While Black

I was standing in a hotel elevator in Columbia, Maryland headed to the lobby. A black adolescent male stepped in shepherding a gaggle of five or six kids; cousins and siblings, I assumed. His charges were no older than eight with the smallest, the only girl, about four. The adolescent doing all the shepherding was as tall as a man, but his facial features said he was about 15. All of them were dressed for the pool. The elevator doors closed.

Image Copyright, Teece Aronin

"Wow, it looks like you guys are going swimming," I said to the younger ones.

"Yeah!" the goslings chorused.

"You are so lucky," I said. "I'm hoping that I get to go tomorrow."

The young man and I exchanged smiles. He spoke to the goslings softly and with a tone of bottomless patience.

"Now, listen to me very carefully," he said, and amazingly  they fell silent and all the little faces tipped attentively to his. "When we get to the lobby, we're going to be very quiet." His index finger rested gently against his lips and the thought struck me that this was a kid who lived his whole life gently.

"Okay!" the gaggle promised.

The young man looked at me and sighed. "All I can do is tell them, and know that it probably won't go well."

"You are doing a really great job," I told him.

When the doors opened onto the lobby I waited because one of the little boys was darting off the elevator. The young man in charge stopped him.

"We let the lady go first," he explained.

As I stepped off the elevator, the words, "Thank you sir," exited my mouth as naturally as if the young man had been an old one.

Behind me, the gosling protested. "Why did I have to wait?"

"Always be a gentleman," I heard as I walked away.

I got in my car thinking of a neighborhood boy who was a friend of my kids in what felt like another lifetime. His name was Paris and like the young man on the elevator, Paris was black, tall and mannish-looking. The last time I saw him he was 12. He was a little younger than my daughter, Sydney and a little older than my son, Jon. He spoke softly and had a dry sense of humor.

One day I was driving with the three of them in the backseat. Jon found a cereal bowl back there and put it on his head.

"Look! I have a bowl for a hat!"

Drawled Paris wistfully, "I wish there was milk in it."

Paris had a younger sister named Maya. Maya was very little and hadn't been around me much, so at her birthday party, fully expecting her to shy away, I asked, "May I pick you up?" And Maya shot her arms up in the air as happily as if I'd offered to take her for an airplane ride. 

One time my then-husband and I took Paris with us on a weekend trip. He, Jon and I were watching the news where one of the top stories was about someone's insistence on using the N word as part of his right to free speech.

"Jon, change the channel please," I said.

Paris' expression was even more serious than usual. "Thank you, Mrs. Aronin. You know, that word is offensive to people like me."

"It's offensive to me, too, Paris."

"What do you mean, people like you?" asked Jon.

"Black people," explained Paris.

Jon leaned back for a better view of his friend and looked astonished. "You're black?" he gasped, dead serious.

Not long after Paris' weekend away with us, his mother learned she had terminal cancer. She moved out-of-state with Paris and Maya to where they had family.

The night they left, Paris gave each of us something to remember him by; I got a "rock formation" from his aquarium and a can of Planter's peanuts. Maya gave the kids her hula hoop. When Paris' mother put the kids in the moving van and literally drove into the sunset, it was one the bleakest times the kids and I had ever known.

Paris' mother died soon after, and Paris and Maya moved in with the extended family. He and the kids keep in touch, but only sporadically.

The day after my exchange with the goslings, my daughter and I were in the hotel lobby. In walked the young man with four of his charges. 

"Syd, that's the kid I told you about," I whispered. "Doesn't he remind you of Paris? I still can't get over how well he handled all those kids."

"You really should go speak to him, Mom," she said. They were in a snack shop near the hotel entrance. The young man was patiently guiding the younger ones through their choices. I walked up to them.

"Excuse me," I said. Despite my smile, they all looked a little startled so I addressed the goslings first. "I was in the elevator with you last night, and I just wanted to compliment each of you on how grown up you all acted. You guys are pretty impressive kids."

"Thank the lady," the young man prompted.

"Thank you!" they chimed.

The little girl put her arms around my waist and laid her head against my side.

"And I wanted to tell you," I said, looking at the young man, "that you have a gift for working with little ones and it's obvious how much they respect you."

He looked shocked, then relieved, then delighted. Did he think I was about to criticize him? He put his hand over his heart and thanked me. I walked back to my daughter.

