Setting the Date

      And on the occasion of my parents' sixty-third anniversary! My folks, Jim and Mary, had been engaged for well over a year. Mary had been apprehensive all through their courtship. If she started to believe that the two of them were for real a couple, Mom felt that would be when the whole thing would fall apart. But when Dad proposed marriage, Mom knew if she continued to guard her heart and said, “no,” that Dad would definitely go away – and Mom had gotten kind of used to having him around; if she said “yes”, well that would be so risky; so Mom decided to say “yes” but not take the engagement at all seriously - and perhaps   Dad would hang around a bit longer.

      So that was how they came to be engaged for over a year.

      When New Years Day arrived in 1952, Dad said to Mom, “We need to set a date.”

      Mom answered, “Yeah.”

      Dad looked her in the eye and said, “Mary, I mean it.”

     “Yeah,” she responded, looking away, looking, she hoped, cute.

     “I'm serious! If we don't set a wedding date today, the engagement is off!”

     Their eyes met again. Mom started to get a little nervous.

     Dad continued, “You can pick the date – any date you want as long as it is sometime this year; in fact it has to be sometime before.......June 1^st!”

     Mom relaxed, gave a little smile, opened her mouth, and said, “May 31^st!”

      Next time you see a wedding anniversary date on a calendar, realize there is so much more to that date than just a month and a day and a year – oh my gosh, so much more!

151 20150531 Setting the Date

Sending a Book

    Tomorrow is the anniversary of the marriage of my Mom and Dad. Sixty-three years ago – May 31^st 1952. I'd like to tell two of the many stories of their courtship – one today and one tomorrow.

     My parents had been dating for a while, Dad was in his early twenties and Mom, I think was about 18.

     One of Dad's passions was football, not just as a fan, but as a player! He was the quarterback for a semi-professional team called the Lackawanna Lakers – Lackawanna being the city just south of Buffalo – known for its steel mills and orphanage, right on the shore of Lake Erie.

     Even before he was quarterback of a football team, Dad had a reputation, with his good looks, of having quite a few girlfriends. Mom was very leery of going out with him. She did not want to be one of the many. And then after their first date – an Errol Flynn movie They Died With Their Boots On at the Seneca Theater – Mom did not take their relationship seriously at all, figuring that Dad would soon move on – and she did not want her heart broken.

      Well, it was football season and Dad kept asking Mom to go to the games and watch him play. Mom had no interest in football whatsoever and even less desire to be one of his adoring fans in the crowd cheering him on.

     “Aren't all your girlfriends at the games cheering for you?” she asked him.

     “Yeah, they are. But you are the only one I care about being there.” Dad tried once again to get Mom to go to one of his games.

     “Sounds like you have enough fans at your games already.”

     “But it would only be special if you were there.”

     Mom still refused to go.

     Until the very last game of the season. She was at home when the game began, and for some reason Mom had a change of heart. She got on a bus from South Buffalo to downtown, and then did a Lackawanna transfer.

     Mom arrived at the stadium just in time to look across the field and see...........Dad being carried away on a stretcher!

     He had hurt his back and did not play football again.

     Mom was not impressed.

     A couple of weeks went by, and Dad was still recovering at his home from his back injury.

     Dad's brother, Bernie, called Mom, “Jimmy has been asking for you; why haven't you come to see him?”

     “Aren't all his girlfriends there taking care of him?”

     “Well, yeah, they visit and bring food and read to him. But you're the only one he has been looking for!”

     “Tell him I will send him a book!”

     Does everyone wonder how her/his parents ever got together? Or is it just me?

150 20150530 Sending a Book

Spider Web Ballot Box

    My eighth-grade social studies teacher was an older woman named Mrs. Anderson. She didn't seem to like me – maybe she thought I had a bad attitude – and maybe I did. When I think back on it now, I most likely had a mousy expression on my face every day while sitting there not participating in class discussion – that's enough to give a teacher an attitude!

     The only other thing I remember about that class was the assignment one day to draw a political cartoon.

      So it must have been American history we were studying that year – because the day of the assignment the topic was something that was going on, I think in Andrew Jackson's day, and Congress could not agree on anything, a not too unfamiliar state of affairs considering all the can we reach across the aisles? talk prevalent in Congress these days.

      My political cartoon was a top hat sitting upside down on a table with cobwebs all over it from having sat there so long – the hat was labeled Ballot Box – and the look of disuse was to illustrate how long it had been since Congress had put anything to a vote!

      The purpose of the assignment was to exercise our understanding of the concept of political cartoon combined with the unit we were studying at the time. My finished product supplied the subtle irony of the political cartoon mixed with my own lack of artistic skills – all I had drawn was a hat with a label and a table and cobwebs.

      The next day we each had to present our political cartoon to the class. I showed them what I had drawn and gave what I thought was a very straightforward explanation about the unused hat illustrating the lack of action in Congress.

       The class looked confused!

       How could that be – it was so simple!

       One boy finally raised his hand and wanted to know what the stuff was on the hat and table and room – I looked at the picture and said, “You mean the spider webs?” 

       Everyone looked even more confused – why were there spider webs on the picture?

       Finally, one of my friends started laughing loudly and derisively and said, “does she mean cobwebs?”

      There is a difference between spider webs and cobwebs?

      I guess spider webs implies spiders are about and active, and cobwebs implies disuse as in a room that has not been occupied in a while – even by spiders?

      Those were the two lessons that I learned from eighth-grade social studies – say cobwebs instead of spider webs in conversation, and being laughed at derisively by someone I thought was a friend can still hurt all these many years later.

149 20150529 Spider Web Ballot Box

Sock Monkey Love

     Foraging my brain for memories of eighth grade brought back the sewing story from home ec and then the stories of my Mom sewing and my Grandmother sewing and that brought front and center the saga of the sock monkey.

     My Grandmother made many items to be sold at her church - St. Judes, an Episcopal Church within walking distance of 51 Dash Street for oh so many years; then the church, whose name I cannot remember, still within walking distance of 277 Hastings but a lot further away; and finally an Episcopal Church in the subdivision Granny lived in after she moved to Florida in 1986.

     Different women from this last church would stop by Granny's to deliver the materials needed for her to make the items she had committed to for their bazaars – and Granny began to realize that perhaps that was the only reason they had befriended her – they would not have come by otherwise. If she had not been making stuff for them, would they have even talked to her? She was being used.

     And then she wondered if that was how it had always been? In the early years, especially at St. Judes, I'd like to think there had been some true friendships formed. But in the later churches, as Granny got older, maybe the women thought they were making her happy just by giving her something they thought was fun for her to do – and little effort was made on either side to nurture any more to their relationship?

     But I stray from the sock monkey. Granny made sock monkeys – the traditional kind. It is not like she made tons of them that piled up in her house. But I saw them as they were made – Granny worked when she watched television in the afternoons and evenings. The monkeys were cute but I kind of just took them for granted.

     On one visit to see Granny when we were both still living in Buffalo, she gave me a sock monkey that she had just finished. I was delighted! The once ubiquitous sock monkey had then become a most treasured item as it remains to this day.

     It was a few years after my Grandmother passed away that Mom was chatting with me, and suddenly she started talking about her mother and the sock monkeys. “She made sock monkeys for everyone else she ever knew and complete strangers, but did she ever give one to me, her own daughter? No!” Mom was kidding, but her voice had that edge of bitterness to it that revealed so much more.

     I couldn't help myself – I said, “she even gave me one!”

    That next Christmas there was a package under the tree for Mom from Mike. It was a storebought sock monkey – not the same as Granny's, but we decided Mom had to have one. She named it Henry and took it home.

