was not, quite angry infact). Oh well. It happens.

Eventually, I sold the car in Chicago to four young Guatemalans. They dressed like Sandinistas and reminded me of the Clash album cover of I think the same name. Only one of them spoke English and they offered me $750.00 for the car. My ad had said $ 700.00. There was a rough moment as I deliberated this but then I only took $ 700.00. Oh well.

My Rose Garden

End of Summer (Vegetable Garden)

The crickets are having a god-damn field day.

There is no utopia

I interrupt the regularily scheduled program to complain about one aspect of country living: the pests!

Yesterday I found a wee mouse alive in an empty jar that had been sitting on the floor in the basement. I threw the mouse in the front bushes, still alive. Its my policy. The jars are in the same room as our cats' litter boxes. Last week I found a not so wee mouse floating face down in the water I left in the kitchen sink overnite. This mouse was not so lucky. It had drowned. I expect to not find any mice in our house at all. With four cats, professional assasins, I might add, you would think this would be a non issue.

I knew the mouse in the kitchen had been living under the stove for sometime. In fact, one day i found it on the top of a window blind just out of reach of one of our "professionals". From there it did a somersault leap to the kitchen floor and scurried under the stove and thats where it stayed I guess till it got thirsty and I made the horrible discovery in the sink . I was totally surprised that we would have a mouse in our furnace room; the same room the cats regularily visit to relieve themselves if they aren't outside. Apparently I am feeding them too much, or they are spending far too much time on the couch. And this leads me to another subject (i showed this to my sister as a periodic "Make Art Every Day" email series and all she replied was "your weird", so again, i just do it for fun and i think i should keep my day job...)


THERE IS NO UTOPIA

The ants in my kitchen
herald the coming of spring.
The ants with their anthills
in the rose garden, they won’t come in
the house again this season.

Small like flax seed, big as a house
Ticks drop from the trees, or the rafters,
or the porch. The cats bring them in on their fur
and they crawl up my toes from the rug

June bugs barrel into the screen door,
nightly, like bombardiers
They litter the porch come morning.
Their large bronze bodies stiff and crunchy
Summer has arrived

The cicadas buzz and sing
Crickets and grasshoppers and slugs
Lay waste to my hostas
Or slip through the cracks
in the screen door and I have to catch them
to throw them back outside.

Autumn marks the soybean harvest
and a plague of ladybugs all red and black.
Like the children’s poem,
I wish they would fly away.
Instead of hovering around my house
on warm days.
They are everywhere and they smell
Like the earth in my vacuum, and they bite.

Elder bugs the color of leaf litter
In great hoards, same as lady bugs but
They look like cockroaches
And they are everywhere, in my kitchen
And I hate them.
I have reached my limit of tolerance.
This year I will kill them.

Superstition

The other afternoon Harry said this to me: “Mom, since you wrote that note on the envelope I have started getting skin problems. I have a patch of dry skin right here (he points to his elbow) and this morning I got one on my shoulder, and I have one on my side(in general Harry does have great skin - except dry, like his sister). Will you please take it back? And, you need to be careful about your curses.”

Harry is referring to a note I had scribbled on the envelope of Aunt Mary’s letter: Harry if you do not read Aunt Mary’s letter today you will have a pox of skin problems.

My Aunt sent him a letter along with a book to help him prepare for ACT’s in October. It has been sitting by the computer for awhile untouched. I was tired of him telling me that he would read it. The kid is well meaning but, you know how teenagers are. All adolescents have skin problems so it was an easy association. I figured as poxes go this was a win – win situation because whose ever seen a teen that didn’t have skin problems. It was more or less supposed to be a joke.

What he meant by “needs to be careful” is this:

When he was about eleven, we were in Chicago at the pool at my mom’s condo. Harry had gone to the Seven Eleven across the street. I told him to take money out of my purse. Well what he did, without realizing it, was grab a big wad of cash that amounted to $60.00. Harry didn’t realize he had that much till he was in the store, but even still, he left the money on the counter, while he went to select an ice cream treat from the store’s freezer. He came back to the counter and his money was gone. He was the only one in the store besides the man behind the counter. He asked the clerk if the clerk saw anyone take his money and the clerk said no. My son felt he was lying. I found my son at my car where my purse was, crying his eyes out. He told me the story. He was very upset because it was a lot of money.

“Listen Harry, I’ll fix this. Let’s go back to the store.”

So we drove over there. The store was empty except for the clerk.
“My son says that he came in here and put money on the counter and turned his back for five minutes, and the money was gone. Did you see what happened to it?”

The man was clearly a non native and by the thickness of his mid-eastern somewhere near India accent probably not very good with English either, but he understood what I was asking. He shook his head, no.
“ Are you sure? Because my son said that only you and he were in the store and that you were standing right here and watched him put the money down.”
Again he shook his head. No, no.
“Are you saying my son is lying? Because I know my son and he is not perfect, but he is not lying about this.”

No, again no.
Well, I had to do something to save face in front of my son. I must somehow win. I had told Harry I would fix this. I stood up straight, looked squarely at the man, and shook my finger in his direction. “Look, you better not be lying to me, because I will put a curse on you. If you are lying to me, when you die, you will go to hell. So, you better not be lying about this because I would not want you to go to hell, but you will if you are lying.” He went bug-eyed. Wow, I think I made an impression. I also think he was lying.

Well I heard from my family and they told me that six months later the 7-11 went belly up. Eventually the building was raised and they put a bank in its place.

So then about 3 months after that, my brother in law was supposed to get tires for me at a discount. He was busy and did not get back to me. He might have been out of town. I needed them right now, and realizing I had waited to the last minute to ask my brother in law, I just went and got them at a retail outlet, for retail prices. I was a little miffed, but I did understand he was busy and probably overextended. About a week after that he was over at my mother’s investigating a clog in her toilet. It turned into a horrible nightmare. He had to completely dismantle the toilet, he flooded the bathroom, and after removing the toilet, where the pipe meets the floor he found a bar of my hand made soap. I make soap in the off season (aka winter) and it is hard as a rock and it lasts forever. My brother in law was convinced this was a sign (he’s Scottish and they are superstitious). So now I had a reputation. (And I have prayed specifically to God for money and gotten that too, so I believe in myself!)

