Talking with a Boy in the Woods

My boy and I took a walk one day far into the forest. With every step, people-generated noise like voices and cars was confronted then swallowed by the sounds of the forest. Suddenly, you couldn't miss the ruckus from the river and the ticking sounds squirrels make with everything from their teeth to their claws to their cast off shells, and the give of the ground was a marked contrast to unyielding cement. 

Jon that day in the forest,
with the river - 
and the wind - at his back.

We stopped to watch the river, and a gnarled branch snapped from a tree, fell into the water, and was quickly swept away. There was something reverent, primeval, yet efficient about it. I wondered if the tree had cut the branch loose or the branch had deserted the tree; whether it was a tiny death or a swift rebirth, or a little bit of both.

"Wow, Jon," I said. "That branch just stopped being part of a tree after who knows how many years, and now it's part of a river. We just witnessed something kind of incredible when you think about it."

Jon considered that. And so it was that after the branch parted ways with the tree, our conversation stopped being mundane; it shifted away from dinner plans to hover around what his life could become, of college, and adulthood, and ambitions and dreams.

I thought of a book I used to read to him and his sister, Raggedy Ann in the Deep Deep Woods. I don't remember all the details anymore, but in the story, Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy traipse off into the forest. At some point they drink something pink, and I made a hit with my kids, who were very little then, when we made our own "pink drink" from lemonade and food color. They were so excited about drinking what Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy drank, that it was like hitting the mother lode of parenting. Delighting them is more complicated and expensive now.

Jon leaves soon, heading off to college out-of-state. When that happens, one of my branches will drop free and travel on a river to parts unknown. Will I have let go of Jon or will he have let go of me? Will it be a tiny death or a swift rebirth? 

Maybe a little bit of both.

When Will You Make an End?

My daughter just had her braces removed and got to bang a gong at the end of the appointment. The gong is huge and hangs in the busy offices of the team of orthodontists who have been managing my kids' orthodontia needs for an unexpectedly long time.  

Orthodontia - not exactly the painting of the Sistine Chapel, but close.

That's how it is with orthodontia sometimes. Your kid starts treatment and you have no idea how long it will take, and the orthodontist doesn't know much more than you. 

I'm not blaming anyone for this except the teeth. Teeth are unpredictable, hard to tame little beggars, and both my kids had problems with the same renegade tooth - tooth number 12 if your were viewing it on a dental chart or in a criminal lineup. 

My son still has his braces, his situation complicated by a sledding accident in which his right central incisor was broken off above the gum line. At the end of every appointment the technician briefs me on the progress - or lack of it. Again, this is not the fault of the orthodontia treatment, and in this case the blame is shared by tooth number 12, the right central incisor, and the sled.  

"So, how long do you think it will take?" I ask. "We really can't tell," they say. It is a similar exchange to that depicted in The Agony and the Ecstasy, the 1965 film about the painting of the Sistine Chapel. When Pope Julius II, anxious for Michelangelo to wrap things up, demands, "When will you make an end?" Michelangelo barks back, "When I am finished!"

I am a powerless pope in an orthodontics office filled with Michelangelos. I didn't need the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted on the roof of my kids' mouths, but it turns out that getting your kids' teeth where they belong is a goal almost as tricky to achieve.  

It was definitely worth it.

I started worrying one day when I watched a video in the waiting room depicting proper oral hygiene for the orthodontics patient. It seemed a bit involved and my daughter is the two-minute brush and you're done type. I imagined the bands coming off to reveal a mass of worms crawling in and out of each tooth, but as it turned out, my worries were unfounded, and my daughter's teeth were gorgeous. 

Seeing her new smile in the car mirror.

Still, my kiddo didn't really want to bang that gong, partly because she was turning twenty-one by this time, and partly because everyone looks up, claps and cheers at the noise. Since kids with braces live vicariously through the kid whose braces just came off, and their parents live vicariously through the parent of the kid whose braces just came off, I always sensed a whiff of resentment in the air whenever the gong was struck. Still, we had earned our gong moment, and I wanted all those people in the waiting room to resent us. I explained this to my daughter and just happened to add that she would be more embarrassed if I were to bang the gong for her.   

I wonder who got to bang the gong when the Sistine Chapel was finished, Pope Julius II or Michelangelo.