     Charley, Mom's cat at the time, claimed Henry for himself – Charley and Henry sat together on the chair by the patio door and glared at Mom as if she were the unwelcome third wheel in their relationship! And once again Mom felt left out of the love that sock monkeys provided the rest of the world – the love her own mother had spread but neglected to share with her!

     One day, I remember it was Super Bowl Sunday, I was visiting Mom and she mentioned that Henry had been banished to the garage because his stuffing was leaking and leaving funny rice-like particles on the chair. Mom said she had cleaned off the rice after moving Henry, but mysteriously some rice had returned. I think the truth dawned on both of us at that moment, and I took a sample of the rice with me. Mike and I went to a friend's house for the Super Bowl that evening, and this friend just happened to have a microscope at the house, and yeah, the rice was not from Henry the stuffed sock monkey, but rather worms from Charley! Ew!!!

     Charley got some medicine and Henry returned to the chair near the patio door, and the worms/rice disappeared.

     After Mom passed away, Amanda and Tony adopted Charley who now rules the roost over their cat, Zumi, and dog, Pizza.

     Henry is there too, because it would have been wrong to separate him and Charley, and because everyone should have a sock monkey.

148 20150528 Sock Monkey Love

I've Got Pie!

    In an early scene of the movie The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand's character, Kate is a couple of years out of college and sees a former classmate across the bar. It is Hubble, the Golden Boy nemesis of sorts, played by Robert Redford. Hubble is in uniform as it is the midst of World War II, and the combination of alcohol and fatigue has him asleep at the bar.

Kate takes Hubble home with her, puts him to bed, and has relations with him. The next morning Kate goes out for groceries, Hubble wakes up – has no clue about where he is or how he got there, but he gets dressed and leaves. I don't know how their paths manage to not cross, but Kate arrives home, sees her prize from the night before is gone, runs to the window and sees Hubble on the sidewalk below walking away.

      In a panic, Kate opens the window, leans out and hollers, “Hubble! You can't leave! I've got pie!”

      That's my favorite quote from all moviedom!

      I've got pie!

      I identify so strongly with that quote. I am not Kate – she is ten times the woman I could ever hope to be. But I guess the things that are wrong with Kate – her insecurities and complexes – are totally me. And I see both Kate and me leaning out the window as an act of final desperation – if I can bribe you with pie, maybe in the time it takes you to share pie with me you will realize how wonderful I am, and you might stay!

      If you google The Way We Were quotes, I've got pie does not appear on the list. Only my list, I guess. But Hubble's response to I've got pie does make the list. Do you know what he says when Kate hollers out the window to him that she has pie?

      “What kind of pie?”

      And Hubble has pie, and they begin a relationship.

      When I was a few years out of college and working at a lab in Buffalo, one of my boss's collaborators taught graduate classes. At the beginning of one semester, the teacher suggested that I take his class, and so I did. While in the class, I took notice of a particular grad student who was also there. And then I took more notice of him.

      One day after class I asked the graduate student if I could borrow his notes from that day. And the next day, when I returned the notes and said “thank you,” I also said, “you deserve a cookie.” (Can you just picture me here hanging out of my figurative window and yelling after he has taken the notes and turned away, “Wait! I have cookies!”?)

      The grad student asked, “What kind of cookies?” and he said his favorite are chocolate chip.

      Instead of handing him the batch of peanut-butter cookies I had baked the night before and was totally prepared to give him at that moment, I went home and made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and gave him those the day after that.

      We got married seven months later.

      Kate's pie and her specialness, and my cookies and my wonderfulness were enough to bring relationships together. But they weren't quite enough to make them last forever. Alas the movie and the real life saw the unions dissolve. But good things came from that which had been –things that blossomed and flourished and still survive - in my case – two precious daughters.

      And I guess that's why when we, you, me, all of us - look back on all that was and all that might have been, it doesn't really hurt, and it is not so sad – we just smile and have fond memories – of the way we were.

147 20150527 I've got pie!

Sewing Lessons

    Home Ec was only for one semester – and the girls all took it – seventh and eighth grade home ec were required for all the girls while the boys spent their time in shop class. Girls, and boys, today would probably wonder why we had put up with such sexist nonsense – change was in the air, just not quite yet.

     Eighth grade home ec was about sewing – we each made a dress for ourselves. Mom and I picked out what looked like an easy pattern for me – straight up and down, nothing fancy – and then we picked out material. In class we learned about pinning the pattern to the material, and cutting the pieces; we were taught about darts – and I think I was able to master the darts and the straight seams – but the sleeves were impossible, and Mom put them in for me at home. And the zipper up the back I never got right – every time I put it in, I ended up taking all the stitches out again to retry it better. If I had gotten the zipper in correctly, all that would have been left after that was the hem, and I was sure I knew the basics of hemming. But time ran out – and Mom ended up doing the zipper and hem for me. She was not supposed to do all those things – and I was surprised that she did – if it weren't for Mom, I would most likely have failed home ec. Sewing a dress was harder than making toast like in seventh grade. And yet one could say that home ec had failed me – I don't like sewing.

     Such a disappointment I was to Mom who enjoyed sewing so much! Mom used to say that she loved the challenge of putting pieces together to create a finished product - kind of like passing one's time playing a video game requiring an artistic flair!

Mom sewed clothes for me for years. I always knew what color outfit I was getting for Christmas if I noticed the color of the pieces of thread I might see on the floor near the sewing machine! (Mom would sew at night after we went to bed if it was something that was supposed to be a gift or surprise!).

     The last thing Mom made for me, at the age of 30, was a maternity shirt when I was expecting my first child. It was a red plaid pattern and plenty big enough for my girth. It is the shirt I wore to the hospital the day Sarah was born – when I took my clothes off the nurse implored me to burn everything since I would not be needing maternity wear after that day and it would only remind me of how large I had been.

     But the nurse did not know the significance of the shirt! I kept it for a while, however I think I had gotten rid of it before Amanda's gestation came along.

     My dislike of sewing might have been inherited from my grandmother, Mom's Mom. Granny was of a generation where one did things with the hands – all the time. If you weren't cooking, you were knitting or embroidering, or mending.....or sewing. Granny was always making stuff to sell at the church bazaar – aprons, pot holders, sock monkeys. She was proud of the big used coat given to her one time that she remade into two or three smaller coats for her children when they were very young. So Granny sewed, and we all mistakenly thought she actually enjoyed it.

     When I was getting married, Granny asked if there was anything she could do for the wedding. So one day I asked if she could hem the groom's pants for us? I thought she would be thrilled to have something to do – a valuable task that she was so good at. Big mistake – Granny seemed insulted as she got out the sewing machine and did the hemming.

     And somehow, it happened again. When we were getting the baby room ready for Sarah four years later, Granny suggested that instead of buying curtains, I could purchase a colorful set of sheets, and they could be made into curtains. So I bought some sheets, and they were beautiful with rainbows - lots of colors! And I took the sheets to Granny's for her to make them into the curtains just as she had suggested. But she muttered once again as she got out the sewing machine, and this time I actually heard her curse! It was the only time I ever heard my grandmother use an off-color word.

     The curtains turned out beautiful, and I let the rest of the family know that Granny really would rather be asked to do anything else but sew, even if she was good at it!

     So the I hate sewing gene came from my grandmother, skipped a generation – blessing my Mom with a love of sewing and creating and being good at reading instructions, and being good at finishing what she started, only to have the I hate sewing gene manifest again in Mom's only daughter. Alas.

     The dress I kind of made myself back in eighth grade home economics class, except for the sleeves and the zipper and the hem, did get worn a few times – I think the material was a grey plaid pattern.

146 20150526 Sewing Lessons

Sesquicentennial

     In 1967 our little town of Boston, New York had a year-long celebration of its SesquiCentennial! The town was founded in 1817, and so in 1967, it was 150 years old – and that is what sesquicentennial kind of means.