"Whoa, Mom, the woman working at the front desk was eyeing you like you would not believe."

I glanced over and saw that she was a young black woman.

"Probably thought I was harassing them for 'shopping while black,'" I said. "You know what I mean, right? Driving while black, running while black, walking while black. She probably thought that white woman better not accuse those kids of stealing."

"She was right to be suspicious," Syd sighed. 

"Yup, I know." I sighed too.

I wondered if that young man's parents had felt the need to teach him what so many black parents teach their already law-abiding kids: to keep their hands out of their pockets whenever they're in stores, to keep them visible if pulled over by a cop, and to be careful where and how they run. I'm sure there are lots of other lessons, too, ones I'm too white to have thought of. 

You know, we can argue until we're blue in the face, instead of whatever color we were born with, about the past acts of both sides, but children like Paris, and that kid at the hotel have to live through the present before they can live in the future and be the kinds of young, black men who'll help break the stereotypes.  

Paris was awfully young when his mother died. I hope she had time to teach him all the lessons.

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. 

Absence Note

I've been worried a lot lately. I've been so worried in fact, that it's taken me from my blog entirely. The only times I've thought about Chipped Demitasse over the course of the last few weeks is when I kicked myself for neglecting it. This blog is very important to me yet I've been entirely absent from it.

A lot has been going on. My mother, who is dearer to me than even a wordie like myself can express, is facing serious health challenges. And I'm a single, working mother of teenagers, one of whom has temporary but difficult health issues of her own.

If being a single, working parent with a sick mother and a sick kid and all the responsibilities those things entail weren't enough, I decided to jump ship from the financial Titanic I call renting and am in the process of buying a house.

Buying this house included a three-day period of torturous anxiety where I obsessed over my monthly cash-flow, fearing it would become an even smaller trickle than it already is once I traded the "freebies" of renting (heat, maintenance, etc,) for the "costies" of home ownership. I earn a perfectly fair wage, but face it, life can be expensive for single parents. Those three days worrying about money are the kinds of times that try the souls of single, working parents and prospective home-buyers.

The utility bill was one of the things I worried about. I have no idea what heat and AC will run in this new place. The seller, as luck would have it, winters in Spain and summers in Northern Michigan, so there is no recent, realistic history of the house's energy use. And someone with the financial means to winter in Spain probably wouldn't turn down the thermostat at night even if he was here. I got so stressed-out over this phantom utility bill that I researched the cost of firewood in case our main source of heat had to be the fireplace. I'll love having a fireplace again; I just didn't want to have to sleep on the floor in front of it.

"Ugh," muttered my tried soul. "Ugh."

Then yesterday I sat myself down and lovingly chewed myself out. I picked up my smartphone, went to "notes," and tapped out a list of ways this house will benefit the kids and me in quality of life alone. So, not even thinking about financials, here is some of what I came up with:

- A two-car attached garage with two steps into the kitchen. On grocery day, that would eliminate the current trek across what feels like a football field in the summer and tundra in the winter, followed by a knee-grinding, nose-bloodying three-story ascent to the apartment. This aspect of renting, I decided years ago, is why God made teenagers.

- A semi-finished basement perfect for tossing said teenagers when I need some me-time. As a renter, me-time at home could be had only in my bedroom, or, if I needed quiet too, in the bathroom with the door closed and the fan on. I once consumed two glasses of Merlot and a Hershey bar with almonds while sitting on the lid of the toilet.

- Hardwood floors and a level, fenced-in back yard for our dog who has accidents in the apartment when nobody reads the signals in time to haul her down the three flights of stairs, like a grocery bag in reverse, and out to the football field/tundra in time to do her business.

- Money saved on dinners out, one of the few luxuries I allowed the kids. Their lives had changed so drastically when my husband and I divorced. I moved them out-of-state because we lived in a region with such a high cost-of-living, I couldn't find a job that would support us in anything higher than near-poverty; sadly, I'm not exaggerating. But with a back yard, we can roast hotdogs and marshmallows, and maybe restaurants won't seem that important anymore.

The kids and I still laugh about a night years ago when we were still a nuclear family. We were out on the deck roasting marshmallows when my daughter's caught fire and in her surprise, she whipped her stick behind her. The marshmallow hurdled through the dark, blazing like a meteor. To kids, mine anyway, laughing yourself sick over a fiery, flying marshmallow beats a restaurant hands down. 

