Tag Archives: Family

June 20, 2013 · 0:00

Because You Never Can Tell With Some People

It wasn’t something John and I thought about right off the bat. Nope, there were other more obvious and urgent ways to protect that new baby we’d been lucky enough to adopt.

In fact, we didn’t actually worry about Jacob playing in a house with guns until he was, actually, playing in a house with guns and he was out of our sight.

It was a day or so before we were to leave Connecticut and move back to the DC area.  Our neighbors, the Planters, had us over for a good-bye dinner. It was John, me, Linda and Paul, their two grown daughters and their significant others. The eldest daughter, Jade, had a daughter Juniper, who was Jacob’s age.

All was well for a while. They were nice people. Linda had retired from an insurance company and and divided her time between cooking and playing classical piano.We could hear it whenever the windows were open, all summer long.   She was quite good. Paul was a upper end contractor.  He was also a hunter.

For some reason that I have conveniently forgotten and  for which John will never forgive me, I brought up guns and gun control at one point during dinner. It was then that I learned that our soon to be former neighbors believed that they needed an arsenal to fight off the ” black booted” thugs from the government. The US government. Black helicopters. They thought that the 2nd Amendment guaranteed that he could have any weapon that he government had. Including nukes.

Huh?

It was at about that time that I realized that Jacob and Juniper were downstairs. They were being supervised by another relative, so I hadn’t been concerned.  But the discussion made me a little uneasy.

I knew there were guns in the house, but I no longer felt quite comfortable that these folks were reasonable. I didn’t know where the guns were, whether they were locked away, or left leaning against the wall somewhere accessible to my 4 year old son.

*     *     *

That was the last time for many years that I didn’t ask about guns in the home of anyone Jacob played with.  Even when the parents seemed like they didn’t fear the guv’ment.  Even when they seem like normal folks.  Liberals, even.

It is incredibly awkward to ask people if they have guns in their house — akin to saying “excuse me, are you an irresponsible parent who would endanger your own child(ren) as well as mine?”

Still, I had to ask. Every time Jacob went someplace new for many years.

I did it by lying through my teeth.  To new friends and acquaintances.  I shamelessly blamed my husband:

“I have the most overprotective husband” I would sigh.  He made me promise to ask everyone before letting Jacob go play … You don’t have guns in your house, do you?  Arsenic?  Nukes?” I’d laugh, and the other mother or father would laugh too.

And then they’d answer.

“No, of course not,” was generally the answer.  And then I was comfortable letting my son go to their house.

One time, though, I did get a “yes, we have guns in our house” answer.  I was surprised. You will be shocked to know that I kept an open mind.

That time, my friend Suzanne invited me and Jacob over, and took me down to her basement and showed me where her husband kept his hunting rifles. In a locked, secure gun safe.

If I had learned that the person had guns and did not secure them, their kid would have been welcome to play at our house any old time.  But my son would not have been allowed to play there.  Nope.  Not a chance.  It is simple common sense.

Guns+Kids=Tragedy

Naturally, I felt bad for blaming John.  Oh who am I kidding.  No I didn’t.  It was much less awkward, doing it that way — it made the other parents feel less threatened, less like I thought they were crazy, irresponsible, folks who wanted to kill children.  With my way, well, I had the comfortable knowledge that my kid wouldn’t become a statistic. It was worth sacrificing John’s pride for peace of mind. Especially because he still doesn’t know I did it.

Friday, June 21st is “Ask About Guns Day,” sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Because all too often pediatricians are called on to try to save children who are hurt by guns.  They know that asking can save lives.

ASK.  Because you don’t want your kid (or grandkid or really any kid) knockin’ on heaven’s door, do you?  I just had to ask.

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Filed under Family, Gun control, Health and Medicine, Neighbors

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June 13, 2013 · 0:00

It’s Dad’s Fault

It was August of 2002 when I realized that I was, in fact, my father’s daughter.  I’m exactly like him, dammit.