     Oh my goodness – so in two years, Boston, New York will be 200 years old – I wonder if there will be bicentennial events going on?

     Well, back then, at the age of 12, I did not know when our town was founded, or what sesqui meant, or that people actually celebrated such things.

     In January of 1967, the men in the town were instructed not to shave! They were supposed to emulate the look of the early settlers in the town – and apparently, the pioneers did not shave. I think this was more of a visible way to be a part of the festivities than to really try to look like someone from 150 years earlier. Instead of wearing a button that said Boston is 150 years old, or a tee shirt that said Sesqui-Centennial! the men were supposed to go around town with beards! Furthermore, Dad said that a clean-shaven man could be penalized with a monetary fine! Of course it was not enforceable – just fun.

     Dad tried to go without shaving, but not for too long, maybe a month. Then he shaved but left a mustache. He hoped that the mustache would keep him from getting fined - Dad wanted to be a cheerful participant in the town's happenings. This might have been because he was a member of the Democratic club in Boston – and it could have been the club itself that put forth some of the sesquicentennial rules for the year!

     I am fairly sure that Mom did not like the mustache at all. I myself remember thinking it was cool – not many of my friend's Dads had any facial hair. But I guess Dad never really cared for the mustacheit disappeared as soon as 1968 rolled around!

     There is little else I remember about the sesquicentennial – I think in the summer of '67 there was a party with straw hats and barbeque and stuff like that – down by the town hall – but I might be imagining it. Mom bought a plate that says Boston, New York and founded 1817 on it – and I'm sure it was a souvenir from 1967 – and since the plate now stands on my hutch, I know it was not imagined!

    If it were not for having grown up in my small town, I might never have known what would get Dad to grow a mustache or to even contemplate not shaving; I might never have seen what Democrats can decree and actually get done; and I might never have known what sesqui means – and that's important to someone who likes to show off what little knowledge she has.

145 20150525 Sesquicentennial

Commencement

     It was 40 years ago today that I graduated from college – Canisius College class of 1975 – Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology! The first in my generation of Des Soyes. Of course, since then many Des Soyes have received multiple and/or higher degrees than mine. But I am proud to have kind of led the way. It is always amazing to see what has become of all of us after the humble beginnings of my Dad and his seven siblings, and my Mom and her two brothers!

      Graduation was in Memorial Auditorium in downtown Buffalo – the same place where we classmates had spent so many a Saturday night cheering on the Griffins in basketball. The same place, where under those folding chairs set up for graduation, was the ice that the Buffalo Sabres played hockey on.

       Our parents and extended families filled the auditorium. 

       There had already been a senior party at the school with teachers and parents; there had even been a mass to bless us all in our caps and gowns. The proceedings would have been too tritefully ceremonial if they weren't also so darned exciting!

      I had actually fooled some Jesiuts into thinking I deserved a college diploma!

     The governor of New York State was the commencement speaker. Hugh Carey – or Uncle Huey – as I called him – if he did not have that nickname, I am sure I would have forgotten by now who spoke or who our governor was at the time, (I do not remember who was the commencement speaker for high school graduation!)

      And I was likely not to remember Uncle Huey’s message that day anyway, but there were other factors involved when he actually spoke – hearing what Uncle Huey had to say was impossible.

       You see, we seniors were seated alphabetically, and our names were not announced individually to approach the stage and receive diplomas – so we were not distracted with having to get up and walk. We stayed where we were, alphabetically in our seats through the entire ceremony. And the class was not so big that I did not know anyone sitting nearby – two close friends who did not really know each other but who both knew me - guys whose last names also began with D were within chatting distance – they were close enough to goof on me the whole time.

      “What happened after the dance the other night? You disappeared!” He was talking about the Senior Ball – I actually went to a prom-like function in college! I asked a junior to be my date.

      “We were with another couple, and the guy couldn't get the car started, and that's why we did not meet you later.”

      “Do you know how phony that story is?” both guys were just about rolling in the aisle laughing at me, knowing that I was not making up this pathetic turn of events.

      “I heard you took a room at a hotel.”

      The next few lines were delivered one at a time in between the two Ds' heckling.

      “You can believe what you want; this guy was showing off this fancy car he had borrowed from a friend for the night; and he accidentally flooded the engine trying to get it started; and then it would not start at all; so he called a cab to get a ride to his own car; by then all he wanted was for us all to go home; I was dropped off at my house with nothing more than a peck on the cheek!”

      “I've tried that story a few times myself – no one ever believes it – why don't you just admit you went to a motel!”

      By that time, I was red with embarrassment from the teasing; I was stammering out stuff that coming from anyone else would have been a lie and so it was hilarious to my friends because what I was saying was so pitifully true. Both the aftermath of the senior ball and the graduation ceremony ribbing could only have happened to me!

      And in a way, this was a closing ceremony of its own – the attention the two D guys were giving me was endearing, reminding me of the four years we and all our friends had just been through. After that, our lives would go in different directions, and our friendships would not be the same, if they should last at all. But to be teased mercilessly during those final moments of college, was a just and loving closing act before commencement to the real world!

144 20150524 commencement

Prom Not

     Some of you will find this hard to believe, but I did not go to my high school junior prom!        Back in those days, you had to have a date to go to prom, and, well, no one asked me... no date.

     There were a lot of girls in my class who did not get asked to prom – the teachers said there must have been something weird in the air because it was a record number of junior girls not being asked that year!

     And somehow, ridiculously, that was a source of consolation to us!

     Now that I think about it, maybe the teachers said that every year to the girls who did not get a date for prom – yeah, a record number of them weren't asked!

     Prom was always in May, and spring break was in April. That year, the school announced that the doors of the school would be open during the days of spring break so the juniors could come and work on the prom decorations if they wanted to.

     My friend, Lynn......who also was not asked to prom, said that on the Thursday of spring break, she was going to go to the school to help with the decorations. And Lynn said that I should go with her.

     I was kind of reluctant to do that.

     You know, all my life up till then I had heard about Junior Prom and what a magical night it would be and how it would be the pinnacle of my high school years. But by spring break of junior year, it was pretty definite that I would not be attending my own junior prom. So why the hell should I help make the decorations for it?

     The whole concept made me feel like Cinderella – helping everyone else get ready for the big dance. Except even she, Cinderella, with some fairy godmother intervention, got to go to the ball! I guess that means I was less than Cinderella – Cinder without the ella!

      But then again, it was a class project, one should be a team player, one should show class spirit, yada yada yada – and I told Lynn I would go with her.

      On the Thursday of spring break, Dad dropped me off at Lynn's house on his way to work in the morning. It was very early, and no one was up at Lynn's yet. I decided to wait a while before knocking, and I walked around to the back yard so as to be less conspicuous to the neighbors. By the back door there was a small patio area with two chairs.

      And there was Lynn's cat!

      Lynn had a gray cat with white markings on its face. I talked to the cat, “Hey Little Guy, what are you doing out here? I thought you were an indoor cat?” The cat rubbed its head on my legs. What a cutie! I bent down and picked the cat up.

      Yes, I did know better. I have no rational explanation for why I chose that moment to do something so incredibly dumb.

       As soon as the cat was in my arms, it let out a nasty meow, scratched my right hand, and jumped away, running off into the field past Lynn's yard.

      As I watched it go, it dawned on me – that was not Lynn's cat!

      I looked at my hand – it was not scratched!

       Instead there was a puncture mark on the far right side of the hand........and a second puncture way way over on the far left side of my hand.

       That dang thing had bit me!

       Lynn's family was soon up, and I went inside where I saw the indoor cat with gray fur and white markings on its face. Lynn and her mom were worried that I might blame them for picking up a strange cat, but I tried to convince them that it was 100% my fault!