Thinking about all this, I calmed down. Then I did the math I had done days ago but had gotten too freaked out to remember I had done. I calculated that with a fixed-rate monthly mortgage roughly half the amount of my rent, and with rent going nowhere but up, there was no way, short of buying in Bizarro World, that a house wouldn't be better for me financially. And I'm grateful to have a bit set aside so that unexpected maintenance costs won't be AS big a disaster.

Those three days of abject terror taught me some things. First, when I examined the benefits of buying the house, my blessings politely raised their hands asking to be counted - blessings like my kids and the fact that I can buy a house at all.

With blessings like those, why should I worry? Besides, thinking is helpful; worrying isn't.

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."

Is it My Fault He Was a Fraud?

I love men, but like unrefrigerated mayo at a Fourth of July picnic, men don't love me back. 

I'm still sorting out an experience where there was enough of what I can only call malevolent relationship weirdness going on that for just a minute, I wondered if it was my fault.  

Was it my fault that after nearly a year of dating a man, he told me something jaw-droppingly "surprising" about himself (no, he wasn't married) followed by his unilateral decision that this issue was too big an obstacle for a continued relationship? And all just one week after encouraging me to be freer with him? 

When he told me all this I cleverly pointed out: "But this is just one week after you encouraged me to be freer with you." 

It seems that when I became freer with him, I became happier with him and we couldn't have that in part because the surprise he'd just shared, aka the bomb he'd just dropped,  might not be conducive to my continued happiness. 

When asked, "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" he replied, "Because you couldn't have handled it sooner."

Interesting how Jack Nicholson here knew what I couldn't handle when I'd handled much bigger bombs from much better men. 

"What do you want to say to me?" he asked, dipping his head tenderly to one side so that it appeared he really cared.

"I have nothing to say to you," I replied.

"Well, if you did have something to say to me, what would it be?" he coaxed.

I won't quote myself here because my response was lengthy and contained a lot of Fs. 

He smiled and said he understood.  

It would be a huge leap for me to imagine how this man could profess to know what I could or could not deal with much less understand how I felt. For me it had as much to do with the deceit I perceived as the revelation itself.  

And that's where I come in again: Was this somehow my fault?

Maybe it was and maybe this is the reason: Maybe I just happened to attract a man who knew not that his secret was something I couldn't handle, but that it was something I should never have to handle. And instead of being open with it, or better yet, not pursuing me in the first place, he helped himself to almost a year with me under false pretenses.

In short, maybe I'm the reason because I'm the one who just happened to attract a fraud.

Defending Facebook: My "Charmed" Life

If Facebook gets you down, makes you feel your relationships, your family, your furniture, your holidays don't quite measure up, or if you think everyone on there is a shallow bunch of fakers, please understand: You aren't privy to everybody's backstory. 

On one of many road trips back to see my mother. 
Photo copyright, Teece Aronin

I post pictures of my kids baking cookies as the dog watches with flour on her face. I make sure you wake to photos of my cat, stretched in feline repose across my bed. I choose pictures that show most cheerfully or poignantly or humorously how well my kids and I get along.

What you don't see is everything that came before, like a tsunami crushing our lives. Life fell apart, and what you see on Facebook is the repair work, the reassembly, the cleanup - with me, the mother, who never knew a damned thing about how to do any of this - as team captain by default.

There was the end of a marriage to the man who fathered these children, who helped build a home only the most tangled of crossed stars could destroy and did. There was me scrambling to find a better job before our house sold out from under us. There was me networking in two different states, first the kids' home state and next mine, to find that job. 

There was the kids having to leave their father. There was the kids having to leave their grandmother. There was me having to leave my mother when I'd always planned to be there as she aged. There was the night before we left when she broke the "no open flame" rule at her assisted living facility, lit a votive, and joined hands with us around the flame. Then she spoke with a smile of how grateful she was that we had been near her all those years and how she would pray for our trip to be safe.

Then there was the 500-mile move away from every warm thing my kids had ever known.

There were the months on end where I swore I was piloting the kids through hell only to learn that they were guiding me. There were the endless kindnesses of family and friends who took us in, shored us up, and gave us hope.

There was Facebook, which became a way to document the restoration. The place I laid our trips to cider mills and pickle festivals and county fairs as though they were flowers and Facebook was an altar. 