The Surly Bonds of Earth

I am a baby boomer. When I was six years-old, my parents booked a flight for themselves, my two brothers and me from our home state in the Midwest to Southern California where my aunt and uncle lived. It was also the sole residence of Mickey Mouse before he built himself that second home in Orlando. Knowing Mickey lived in the same state as my aunt and uncle made it the most intriguing destination I could imagine.   

Wild Blue Yonder, by Teece Aronin, available on 

products at  Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

Flying was an event back then, and all of us were dressed up. My mother looked lovely in a dress, and my father wore a suit and tie. My brothers were in the sixties' equivalent of business casual, and I was wearing a brown and white striped seersucker dress with a pair of Mary Janes. My parents bought me a pink plush wind-up elephant to take on the flight, and its trunk rotated along to the tune of Frere Jacques. 

Our meals were real food, meat and potatoes and vegetables, and the flight attendant (or stewardess, in those days) gave my brothers each a junior pilot pin. I can't remember what little token of the flight she gave me, probably a junior stewardess pin.  When my father jokingly asked the flight attendant where his pin was, she made a big fuss over applying a junior pilot pin to his lapel. She was blonde, beautiful and spoke with a lovely accent. She reminded me of Inger Stevens.

Last week, I took my daughter, Sydney to the airport so she could fly out to visit her dad and we were abruptly notified at the ticket counter that her flight had been cancelled. The reason given had something to do with bad weather near Baltimore, but I've been told that airlines sometimes do that when a flight isn't full. 

Whatever the reason, we headed home for the night. I was just grateful they could book her on the same flight out of the same airport the next day. For a while, because of computer problems, they were insisting I'd have to take her to one of the busier hubs, the kind  patterned on that hedge maze in The Shining. 

The next day, which only felt like Groundhog's Day, we approached the same ticket counter behind which stood an unsmiling, monosyllabic ticket agent. She attached an ID tag to my daughter's suitcase and pointed us toward Security.  

Syd and I were sweating it out because she didn't have her I.D., and we knew it would be dicey explaining things to TSA. Syd's an anxious flyer as it is. Just as we approached the first TSA officer, I realized that I didn't have a gate pass. I've never walked up to a ticket counter with one of my kids and not been asked if I wanted a gate pass. Granted, Syd is 20 now, but tiny as a waif and still in braces, so she looks like someone who would need a grownup to get her to the gate. 

Since I had my mind on my daughter and the intensified security measures she'd be up against, I didn't think to ask for a pass, and I think I had a better excuse than the ticket agent. The officer suggested I go get my pass while they got started with Syd. I walked up to the same ticket agent and smiled.

"I need a gate pass." My request was pleasant enough, I thought, considering my resentment of this woman.

"You didn't ask for one," she said. 

"Because it usually comes up in the converSAtion," I replied. 

When I rejoined Syd, she was standing near a lectern behind which stood a different TSA agent. He was telling her to name a landmark, and at first Syd looked a little blank.

"He means near where we live, honey."

"Don't answer for her ma'am," said the agent.

I didn't think I was. Syd answered a whole slew of questions like that while the officer relayed her answers to someone over the phone. She passed with flying (no pun intended) colors, but still had to be patted down. After that we made it to the "other side," the land of book stores, gift shops, bars and restaurants and gates. 

Syd and I each had a sandwich and a bottle of tea which cost me around $20. Silently, I longed for the days when she was delighted with brown bags of peanut butter sandwiches, string cheese and sliced apples. Sadly, she's had the audacity to grow up. 

And she wasn't the only one of us who'd been detained by TSA. When she was a kindergartner and her brother was about three, we were at the airport with my mother, waiting to be cleared for a flight from Maryland to Michigan. I'd left my driver's license at home after taking it out to scan or copy or something, because someone had mentioned that we might also go to Canada.   

My mother was in her eighties by that time and seated in a wheelchair while we waited at Security and I tried to think of what to say. When I couldn't get cleared, someone from the airport wheeled my mother to the gate while I stood there watching them disappear into the distance. A friend later suggested that if I'd mentioned that my mother was due for her diaper change, the requirement for my picture I.D. would have been miraculously waived. 

I looked around at the other passengers waiting to be screened and spotted a woman in an Army uniform who had chaperoned a school field trip with me a few months earlier. She vouched for me, displayed her own substantial credentials, and TSA let me through. When the kids and I caught up with my mother (who did not wear diapers, by the way), my pulse rate was approaching tachycardia.