      We went to school. In one of the hallways, the two boys who were the artists in our class unrolled a huge mural that they had drawn for the prom. The theme our year was Alice in Wonderland – (the theme that I myself voted for – so there was that, anyway). The mural had Wonderland stuff on it and would be on the wall in the cafeteria the night of the prom. I was afraid to touch their creation, not being in the least artistic myself. The guys said it would be okay to work on the background. I probably muttered some Cinderella references at that point.

      Whenever a different classmate passed by, I would stand up, walk over to the person, and say, “I picked up a strange cat at Lynn's house this morning and it bit me. Want to see?” and with that I stuck my right hand in front of the poor hapless classmate.

      Yeah, and I wonder why I was not asked to prom?

      But the thing is, every time I showed my wound to a new person, my hand actually looked different!

      It was swelling!

      By mid-morning, my right hand was twice the size of my left hand!

      Around 11 o'clock, the skin on my right hand was stretched as far as it could possibly stretch, and yet the swelling was pushing it to go further!

      It hurt a lot. I could no longer hold a pencil or a paintbrush, and at lunchtime, I used my left hand to hold the sandwich I had brought.

      When I got home that day, I sure did not want to tell my parents about the really dumb thing I had done, but my hand was going to be difficult to hide, and besides that, I had promised different people at school that I would get medical attention (if Mom and Dad thought I needed it). So I walked up to the stove where Mom was putting dinner on one of our plates, and I said, “At Lynn's house this morning there was a cat that I thought was Lynn's cat and I picked it up, only it wasn't Lynn's cat, and it got mad and bit me.” 

      And with that I swung my huge deformed hand into Mom's view.

      She almost dropped the dinnerplate.

      But Mom managed to set the plate down on the counter before getting into full tilt Mom-mode with a performance I have remembered to this day. “Now I am going to have to drop everything and start calling doctors. Because if I don't do anything, you could die in your sleep from lack of medical attention. I have to do that. How am I going to find a doctor tonight? The family doctor we had doesn't practice anymore!”

      Yeah, Mom was royally ticked.

      We didn't have a family doctor because we did not go to the doctor unless it was an emergency. The last emergency was when Eric plucked the icicle from the eave of the house and the icicle slipped through his fingers and split his lip open. And that had been six years earlier! Got a new doctor real quick that day. (Mom also passed out all the way that day when she saw Eric's gash!). And so that doctor-after-the-emergency became our family doctor, but he had retired a couple of years before my cat bite.

      “I'll call his old number anyway. He turned his business over to someone, maybe the new doctor has the same number. But I'll have to do some quick talking to explain who we are and ask if he can see you tonight. Oh great! It's Thursday. Doctors traditionally take Thursdays off. I'm not going to be able to find any doctor today! Why did you let this happen on a Thursday?”

      I don't think Mom ate her dinner that night. She was too ill because I had ruined her evening.

      She called the old doctor's phone number which was indeed the doctor who took over's phone number, and explained the whole story: patients of the former doctor, daughter with an emergency, possibly see her that night? When Mom stopped to take a breath, the person on the other end explained that the new doctor was off on Thursdays, she herself was the answering service. Mom was mad.

      “Well, I've heard about this doctor in Hamburg who is rather unconventional. He does not take appointments! You just walk in and wait your turn. Maybe he is unconventional enough to not be off on Thursdays. All I want after a long day at work is to come home to peace and quiet. But no. I'm the mother. I have to find a doctor for my daughter who does have the common sense to not pick up strange cats.”

      Mom said these last few lines while looking for the big phone book and looking up the name of the quirky doctor she had heard about.

      Then she called his number.

      The doctor himself actually answered the phone!

      And Mom quickly sputtered out her story: family doctor retired, daughter has emergency, could he see her tonight? When Mom stopped to take a breath, the doctor told her that he is off on Thursdays! But if all I had was a cat bite, I was not going to die during the night, and he told Mom she could bring me during his office hours the next day.

      “Well, I'll have to take some time off of work, but if we get there just before his office opens, we should not have to wait too long.” Mom was relieved to have done her Mom job; her evening of peace and quiet could finally begin, and I was not going to die in my sleep!

      The next day, Mom and I were at the quirky doctor's office about five minutes before his hours began. There was already a line outside his locked door that went down the sidewalk of his front yard. I wondered how we were supposed to know when our turn was? But after the door opened and we went into the waiting room and the waiting room filled up and a line formed again outside and went all the way down the sidewalk to the street, I realized that I could easily remember who arrived after me, and when there was no one left in the room except people who got there after I did, then it would be my turn next! It was a good distraction from the pain that my hand was still woefully in.

       So after a while, it was finally my turn to see the doctor. His office was an old house, and the examining room was the kitchen of the old house. Quite handy, actually. There were cabinets and counters and a sink – the examining table was narrow enough to fit in the room without making it look crowded – all quite functional. The doctor grabbed my right hand and started pressing on the plump, swollen skin! “Got a cat bite, did ya?”

      I winced in pain. A giant tear formed in the corner of each eye.

     Then he saw the ring on my right hand ring finger.

     “Get that ring off!”

     With all the bravado I could muster I said, “The ring does not come off!” A couple of Christmases before, Mom had given me a ring – and when I put it on, the fit was a little snug, so I took it as a sign that I should never take it off again. Making a stand to the doctor like that was my way of remaining true to the proclamation I had made that Christmas morning.

      “It's either the ring or your finger, you decide.”

       The nurse and I started tugging and twisting and yanking- it hurt a lot! – and the finger was way too swollen to coax a ring that would not come off even in normal circumstances.The nurse said, "I think we'll have to cut the ring off, Doctor.”

      “No, we won't need to do that.”

      The Doc then pulled me over to the sink where he turned on the water and soaped up my hand and fingers and ring. As he twisted and yanked on the ring, the doctor explained that whenever there is a trauma to the wrists or hands or fingers it is very important to remove all jewelry immediately – otherwise there is a risk of circulation being cut off if swelling occurs. He said to the nurse, “Bring me a spool of thread!”

      “Oh I've heard of that – it doesn't work; you're going to have to cut the ring off.” And with that, the nurse handed the Doc a spool of thread.

      I tried to back away – this meeting with the doctor was getting more and more painful by the minute!

      He had a firm grip on me, and then the doctor had a firm grip on the end of the thread. He started to wind the thread around my finger as tightly as he possibly could! How many atrocities could this man come up with? Of course he had started the winding of the thread at the plumpest part of my finger – right by the ring where it hurt the most, first from the swelling and then from the yanking and twisting and now the abomination of the thread, tight thread, and soap, and the doctor lecturing and the nurse saying, “This isn't going to work!”

      When the doc had about an inch of my finger tightly tightly wound in thread, he touched the ring ever so slightly, and it slid up my finger and popped off the end!

      The nurse said, “Well I'll be! I'll have to remember that one!”

      The doctor handed me my ring. Any sentiment I had had for the ring before the trip to the sink was at this point completely gone, never to return.

      They could have cut the ring off for all I cared.

      The soap was rinsed off of my fingers and hand.

      The doctor said that the inside of a cat's mouth is very dirty, and a cat's teeth has many germs. So my hand had gotten an infection from the cat bite.

      He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and started walking me to the door.

     “Yep, a cat-bite infected hand. That's what that is. Yeah. Uh, well it's either a cat-bite infected hand, or......hmmmmm,... or it could be cat scratch fever – but if it's cat scratch fever, there's nothing I can do about it and you're going to die. We'll know in six months. Time will tell.”

       With that he pushed me out the door while the nurse called for the next patient.

       A little unconventional and quirky?

       Well time did indeed tell.

       I did not die from cat scratch fever six months later.

       And I did not die three weeks later when even up until the last hour before the prom there was still a flicker of possibility that I might get asked, and then it was gone.