Well just recently I had a conversation with someone at work about the war in Iraq. I made the comment that I hope Bush gets kidney stones because they are a major nuisance. My friend looked at me funny and I said, well I just want him feel some of the pain these families of solders are feeling (not even close but still), and I don’t want his problem to be traced back to me. Well y’know what? Within several weeks I read in the papers that he got polyps. That must have involved some kind of pain, because a doctor had to remove them. Hmmm.

Learning a new culture

For those of us who have children, August is when sports programs and various school related activities begin. I am never ready for all this and I have mixed feelings about the transition from unstructured summer activity to busy school and sports schedules

I wanted Harry to be a figure skater. When he was three and four I would take him to the community rink, and taught him the rudiments of skating. He loved it. In Maryland, when I signed him up for skating lessons at five years of age, he was always trying to race the instructor to the end of the line. When no one was looking, Harry would skate and slide, slamming into the boards. The progress reports from skating instructors always ended with “he needs to be in Hockey!”, so I signed Harry up for Hockey clinic. It was a perfect fit.

Then we moved to rural Minnesota. After a couple of years, pond hockey just wasn’t enough, and Harry was asking to play in a league. Living in rural America as it were, it took me some time to acclimate to available resources, which were neither convenient nor in large supply.

On top of that, hockey is a rough sport and this rink was a cold, unattractive place that smelled faintly of rotting rubber and gym sweat. The practice schedule and number of games was crazy impossible. I felt I was consigning a good portion of the rest of my life here, like being in purgatory, because watching his practices and driving all over the state in horrific winter weather for games was depressing. I guess I wasn’t ready for it.

So at signup, I handed the lady the ten sheets of paper containing Harry’s information written four different ways at least seven times, with the check for an unholy large sum of money. Hockey is a very expensive sport, what with the ice time and the 15 1bs of padding and plastic the kids have to wear. It had taken me three weeks to find the website where the forms were, and three days to understand what I was supposed to do with it.

“This is the old form. You want the new form, 6048b and revision date August 8.” She handed me ten sheets of a form that looked disgustingly similar to the one I had just handed to her

“You want me to do this again?” I had developed a serious case of bursitis in the knuckles of my writing hand from pulling weeds over the summer. I was feeling old and in denial about it, plus I was frustrated at not understanding the youth hockey system. It was for me, like trying to figure out how a car engine worked. And that is when I completely blind-sided the poor woman. She did not know what hit her. I began to protest, and worse, as the volume picked up, the speed of my diatribe increased. I was saying things like: “These forms are EXACTLY alike! What a waste of time! I refuse. I won’t do it. Why was this form posted? What’s wrong with you people?” Here I was crazy. I was waving the papers in the air and shaking my head and rocking on my heels till I finished. Her worried expression turned to fear. How could the most mundane comment produce this volcanic eruption? What was my problem? My son was embarrassed. I could see him visibly shrinking, turning away, and probably looking for an escape route.

The woman looked at me incredulously. The people around us stopped and stared. “We posted this new form yesterday; see it’s got a dash b. We only found out about it this week.” Like, geesus woman, I am a volunteer. I have a life believe it or not, just like you, so suck up.

As I learned with Hockey, you do just suck up. It’s got to be one of the most painful, time sucking sports a parent can endure on behalf of their child. Every hockey mom or dad should get a medal for suffering. Hockey parents are just about the toughest group I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. You have no idea what it is like to go on overnights for tournaments in cold dumpy hotels or motels, which are the only kind that will suffer the presence of a youth hockey team (youth hockey teams are notorious!). All this in January or February or March! Blech!

As for me, I spent the rest of Harry’s hockey career trying to impress on that woman that I really was a normal, decent, human being.

The meanest man alive

John Pike helps us with the mowing and maintenance of our equipment and property. He’s lived most of his life in this area, except for some time in prison, and some time out west working in coal mines with his brothers. He’s one of nine children of a hardworking and respectable local family. John quit school at thirteen to help his dad, who was the city’s maintenance crew, back in the ‘50’s, when his dad was injured working on the job. His mother just died a year ago at the age of 96. We were the first person he called (although he doesn’t have a phone). John has survived throat cancer, two heart attacks, and most recently, removal of his bladder, but it hasn’t slowed him down much. When he had his last heart attack, which put him flat on his face in the bowling alley, they used a defibrillator to revive him. When he came to, he punched the police officer who was assisting, and pulled out the IV’s. I tease him about getting a tattoo on his chest for the next time; the universal symbol for NO (a red circle with a cross through it) using the medical acronym for the defibrillator. He swears he’ll never let anybody put one of those things on him again.

With any journey, and this time for us in Minnesota has been a journey, it always helps to have a guide. Our guide has changed a few times; first it was the realtor who introduced us to the rural community and being Minnesotan. (I kept calling him to get directions out to our property. I swear every corn field looked the same.) Then it was Joe Rude, who we bought our land from, and the man who among other things, got Cooder of the wild ride in a bulldozer, to knock trees down for trails in our woods. For about the last eight years we’ve had John Pike. John Pike is fond of telling us that he’s the meanest man alive, or so bad that when he dies, the devil doesn’t want him in hell, and I believe it. My son and all my son’s friends hate him. They describe him as scary. Or maybe it is because we made John Pike the straw boss for Harry and his friends on whatever project we had going, (and to describe us as opportunistic about child labor would be fairly accurate). John does take some getting used to, but any more I consider him one of our best friends and, unfortunately for my son, part of the family.

My favorite John Pike story is the time John was moving an old Chalmers plow for me, and a piece of the plow hit John in the face, splitting his lip and busting his dentures. A day after the incident, John’s girlfriend (who is eighty), called me to say that John did not have insurance and would need new teeth. I was all for it. John had the worst teeth of just about anybody I’d ever met, so I told his girlfriend I would notify our insurance and have the adjuster call him. That night John Pike called to speak to my husband. “I tain’t talkin’ to no insuree agents and I tain’t fillin’ out no forms. I fixed my teeth myself and they are fine.” Well, he soldered them with one of those soldering torches. And I have to admit they do look fine. And that’s pretty much the way he his with just about everything which includes everything he owns. There is nobody who can breathe life into old, worn out, or broken better than he can. He is living proof.