It wasn’t my best moment as a parent.  I still feel guilty about it.  And Jacob, my only child, makes sure I do.  He still glares at me when he recalls that day.  But it wasn’t my fault.  Really.  I blame Dad.  The fact that he’d died nearly two years earlier did not absolve him one little bit.

John, Jacob and I had just moved back from Europe in July, and Jacob would start his new school in September.

That August afternoon, I held in my hand the most important envelope of every child’s year — the one that told us what class he would be in for the entire school year.  It had just arrived.  Each year since Jacob had been in kindergarten, we opened that envelope together the minute it arrived.

Naturally, Jacob was nervous.  He wanted more than anything to be in class with his brand new best friend ever, Joe.  Jacob wasn’t concerned that he might not like his teacher.  Or that the work would be too hard for him.  No, he worried that he’d be in a class of entirely new kids.  Ones he hadn’t known, like, for a month.

We stood at the kitchen counter and slit open the envelope.  I read it aloud:

“Jacob K has been assigned to Mrs. Smith’s 1st Grade class.”

Assigned to Mrs. Smith’s FIRST GRADE class?  Jacob was 11.  He was supposed to be going into 5th Grade, not 1st.  WTF?

Jacob looked at the letter, and looked up at me with panic in his eyes.

That’s when my late father rose up and spoke out of my mouth.

“Well,” I said to Jacob, philosophically, “I guess you’ll have to start again with 1st Grade.”

Jacob’s eyes bulged, his mouth fell open in a silent moan, and tears started forming behind his eyeballs.

Of course I couldn’t hold it for long, I burst out laughing and quickly followed up my sarcastic comment with “I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding,” and a big hug.  “They just made a mistake.  We’ll go to the school tomorrow morning when school opens and they’ll correct it.  And if you want, you can ask them to put you in Joe’s class.”

Somehow, Jacob slept that night, and the next day we went to the school, where they apologized profusely for their error and did, indeed, put Jacob into Joe’s class.  It made Jacob feel like the folks at his new school were on his side.

But what made me torture my son like that?

Dad.  He made me do it.  Because I’d bet my life that that’s exactly what Dad would have said to a terrified boy who feared he had to restart school at the beginning.  In fact, I’m sure of it.  That’s exactly what my Dad would have done.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I adored my Dad.  We were close from the moment of conception, I’m pretty sure.  I was the last of five kids, and the acknowledged favorite, well before any of my elder siblings were even born.  Dad was just waiting for me.  Because I was the one who would “get” him.  He made me laugh.  Everybody else was terrified of Dad.  And with good reason.  Most people couldn’t tell when he was joking.

My first memory of Dad is not exactly a happy one.

I was three years old, and had gotten my head caught between the legs of my horse, Lightening. And Dad laughed at me.  Seriously!  Can you believe his cruelty?

Now before you start assuming that that’s where my brain damage came from, I have to confess that Lightening was a pretty special horse.  Lightening was usually a black stallion, although sometimes, when the mood struck, he was a white one.  Lightening  was also the second fastest horse in the West.  He was regularly beaten by Thunder, my brother Fred’s horse.  Fred named our horses before he learned that lightening is faster than thunder.

To other people, what we rode on weren’t “real” horses.  They were the railings surrounding our staircase landing.  Their legs were made of pickets that were thin at the top and widened at the bottom.  I’d stuck my head through the pickets at the top, slid down, and was unable to pull it out at the bottom.

Google, of course

Google, of course.
As close as I could come, but ours were thin at the top and thick at the bottom. Really. How else would there be a story here?

I was not a happy child at that particular moment.  I was uncomfortable.  I was stuck.  I’m sure I was thinking that my whole family would be laughing at that moment for years.  I was right.

Nobody could calm me down enough to lift my head up and get me out of there.  In kid years, which are just like dog years,  I was there for days and days.  I was there forever.