It was a place where the Facebook friends who truly knew me tracked our progress and supported the effort, and where those whose newsfeed I clogged, viewed the work, neither knowing nor caring that there was any work in it.

It was the place I showed off my new sofa with framed Rothko prints hung perfectly level right above - and where at least five nail holes hid behind each print even though I measured. It was a place where few knew it took five years to save the money for that sofa because I was terrified of credit card debt. It was somewhere just a handful of people were aware that the sofa's predecessor had belonged to my aunt, was chewed up by our dog, and that the prints came from a thrift shop and cost $12 each.

I, who loved to write and aspired to be a blogger, developed my "voice" on Facebook, found rhythms for my words, and learned how good it felt when my posts made people laugh. It was a place where my friends nurtured the writer sapling until it was strong enough to launch that blog. 

Anyone who didn't know me well might have thought: 'What a great little family; I wonder what happened to the marriage.'

For the record, the marriage was lost in the tsunami.

But I had Facebook where I documented our trips to see my mother and my ex-husband, where friends could see how well he and I worked together for the sake of our children, and everyone could wonder just how much was exactly as it seemed. 

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer - on Purpose!

Holiday Season 2015 is upon us. Yes, Thanksgiving is finished cramming its accidentally-left-in-the-bird-giblets down our throats, the menorahs are back on their shelves and St. Lucia has blown out the candles on her head-wreath. But we’re still looking at Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s – and that’s assuming I haven’t forgotten any. Oh, and Boxing Day, but that's Britain and Canada, so it doesn't really count.

Me, right after getting drummed out of the
elf corps for insisting on wearing black.

Have I forgotten any? Maybe, and this time last year, I’d have been too frazzled to know the difference. This year I’m too tranquil to give a fig.

But whether I stay calm or not, I’ve decided the holidays have been responsible for way too much upset in my life and this year I’m done with that nonsense. This year, I don’t care if Santa falls off the roof and dies; it’s not going to get to me. Even if he lives and sues, I’m staying zen about it all.   

We let the holidays stomp all over us with their big, black, rubber snow boots, and come to think of it, it’s not the holidays' fault; it’s ours. By ours I mean the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, the retailers, all of us. We either make the holidays hell (retailers and Black Friday shoppers) or we allow our holidays to become hell (normal people and Black Friday shoppers).

Blame it on my baby boomer mentality if you will, but I don't remember Christmas pressure starting so early when I was a kid - I don't think it did, anyway. Or maybe my parents just didn't buy into it so I wasn't aware of it. These days we allow shopping chains to start ho’ing us around in their greedy grips before our jack-o-lanterns are moldy. We start worrying that our homes don’t look like the hotel in White Christmas. If we’re Christian we start resenting our Jewish friends for getting off so easy and if we’re Jewish, we think it would be cool to get more presents for once.

This doesn’t even factor in for Kwanzaa or St. Lucia’s Day. In fact, the real holiday miracle is that the faithful haven't burned the world down at least once by now.  

Boxing Day is the only winter holiday I can think of that doesn’t involve a lot of candle-burning, but still, every year, people beat each other senseless thinking they’re supposed to be boxing like boxers. Or they smack each other stupid with empty, leftover gift boxes. It’s TRUE. (No it's not.) But who really understands British and Canadian holidays besides the British and the Canadians?

Here’s the reality for far too many of us this time of year: Helpless and hopeless, we throw ourselves under the next one-horse open sleigh that comes along. And most people don’t know this, but the song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is based on a true incident which happened in 1947 when a stressed-out grandmother named Iva Haddit threw herself in front of a rogue reindeer at a petting zoo in Minot, North Dakota; all this in an effort to land herself in the hospital until the holidays blew over. That’s true too! (No it's not.)

This year I’m getting on Etsy, buying myself a handmade kerchief and settling my brains for a long winter’s nap. I’ll go down before Christmas and get up in time for Groundhog Day. And if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, I’m goin’ back down.

You can call me in time for the summer solstice.    

Someday My Prince Will Come To - Or Not

When my daughter, Syd's beloved guinea pig died, we allowed for a proper time of mourning (three days). Then we brought home a baby Netherland dwarf rabbit. Syd named him Prince Charming. He was the umpty-umpth rabbit to hop into our hearts.

"Rabbit Sings the Blues" by Teece Aronin, on 

products in the phylliswalter store at

Redbubble.com. 