Lollapalooza (more)

It rocked. We saw so many great bands, and now I regret we didn’t get up earlier to see others. I am still going through withdrawal. Patti Smith was so ama-azing. She seemed overwhelmed by the crowd. At one point it looked as if she would cry. Age does a lot for her. She was magic. Iggy Pop hasn’t lost his charm or his stage presence either; during Its No Fun To Be Alone he invited the whole crowd on stage and anyone who could fit was up there. The news reported about 250 people. At the end of the song he introduced the crowd on stage as “the Lollapalooza dancers” and thanked them. Then he said “I would thank God, but he’s not up here”. He’s so cool.

Oh, and I body surfed to Daft Punk the first night. I didn’t want to press my luck any further so I only did it once. It was a riot. The guys around me were so polite because they mustered a group to send me off (at my request natch). Oh yeah! My sister and I decided that the young people today are a whole lot nicer than the young people were when we were young.

And the place was full of technology. There were ATM’s aplenty and other things. Part of any basic survival kit, along with a cash card, water, and a beer, was a cell phone. We made sure each of the kids had one. I love technology. It makes teen sitting so much easier.

The first night my sister, her husband, and I went down. We met the three boys plus my niece at the event. Since my sister’s blackberry is broke and she couldn’t text, I was doing the texting. I stumbled at first with texts like “Wgerf r t” or “We r bw thf snumd stahe” to my son and my niece. They were confused. My son responded with a “What the hell are you trying to say? Are you drunk? I’ll show you how to text later” tirade two seconds after I text him. Hating to be lectured, I text back “I luv u”, which is like “F** you” in my personal mommy language. I finally figured out what was upsetting him so much when my brother in law showed me a message I sent to him. It was basically nonsense. (I didn’t believe either of them when they said I was such a shitty texter till I checked my call log of sent messages and it was true.) I got better as the weekend progressed.

The second day my sister and I went down with the three boys. The boys lost us the minute we were inside the gate. No texts either. I thought my son was not communicating to me because of the texting fiasco of the day before, but I realized that it was because I gave him forty dollars to get something at Portillos yesterday, the restaurant was closed, and he kept the change. Mommy who?

On Sunday we took advantage of cheap parking around State Street. We were a little worried that we were too far away from the park, and in an area that wouldn’t be safe. My sister is talking on the cell phone with her husband, who is telling her that as long as she is walking with a crowd she’ll be fine. She says, “What if we aren’t in a crowd?” "You are the crowd, add the boys", he says. This time we did run into the boys at Iggy Pop and it was like three baby birds all at once, and I’m slapping twenty in my son’s hand and I see my sister give her son money and after they leave my sister mutters “well that hello was expensive”.

And finally, I love Chicago. It is such a great city. The park service and city workers did a phenomenal job of keeping up with services and cleaning up after the crowds; makes me proud to live in the Midwest.

Lollapalooza

Garden

MizMell , i found this picture. (Thanks for your interest!) Its just alot of green right now. I tend to overplant to discourage weeds, but this year I think I am crowding out the zuccini and the gladiolas. Everything is late. Marigolds are planted along the edge, mixed with cilantro and brussel sprouts. There is dill everywhere. I like to pick it and put it in vases in the house. I just let that and cilantro reseed themselves every year. On the either end I plant pumpkins and sunflowers. The pumpkin vines grow over the edge of the garden on the high side and into the grass on both sides. This give them more room to grow. I have cana planted around the center edge which keeps the blackberry bushes under control and stops them from bothering everything else. The other side of the garden has pole beans and is edged with calendula (i use that in soap - the petals retain their yellow orange color in spite of the lye). I have tomatoes and green peppers on the end by the woods. There is also corn (i planted lettuce, spinach underneat, and radishes under the pumpkins, because that stuff all is gone by the time the corn or pumpkins mature). The potatoes are on this side of the picture in mounded rows,with onions, parsley and basil. They are just starting to die back (gold and white potatoes - mid season.... red potatoes don't do well here). Pretty crowded place eh? More diversity than a New York City block.

OOO

Out of Orbit for a few days....

I am getting ready to go to LOLLAPALOOZA in CHICAGO, where my family lives. I am leaving tomorrow with my son and his friend. I'll be meeting my younger sister. Her whole family will be going, her husband, their three kids plus friends. Par-tey! Y'know ... i spent at least two decades (the 70's and the 80's) going to stadium concerts, concerts at the Allen Theatre, concerts in the park, in the quarry, in bars, you name it. I saw every Jackson Brown tour up through the early 80's. I used to be like that, and my tastes are very eclectic. I've slowed down alot, but I still like to kick it up every so often. I went to Red Hot Chili Peppers with my son and his friend last year. It was great. The headliner at Lollapalooza is Pearl Jam. That was the first CD I gave Harry, when he was EIGHT! Oh, and I would be such a groupie if I wasn't so shy. I always find ways to meet the musicians, y'know run into them casually or something. I worked in a record store in the 70's and use to go to promo parties. I still do it at these little folk venues I go to for musicians who you've never heard of. Its probably embarassing for my friends. I can't help it. Anyway, Lollapalooza, I am so excited. I recognize at least half the bands that will be playing. No posts for a few days. (I am sure my large readership will be sooo disappointed!)

Why oh why did we swallow the fly

I wanted to put a garden in the back of our house where the trailer used to sit. Just a big square garden like we had in Maryland. My husband disagreed. He wanted a raised bed. In Massachusetts, where he was from, they used raised beds for gardening. His brother in Massachusetts gardened with raised beds. Raised bed gardens were superior, end of discussion. He also thought a raised bed would be more accessible, which I went along with. How it ended up being in the front yard near our first tree field (constant reminder to weed from my kitchen window) is a complete mystery.