Syd made the flight out to see her father without much problem considering, and when it was time to fly home, she and her dad knew to expect another round of enhanced identification measures. But when they asked her questions this time, they were all about Baltimore and the area where her father lives. He's moved at least twice since we all lived in Maryland, and Syd couldn't answer the questions. 

I got on the phone with the TSA officer and willed my head not to explode. Patiently he explained that I was the wild card that got Syd on the flight to Maryland, and her father was the wild card coming back. When she couldn't supply any solid facts linking herself to him, she was grounded. It made sense, and I was grateful not to be a TSA agent having to explain policies like this to furious parents of kids traveling without I.D. 

I offered to send a picture of her birth certificate, but the agent said he couldn't accept anything electronic. Eventually someone put a supervisor from the airline on with me who suggested I send a picture of Syd's birth certificate. I know, that's what I thought. 

"I offered to do that," I told her, "but they said they can't accept anything electronic."

"I know,'" said the supervisor, "but I'll print a copy."

I wasn't about to ask how that was any more legitimate than me texting the same birth certificate directly to TSA. I guess it's that TSA agents aren't allowed to use printers? I'm still confused, but it got Syd on the flight and that's all that mattered. 

Talking to her father later, I said, "I'm so glad I had her birth certificate."

"You couldn't have thought of that last week?" he asked, and we laughed and laughed. Actually, we didn't.

Flying isn't what it used to be. But I'll bet if Syd could have walked up to those agents and flashed her junior pilot pin, they'd have ushered her straight through.  





  

Soul Flier

How could you have grown up so fast, when the day you were born, you, grown up, seemed a million years away? 

Syd and me when she was about 13.
Photo credit: Jon Aronin

How did you get so capable, because when you were two, you needed me for everything? 

How could you have needed me for everything, then barged ahead anyway, my pigheaded angel-face, convinced that you needed me for nothing? 

And how did you get so strong, my fairy warrior princess, when there was a time that you worried about everything?

Remember that day on the bed? You said you were so afraid to die. I tried to think what could have made you that anxious. Then, you spoke of stresses from school, your parents' divorce, and unreliable friends. You cried about missing your grandma, leaving your childhood, losing your home, and growing old. 

No wonder you were frightened; you'd worried yourself full circle to confront your own mortality. And we went around and around and around, I trying to comfort you and you still not comforted.

Then I, a discontented agnostic, struggling to believe, said the last thing I could think of that might help, that after I died, I would watch over you, and that when you died, I would watch then, too, and fly down from Heaven just in time to catch your soul, that I would hold it tight against me and pilot it to Heaven. 

So far, my help hadn't helped, so I braced for your scoff. 

But you said, "You promise?"

And I said, "I promise."

A Duckling at Sea

Getting a feeling that your two-year-old has more sense than you do isn't pleasant. I had that feeling at a party for my daughter's fifth birthday. 

Jon at another party, probably the same year.

I've never known why the face-painter put that

dot on his forehead. Photo copyright protected.

My then-husband and I threw this party with the parents of one of our daughter's friends whose birthday was at about the same time. Since we were saving money by splitting the costs, the four of us decided to spring for a moon bounce. This one was purple and built to look like a storybook castle. 

That moon bounce was the delight of every moppet at the party; they were jumping, tumbling and fanny-dropping within its mesh-y, net confines and squealing with delight. But by the end of the day, the moppets were tired and the moon bounce sat empty as the children ate or entertained themselves more sedately elsewhere. 

One of the other mommies at the party slipped over to me and whispered, "The moon bounce is empty and the rental company's on its way to get it. Let's go play in it!" And even though my fellow mommy and I were curvy, good-sized women, we saw nothing amiss in the two of us frolicking in the moon bounce as though we were forty-pound five-year-olds.     

We left the house and giggled ourselves over to the side yard where the moon bounce sat, seemingly glum. The sunlight, which earlier gleamed from its purple hide, was now dimming into dusk. It was obvious to us that the moon bounce was lonely and needed two grown women in it, so we slipped off our shoes and clamored in. I was surprised at how much work it was to hop around in there, and though I was getting winded, I was having fun. A few minutes later, my son, Jon who was two, toddled over and laboriously hauled himself up into the moon bounce.