       Time would tell.

       To all you guys, Hamburg High Class of 1971 who chose to take someone else to the prom, instead of me, I hope your prom story is still something worth telling to friends and family fortyfive years later. Because last month I told my prom story, the one about a cat-bite, to a barroom full of people! 

       They gave me a sincere “Aw!” after my opening line, and they laughed in all the right places after that.

        And two guys with cameras and sound equipment immortalized the story on film.

       I'm going to be on TV!

143 20150523 Prom Not

Carthago Delenda Est

     While working on another story recently, I realized that I could remember something that a classmate wrote in my yearbook from 1971 without having to go look it up! So then I started wondering if I could remember any other yearbook comments after all these years, and several came to mind.

     Cheryl's entry will stick with me forever. In my sophomore yearbook, she wrote, “you are a sweat girl”. I gave Cheryl the benefit of the doubt when I read the note – thinking she accidentally spelled “sweet” incorrectly. But Mom saw it and laughed and laughed – either I was being told I sweat a lot, or I was hanging around with a friend who did not know how to spell “sweet.” Now when I think of yearbook messages, “you are a sweat girl” instantly comes to mind.

     Jeff was in many of my classes over the years of junior and high school. I think it was junior year I sat behind him in English class. He wrote in my yearbook, “I hope you have enjoyed looking at my back as much as I have enjoyed looking at your front!” I did not pay any attention to his comment until, again, my mother wanted to know who Jeff was and what he meant with that remark? After I figured out that the comment had to do with my sitting behind him in class, it made sense. And he was not making an affront to my front – Jeff was just being clever and sweet. Wish I had told him at the time how much I appreciated the comment – who could have guessed I'd still remember it after all these years?

     M wrote “you have an unique personality” - that was her nice way of saying that we didn't get along very well. A couple of years after graduation I saw M in a dress shop in Hamburg called Guyettes. (isn't that a cute name for a dress shop? - Mom liked going in there) I was about to say hi to M when she turned her back to me! I knew I deserved that.

     “Carthago Delenda Est” is the Latin phrase that MaryAgnes was writing in everyone's yearbook junior year. It translates to “Carthage must be destroyed”. The phrase evokes the memory of Miss Collins, our Latin teacher, teaching us about the Roman wars and telling us the stories of the Greek and Roman myths

      The lilting way “Carthago delenda est” flows off the tongue made this phrase what I thought was a perfect yearbook entry for fellow Latin classmates. And I am ashamed to say this now, but when I saw what MaryAgnes wrote, I thought it was too clever not to share, so I started writing it in classmates' yearbooks also! It was not until later that I realized how wrong it was to steal MaryAgnes' Carthago delenda est. My only defense is to say I really was not claiming it at my own, but merely sharing the genius! Sorry MaryAgnes.

     Of course, now I will have to go to the yearbooks and pore over all the writings of my classmates. I'm sure more memories and stories will come of them.

142 20150522 Carthago Delenda Est

Vanessa's Mom

      The person most dreaded by the entire staff at the day care was Vanessa's Mom. And the reason Vanessa's Mom was the person most dreaded by the entire staff at the day care was because Vanessa herself was just a few months old, in the infant room, and that meant that every single teacher at the day care was going to have to contend with Vanessa's Mom at some point during Vanessa's journey through the facility.

      Now every parent is particular about the care of her or his child, and every parent will have specific issues or passions, but Vanessa's Mom? She easily held the world record for concerns shared with the staff.

      In the infant room, the teacher was told that Vanessa had a special diet and special feeding times; Vanessa was to lie a certain way in her crib with specified covers; Vanessa's Mom was concerned about the lighting, the noise levels, the daily schedule of activities. There was not a day that went by that Vanessa's Mom did not have something that needed to be talked about, and so that was how the feeling of dread came over all of us when Vanessa's Mom walked in each morning.

      My room of 18 month old kids was two classes, and two doors away from Vanessa and the infant room. A class of 12 month old kids was between us. But Vanessa's Mom seemed keen on wanting to talk to me. I would see her walk in my direction, but someone would ultimately intervene – another teacher would head her off, or one of the managers. I think Vanessa's Mom wanted to talk to me because I was a bit of a novelty at the day care – the day care teacher with a college degree – management would brag about it to parents even though the managers really didn't think very highly of me themselves, and the truth is that I was only there to be near my own children and make sure they were all right in that environment. So Vanessa's Mom wanted to talk to me because I went to college, and she was kept away from me by the managers because I tend to be flippant and they were worried that I might tick off Vanessa's Mom!

      There was an open house at the day care one evening. All the teachers were expected to be in attendance, and parents were encouraged to mill through the different classrooms and get to know the teachers. Vanessa's Mom walked in my direction, and as she began to talk to me, another teacher joined us. Now there is something I have to say about Vanessa herself – all babies are beautiful, I cannot contest that, but admittedly, some babies are more beautiful than others. And I would easily say that Vanessa was less beautiful than most any other baby I had ever seen. I think it was the scowl on her face that seemed to always be there, and the tufts of red hair that stuck out on her head – not that I'm knocking red hair, of course. I guess it was the combination of Vanessa's Mom rattling on and on forever about Vanessa's specialness and the actual sight of Vanessa herself which was really not that special at all.

      So imagine my shock when the teacher who joined the conversation between Vanessa's Mom and me at the open house asked, “When are you going to get Vanessa into modeling?”

      Oh my gosh, I almost choked on the punch I was sipping! Management was worried that I was going to say something glib to Vanessa's Mom and here was a teacher making fun of Vanessa's looks!

      And imagine my shock when Vanessa's Mom answered with complete sincerity , “Oh I'm going to wait a while before getting Vanessa into modeling. That industry can be brutal, you know. I would like to wait until Vanessa's personality is developed so they can't be molding her themselves. I think by the time she is two, Vanessa might be ready for the modeling business.”

      My eyes kept darting between the teacher who had asked the question and Vanessa's Mom. I was trying to keep a straight face. Neither of the women were kidding!

      Well I don't know if Vanessa ever got into modeling when her personality had developed on its own at the age of two, but Vanessa soon graduated from the infant room, surviving all of Mom's daily concerns, and she advanced quickly through the 12-month old room.

      One day the day care director informed me that she wanted to move Vanessa to my class, and to avoid Vanessa's Mom stressing over changes that Vanessa would be facing, causing Vanessa herself to possibly stress in response to Mom, Ms C decided to sneak Vanessa into the class without telling Mom about it!

      Her thinking was that if Vanessa was in my class for a couple of weeks without Mom knowing, Vanessa would transition smoothly. After that, Mom would be told Vanessa was moving – Mom would wring her hands a bit but then realize that her daughter was just fine.

      Sounded like a good plan. Vanessa came to my class and did very well. So after about two weeks, Ms C told Vanessa's Mom, “I have great news! Next Monday Vanessa will be graduating to the 18 month old class - a few months early, she is so advanced!"

       Vanessa's Mom said, “I don't think so.”

      “Is there a problem?” Ms C was shocked .

      “There is most definitely a problem. My Vanessa is not stepping one foot into Miss Denise's classroom – not one foot – until I have had a conference with Miss Denise!”

      Ms C felt just a tad guilty since Vanessa's two feet had been in my class for days!

      The next day I was informed that Vanessa's Mom would be coming by during naptime, and I was to chat with her and agree to whatever she had to say.

      My classroom was shared with Ms Liddy who had the 24-month old kids, and after we got everyone to sleep that afternoon, we waited for Vanessa's Mom to arrive.

      Vanessa's Mom walked in with a ceramic apparatus that had an electrical cord dangling from it.

      “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

      “No.”