John built the garden with help from Harry and others. He used 12 foot long, 6 by 6 timbers, tons of them. It was a strip of sorts, maybe 30 feet long by 10 feet wide. It didn’t take long to figure out that the location was not ideal. The bed was built on an incline and so one end had a three feet high wall of timbers, and the other side was the same level as the low part of the yard. John had to buy a truck load of dirt to fill it out.

Oh, and we have this John Deere garden tractor with a tiller attachment. The one thing about John Deere garden tractors; any woman can use them. Install the attachments for the tractor? Easy, just look at the brochure, especially their sales brochures and technical data sheets. Each page has a cheerful, average sized woman riding or working on the tractor installed with one or more attachments, like the tiller or the snow blower. We have one of those too. Honestly, the woman who could install these attachments would have to be able to press at least 200 pounds and have strength in her hands like Lou Ferrigno. I’ve tried and I cannot, and I am only slightly smaller than the woman in the picture, but I digress.

John quickly discovered that the design of the garden was not optimal; another problem being I cannot back up the tractor with this big ass tiller attachment on the back of it, in the narrow strip of garden which is the raised bed. So then he added the West wing. The garden is now a U shape, so I could till riding forward at all times, no backing up required. The whole back side of the U is made up of a 3 foot wall, more bucks for timbers, and he had to order two more truckloads of dirt to fill it. In the process we discovered that it was much cheaper to buy dirt than six by sixes, and I got a center island, which was a closed rectangle that wouldn’t be tilled ever. Here I planted blackberry bushes and asparagus and gladiolas, which I dig up every fall. Of course, after a year of having to mow the grass in the center between the island and the bed I had had enough. So I told John we needed to get rid of the grass. And he did with more dirt. This last year I went out and bought an electric tiller, that I absolutely love. There was no woman pictured on the front of the product brochure, but there should have been.

Last year I got a plaque that I attached to the “wall” of the garden. It says “John’s Folly”.

Side note: Negatives aside, it is a really nice garden and with my new tiller I am starting to enjoy it more.

Awake at Night

Awake at night,
unable to sleep
Water drips, the furnace growls
refrigerator purrs and shudders
a dog barking in the distance outside,
a garbage can bangs
trees rustle in heavy breezes
I know there is a monster
in the woods
beyond my window
slide stepping slowly towards the house.
while a green warty troll
sits, on the floor,
in the kitchen pantry among
the recycled paper and plastic bags.
A silver alien with yellow cat eyes
is hovering above the herb garden
in the back yard, taking survey
of the house from a distance
And if I get up for a glass of water
everything will stop
except the water will drip
the furnace will growl and
the refrigerator will continue to buzz
i get back into bed
and pull the covers up
with my pillows over my head
for emphasis
and they will resume their postures
The monster will begin stepping slowly,
arms extended.
The troll leans forward attentively
jostling the paper bags as he moves,
and the almond eyed alien
will move and sway
effortlessly above the garden.

I used to do this thing "Make Art Every Day" and then I would make up a "poem" and send it to my sisters with a fake link that they could hit to unsubscribe. I do this sort of thing to my sisters or my family all the time. They have suffered my goofiness for quite awhile very good naturedly. I also do some crafty things and then give them handmade gifts ..they are pretty good natured about that too. Anyway the above entry seemed appropriate with the recent story. Truly I am afraid of the dark around here and what goes on at night at the edge of our "yard"...but at any rate..as far as my talent goes...I guess i shouldn't give up my day job eh?

Where it started

We moved to Minnesota twice. I’ve talked about our moves some here. The first time we moved from Chicago. It was early 90’s and Harry was two. It was a company move and we looked at houses in a couple of really small towns on the north side of Rochester, and then for some reason ended up looking out in the rural areas.

Some observations about these small towns (in Minnesota): Every restaurant we walked into looked like a convention of the Klu Klux Klan; very white and wrinkled men in overalls and a sea of john deer baseball caps, and of course the room would go silent for a full minute with all heads turned our direction when we walked in. It was creepy. Our middle aged realtor wore a jacket, one of those flannel lined nylon windbreakers like I wore back in high school, and a floppy wool rain hat. He was over 6 feet tall, so who was I to criticize his fashion sense. He had no clue what might appeal to us. If I commented on a painted door at one place (because it accented something else about the house or yard) he would immediately assume that I would go gaga over a screaming turquoise door with a fake Tudor façade on some other house that was horridly inappropriate with whatever else was going on with the colors and landscape. And there was never any landscaping. They like to mow grass right up to the houses foundation or landscape with gravel all around the house. Bushes cost money. Most of what we were looking at was post WWII ticky tacky anyway. It was a tough choice. We also noticed that inside most homes, floor molding consisted of running the rug up the wall two inches, and every boy bedroom carried a monster assortment of toy tractors and farm toy paraphernalia. Oh and also, every barn had a fabulous old car that hadn’t been run in years under plastic tarp.

My biggest concern, having lived all my life in the city, with city noises, city traffic, and dense populations, was alien sightings and crop dusting. In the city, alien ships don’t land in parking lots, but they do land in cornfields. Every place we looked had a cornfield within the immediate vicinity, so I always asked about the crop dusting because the realtor would think I was crazy if I asked about aliens. The realtor would stare blankly at me for a minute (he probably thought I was insane anyway) and then would just say “NO”. I found out later that they apply most of the chemicals with pull behind sprayers and they sometimes do aerial spraying. We lost a row of trees that way once, and there are a lot of farmers who die of cancer around here, just like in the city. Since I couldn’t ask about the aliens, I researched the topic by watching a lot of movies involving the subject. I also watched anything I could on TV, but for some reason I didn’t watch x-files, too gory. I preferred the TV journalism approach of that show narrated by the guy who used to be second in command on Star Trek, Next Generation. What I learned was that aliens for the most part have only been seen in the Northeast or the Northwest or in the Western desert, and maybe once in Michigan. We were pretty safe. So I am less worried about aliens as I am about zombies (we have about 30 acres of second growth forest), but I haven’t taken the time to do a lot of research on that topic. That’s one I am still working on.