"Hi, there, Jon!" I called. The exertion and bouncing made my words come out in breathy chunks. He sat near the moon bounce entrance, rolling and bobbing, a duckling at sea. "Did you come to bounce with us?"
     
"Uh-huh," he smiled. He struggled to gain his footing but fell on his bottom every time one of us mommies landed; still, he remained good-natured about it. 

Suddenly, the other mommy lost her balance. She fell backward into the net wall which proceeded to stretch several feet in an ominous, yawning bulge then snap back to fling her across the entire width of the moon bounce. She slammed against the opposite wall which also stretched and bulged before flinging her in a sweaty heap to the middle of the moon bounce floor.

Jon, still on his fanny, placidly watched as the mommy went hurtling. Then he looked at me calmly, the lips on his little gnome face parted, and he spoke these very wise words: "I gettin' outta here, Mommy."

With that, he flipped onto his tummy, swung his legs out of the moon bounce, and with a little thump, plopped onto the grass. He padded away leaving me with the troubling notion that there went a two-year-old who had more smarts than his mother. 

And I wondered how many years I had before he'd notice.  

Be it Ever So Humble and Odd

One day, when my gal-pal, Lyle and I were still raising babies and up to our ears in diapers and baby food, she said to me, "Sometimes I wonder how many weird things there are about my house that other people notice and I don't."

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

After she said that, I wondered too, especially since we were at my house when she said it. I still wonder years later, just in a different house. I no longer have raising babies as an excuse, but still, life gets hectic, my kids couldn't care less if our house looks like we just hosted a frat party, and I'm not very handy. You get the drift.

As I write this, there is a cobweb growing ever bigger on the front porch, as if our house were practicing for Halloween. There is duct tape wrapped around the kitchen faucet, and the kitchen waste basket is in the pantry, one step down from the rest of the kitchen and out of reach of everyone but giraffes and orangutans, because when we put it anywhere else, the dog gets into it and trots the contents all over the house.

The paint is peeling off several of our interior doors, but only at about six inches up the outside edges because that is where the cats squeeze their paws in to open doors that aren't quite latched. If we were to shut the doors more tightly when we want privacy, the paint would be peeling off the outside of the doors in whichever bottom corner the door knob is on because that is where the cats "knock." Since they tend to "knock" with their claws, we can tell which of us is most popular with them by comparing the number of scratch marks. 

There are two large pieces of plywood lying in my driveway, placed there by the restoration company before they deposited a garbage dumpster over them last winter; that was because the basement had flooded. I keep meaning to call the company to have the plywood removed but I'm too busy knocking down the cobwebs and wrapping duct tape around the faucets. Household maintenance can be demanding.

Our car has idiosyncrasies too. There is a towel covering the front passenger seat because during a girls' weekend last spring, I forgot one of the weekend's many candy bars in there and it melted. Then there was a period of several weeks where the trunk wouldn't latch because I had broken it trying to attach a bungee cord, and since it didn't fly up and nothing was getting wet in there when it rained, I let it go until the car was smashed up (not my fault) and it had to be in the shop anyway. The only thing that got tiresome about not having the trunk latch were all the people pointing it out to me that my trunk wasn't latched. Sounding appreciative when you're actually annoyed is annoying in its own right. I wanted to say, "Oh, thank you, but it's fine. It's been like that ever since I stuffed my ex-husband's body in there last fall."

Anyway, I suppose life is like that for everyone to some extent. It's easy to get used to little oddities until we're barely aware of them. 

I hardly noticed that body in the trunk until I bought a bookcase at Ikea.

Tales of the Unexpected

Sometimes a snappy retort is welcomed and sometimes, not so much. Sometimes what comes from a loved one's mouth in our time of need is not what we expected to hear, and sometimes what comes out of our mouths is not what our loved ones expect either. 

Syd and Jon at that retort-ish stage.
Photo by Teece Aronin, all rights reserved. 

A few winters ago, during one of the worst winters on record, as huge swaths of the U.S. suffered through a polar vortex, I left work at 4 p.m. to take my son, Jon for an allergy shot. Then we hit the post office, tried to find our way back to an ice cream shop we like (I have no sane reason for that in the midst of a polar vortex), got lost, gave up on the ice cream shop, picked up my daughter, Syd, went to the store, then pulled into our apartment house parking lot four hours later. Everyone was a little on edge because the weather was truly awful. We sat in the car, dreaded getting out, and then I snapped.