Why we were so optimistic about this rabbit's prospects, considering our luck with previous ones is unclear. The closest I can come to why we felt this way is that we didn't feel that way. I think what we really felt was a glimmer of hope and a lot of enthusiasm about sustaining a tiny life with the bonus that neither of us would have to get pregnant. 

The other rabbits had died. With the exception of one, that was snatched from Syd by a dog and killed, we never knew exactly what went wrong; some "syndrome" or another would strike and next thing we knew, our rabbit was gone, hopping up God's bunny trail.

So, now, here we stood, Syd and I, with Prince Charming.

We bought him from a breeder who kept him and a pile of other rabbits from a mishmash of litters all stashed together in a stuffy outbuilding. 

Gently, Syd picked him up. He didn't thrash around; he just gazed placidly back at her as if peering into Heaven, or something just short of Heaven since Syd didn't have carrots sticking from her ears.  

We stopped at the pet store on our way home to buy Prince Charming some supplies. Syd was holding him in her hands when a clerk revved up a noisy floor buffer and Prince Charming promptly fainted.

The clerk immediately switched off the floor buffer. Prince Charming's eyes were closed and his head had lolled to the side, but with the noise stopped, all it took were a few gentle strokes down his back to bring him around. Syd and I breathed again, bought the supplies and took him home.

We'd had Prince Charming for maybe a couple of months, when Syd woke up one morning to find him dead. After the crying subsided (for both of us), I told Syd she could stay home from school. I used a towel to lift Prince Charming from his cage, wrapped him up and placed him in a shoebox. We decided I would bury him in the woods off a nearby bike trail.

I found my garden spade, picked up the shoebox and went outside. Not until I'd walked a few yards up the path did it occur to me how obvious it was that I was the mother of a kid whose rabbit just died, who was single with no one else to pawn the task off on, and was looking for a place to bury the beast. It was still morning but brutally hot.

A few feet into the woods was a little bush that looked perfect for bunny-burying so I slinked off the trail, knelt in the dirt and started digging. Then I thought: What if someone comes by? This was public land and bunny-burying was probably frowned on. If someone did come along, I would pretend to be talking on my cell phone. It seemed to me that would minimize the risk of anyone questioning me.

Digging a hole, even one that short and shallow was hard work in that heat. My hair had fallen into a page boy droop that made me look like Prince Valiant's sweaty father. Then I heard some women coming up the path. When they were close enough to see me, I started talking into the phone with a no-nonsense clip I hoped would deter them from speaking to me. Then I fumbled the phone and accidentally hit the speaker button. Loudly and clearly came the words: "I'm sorry, but your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later."

The look I gave the women was intended as a warning that I'd just escaped from prison. They walked on, eyeing me cautiously as they passed. I didn't care; I had a bunny to bury. 

Prince Charming was the last of our rabbits. Maybe someday we'll try again. But right now, two things are sure: 

Fainting bunnies are adorable.

And when they never wake again, it hurts.



  

Let Us Be Batesful

Thanksgiving is this Thursday and I was just thinking - before the death of Norma Bates, she and her son, Norman must have spent some lonely holidays together. I think when Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, he should have included some flashbacks to show us what those holidays were like. But since it's too late for that, I'm stuck using my imagination. 

A Batesful Thanksgiving by

Teece Aronin. Available at the

phylliswalter store on Redbubble.com

I came up with one scenario for how Mrs. Bates could have met her end if her end had fallen on Thanksgiving. Actually, in this scenario, Thanksgiving is instrumental in bringing about her end. I offer it here in hopes that it will make your relatives look better to you this year. You can thank me later. 

Now, picture with me if you will . . .

. . . a Thanksgiving morning, and, as usual, the neon vacancy light burns with hope beside the Bates Motel. Switching that light on is a task Norman Bates has performed in a perfunctory way ever since the new highway went in, routing traffic away from the motel that he and his mother run. 

Behind the motel, high up on a hill is the house Norman shares with his mother. It is a dark, tumbledown Gothic monstrosity - or is it Victorian? Anyway, right now, the only light burning in the entire house is a dingy bulb attached to a cord that dangles from the ceiling. Norman and his mother are preparing their holiday dinner. Let's listen, shall we?

Norman (at the sink, smiling and rinsing blood from the turkey): Mother, do you think we might get any Thanksgiving travelers on their ways home tonight?