The Piano Lesson

When I gave birth to my son I had great plans for him. He was going to be brilliant and do all sorts of magnificent things. All I needed to do was wait for him to grow up. Well four, I figured four was going to be the age to start.

There is not much you can do with a toddler, but I will say that I read him books from the time he was very small till he was maybe eleven or twelve years old. I enjoyed reading him books, and would give commentary to him on the literary, social, and cultural merit of any book we read (the world according to me of course). I don’t think my son much cared. He wasn’t speaking English yet. He was more interested in the pictures. Some of my personal favorites were, Little Critter’s These are My Pets, by Mercer Mayer. I loved that book. It was geared toward bedtime (yeah) and the mom was always in the background mowing the yard, trimming bushes, or some kind of work, while the little critter boy introduced all his pets. It reminded me of the real moms in the world who worked as part of our job of maintaining the order of the universe. In fact, I don’t remember my mom being around when I was little, probably because she was busy doing things around the house. I also loved the Bugs in Boxes pop up books by David A. Carter. These were counting books and there would be a different number of bugs on each page, like 8 speedy spaceship bugs, or ten bouncing basketball bugs. These books are pretty much a mess because Harry would pick the bugs off the pages, but I still like to bring them out once in awhile to have a look see and count all the cool bugs.

OK, so when Harry was four I determined he was FINALLY ready to start his path to greatness. Music was going to be just one of many critical skills toward that development and I enrolled him in his first serious music class. I found a piano teacher who was good with small children. She was a teacher at the local elementary school. She was very nice. The first two lessons went excellent, just super, but we hit a major snag on the third lesson. In this lesson the teacher introduced black keys. Harry was also required to use his thumbs for one of the little songs he was learning.

When I picked him up from the lesson that day I could tell she was exasperated.
“He won’t do it. He won’t touch the black keys, and he refuses to use his thumbs. There is nothing more I can do. I have tried really. Mrs. Moore, we won’t be able to go any further.” She was genuinely sad about this. Me too!

“Oh Harry!” I looked at my son. He was smiling, happy, and his usual playful self. “Let me see you play your song…” and he played the whole song, but deliberately missed some notes (I could tell!) because it required a black key or his thumb, just like the teacher had said. Harry smiled at me very tight lipped when he finished. I tried to coax and cajole him. We went back over the song. No use. Resigned to the fact, I gathered up his book and his toys and I promised the woman I would call her. This was a major blow. By mid week I did call her. I had given it a lot of thought and some indirect discussion with Harry, and concluded that lessons were too much pressure for him. He needed to mature.

So again, I waited, and then when he was seven, I figured this was it. I told him to pick an instrument. Its time, just pick something. He picked the drums of all things and I couldn’t change his mind. It was all he was interested in. I had played the flute in band in high school. Flutists, you know the personality, usually sit in the front rows and appear very polite and attentive. The percussionists are always at the back of the band, and from my vantage, goofing off, falling asleep and generally getting dirty looks from the conductor during lessons. In my mind they were juvenile delinquents. I was heart broken. Yet deep down, I knew my son was a was a genius. I knew this because he would do things at school that displayed ingenuity and brilliance at a very early age. Like the time in second grade he forged my name on a note coming home from the principal, mid year, for throwing rocks on the school bus. He had only JUST learned to print. Most kids don’t start doing this kind of stuff till High school. (What gave it away for the principal is that the signature had been printed in pencil and then overwritten in pen. Most parents don’t use a pencil and they don’t print. ) I have other examples of pure genius, which would take too long to describe for mention here, but what was happening was clear. It now became my mission in life, hence forward, to make sure that my son used his powers for good and not evil. Its been rough but I think good is winning.

Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday a week ago Monday! I turned eh-hem, forty nine. A good friend I met through work shares my birthday. She now lives in Michigan. She called me first thing. It made my birthday all on its own, but then I spent the day in the garden weeding.

What is great about this activity is the dog, a very high strung, overly enthusiastic chocolate lab who lives outside, will leave me alone. He has learned not to come in the garden. Although adorable, he’s a royal pain. I love it.

What is not great though is that weeding becomes a major project because it can be so messy. I went through four sets of gardening gloves with all the dampness and mud. I get dirt on my knees and shoes and feet. I am just absolutely caked with it. So once I start I don’t want to stop till it is done.

I was out there for most of the day, and by afternoon, I started getting calls from family members with birthday wishes. John would shout to me from the house. He was taking the call and then telling them I would call back. Then he was coming up to get me. He was doing this while the event was fresh, to avoid forgetting, which would definitely happen otherwise.

When I finally finished in the garden, John was in the kitchen. He announced that he had made calls to everyone on his phone list (HIS PHONELIST), telling them or leaving them messages to call and wish me a happy birthday. He told me this in the kitchen. He had done it so he could get all the incoming birthday calls at once and avoid all this having to go up and down the stairs and outside to give me messages. He has a talking computer and his phone list on the computer is the list of all HIS friends and whatever businesses he might call or need to call in the course of a day. The rest of the evening was spent by me talking to people that I didn’t really know very well. I have to confess he does have some friends that are my friends too, so it was very nice after all. I am just glad I didn’t have to talk to his stock broker (who he left a message for, but never called back).

One more

These are my sister's husbands on the last day of our vacation. They love the surf.

More about vacation

I am in the middle. My sisters are on either side. We made John (my husband) hold the beer can as a prop. After all, a man is a man, and all good men drink beer. It took the whole vacation to get John into his bathing suit, and he went swimming in the pool! Yeah! He's doing a great job for a guy who is blind and has had stokes up the ying yang (amen).

How I spent my summer vacation....

Like this. And, when we weren't by the pool, we were on the beach.

My sisters and their husbands did a lot of fishing in the morning(wives 3 husbands 0). I had fishing rods for our family, but frankly, it was too much work.

Lots of walks along the beach, to the point at low tide,very peaceful, and my son made the following observation: This vacation provided a big change for our family from Chicago, but for us, personally, there wasn't much difference between this and home, except for the beach of course. My son, like his cousins, was in pursuit of the perfect vacation tan. My sister dubbed one of the nieces the President of the PTA - Professional Tanning Association. This sister would have been the Vice President as she takes her tanning very seriously.