"Great! We've been driving around for hours and now the whole evening is shot!" Jon looked over and said, "Mom, it's just one night out of thousands in your life. It's okay." I complimented Jon on being so wise. When we got out of the car, the wind hit us smack in the face. It felt like fistfuls of razor blades hurled by an unseen sadist.

"Oh, maaan!" Jon wailed. "I forgot I have to walk the stupid dog!" Watching him hustle up the walk, miserable from the cold, I called after him, "Jon! It’s just one night out of thousands in your life!" He flat-out ignored me and kept walking. I apologized later because using a child’s words of comfort against him is a low thing to do, but I was exhausted, cranky, and after all, it was a polar vortex.

One day, after I got rear-ended and my back was killing me, I asked Syd to bring me a glass of ice water and some ibuprofen. I was still a little loopy from a pain pill I'd had earlier, so as she handed the pills to me, I said, "Oh, thank you. Having you was such a good idea. Now I'm extra glad I did."

Syd smiled placidly and replied, "I'm not sure if you getting high on pain meds is a good idea. Kind of scared of what you'll say next.”

If I had thought she would say, "Aw, Mom, I love you," I was mistaken. 

This same kid sat in a high school classroom one first day of school as a girl came in, crying. Syd didn't know her, but she got up from her desk, walked to the girl and asked what happened. The girl explained that she'd just been bullied. "Do you need a hug?" Syd asked. The girl said she did, so Syd hugged her then stepped back and quipped, "Who do you want me to beat up?" I expect that show of support to her classmate will get her off the hook with the Universe for what she said when she handed me my pain pill.

Being a later life parent has its challenges but rarely do you expect them to come in the form of age-related sarcasm from your own kids. I was crossing the room one day when Jon, lying on the floor watching TV, reached out and wrapped his arms around my ankles. I smiled down at him, expecting an affectionate remark. What I didn't expect was, "I got your legs! Well, not exactly - maybe in another 40 years!"

Jon was an experienced quipster by that time, having tried out his early material on his grandmother when he was three. He was sick and I left him in the car with my mother while I ran into the pharmacy to pick up his prescription.

"Grandma," he said, "I'm gonna throw up."

"Just a minute, Jon," my mother said, scrambling around and searching for something he could vomit into. It took a minute, but she came up with an empty fast food bag, got out of the car using her cane, opened his door, leaned in and heard, "But not today."

Could there ever come a time when thinking of those moments with my kids won't make me smile? Maybe.

"But not today."

Certainly not today.

Bridge Years

The day that would have been my mother's 93rd birthday passed in January. The second anniversary of her death fell in February. She is still the first thing to slip into my consciousness at waking and the last to cross the backs of my eyelids, with the good and the bad and the slights and the love, just before I sleep. 

I have two kids in their upper teens, and lately I'm comparing my mother's situation when I was a young adult to the ones I face with my children. As I write this, my daughter is taking a "bridge year," in her case, a break between high school and college. Like many young people, she’s anxious about setting sail and hesitates over her options, even though I point out - more often than is helpful - that she doesn’t have to declare a major until later. Next year, if she's ready, she'll start at community college then head to Michigan State. That's the loose plan anyway, and it's given us a lot of time together. When we laugh, we are so like my mother and I, all those years ago.

Though I lived on campus and loved dorm life, I was home much of the time. I expected my parents to pick me up on Friday afternoons and take me home for the weekend - almost every weekend - a three-hour round trip. On Sunday nights, as though for the last time, I'd hug and kiss them and shout goodbyes, and they'd be gone - until they came back five days later. If they felt even the slightest discontent at doing all that driving, it never showed. All I saw were two happy, tired people. They would ask me how my week had been, and I, a merry egotist, would spend the next two days telling them. Much of that time was spent curled up next to my mother in my parents' bed, spilling the tea about all the things my father would rather not hear. We'd lie in that bed laughing and talking until my bone-weary dad would come in to say I really should be in my own bed.    

As to bridge years, I took one, too - between earning a BA and earning an income. My parents approved, provided I used that year to develop my writing skills, skills I'd just recently discovered. I'd sit at our dining table, portable Brother typewriter before me, plagiarizing a book on Laurel and Hardy. The plagiarizing wasn't intentional, and I'm sure my manuscript contained some embryo of an original thought. Still, if they ever peeked over my shoulder while I typed, my parents must have slipped away afterward to weep.  