Mrs. Bates (standing at the counter next to Norman): No. And pass me those potatoes I had you bring up from the cellar. By the way, something smells off down there. What have you got stashed away?

Norman: Nothing, Mother. Really.

Mrs. Bates: Nothing mother really my foot! I asked you a question, young man, and I expect an answer!

Norman: Mother, it's just a few things I need for my new hobby. Really, the smell won't bother you at all once you get used to it. One day you won't even know I've been doing anything down there at all. 

Mrs. Bates: I highly doubt that. And just what is that smell anyway?

Norman: Pickling agents, Mother. 

Mrs. Bates: Pickling agents! Norman Bates, have you been sniffing my canning supplies again?

Norman: No, Mother. But soon you won't be needing your canning supplies, so please, let's just try to forget about it.

Mrs. Bates: What do you mean, I won't be needing my supplies?"

Norman: I simply meant, Mother, that canning seems to be to physically demanding for you lately. I think it's time you gave it up. We can afford to buy the kinds of things you used to can. 

Mrs. Bates: What do you mean "used to can?" Norman, just what kind of a ditwad are you? That canning saves us hundreds of dollars a year. With the motel not getting any business, that money comes in handy. Now, where are the onions I asked for?

Norman: Mother, you didn't ask me for any onions. 

Mrs. Bates: Well, suppose you just march your caboose down to the cellar and get some?

Norman: Yes, mother. 

Thinking what a pain in the caboose his mother's always been, Norman trudges down the cellar stairs, selects two onions, then trudges back up. Trudging is as close as Norman's ever gotten to showing his mother he's angry. He hands her the onions.

Mrs. Bates: And suppose you tell me what other of your hobby supplies I'm smelling down there? And where's the celery?

Norman: Mother, you didn't ask me for celery either.

Mrs. Bates: Oh, don't be ridiculous, Norman; of course I asked you for celery. Get down to that cellar and find some.

Now, instead of being a pain in his caboose, Norman's mother morphs in his head into being a caboose; a caboose attached to a long line of boxcars carrying highly explosive materials, jumping the tracks and plunging over a cliff to a fiery end. This time Norman stomps down to the cellar, snatches up five stalks of celery, punches them repeatedly, then stomps back upstairs. 

Mrs. Bates: You were just about to tell me; what else am I smelling down there?

Norman: Tanning chemicals, preservatives, relaxers. Oh, and some re-hydration products.

Mrs. Bates: What are you running down there, some kind of spa?

Norman (hoisting the turkey into a roasting pan): Well, let's just say, that I find it relaxing. 

Mrs. Bates: Norman, why didn't you bring up any rutabagas? 

Norman: Mother, you never said you wanted rutabagas.

Mrs. Bates: Norman, what do you take me for, a cook or a kook? I most certainly did tell you I wanted rutabagas. Now march! 

Going down for the third time, Norman storms off, accidentally striking his head on the dangling light bulb. It swings back and forth, back and forth. His mother's face is glaringly illuminated then darkly shadowed; back and forth and over and over. Seeing his mother like this makes Norman nervous. Once Norman has returned to the kitchen: 

Mrs. Bates: This hobby of yours - is it something I might enjoy?

Norman (slyly): Well, I'd be happy to expose you to it. 

Mrs. Bates: What about those preservatives? What are those for?

Norman (smiling at his mother): Mother, those preservatives could help keep you looking fresh and alive for a long, long time. 

Mrs. Bates: Hmm . . . After dinner I'd like you to show me what you've got going on down there. Maybe for once you've got yourself a hobby we can share.

Norman: Trust me, Mother. There's one thing I'd like to try with my hobby that I wouldn't want to do with anyone but you.

Mrs. Bates: Norman, I must say, that was rather sweet. 

Norman crosses the kitchen to return with a pan of steaming hot dressing. He begins spooning it into the bird's cavity.

Mrs. Bates (looking furious): Norman Bates! That is no way to stuff a turkey!

Norman (smiling again): Mother, there are all kinds of ways to stuff a turkey, and all kinds of turkeys to stuff. I'll show you what I mean after dinner . . . in the cellar.    

Gloria Steinem is 81 and Still Cool

Gloria Steinem is 81!

Fish Without a Bicycle
Illustration, copyright Teece Aronin

And she doesn't look all that different from how she looked back in the day, back when we could expect something just a little cutting but still elegant, to fly from her lips to the media's ear on an almost daily basis.