By the end of the week, being much less competitive on this front, I had had enough. John and I went over to the Brookview Botanical Gardens and spent a day amongst the marble and granite Sculptures, walking through the "rooms", reading the poetry on plaques on the walls, and enjoying the fabulous green green architecture.

I can't make this stuff up

We lost the car in Knoxville Tennessee. I am not kidding. It was the second day of our trip to Garden City, SC (Myrtle Beach). We were at a gas station just off Interstate 40 in Knoxville, Tennessee. I parked the car at a gas pump and put the nozzle in and all that. Then I told John and Harry I was going in to buy some water. I am in the habit of leaving the pump while I’m fueling the car, doesn't everybody? Well, then Harry said he was going in to use the rest rooms. John didn’t need to go. I actually used the rest room too (I think) and at any rate I met Harry at the counter buying an ice cream bar. We walked out together.

“Harry where is the car?”

We looked. It was gone. We went to all the pumps, nothing in back.
We were freaking, and then Harry pointed. The car was about 500 feet or more away, across the street. It was sitting between an electrical utility pole and the wires that they use to support it. It had rolled across a street, through a grassy ditch full of who knows what, through utility wires, just missing a utility pole, and into an old arborvitae that was cracked and falling over from the impact. There were two guys who looked a bit shell shocked standing near the car. They must have seen what happened. John was in the passenger seat. He was white. I asked the one guy how fast the car was going… he thought maybe 10 mph maybe faster. It took Harry a couple of tries to get it out of the tangle of shrub and grass. Amazingly, while the bumper smelled strongly of spruce, there were no dents. Everything seemed to work. No scratches on the underbody. We still had to go through the mountains and I was hoping we didn’t have alignment problems. John’s only comment when we asked him if he was alright was “I DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT IN THE CAR BY MYSELF AGAIN!” I was too stressed to do any more driving so Harry drove the rest of the way to Garden City. We found out later
when John was describing the incident to my sister, that John was trying to turn on the air conditioning. He put the car in neutral and turned on the car. The parking brake was up but didn’t work. The car was on an incline so it rolled forward. Harry confessed that in the excitement he had dropped his ice cream bar. We should have bought a lottery ticket.

Being blind's a bitch

My husband lived in Chicago for about twenty-five years, before I met him in ’84. He was already blind. He lost his sight as a complication of diabetes when he was thirty. I met him when he was thirty-five.

The condition is called retinopathy. Diabetics suffer from cardiovascular issues. In order to feed the body, I am not sure exactly what, but diabetics build more capillaries. Capillaries are blood vessels that carry nutrients to the outlying area of the body. Anyway, these capillaries are very fragile, and so when there are changes in blood pressure, they can burst and internal bleeding occurs. It happened in his eyes. There was bleeding, and the retinas detached. This is how he lost his sight. John had a famous eye doctor in Chicago, the same one that treated a famous boxer for an almost detached retina. The doctor tried to save John’s vision but failed. After that, John said, the doctor never charged him for another visit, and John used to visit every year and send a poinsetta at Christmas.

John’s strokes have resulted for similar reasons, and there isn’t much that can be done, except control his blood pressure and maintain a healthy diet and exercise.

While going blind was very difficult, being blind was an easy adjustment. John sold his beloved corvette, but having a love for cars, bought a Mercedes station wagon in its place. He used to spend every weekend in the summer washing and hand waxing all the cars we had. When Harry was little he would help. As a toddler, Harry would not answer when called, or speak when spoken to, so we would tie bells into his tennis shoe laces so John would know where he was. This is one of my favorite photos of the two of them and I miss John and his energetic, “I can do anything” spirit. He is still a fighter, and is hanging on and will never give up. Neither will I.

Its all about consumption...

We're headed off on our vacation.

Over many years, my sisters have been going down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in July. My brother sometimes joined them, but this year, with his kids getting older and different schedules, they are going a week earlier.

My sisters continue to go, together, every couple of years, and for the second time, my husband, son and I will join them.

The first time we came down, it was a whirlwind of activity. Of course when you have that many people, it seems very busy. Lots of time at the beach, and then out to dinner and the bars.

The kids, all various stages of teen hood, go down and hang out at the pier. My son rode in the trunk for one of these occasions. I mean when all the kids piled in the car, there wasn't enough room, so he volunteered to ride in the trunk. The pier was only about four blocks away. It is something my fearless son would do. I wasn't happy to hear what he had done when he told me about it months later. He was about fifteen. That was the same year he and his friends discovered duck tape and, would duck tape themselves to street lamps late at night, and various other pranks which could have gotten them hurt or worse. Hopefully he won't be that goofy on this trip.

The most memorable thing we did on this vacation was ride on a jet ski. I rode with my son and he was jumping all the waves, doing sharp turns and going at death defying speeds. You have to be 18 to be by yourself. He wasn't so I rode behind him. I think I lost two cavities with all the teeth nashing.

The best part about it though, is I get to spend time with my family...

History lesson...

When we lived in Maryland Harry frequently came home from school with chatter about Tyrone, such as something that happened with Tyrone that day, or something that Tyrone said. For instance, Tyrone was going to have five wives. I had no idea how to respond to this. "Well he better get a good education so that he can get a good job!" I always tried to turn everything into encouragement for Harry to do well in school, since Harry seemed to have an agenda that conflicted with the teacher’s. It was a kind of survival mechanism for me.

Harry and Tyrone came from what must have been opposite backgrounds, and yet they were friends. Tyrone was black, and his family attended a Baptist church; a southern boy from a southern family and after all, Maryland was the south. Harry was white, and at the time, we were going to a Presbyterian church, which struck me as stiff and well, white. Harry was most definitely northern, last stop being Minnesota. In fact, Harry had just started using the regional expression "ufdah" before we left town. He and Tyrone made an interesting pair, both just adorably goofy and non-stop action. I would meet Harry to give him a ride home from school. There would be a boy hopping along next to Harry, and jumping in front of me with mischievous smiles. That's Tyrone, Harry would say. Tyrone reminded me of Harry.