      “This is a pot for potpourri. You will have this plugged in and simmering potpourri anytime my Vanessa is in the room. I will provide the potpourri. And you will have the pot plugged in whenever my Vanessa is here. Quite frankly this room smells like diapers. That smell is not good for my Vanessa's self esteem. The potpourri will make the room smell good since you can't figure out how to get rid of the diaper smell on your own. Now you must promise me that you will have this pot plugged in and simmering for my Vanessa!”

      “Sure,” I said which was a bold-faced lie because there was no way I was ever going to simmer that woman's potpourri! The mere thought of an electrical cord and hot liquid and shards from a broken ceramic pot in the same room with children still makes me shudder!

      Vanessa's Mom then continued down a list of controlled stipulations which made it clear that her Vanessa was indeed the most special child in the entire day care and had to be treated as such. Of course I agreed with them all.

      “Now, my Vanessa has IBS; do you know what IBS is?”

      “No.”

      “IBS is irritable bowel syndrome. This means that food goes in, and then the food comes out. It comes out very soon after it goes in. How often do you change the diapers on the other children here? How often to you check their diapers? Every half an hour?”

      “Sure.”

      “Well, then you must check my Vanessa's diaper every 15 minutes because her diapers are going to get soiled more often than the other children. It will not be good for her self esteem if she is in a dirty diaper. You must be checking it. Vanessa will get a rash – so I will know if you are not checking it every 15 minutes. Furthermore, I want you to realize that the food goes in and then goes out so fast that there often is not time to process a smell. So don't wait until you smell something to check Vanessa's diaper. She could be soiled without your smelling it.”

      At this point I must have gone into a mild state of shock. The next thing I knew, I was standing there in the darkened nap room with the potpourri pot in my hands, and Vanessa's Mom was walking out the door. My feeling was that things had gone well. I turned and saw Ms Liddy smiling at me. I pointed at the door and said,

      “Did that woman just tell me her kid's poop don't stink?”

      “She most certainly did. And I love how you responded when she said it!”

      Oh my gosh! I could not remember saying anything! “What?”

      “When she said her daughter's poop doesn't stink, you said that was odd because you had gotten a pretty good whiff of Vanessa when she was brought in this morning!”

      Oh dear.....management was not going to be pleased.

      This all happened in early 1990. Since then I've wondered how Vanessa has turned out – did she thrive in spite of her IBS, her Mom, the day care, my potpourri-less class, the modeling industry? If so, perhaps the scowl is gone even if her poop does smell.

141 20150521 Vanessa's Mom

Save Sherman

    There was one night Laura and I were at the Allen Bar sitting at a table with someone – I think it was one of the guys from the dorm. There was a pitcher of beer on the table, and out of nowhere, a Sherman doll appeared! He was Sherman from the Professor and Sherman cartoons that were part of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Sherman was a bespectacled nerdy student and the Professor was a dog who knew everything and who often took the both them on adventures in the wayback machine - traveling through time and teaching the viewers some twisted history. The Sherman doll on our table was plastic and bendy – like the Gumby and Pokey dolls popular then. We laughed and talked about cartoons for a while.

     And then suddenly, Sherman climbed up the side of the pitcher of beer, and fell inside!

He sank immediately to the bottom, and we screamed, “Save Sherman! Save Sherman!” Someone picked up the pitcher and began to chug the beer – then passed it to the next person at the table who continued to chug, and we kept passing until the beer was all gone and Sherman was saved!

     But wouldn't you know it? As soon as a fresh pitcher of beer arrived at the table, Sherman would fall in again and cries of “Save Sherman” were heard throughout the bar., followed by chugging, claps, and cheers.

      One Sunday evening, after having worked on a molecular biology term paper at the library all weekend, I told LR that I was going to the Allen Bar for a while. I must have known that friends were there because I was not one to walk into a bar all by myself. LR said she'd meet me later, maybe. She was working on papers too.

      Well, I was standing at the bar talking to a couple of classmates when the phone behind the bar rang, and the bartender answered, and then the bartender turned to the crowd and asked, “Is Denise here?”

      Oh my gosh, the phone was for me! But that was Laura's fantasy – to get a phone call at a bar! I took the phone, and it was LR who was calling! How could she let me get a call at a bar before it actually happened to her? And that is how it came to pass that one night a phone call at a bar was for me!

140 20150520 Save Sherman

Demske Doughnuts

      We had never noticed the bakery before that afternoon. It was a Friday at college. Laura and I had finished classes and had walked to Allens Bar a short distance from school down Main Street. The bartenders at Allens were mostly Canisius classmates, and LR and I passed the time waiting for the TGIF to begin back at the student center cafeteria. The drinking age was 18 back then, and the college actually sponsored many drinking events like Rathskellars on Tuesday nights in the basement of Old Main, and TGIFs on Fridays.

       It was a beautiful sunny day when we began our journey back toward campus, and we might have been a tad tipsy and a lot giggly. A bakery? Where did that bakery come from? We went inside and purchased 6 doughnuts – each a different kind. They were put into a paper bag. As we continued our walk back to the school, Laura and I each took a bite out of each doughnut and then returned them to the bag.

      When we got to the TGIF, we offered doughnuts to everyone we met. And when anyone yes, we opened the bag. At the sight of the well-bitten doughnuts, we would get a strange look, and then the giggles would overtake us again.

      Father Demske happened by – the President of the college – very well respected by all. We offered him a doughnut! He looked in the bag and then looked at us and gave a little smile. He did not take us up on our offer. Oh my gosh what had we just done?

      Father Demske was always a good sport – and you know, dealing with as many college kids as he did over all those years, he must have encountered much weirder stuff than a couple of silly girls with their half-eaten doughnuts!

139 20150519 Demske Doughnuts

Wild Right Turn

       My best friend in college was Laura, or LR, as she was nicknamed – initials which also stood for left and right, or Larry and Ralph, as in take a Larry at the next street or hang a Ralph. Laura was the only other person I knew at Canisius who lived with her grandmother just like I did! LR's grandmother lived in a house with her son, Laura's uncle – and they were all the way in Amherst, past UB off of Bailey Avenue – but LR, I don't think I would know how to get to your old neighborhood if I were driving around the area these days.

       We met the first  month of freshman year and started hanging out together. She was a philosophy major, and I was a biology major, and we had great conversations. We went to the college basketball games at Memorial Auditorium in downtown Buffalo on Saturday nights and afterward drove to the Park Meadow, or PM, a bar where Canisius students partied until the wee hours.

       Now, remember, these were days long before cell phones – there were land-lines and payphones for making calls, and no answering machines or caller id. And in those days, one of Laura's fantasies was to be in a bar with friends some evening, and the phone behind the bar would ring, and the bartender would answer, and then yell across the bar, “Laura! Phone call for you!”

      That would be so cool!

      One afternoon, it was just before Christmas break our senior year. LR and I were looking for something to do, and I casually mentioned, not thinking that she would take the suggestion seriously, that the biology club was having a Christmas party that night in the Health Sciences building. To my surprise, LR said that sounded like a plan! We had a few hours to wait until the party started, so we drove to a bar and maybe had one beer.

       Afterward, as we headed back toward campus, LR made a right turn that some might think was a tad wild. Then she turned sharply left into the parking lot of the Health Sciences building. A car followed us and then turned on its police light.

       “You keep your mouth shut!” Laura warned me as the nice police officer approached her car window.

       “Good evening Officer,” LR exuded with a soft, almost purring voice.

       The policeman asked for her license and looked it over.

      “Where are you ladies going?” he asked.

      “We are about to go to the biology club Christmas party.” In her ever so friendly way, Laura pointed to the building in front of us, which was indeed where the party was – but from the outside, the Health Sciences edifice was pitch black with no lights and no apparent signs of life!