I landed a full-time job as an employment agent when I was 23. I had gone to an agency for help finding a job and was hired on the spot. And that job proved to be a keystone in my career, so the bridge in my bridge year didn't collapse after all, except that I didn't need writing skills until much later. 

The other night I dreamed that I was an adult living with my parents when it occurs to me that I really should get a job. My mother asks if that means I'll be getting my own place, too. I tell her that I'll live at home while I train for the ideal job, and even after, since it will take time to save a down payment on a house. Upon learning that I plan to move out eventually, my mother sounds lighter than she has in years as she chats on the phone, sharing the news with friends. Later in the dream, I'm telling my father that he is absolutely correct to throw out all the knick-knacks and curio shelves before he redecorates the house, and then I question his choice of wall paint. I honestly did dream that dream exactly as described and hope I wasn't that big a jerk in real life. 

My mother and I were always close and are even now, in our own way, since some days she feels as real to me as if she were alive. As she lay dying, I drove almost 600 miles to surprise her. When I walked into her room, it was late, the lights dim, and two aides were struggling to make her more comfortable. They weren't struggling because she was hard to please; my mother was unfailingly appreciative and expressed her gratitude generously. But there wasn't a part of her body that wasn't breaking or broken. She was so ill and trying so hard to communicate her needs, that she didn't see me slip in. I sat by the window and when one of the aides looked up, I signaled her to keep quiet. When they left, my mother lay there, eyes closed. 

"Hi, Mom," I said in my best hushed-but-happy tones. It seemed that even a voice, too loud or harsh, might tear the tender body in the bed. She opened her eyes, looked toward me and started to cry. I cried too. I cried harder when, she said, "Oh, Mom. Mom." 

I gathered her in my arms and kissed the top of her head.

"It's Teece," I murmured against her hair. "I love you. I'm here now. I'm here."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she sobbed, and I wondered if she minded that my tears had wet her scalp.  You wonder a lot of odd things when you hold a dying parent. I doubt she minded, though. Very few things had ever bothered her. It took something as big as death to trip her up. For a while, I regretted telling her it was me when she thought I was her mother, but I think for her, by then I was child and mother. Besides, this was her bridge year, and who am I to say she didn't see her mother?    

Now that I've thrashed all this around in my head a few thousand times, I've vowed that the next time someone tells me about their kid who's studying abroad, nailing down a second master's, I will proudly share that my child might be living with me for years. 

Laura Done Died

For years I've had a love affair going with old-time radio. Shows like Suspense, The Jack Benny Program, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Your's Truly, Johnny Dollar - they all transport me to a place where my imagination does the work - if you could call it work. 

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

And because radio ruled for decades, my mind dances to places where Art Deco might have been new-ish, as could Colonial furniture, or Mid-century modern, and atomic design motifs. I love it all, and somehow, those decades seem safer - until you factor in for things like the Great Depression, Jim Crow, World War II, and the Cold War. Damn reality.  

I wish my kids could slip away into these shows like I can; I listen to them in my car on Sirius XM, where a host named Greg Bell airs them in what feels to me like something close to Heaven 24/7. My kids are politely tolerant of the Way Back Machine I'm running out of our dashboard, and they typically plug into their phones when I'm listening to these shows. 

Last Saturday my son was at a sleepover, leaving my daughter and me to what we call our "girls' nights." These girls' nights aren't what you might imagine. They're usually us ordering pizza and binge-watching shows like Buzzfeed Unsolved, Will & Grace, and the show we're currently crazy about, the "re-imagined" One Day at a Time. 

But sometimes on girls nights, we like to take drives in the country. We sing along with the radio at the tops of our lungs or I listen to my vintage radio shows while she plugs in to something newer. We still talk off and on, but the backdrops are these two different worlds into which we've chosen to escape while I drive. 

So after Syd and I dropped Jon at the sleepover, we set off for the open road. There was a big moon, a clear sky, and unusually warm temperatures for late January. All these elements combined to give me a kind of contentment I don't usually feel. I was all wrapped up in an episode of Inner Sanctum hosted by the cheeky Raymond Edward Johnson, and Syd was plugged in nice and snug, listening to music and texting. About halfway through the episode, she piped up and commented on the fate of one of the characters: "Laura done died," she quipped.