One time I worked as lunch monitor. The kids ate their lunch in 10 minutes and then went outside, always incentive to finish as quickly as possible. The monitors would give some kids special cards to go early. Tyrone got one. That day Tyrone gave his to Harry. During moments of chaos the two boys always seemed to find each other. Coming back in they had to sit on a ledge and wait. Before long the two boys were rocking back and forth and knocking each other in rowdy camaraderie. These kids were six or seven and it looked pretty normal to me.

One day after school Harry and I had the following exchange:

“Mommy, were you alive when the dinosaurs were alive?”

“No Harry, I wasn't alive when there were dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were the first animals and that was millions of years ago...well maybe 20,000 years ago. I am not really sure, but it was way before I was born.” (Do I have that many wrinkles? Harry was so serious, like he'd been struggling with this for days!)

“Well if you weren't around when the dinosaurs were alive, then were you around during the American Revolution? Was anybody in your family alive then?”

“No Harry, I wasn't around during the American Revolution.”
(American Revolution? What does that have to do with the Jurassic period? Damn, he makes me feel like old! Hey, he knows his history though.)

“Well then Mommy, were you or was any of your family around during the civil war?Was dad around? Or was your mom or dad?”

“No I wasn't Harry. My mom's family came over during the Irish Potato Famine. That was in the 1860's. My dad was in the Korean War. My Uncle was in World War II. Your dad’s family came over from Scotland and settled in Canada. Why are you asking Harry? Is there something wrong?”
(Where is this going?)

“Well no, except Tyrone says my family killed Abraham Lincoln. But my family couldn’t have killed Abraham Lincoln because you weren't born yet and your parents weren't born yet and I wasn’t born yet. Tyrone is wrong. I'm going to tell him tomorrow!”
(It was Black History week. The guy who killed Abraham Lincoln was white. Harry is white. I think Tyrone has figured it out. Nice job with the guilt factor.)

Well, Chicago was great. My sisters were great. My cousin Kathy, my Aunt Mary and my mom were great. We had a great time (no really it was fun and I love them all). It took about 10 minutes into the hello's for my mom to comment on my hair and its lack of blondness. My sister lost the bet. She figured my mother would comment almost immediately.

Traditions

As I child, between my two sisters and my brother, I had the lightest hair in the family. I was the closest thing to blonde my mother would hope to have. In fact, I actually thought I was blonde, until I got my driver’s license at 16. The woman at the counter corrected me, “Honey, your hair is brown.” All through childhood my mom would wash and rinse my hair in lemon or vinegar, and then put me outside to dry in the sun to lighten it. In truth, she used to put me outside a lot, for various things. Like, as a preschooler, when the weather was nice, she would make me a sack lunch and send me outside to eat it. I see myself standing in the driveway feeding my sandwich to our cat who was sitting on top of the car.

My little sister and I are about a year and a half apart. She was always taller than me, and bigger. She was dark haired and I was light. If my grandmother gave us some money for gifts, my mother would buy complimentary outfits for us, but my sister always got the dark vibrant colors because she was a brunette. I would get the dull drab pastel shades. I hated it.

This weekend I am going to Chicago because my Aunt will be there visiting my mom and I want to see her. Its an excuse to get away for the weekend, and my son has agreed to look after his dad. I have alot of grey hair, and I feel a certain amount of pressure, and competitiveness, to look as youthful as is possible for a woman my age, so I usually color my hair before a visit to any of my family. Last night I dyed my hair some shade of auburn brown, and to my horror, it looks pretty unnatural and very red. My younger sister can pull this off marvelously. Her hair is always some unnatural shade of purple or bronze, but me personally, I can't decide whether I made a mistake and if I should "fix" it. I know that when my mother sees me this weekend she'll express some disapointment. "Anne, I think you should be a blonde".

So that being said, I think I'll probably just go with this and see what happens. Ought to be interesting.

Go West

The summer of our move to Minnesota we took a trip with Johnny, Courtney, and Harry to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. It was a driving vacation, literally. We drove nine hours out in two days, took pictures of the family in front of Mt. Rushmore, and then drove home. In between we did the usual stops, the Badlands, Bear Country, Petrified Forest, Wall Drug, on the way there, Sturgis, and the Corn Palace on the way back.

Outside of our stops at all the tourist attractions, hotels, bathroom breaks, and restaurants, we spent alot of time together in the car. We discovered very quickly that Harry, three at the time, and Courtney, fourteen, had to be separated, because they could not get along. I was surprised that a fourteen year old and a three year old could bicker and pick and irritate so successfully. At one point, getting ice cream at some restside stop, Courtney, in a fit of frustration, exclaimed that Harry was the most immature three year old she ever met. We all just looked at each other. Can a three year old be anything else?

The car we were driving was John's mercedes station wagon. It was his baby, painstakingly washed, waxed and and maintained in top condition. He was constantly harping at us about the way we shut the doors too hard. On the way home, he became so annoyed, that he passed an edict that he would be the only one allowed to close doors when anyone got in or out of the car. And so it was that we would stop at a rest stop or a restaurant. Everyone would pile out of the car and into whatever place we ended up. John had to go around to each door and shut it. Then after whatever, lunch, restrooms, we'd pile back in. We would wait for John to walk around to each door and close it. But oops, Johnny forgot something. Out the door he went back into the rest stop. John would have to get back out of the car, make his way around the car (he was blind of course), shut Johnny's door and get back in to his own spot. Then Courtney needed something and out she went. John would repeat the process. Then they were back and John would have to get out and start all over again. This lasted for about a day and a half before John finally gave up, and things were back to normal. Slam, Slam, Slam!

Too many pets

At one point we lived in a western suburb of Chicago. That was where we found George. George would be lurking around the neighborhood, in the bushes and very friendly. With his big wild eyed expression and longish snarley fur, George was a grizzly bear version of a cat. I watched him track an opossum along the fence between the back yards once. George's hair was dirty grey and matted. He could have been mistaken for the opossum in a line up if you just saw their backs. After I saw that I knew George's character was excellent. He had imagination and was fearless. When we took him in permanently, George became very devoted and loyal and he proved an excellent watch cat, making his territory our yard and keeping every dog in the neighborhood at bay, and fearful of walking past our house. We absolutely adored him.