      The policeman looked toward the building, and he was clearly skeptical of L.R.'s story!

      “Are you aware that you took that right turn back there rather sharp? And it looked like you were trying to evade me by pulling into this parking lot.”

     “Oh the turn might have been a little sharp; and we really are going to a party in that building!”

     The policeman shined his flashlight through Laura's window across the front seat to me,        “You haven't had much to say,” he commented.

     “Laura told me to keep quiet, “ I responded.

      He gave LR a look, and then he asked, “Have you two been drinking?”

       “Oh we might have had a beer,” Laura answered, again ever so innocently.

     “Next time, be more careful with your turns,” and then the policeman went on his way.

     She had done it! LR had sweet-talked her way out of a ticket with a crazy but true story.

     After all this time, I vividly remember the turn, the parking lot, the policeman and flashlight and questions, but I have no memory of the biology Christmas party!

138 20150518 wild right turn

Pocket Full of Stories

       One of my Pandora stations is Harry Chapin – I love it because it plays all the hippie songs I know the words to, and I sing along. Usually I am analyzing mold samples at the lab when listenting to Pandora, and the old songs give me a sense of peace. Of course, there are a lot of Harry Chapin songs that are played, and when Sunday Morning Sunshine comes on, every single time I am transported back to 1980 and my first apartment in Buffalo.

       Among my five dollar record collection played on my five hundred dollar stereo is a Harry Chapin album called Sniper and Other Love Songs. I had purchased it for the song Better Place to Be which I will talk about another time, and also for Circle which I had not known about until I went to a Harry Chapin concert at Kleinhans Music Hall , in 1979 or maybe early 1980 with my brother, Eric, and heard Circle for the first time and of course loved it. Hearing all the other songs on the album gave me a new appreciation for the artist that continues to grow to this day.

       Well, it was in 1980 that I got married. And one Sunday morning, with the sun streaming in through the windows, my husband walked over to the stereo and put the Snipers and other Love Songs album on. He put on side 2, and the first song on side 2 is Sunday Morning Sunshine. When Harry got to the line, you brought your Sunday morning sunshine/here into my Monday morning rain, my husband looked at me and asked, “why are you crying?”

       Pointing to the stereo, I managed to blurt out, “The words!”

       I thought he had put that particular song on for me! I thought he was calling me his Sunday Morning Sunshine – it was Sunday morning, the sun was shining, I was sitting there, and he purposely put that song on!

       The Hubs said, “Um, I just wanted to hear some music.”

       There had been no other thought involved than to put an album on the stereo.

       As I smiled sheepishly and dried my tears, I thought of another song, The Actress, by Melanie and the line, they loved the melodies/but they will never understand the words. And I get that. (Yeah, Melanie is a Pandora station of her own.)  The Hubs had done nothing wrong.

       When the opening notes to Sunday Morning Sunshine play on Pandora these days, I see again the sunshine in that Kenville Drive apartment, and I feel again what I was feeling that day – but then the apartment and the five hundred dollar stereo fade away, and today comes into view. The first lines in the song go like this - I came into town/with a knapsack on my shoulder/and a pocket full of stories/that I just had to tell – and with those lines, I see my present husband, and he is smiling at me; he listens to my pockets full of stories and encourages me to tell them. He is my Sunday Morning Sunshine.

137 20150517 Pocket Full of Stories

Feet in the Sink

      In the day cares where I worked, there were sinks at the level that the children could reach and wash their own hands. At the Texas day care, in my class of 18 month-old students – I had the hot water valve turned all the way off under the sink. A wise precaution.

       Now, perfect as I was as their teacher, it was still hard to keep an eye on every child at all times. One morning I was talking with a Mom, and one of the kids shouted, “Miss Denise, Johnny's in the sink with the water running!” (Not his real name). I continued to look at the Mom but said to the child, “Are his feet in the sink, or his hands?”

       Before the little girl could answer, the Mom who had been talking to me put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Oh you Poor Thing!”

       Johnny had his hands in the water. That time.

       The Mom who had been chatting with me that morning was the same one who had called the manager one afternoon within my first week of employment there concerned that I might take her own child's security blanket away. Her son, who I will call Turk, carried a cloth diaper around with him everywhere. Of course the manager got after me about it, and I tried to reassure the Mom that I would never take Turk's security blanket from him.

        Now the electrical outlets in the room all had childproof covers on them, and I did try as hard as I could to be attentive to each child at every moment, but a combination of Turk's teething which caused heavy drooling and his curiosity and determination even with a cloth diaper security blanket in one hand and my own misplaced confidence in thinking the room was safe that led to Turk receiving an electric shock when his wet fingers somehow touched something live under the childproof outlet plug!

         He let out a yell and then began crying. I was mortified! Beyond the shock, Turk appeared to be okay. The plug was put back into its proper position. How was I going to tell Turk's parents? If they were so concerned about his blanket, how were they going to react to his getting an electric shock during my watch? I wrote up the accident report. And then I heard no feedback. Surely they hated me.

       When conference time came I blubbered apologies to both Mom and Dad in person. And I was ready to hear their anger about expectations of a safe environment for their son that had not been met.

        But they were not upset!

       “He won't be doing that again!” Dad said.

       Apparently Turk's curiosity and determination were getting him into trouble at home – maybe he had been exploring electrical outlets there too. And so Mom and Dad were grateful that Turk had learned this particular lesson at school instead of at home!

       Ultimately, one never really knows how one serves!

136 20150516 feet in sink

Tiny Tots

     It was shortly after Amanda was born and Sarah and I were at church one Sunday morning when one of the Mom's mentioned a program at the church called Tiny Tots. It was available several days a week from about 9 in the morning until 2PM. If you were a member of the church and were doing something there, say a meeting of some sort, you could drop off your child no matter how young, at Tiny Tots! And if your child was over the age of 2, you could leave the child while running errands around town! It was a great child care set up complete with arts and crafts, music, stories, and a wonderful caregiver.

     It had not occurred to me before that morning that I might ever want to take advantage of such a wonderful sounding program. But the more I thought about it, the more inviting it seemed – would Sarah want to spend time at Tiny Tots, away from me?

     With much misgiving, we went to the church one Tuesday morning around 9:30. It was all I could do to open the door to the room and go in – was I doing the right thing? I wanted children more than anything in the world – it would just be wrong to ask someone else to watch either of them for me for any length of time!

     Sarah ran to the little table and sat down and began coloring.

     I filled out the paperwork, stalling the time until I would walk out the door and leave Sarah there. I said goodbye and told Sarah we would be right back. Sarah said she was fine and began waving me away. Not waving goodbye, mind you, waving as if she were shooing a fly!

     With Amanda in my arms, I slowly made my way to the door. And we went through the door which then shut closed, but there was a window – I stared at Sarah's back – she did not turn around or look the least bit upset. We picked her up at noon. Then Sarah got upset – the other kids were staying, why did she have to leave?

     After that, Sarah went to Tiny Tots about once a week, sometimes more. She stayed until 2 o'clock except for the day when she did not believe me when I said we had stayed as late as the program allowed. Sarah insisted we sit there until the room was empty – she did not want to miss any fun because of me.

     The only time I left Amanda at Tiny Tots was one morning when there was a meeting of the women's group at the church. About an hour into the meeting, a woman came looking for me – she said that Amanda had not stopped crying since I had left her in the caretaker's arms! Oh my gosh! Not only had Amanda been crying for over an hour, but the Tiny Tots instructor had been holding her the whole time! I should have been flattered, thinking Well at least Amanda loves me enough to be upset if I leave her with someone else – except that it was such a difficult ordeal for the Tiny Tots lady and even more so for Amanda!

     My favorite Tiny Tots story has to do with one day after I picked Sarah up and we were in the car driving home. I asked, “How did things go today at Tiny Tots?” And Sarah said, “I had to sit in time-out.” Well that had me curious! “Why did you have to sit in time-out?”