My heart soared. Could it be my darling daughter was, dare I say, listening to my radio show? Note that I say "my radio show" as though I were Jack Webb. I decided to encourage her and played along.

"Don't be too sure of that. These shows have a way of misdirecting you. You might get a surprise!"

In the end, even Raymond was surprised - surprised and disappointed by what proved to be a total lack of murders and how there wasn't "a drop of blood spilled all evening." Had this opportunity to engage my daughter in a sliver of my world just fizzled? After all, she had grown up under the shadow of the Twilight series and others of its ilk. This show - the ending anyway - might have been a letdown. After a few minutes, I asked her. 

"Syd, did you get into that story at all?"

"Sorry, Mom, not really. Except for that one little part, I didn't even hear it. My friend, Juliana texted me then started a group chat where she introduced me to someone she thought I'd like. That person ended up liking me, but I didn't feel the same way. It was a whole big mess. I was trying to get out of it without hurting anybody’s feelings. Now I’m totally drained."

And not even by a vampire. I stared at her, my mouth open.

"All this happened just now? You got fixed up with someone, went on a blind date, got to know this person enough to know it wasn’t a fit, and then broke it off - all on the phone and all inside an hour?

"Yeah. I guess I kind of had my own drama going on."

We drove home and binge-watched Netflix. Syd still occasionally fiddled with her phone - probably nailing down a four-year degree, getting married, and having my first grandchild - all at the same time.

Mercurochrome and the Mothers of Spring

All hail the Mothers of Spring! They were that fast, fierce, elite team of first responders always on the scene whenever their baby boomer kids bashed themselves up. The Mothers of Spring weren't real in the sense that they were a formally organized group - I made that up - but they were very real in every other way, especially to any child who ever cried out for hers or his while sorely in need of something akin to an Army medic.

Graphic by Teece Aronin

The Mothers of Spring are so named for the super-human ability to spring into action at a moment's notice, and also because, where I'm from, they were at their best during the spring season. You see, in my neck of the woods, the United States Midwest, Mothers of Spring shone brightest on those glorious days of April when it was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade. These are the days when children get so carried away by the beauty of it all, and too dazzled by the light, to look where they're going, and collide with something hard, like a section of buckled sidewalk. The Mothers of Spring deftly bandaged up their wounded warriors, first applying enough antiseptic to sterilize Lenny Bruce's toothbrush. And yes, Bruce did kiss his mother with that mouth.

Down through the annals of time the Mothers of Spring dabbed every boo-boo deemed in their mighty judgment as appropriate for it, with Mercurochrome.

Mercurochrome was a reddish-orange colored tincture that, once dried, became the reddish-orange skin stains kids of my generation wore as badges of honor. The cooler or more scrappy the kid, the more Mercurochrome stains he or she sported, or, conversely, the klutzier the kid was perceived as being. Baby boomers know what I'm talking about. 

In 1998, the Federal Drug Administration challenged the authority of the "Mothers of Spring, Mercurochrome Division" when it found that Mercurochrome was "not generally recognized as safe and effective. Mercurochrome wasn't flat-out banned, but it did get a lot harder to find. The comely flower-wreathed heads of the Mothers of Spring, especially those who were traditionalists or baby boomers, snapped up as one at this news, and many of the mommies yelled, "What the h€##?"

It turns out that Mercurochrome didn't get that first syllable, "merc," from nowhere. It got it because Mercurochrome contains mercury, an ingredient no self-respecting fish would be  caught dead with. While Mercurochrome didn't seem particularly hazardous when used as directed, it probably wasn't doing kids a whole lot of good. 

In an episode of I Hate Chris, the sitcom based on the childhood recollections of comedian Chris Rock, someone yells, "Chris got hit by a car!" and Chris' mother shouts, "I'll get the Robitussin!"

Robitussin is another must-have in the medicine cabinet of every good Mother of Spring.

According to My Specs

Last week for the first time, I couldn't find my glasses - because I wasn't wearing them. 

I might keep a few extra 

pairs of glasses around the house - 

or around my face. 

I yelled for my daughter who searched while I trailed her, whining over and over that I couldn't find my glasses without my glasses.

When my daughter found my specs, I put them on with the nerve-racked, shaky-handed gratitude of someone handed nitroglycerin tablets in just the nick of time. I sat on the edge of my creaking old quilt-covered bed, and it hit me: 

- I'm a woman of a certain age. 