When we moved to Minnesota, we took George. We put him in a huge cage in the back of the Mazda Navajo. And so we left Chicago, dragging a trailer; which had nothing to do with George, but was just really hard for me to maneuver, and I hated it. We landed in the rural backwaters of Minnesota, pretty milktoast as backwaters go and at some point must have realized something was missing. Ah, that was it, a dog! Hello Mudflap, a blue healer/ Australian sheep dog mix, who killed and masticated every free ranging rodent in a 1 acre radius from our house, and would have killed George too, but George steered clear of him. Mudflap didn't last, for shame, tragically lost in a dogs at play incident. Over the course of the next year we adopted an Alaskan husky named Skylar who had a tendency to run long distances (and got hit by a car on the highway), and finally a 2 year old yellow lab, the discard of a messy divorce, from a guy I knew at work. The yellow lab's name was Buster, and Buster was perfect for our family in his own confidant, sloppy, happy, self determined, disobedient way.

When my son was about four he introduced us to Little Black Kitty. I still remember the evening. It was just turning dark, and I remember seeing my son out in the yard in silouette. He was trying to catch hold the cat, who I think was trying to be caught. She was a little black female kitten cat, that eventually came to reside on a shelf in our garage because George wouldn't let her in the house. My son, over the course of a year called her by a lot of different names, but not being able to keep up with his changes we finally just referred to her as Little black kitty and it stuck. We thought Little black kitty was pregnant for at least 6 months, till we moved to Maryland, and the vet told us she'd been spayed, and showed us the scar to prove it. We also had a big furry George like Hamster, can't recall the breed, but it looked like a pale dust mop.


So when we moved to Maryland, we had two cats, a dog, and a hamster, in the Mazda Navajo, and I was trailing another big pain- in -the- ass trailer full of pet supplies among other things. I soon discovered that Buster was my best traveling companion, because he didn't complain, and he didn't need bathroom breaks. I felt like I was traveling in the dryer's lint cage, or that hairy feeling you have after a Veterinary clinic appointment with your pet. You need a shower, and a lint brush for your tongue, if you made the mistake of consulting with the vet in the room, or whatever. I can't imagine what the Vet must feel like after a day at the office.


The great thing about Maryland was that the house was neutral ground. When we landed, George immediately moved to the heating ducts. We knew this about him because he did it the first couple of weeks in Minnesota. We would hear his plaintive calls muffled reverberating through the walls of the house, particularly in the basement. When he finally appeared at the end of a couple of weeks, he really did look like a dust mop. I introduced Little Black Kitty to the house, and she and George eventually, through her female persistence and attention, became fast friends. She was constantly grooming him, and eventually, he was hooked. Trucker 1 became Trucker 2, this time a Golden Hamster, and somehow we acquired a gecko lizard named Lizzy.


When we moved back to Minnesota for a second time, we traded the Mazda Navajo for a Jeep Cherokee something or other in Chicago, but we had Buster, George, Little Black Kitty, Lizzy, and well we lost Trucker 2. While we were packing, actually the day that we were moving, Harry took me into to his room to show me Trucker. Something was terribly wrong. Trucker was curled in a ball and breathing hard. Mommy, what are we going to do? When I looked at the heartbreak in my son's expression, well, I called the Vet. I swear to god the Vet had the biggest Shit eating grin you'll ever see, as he placed the stethoscope on that little hamster's chest and listened, and then explained to me the diagnosis. Trucker had an upper respiratory condition. He was three years old but that equated to 70 years in hamster life. He was an old man hamster. Here was the dilemma. He needed antibiotics. We could drive to Catonsville and get the proper dosage, or the vet could mix something for us. He warned me that an improper dosage could ruin the rodent's kidneys, and that he had never done this before. Since we were moving that day and the truck was loaded, i opted for the vet to mix it there. The vet also advised us that Trucker needed fluids every three hours, and medicine every six. Harry and i nodded. We understood, and i paid the forty dollar bill for a seven dollar hamster. No wonder the Vet could barely contain his mirth. Sadly, Trucker didn't make it very far, barely to Pennsylvania, two hours into our trip. We knew when he died because we smelled this brief foul odor ...a death fart. Even sadder, we had a stop in Ohio, at my mother's, and she wouldn't let me put the corpse in her freezer for the night. We had planned to bury him when we reached our Minnesota destination.

being human

I am taking this just a little out of context, but somebody famous once said "There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant."

Introductions

At present this is all about introductions. This is my husband. What you might be able to tell from this photo is that he has a cane. His left eye is a little funny too. The man is blind. He's not been able to see, at all, for as long as I have known him. What I liked about him when we first met, though, was that he would go with me to the art museum and 1) he would go and genuinely seemed to enjoy it, but only the first time 2) i could describe everything i saw from my perspective, utterly, in my opinion, and unchallenged. I realized that I could do this with just about anything and it was like a great power. It was heaven. He also had a lot of imagination, loved to play, and could be very silly. Still is. We've been married for 18 years. He's had a few strokes. What he's lost makes me sad. He isn't the same person that he was when i married him but he's definately there in spirit, he enjoys life, and he is very loyal to me. What more could anyone ask for. Plus he still cleans up really well...when I can convince him that it is a worthwhile effort. We've been invited to a graduation party on Sunday and it will take a special conversation to convince him to go. I am not sure i will succeed but we shall try.

Food is fabulous

I imagined this when I compare my young son and the mudbogging. In retrospect, my young son looks better in this picture than I remember or imagined. He was a blonde as a youngster. My husband called him “chowder head”. My husband also called my son and his first son, “sunshine!” as in the greeting “hello! Sunshine!”. It was always so sweet. Do you know, from a term like “chowder head” what part of the world my husband originated? (ok Massachussets, not really the world, I just tried to give it some mystery.) I think the red tint on the top of my son’s head was sauce.