But I'm throwing water on one of the fiercest arguments Steinem ever made, that a woman's looks don't define her, and, of course, she's right. 

I mention Steinem's looks only in the context of her being 81, and how it seems the cosmic force that launched her into 1960s psyches now stirs something into Steinem's coffee with a magic spoon, making her close to ageless so she can continue to challenge and guide in the form with which the world became so enamored years ago.

If I don't embrace every Steinem message, I have a sense that she's closer to right than I am and that I often miss her point. Remember when she quipped, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle?" I take some exception to that, particularly since fish and bicycles would make pretty weird-looking offspring. But I probably should aspire to a more full-on embrace of Steinem's point of view.

Then again, perhaps I have. After all, I have reached the point where I don't see myself as needing a man, simply preferring to share life with one. And where Steinem artfully articulated contempt for the notion that women need men, sometimes I really do need a man because I've never ridden a bicycle that . . . well, once maybe.

And if a woman wants to get someplace on a bike while enjoying a man's company and not having to pedal, she needs a man. Just ask Katherine Ross. After Paul Newman rode her all around the barnyard in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ross' beautiful bum no doubt ached for days, but at least her legs didn't get tired.  And since that's always the trade-off in that situation, I prefer to see the bike tire as half full.

I wonder if I'm now guilty of objectifying men. Ugh, liberation, equity and equality can be tricky. Let's just say that I have a great liking for men, for many of their perspectives, and for their hard work and companionship. And yes, I do see the genders as equals. 

But what really gets me, I say as I miss Steinem's point yet again, is that I'll never look that good when I'm 81. There are recent photos of her all over the internet promoting her memoir, still lean, still clad in tight-fitting jeans and body-hugging tops and with a belt loosely draped around her slender hips.

Arriving home at the end of a long book tour, does Steinem groan as she eases onto the edge of the bed? Does she whine as she pulls off her boots? Does she grimace while removing her jeans? Does she then step gingerly into her walk-in tub, "perfect for the senior with mobility issues?" And does she have this walk-in tub because she can't get out of an ordinary tub unassisted? I think not. Something tells me Steinem has a regular bathtub and that she gets in and out of it as easily as ever because Gloria Steinem is just that cool.

And because Steinem probably needs a walk-in tub like a fish needs a bicycle.

Dumb Door-a

Doors can be dangerous. On their surface, they come off as silent stewards of privacy and sentries against intruders. At their most innocent, they make lovely additions to your home.

Image by Teece Aronin

But the reality of doors can be ominous. The other day, as I reached to push open the door of my doctor's office, someone tentatively opened then closed it from the other side. This tipped me off to open the door cautiously. Standing on the other side was a bespectacled lady in her eighties. We exchanged pleasantries as I swung the door wider and almost nailed another lady who looked a bit like the first and was at least as old.

"Whoops," I said. "Nearly got two for one!"  

One of the ladies commented that their placement, combined with my entrance, had indeed presented a rare opportunity for me, assuming I was in to little old lady tipping.

I once nearly got myself killed by my garage door, and I can think of at least one slasher movie where a teen was done in when the killer used one to crush her head against the door frame. For the life of me, I can't remember the exact circumstances around how my garage door almost did me in. All I remember was that the door was up and I needed to be both out of the house and leave the door closed. Who knows what had happened to the garage door opener. 

So I stood by the door that led to the kitchen, pushed the garage door button, and ran. The door began a rattly descent and a few feet from it I bent over and thrust myself beneath. Then I lost my balance. By the time I hit the ground I had picked up quite a bit of momentum and couldn't stop rolling until the tree in the front yard stepped up to help. 

Flash-forward twenty years and I'm at another door inside another garage leading into another kitchen. My son's in this house having just spent the night here with his friend, Giles and the home belongs to Giles' grandparents. The house is huge and so is the garage. There is a two-car garage door with a one-car garage door next to it. The two-car door is up and the one-car is down. 

I press what I think is the doorbell but the smaller garage door opens. I'm embarrassed and don't want Giles' grandparents to think I'm messing with their garage doors. I fumble for the button and press again. This time the big door goes down. I press the button yet again hoping both doors reopen but only the small one goes up. When I press one last time, the bigger door goes up, the smaller one lowers. 

I knock. 

"Those doors can be confusing," says Giles' grandfather, letting me in.

I like Giles' grandfather.