- I need my glasses to find my glasses. 

- The bed wasn't creaking, it was me!

Then I realized that glasses had been dangling my future dotage before my failing eyes for years. 

I didn't have children until I was in my forties. When I was forty-three and getting an eye exam, the optometrist broke the news that it was time for my first pair of bifocals. Hand to God, the words that flew from my mouth at that moment were: "I can't need bifocals - I have babies at home!" 

For years I'd thought that dual umbilical cords were carrying sustenance from my ovaries to my eyeballs and that having children that late in life, my eyeballs were returning the favor. But for that to be true, my inner workings would have to look like an Escher print. 

Then there was the adult movie with a scene that depressed me for years. This movie (which I might have heard about, not necessarily seen!) depicted women, age 50-plus, getting a lot of, shall we say, attention, from younger men. A woman in one of the vignettes was wearing reading glasses and never took them off despite them slipping ever closer to the end of her nose. Now I understand that she didn't take them off because she needed them to see what was happening.

Forgetting where I've left my glasses is bound to happen again. And blaming my glasses, as though they're at fault by forgetting where they put my face, won't help. It's time to accept the facts. I'm getting older. 

But that doesn't mean I can't still love who I am, and even who I see whenever I look in the mirror.  And it doesn't mean I can't see myself in the best light possible even if I need the best light possible to see myself. 

We crawl, then we walk, then we walk a little slower. All the better for seeing what's most important and what is truly beautiful.  









  

Heart Murmur

When my mother was 91, sick, weak, and giving up her life, I wanted to tell the healthcare workers the things I knew that they did not.  

That she once had a heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and was a redhead with freckled arms. 

That I had pictures of her, looking beautiful, like a starlet, playing badminton in her bathing suit and reclining in the sun. 

That she was so quick to laugh - but never at someone's expense, that she met people where they were, openminded, fully expecting to embrace them, and that, even in my teens, when I "should have been" rebelling, I would curl up with her at the end of the day and spill every drop of tea in the pot.   

Her caregivers could not have known that when I was seven and had a tonsillectomy, she spent the night by my hospital bed because the staff couldn't get her to go home - this, in the days when kids were kept overnight, and their parents booted out. 

Her nurses and techs knew none of that and were kind to her anyway. But one impatient word, one careless yank on her gown, one exasperated sigh in her direction, and I would defend my mother as she had defended me in the face of child-hating neighbors with perfect yards and the first-grade teacher who said I couldn't read - with all the conviction of an outraged mother bear. 

Because our days came and went like heartbeats, but then there was a murmur, and now I saw my mother as she had once seen me. 

The Long Arm of the Law

What do Matt Dillon, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and my mother have in common? Each could put the fear of God into any gunslinger, or in the case of my mother, into her runny-nosed, mercurochromed, wisenheimer kids every time one of them lipped off at another. None of us would have dared lip off at Mom. 

You could be in any room in our house and my mother could rap you in the back of your head from any other room in the house, and not take so much as one step in your direction.

You'd be standing in the middle of the living room basking in the glow of having just called your brother a sticky stalactite booger, Mom would be in the kitchen and WHAP.

She could bounce braids with one of those four-fingered love taps, love taps that seemed devoid of any love short of the kind in Scared Straight. These raps in the head never hurt, but they got our attention. And in truth we knew she loved us with everything she had.

Eventually my brothers and I resorted to experimental methods of insulting each other hoping to fly under our mother's radar.

We tried whispering our insults upstairs when Mom was sweeping the sidewalk . . . and WHAP.

We passed notes to each other in the basement while Mom was in the bathtub and . . . WHAP.

We coded messages to each other using secret decoder rings while Mom was next door having coffee and . . . WHAP. 


I wish I could describe to you what these encounters with our mother looked like, but it's a little like that problem people have after near death experiences when they find human speech wobbly, puny and inadequate to the task of describing something so astonishing.


One day, years after we'd grown up, my brother was driving somewhere with his kids, my mother, and me. My little nephew was on the driver's side in the back seat and my mother was on the passenger side up front. Then my nephew said something of which my mother disapproved and  . . . WHAP. My nephew never saw it coming.

"Whoa! What was that?" he yelped, not hurt, but surprised.

"That son," said his father, "was the long arm of the law."