When Mom couldn’t get me out, she told me that she’d get Dad who would.  I started calming immediately.  Dad could fix anything.   Absolutely anything.  He would get me out from underneath Lightening.  He’d do it like he did everything, with a cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth, and a carpenter’s rule and pencil in his pocket.  With those three things, Dad could rule the world.

Dad came up from the basement  and quickly sized up the situation.  I’m sure he took a drag from his cigarette when he said, “Hmmmm.”

His presence alone calmed me, stopped my crying.  I knew he’d get me out, somehow.  I knew I didn’t have to worry.  I knew that soon everything would be OK.

“Hmmmm,” said Dad again.  “I guess we’re just gonna have to cut your head off.”

“MOM!!!!”

Spoiler Alert!  He did not cut off my head.

Once I stopped screaming, Dad was able to lift my head up a bit to where the railing was thin at the top, and got my head out.

For as long as she lived, my mother shook her head whenever she thought of that day.  “I still can’t believe he said that to you,” she’d say with a laugh.  “Right after he’d calmed you down!”

Clearly, I take after my Dad.  Jacob was (and is) never quite sure whether to take something I say seriously.  (Duh! Never!)

But you know what?  I think that’s a good lesson in life.  That you have to find the humor, no matter how terrified you might be.  Even at the scariest times.

Dad taught me something important that day when I was stuck underneath Lightening.  That if you can laugh at whatever’s holding you back, you’re gonna be just fine.  Unless of course you’re stuck underneath the second fastest horse in the west.  Then screaming bloody murder is the way to go.

Thanks Dad for getting me out of that jam and a million others.  I miss you.

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June 3, 2013 · 0:00

It’s A Cookbook!

You probably don’t know this, but at one time I was a terrific cook.  And I have the books to prove it.  I’ve bought cookbooks wherever I’ve gone — I have them from all over Europe, although following the recipes in another language and using a different measuring system can be a bit of a challenge.

I even have one with recipes from Bill and Hillary Clinton and other political notables.  It’s called the Congressional Cookbook, and it came out in the late 1980s.  It has recipes from governors, congressmen and senators and their wives.   Hillary’s chicken, by the way, is awesome and easy.  She is a damn smart lady.

A small sample

A small sample

These days, I don’t cook as much as I used to.  And so my cookbooks are mostly gathering dust instead of flour.

But today I learned that in spite of the fact that I don’t cook so much any more, there will soon be another book I’ll need to add to my collection.

You see, Ann Romney has penned a Cookbook called The Romney Family Table.

Yup, You just can't get away from Ann. Cover photo courtesy of Politico.com

Yup, You just can’t get away from Ann. Cover photo courtesy of Politico.com

 

In it, I’m sure she’ll tell us all how “To Serve the 47 Percent – a la Twilight Zone.”  Yum.

Because folks like Ann and Mitt wouldn’t want to eat with the 47 percent, now, would they?

{My thanks to The Last Of The Millenniums who first alerted me to this important news.  Well, sort of.  I think I’d sleep better not knowing about Ann’s plans for the future, but still.]

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May 24, 2013 · 0:00

Modern Conveniences

Modern marketing really scares me.  And I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.

A few years ago John and I needed to replace broken toilet that had a built-in shelf above the tank top.  (Not the kind of tank top you wear, but the kind with all the parts of a toilet that break.)

We needed a special size and type.

Toilet with shelf 2

Naturally, I looked online to find the best price.  Then off-to Home Depot John and I went expecting to flush away a wad of money.

As we were trying to choose between two models, the salesman tried to help us make the decision:

“You can flush an entire bucket of golf balls down this American Standard toilet and it won’t clog,” he said.

John tilted his head, dog like, and looked at the salesman trying to figure out if he was joking.  He wasn’t.

I looked at John and then at the salesman.  Somehow I maintained an interested customer demeanor.  “Why would we want to do that?” I asked.  “We don’t golf.”