     “The teacher asked us not to write on the chalkboard, and I did.......twice.”

     Once we got home, it became apparent that Sarah was upset about this – the fact that she had gotten into trouble. At one point she was so upset that we sat her down, and I said, “everyone gets into trouble at one time or another at school – you just need to own up to it, forgive yourself, and move on – otherwise you will be stuck thinking you are a bad kid!”

     Well Sarah did not hear the part about forgiving or moving on. All she heard was the part about everyone gets into trouble at school sometime – and her eyes lit up, and we could tell what was coming next,

     “What trouble did you get into when you were at school, Mom?”

     Oh my gosh, now I had to give her examples! All I could come up with was that teachers sometimes had to ask me to stop talking – I did have a tendency to chat with my neighbors. “But!” I said to Sarah, “It is wrong to talk in class – especially when the teacher is talking – you should not do it even though I did.”

     Perhaps someone else could give her something juicier. With eyes still lit up despite boring her with my answer, Sarah turned her head toward her father and asked, “Dad, what kind of trouble did you get into when you were at school?”

     The Lost in Space robot was flailing its arms at this point, “Danger, danger Will Robinson!!” what in the world was Dad going to say? Well, it was a third grade boy kind of story involving matches and a note home to his Mom and Dad and their laughing it all off.

    Sarah found the tale quite satisfying, and she was able to forgive herself and move on.

135 20150515 Tiny Tots

Flood of the Century

      When we moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1986, we were in a rented house on Nowata Street – that was the road to the city of Nowata a few miles east. The location was convenient to everything, but we were not really comfortable in the house, and looking around, we quickly discovered we could well afford to buy a place. Housing costs were low due to layoffs at Phillips 66 and people moving out of town and wanting to get rid of their houses as quickly as possible. 

      Did we worry that Phillips was letting so many of its workers go at the same time that my husband was coming on board? Well he was joining the biotechnology department which was fairly new and was allegedly going to be the future – and the future of Phillips 66. We weren't feeling cocky about the new position, but we were not going to be overly hesitant about it either.

      So we started looking for a house. Bartlesville was filled with subdivisions with huge edifices on teensy tiny plots – and so we decided to look out of town. The place we found was on a dead end street with about 10 houses – our house was second to last from the dead end on the left, with two and one half acres! Both the house and the yard were huge – the backyard dipped down a little before rising back up again ending at the railroad tracks. Oh it was lovely. We decided to put a bid on it – and that was when our realtor began to advise against our getting the house.

      Did she think our offer was so low that it would insult the sellers? No. The realtor's concern was that the school system had a poor reputation. Well, the memory of the young man who wrote ricords on our box of record albums came to mind and I said to the realtor, “the schools have a bad reputation compared to what? The rest of Oklahoma?” No matter where we moved in the Bartlesville area I was convinced the schools would not be good enough for my kids, and we would supplement somehow in the subject areas where we thought public education might be weak. So why should we let a school's poor reputation keep us from a lovely house?

      We bought it and were settled in by early September – moving everything ourselves! And shortly after that, and not long after the story of the owls mentioned in an earlier blog – 2yr old Sarah kept asking me to unpack the owls one day when I was trying to get the kitchen stuff out of boxes and put away, my husband went out of town on a business trip.

      And then it started to rain.

      The rain came down a lot. In the six years we were married at that point, we only had a washer, not a dryer. Clothes were outside on the line when the rain began, and stayed there until the rain stopped, days later.

      The Caney River overflowed from the rain. Downtown Bartlesville began to flood. Then the rest of the town began to flood.

      The dip in our backyard filled up with water, and the water flowed across the yard to the next yard, and then all the way to the end of our street – the former dip was like a huge flowing ditch. Sarah and I watched the backyard, but the water never began to creep toward the house.

      One day, while it was still raining, we went out in the car and drove to the end of the street and then the end of the next street which met the major road to Bartlesville. A nice policeman stopped me there and said all the roads were closed – I needed to turn around and go back home.

      It was the Flood of the Century! How about that! If you google Bartlesville Flood of the Century, what will come up is 1986 – pictures, articles, weather reports – and we were there!

      A couple of days later when it was apparent that the worst was past, one of the neighbors stopped by and pointed to my seven months pregnant belly and said, “I bet you thought that baby would be wanting to come out during the middle of the flood!”

      I told her that the notion had crossed my mind.

      “Well, don't worry about it anymore! The eighteen year old daughter of the folks that live next door to you was helicoptered out of here yesterday – she had her baby!”

       Oh my gosh! – that was the family between us and the dead end. They had horses in the yard that Sarah enjoyed seeing and talking to and feeding grass to through the fence; and they had two girls and I think three boys, all much older than Sarah. We did not see them much, so I guess it was easy to miss that someone was pregnant.

        Don't know how I missed the helicopter, though.

134 20150514 Flood of the Century

Seventh Grade Essays

     There are two more things I remember from seventh grade English class which I can combine here because they came from the same assignment although the second is much bigger than the first. It was a writing assignment, and I do not know what the theme was, but it was understood that Miss Armstrong would be going over them rather critically to help improve our writing skills.

     After correcting our papers, she spent at least one class period, maybe more, putting different students' essays on the overhead projector to point out areas that need corrections – not to embarrass the student, but rather to illustrate mistakes that most of us make.

     I do not think mine went on the overhead, but the thing I always remember about my assignment when it was returned was that I had written an essay about Jesus! And the sentence that needed fixing was, “He was the Son of God, but He is man on earth.” Miss Armstrong noted that my tenses were wrong, and the sentence should be, “He is the Son of God, but He was man on earth.” Since then I've been careful about my tenses (and am amazed at how often they need fixing when I proofread, and how often bad tenses still get through) – but I still wonder if I was just trying to say something like, “Well maybe He was the Son of God, but on earth he's a man”? Anyway, I can't imagine now what would have provoked in me such a topic to write about for that essay!

     One of the papers that was put on the overhead, however, still pierces me to my core to this very day. It was by a classmate who was different from the rest of us – a minority, although I won't say which one here. He was a neighbor of mine and was in many of my elementary school classes. Over those years, whenever we were in conversation at all, I would bring up his ethnicity – out of nowhere I'd make a comment that was stereotypical – and it was not to put him down, I did not dislike him nor felt I was superior – I would not even say it was gentle teasing, just something to say.

     Well his essay was on the overhead projector, and included in it was a sentence or two about how much it hurts when people say things to him because he is different. He did not mention names or even say it was just one person who did that to him. Miss Armstrong lectured the whole class about how wrong it is to treat someone that way. At first I did not recognize myself because I would never hurt this classmate! And then as the words on the projected screen sank in, I realized it – I was the one who had been so awful to him – caused him this pain. If Miss Armstrong had asked him privately who had treated him that way and he had told her, then I have to say they both showed a lot of class in how they got the message to me.

     Of course I wanted to say I was sorry, to let him know I did not mean any of it in a mean way – but I was afraid to even bring it up to him for fear of hurting him again. I don't know if we ever even exhanged words again. When I tell people this story nowadays they say that I was just a kid and what I did was more age appropiate misbehavior than pure evil. But I find it hard to forgive myself, and I still wish I could tell him how sorry I am.

     A few years ago a friend asked a question that I have given a lot of thought to ever since – she asked, “What have you ever read that has changed you?” And I opened my mouth to give a list of book titles in response – but suddenly realized that there was no list. We all read, and we read to become informed; but are there single books, papers, articles that change our opinions? Our lives? It has taken all the years since then to come up with my eventual short list – My classmate's seventh grade essay is at the top of that list.

133 20150513 Seventh Grade Essays