“I’m just sayin’ that you could,” said the salesman.  “I mean, if you did golf.”

“We probably wouldn’t be golfing in the bathroom,” John said, thoughtfully.  “I mean, if we did golf, we wouldn’t golf there.  We’d probably do it outside.

“And if we take up golf, I think I’d rather keep the golf balls in the garage,” I added.

“Plus we have a septic system.  I don’t know if it is designed for golf balls.”

“It might be hard to explain to the guys when they pump it out.”

We had to leave or we would have wet our pants in the toilet aisle of Home Depot.  In spite of the fact that it would be expensive, we opted to replace the innards of our own non-golfing toilet instead of spending – I kid you not – more than $1,000 on a toilet that would fit the spot and accept golf balls.

Since then, though, I have been getting ads for toilets.  But not just any old toilet.  Strangely shaped toilets.  Apparently, to the marketers of America, I not only like to flush strange hard things down my toilets, but I like my toilets to look like anything but.  Or butt.

Toilet 2Toilet 1Toilet 3

So imagine my dismay when I read this article that explains where modern advertising is heading.

They’re going to mine our DNA

to figure out how to market stuff to us.

The article gives the example of someone who is lactose intolerant getting special coupons for lactose-free stuff.

Oh joy.

I wonder if my DNA will tell folks that I’m not interested in what they’re selling.

Which gene says "NO SOLICITING"?

Which gene says
“NO SOLICITING”?

 

All the pictures are from Google Images.  I can’t wait to see what they try to sell me next!

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May 10, 2013 · 0:00

Untarnished

No matter how old we are, when we’re sick we want Mom.  When we hurt physically, that’s who we call out for.  When we have been wounded emotionally, we want her more than anything.

Several of my bloggin’ buddies asked me to repost this piece for Mother’s Day.  I am delighted to grant those requests.  Because one of the best things about writing is that it lets you bring back folks you miss, hold them again, and let them know that you love them.

I love you, Mom.  And thanks for being such a nut.

*     *     *

My Silver Lining

Thursday, November 22, is Thanksgiving in the U.S.  It is also the 30th anniversary of the surgery I had for what was then thought to be severe ulcerative colitis.  It was a difficult time for me, but one for which I will be thankful for on Thanksgiving and really every day.  Yes, I got my health back as a result of the surgery, but that wasn’t the best part.

The most important part, the silver lining, was that I got to know my Mom, and it started a close relationship that lasted for the rest of her life and that I will feel grateful for for the rest of mine.

Mom was the sweetest woman on the planet.  My friends adored her.  Our house was always open to hoards of kids.  We lived near the beach, and it was convenient for everybody to just hang at our house.  But it was more than that. For years dozens of teens used our house as their home away from home.  There was always room, always plenty to eat, always a welcome.  No one was ever turned away, and the answer to “can So-And-So stay the night” (or “the weekend” or in some cases “the summer”) was always “sure.”

But we weren’t close, Mom and I.  I was Daddy’s girl from the start.  Mom, well, I loved her.  I even liked her, mostly.  It’s just that there wasn’t a whole lot about Mom to make me respect her.  She was completely helpless, you see.  Hopelessly so.  I can’t stand that and never have been able to deal with dependent people.  And “helpless”?  That was Mom in a nutshell.

She didn’t drive.  She didn’t shop without Dad.  She didn’t go for a walk alone.  She didn’t try to take control of family problems and help figure out how to solve them.  She waited for my dad to get home to reprimand, make a decision, to blow her nose, or so it seemed.  She was utterly and totally dependent upon my Dad.  It was incredibly annoying to this girl growing up in the late sixties and seventies during one of the strongest pushes for equal rights for women.  My friends’ mothers were out protesting the Vietnam War.  Mine didn’t even vote.  They burned their bras; Mom ironed hers.  They voiced their opinions ever more loudly.  Mom looked to Dad to indicate which way was up.

After I left home and became more self-sufficient, my irritation at Mom’s inability to do anything without Dad’s help, grew.

So when Mom announced, just weeks before I was to have radical, difficult surgery, that she was going to come to help, well, I panicked.  She was going to help me?  Yeah right.  Her announcement sent me into apoplexy.  It was the worse possible news heaped on a whole ream of really shitty news.  Who the hell was going to help her?

I lived with my roommate, Keily, and my 120 lb. alcoholic German Shepherd, Goliath, in a tiny Washington, DC, townhouse, in a not terribly safe area.  I was sure that Mom would get mugged — she’d make an easy target.  I feared that she would let the dog out and they would both die.  I drove a battered and temperamental VW Bug with a stick shift that Mom didn’t know how to use.  And of course, I wasn’t going to be able to help her because I was going to be recovering from having my guts totally ripped open and reorganized.

I couldn’t believe she would do this to me.

At the same time I couldn’t hurt her feelings and tell her that I didn’t want her.  Nope.  I could never have done that.  Not if my life depended on it.  Which of course, it might.

But once she dropped that bomb, I stopped worrying about the surgery, about the recovery, about everything except how I would take care of my caretaker.  Thankfully, my brother Fred came to help too.  He could drive my car; he could help with Mom for the week he took off from work.  My roommate, Keily, was a star, too.  (That’s a whole different story.)  But Mom came for what was a very long recovery, 2-1/2 months, so felt like I’d be pretty much on my own in taking care of her.

It wasn’t long after she arrived before I realized that Mom without Dad was a different person.  Dad loved the caretaker role, and she was happy to let him play it.  Without Dad, Mom had opinions on stuff, could make decisions and could give savvy and sage advice.  I decided quickly that maybe she and I were related after all.

And as soon as we got to the hospital, I was incredibly glad she was there.  I was admitted and headed up to my room, sending Mom and Fred to get settled in their hotel.  It was about dinnertime, which didn’t matter to me; I’d been on a clear liquid diet for about a week.  And while I was starving, I knew I couldn’t eat.  I had my instructions from my doctor:

(1) Do not eat;

(2) Continue taking your medicines just like you are now;

(3) Show up to the hospital.

Always pay attention to the details when your guts are on the line.

Now Hopkins is one of the best hospitals in the country and it was also one of only two places in the country where the operation I was to have could be performed.  The surgery was brand, spankin’ new – just a smidge beyond experimental.  It was dangerous.  It was highly specialized.   My doctors were to take out my large intestine, rearrange what was left of my plumbing so that things worked normally, and close me up.  Two surgeries were involved – they had to give me a colostomy (ewwww – a bag) in between the two surgeries while my innards healed.  Only 100 of these surgeries had been done in the world.  I was my surgeon’s 7th.  I was scared shitless which is saying a whole lot for a girl with bowel trouble.

But when I got to the hospital, everything went wrong.  They tried to insist I eat; they tried to give me the wrong medicine; they forgot about me and left me hanging out in my room where I fell asleep for several hours before someone wondered who I was.  The grand finale came when two nurses wheeled in an EKG machine, hooked me up and turned it on – and the machine started smoking.   The nurses, trying valiantly not to laugh, had to quickly unplug it and get it out of there.

“MOM!!!!”

I called her at her hotel in a complete panic, hysterical.

“I am not going to have this surgery.  What kind of a hospital is this?  They can’t even get an EKG machine to work.  It was smoking Mom, SMOKING!!!!  I’m not.  I’m not. I’m not.”

How is it that Moms know just how to calm down the most hysterical daughter?  I was and she did.  And she didn’t need Dad one little bit.  Yup, she calmed me down, and then, I heard later, called the nurses’ desk and chewed them out royally.  I’m pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever chewed anyone out.  But she wasn’t going to let anybody or anything upset her daughter or get in the way of the surgery that her daughter desperately needed.  And whatever she said worked.  Nothing else got screwed up.  They paid attention to her daughter.

In fact, Helpless Mom became SuperMom.  She corralled doctors when they didn’t come in a timely manner, she sweet-talked most of the nurses and they seemed to come around more and more often as they laughed and joked with Mom.  She was on a first name basis with all the residents and interns, knew if they were married, where they were from.  They got a little bit of mothering whenever they came into the room, and she charmed the lot of them.

She was always full of laughter, encouragement and fun.  Except when her sixth sense told her that I was feeling sorry for myself; then she’d tell me to stop sniveling.  Sometimes I needed that.

Back at home, she was great too.  She found the grocery store and walked to and from, lugging bags of food.  She fed me and Keily, gave beer to the dog, helped me get upstairs and downstairs.  Helped me do many things that were totally disgusting.  She helped me be independent again.  We laughed our way through Christmas together and then my birthday in January.  We laughed for two months, barely coming up for air.  We talked a whole lot, too, about everything.  We became fast friends.

There is one incident though, that made me realize that I’d never really known her before.  Could this crazy woman really be my Mom?

We’d driven my VW to Baltimore for a pre-surgical checkup before the 2nd surgery, scheduled for the 9th of February.  It was late January, and there were several inches of snow on the ground.  On the way back home, the VW died in the center lane of a busy highway.  I managed to coast to the side of the road, where the bug sighed once and died.  Shit.  I was still not at my best, and the promise of a long snowy walk was not a pleasant one for either Mom or me.

But a blue Honda Civic two-door driven by a big burly guy pulled up along the roadside next to us.  He rolled down the window and asked if we needed a lift.  I was about to explain that my car had just died and would he please call a tow truck, when, well, Mom jumped into the back seat! I stood there with my mouth flapping. Because I could hear her voice from my childhood talking in the back of my head:

NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGE MAN.

THEY ARE ALL RAPISTS

But there she was, the woman who taught me never, ever, to get into a car with a rapist — she was in the back seat of a stranger/potential rapist’s car.  WTF?????  What the hell was she doing?

I didn’t know what else to do, so I got into the front seat.  And there on the floor was something else that shocked me:  A  teddy bear with a green t-shirt that said “I’m Going To Steal Your Love.”

“Wonderful,” I thought, “a rapist with a sense of humor.”

As it turned out, the guy wasn’t a rapist!  He took us to a reputable garage where they agreed to tow and fix my damn car.

But the adventure wasn’t over yet — we still needed to get home.  The hotel across from the garage had a shuttle bus that went to BWI Airport.  From there, we were told, there was another shuttle bus that could get us back to DC.  It sounded perfect.

Perfect except for the fact that we had hardly any money left  The shuttle to DC only took cash.  No credit cards.  No beads.  No chickens.  Cash.  Shit.

We didn’t have enough for the fare, and couldn’t have come up with any more money.  But that didn’t stop Mom.

She walked up to the shuttle driver and chatted her up.

“Do you think you can let us both on for $16.50?”

“Sorry M’am, the adult fare is $10.”

“What’s the child’s fee?  I mean, after all, she’s my little girl.”

The driver let us both on, shaking her head and smiling at Mom.  Feeling like she’d done a good deed (she had).

Mom was there for my second operation, and then she headed home with Dad who had come up for it.  When he arrived, Mom didn’t just let Dad do everything as she always had before.  She showed him around — showed him her turf.  She had realized that she really liked feeling in charge, and doing things on her own, for herself and for me.

For the rest of Mom’s life, she and I had a whole different relationship.  I had always loved her, always liked her.  But her care for me, and her resourcefulness and sense of duty and just plain fun let me develop a respect for her I’d never had.

I’ve always felt lucky in a way to have had these health problems.  Because they gave me my Mom.  I would never have known her, never have laughed with her so very much.  I wouldn’t have heard the stories of her life, told with love and humor, the way she did everything.

*     *     *

On Mother’s Day, I will raise a special toast to Mom, my SuperMom.

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