Memory Like an Elephant

Some of us are prone to losing things. In my case, the things tend to be my phone, my keys, my car, my credit card. I don't know if what they say about elephants having great memories is true, but if it is, I want a memory like an elephant. 

Elephant on Stripes, copyright, Teece Aronin

I once wrote an entire blog post about losing my keys. My favorite part of writing that essay was recounting what actually came out of my mouth one of those times I was searching for them. I was going out for the evening with my old boyfriend, Prickly Pete when I realized my keys were missing. Frantically I dispatched the kids, whose complete buy-in to the cause was gained by shutting off the TV. As I opened and shut drawers, cupboards, closets and jewelry boxes, Prickly stood there, perplexed.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why don’t you just keep them in your purse?”

“What, are you nuts?” I hissed, “Then I’d never be able to find them!”

You know you’re getting desperate for material when you start quoting your own blog posts, especially the ones that make you look like a ridiculous screw-up.  

But I make a good point (twice): Losing things, even things that should be perfectly easy to track, happens; it happens to all of us - especially when we’re distracted or under stress.

There aren’t many stressors worse than divorce, and years ago, while in the middle of one, I lost a cell phone inside my car. It would ring out from some dark, unreachable, invisible recess, and not even my kids, elfin enough to be jammed between the seats, could see it, much less recover it.

Then there are the things you’d think are too big to misplace, for instance, the car you lose your cell phone in.

One day, gal-pal, Tina and I went shopping. Carrying our bags to the car, we realized that we had no idea where we’d parked because we weren't paying attention. As we made our way up and down aisle after aisle, row after row, I noticed we were being followed by a car. Every time we turned up another row of cars, he followed us. If we slowed down, he slowed down. When I stopped to tie my shoe, he stopped too. 

“Don’t look now,” I muttered from the side of my mouth, “but I think that car is following us.”

“You’re kidding!” Tina gasped.

“No, I’m not kidding. Just play it cool and don’t get close to it.”

The car pulled up even closer, and the passenger side window went down. Tina and I froze. A middle-aged man leaned toward us, and we held our breath.

“Excuse me, ladies. I was hoping to get your parking space, but you have no idea where your car is, do you?”

“No, sorry,” we confessed, and he drove away. The smart thing for him to do would have been to drive us around the parking lot until we found my car, and then take the space. Men just don't think sometimes. 

The other day, I lost a credit card – in the middle of the Lansing Convention Center. I was there for a conference with my boss and some coworkers. At the end of the day, hundreds of attendees were reconvened in the main ballroom. One of the event organizers stood at the podium, his image simulcast onto two huge screens on either side of the room.

“We have a lost credit card,” he announced. “Is there a Patricia Aronin in the room?”

“Oh, my word!” I yelped, jumping to my feet. “That’s me!” 

I started toward the front of the auditorium and several people shouted, “No! Behind you!” I turned around to see a woman walking toward me, reaching out to hand me back my card.

I sat down in the nearest empty seat, and heard a soft ping inside my purse. It was a text from my boss:

“Really?!?”

“I'm glad that tattoo artist was honest,” I texted back.

“Must notoriety follow you all of your days?” he asked.

Oh, I hope so.

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.

Sprung

This is the weekend everyone in my neck of the world sprang ahead, meaning we turned our clocks ahead one hour to usher in that harbinger of spring, Daylight Saving Time.

Image, Teece Aronin.

So many things about this ritual confuse me, starting with the name. Is it Daylight Savings or Daylight Saving? I've thought about this quite a bit. For years, I thought it was Savings, but often see it written as Saving. Why this distinction bothers me I have no idea. If I dedicated as much thought to other aspects of time, I could discuss Einstein's theories more impressively at cocktail parties and maybe even get places when I'm supposed to - the latter being the bigger achievement despite not having a science-minded bone in my body and never getting invited to cocktail parties.

I'm also confused by whether I'm really saving anything valuable since I've just lost an hour of sleep and will be exhausted all week. Every winter I get all psyched up in anticipation of Daylight Saving(s?) Time only to get there and find myself haunting my house like a sleep-deprived ghost until my circadian clock catches up. 

And what exactly happens anyway? How did I just gain an hour of daylight and lose an hour of sleep? I mean, I get it - sort of - but it still seems counter-intuitive - or counter-clockwise - or counter-something. It just seems counter.

The first day of spring arrives close to the time we spring ahead. This is an event I've overblown in importance for years. Ever since I learned that spring commences at a specific time of day, say 12:57 p.m., I've gotten all excited about it every year, staring at the clock a few seconds ahead so that I'll know the very moment it begins, kind of like New Year's Eve but less depressing.  

Years ago, on the first day of spring, I was babysitting for a four-year-old. I told him that spring would arrive later that day and that we could go outside a minute before and do a 60-second countdown to welcome in the new season. I was careful to explain that we wouldn't actually see spring arrive, but still, it would be coming at the same time we were outside counting. We walked out of the house, and the conversation went like this: 

Me: Okay, here we are, out on the front porch. Spring will be here in exactly one minute. Are you ready to do the countdown with me?

Dougie: Yup!

Me: Okay, repeat after me: Sixty!

Dougie: Sixty!

Me: Fifty-nine!

Dougie: Fifty-nine!

Me: Fifty-eight!

Dougie: Fifty-eight!

Down and down, we counted until . . .

Me: Three!

Dougie: Three!

Me: Two!

Dougie: Two!

Me: One!

Dougie: One!

Me: Happy Spring!

Dougie: Happy Spring! . . . Now what?

Me: Now what what?

Dougie: Now what happens?

Me: Well, nothing happens.

Dougie: But where's the spring?

Me: It's here, right here, all around us.

Dougie: But nothing happened.

Me: Well, we didn't see anything happen. But something did happen.

Dougie: What?

Me: Spring.

Dougie: Where?

Me: Here. Everywhere. All around us.

Dougie: Oh, man, dat was a bummer. I goin' back in da house. 

So here we are again, having just gained light and lost sleep. It's too confusing for me to ever fully grasp, so this will be the year I just roll with it. By the way, I googled it, and it's Daylight Saving Time.

So now, I've lost an hour's sleep, and I've also lost my S. On the bright side, I have an extra hour of daylight with which to go find them. 

Sammy Davis, Jr. Went Swimming with My Mother (No He Didn't)

It was a mistake any white four-year-old could make in 1962.

When I was four, my mother told me a story about a civil rights activist she admired. He was a contemporary of Dr. Martin Luther King, and his name was James Farmer. He was among the bravest people who ever lived because he was one of the Freedom Riders who rode buses throughout the South, testing how successfully and safely Blacks could assert their newly established equal legal status on public transportation. 

This was a time when Jim Crow, separate but equal laws were in force in a de facto way, meaning that forcing blacks to the back of the bus was supposed to be illegal but was a stubbornly lingering practice. What Farmer did was dangerous, and Blacks were frequently beaten and lynched for this kind of "brazen" behavior. 

Long before he was a Freedom Rider, when my mother was a girl, Farmer visited the church camp she was attending, spoke with the children, and took them swimming in the lake. I was impressed by this and bragged to my Sunday school class that my mother had gone swimming with Sammy Davis, Jr. I loved Sammy Davis, Jr. I also lived in an all-white neighborhood since neighborhoods, even in the north where I was from, tended to be segregated then. The Black men in my life were either Sammy Davis, Jr. or Nat King Cole. I loved him, too.

When my Sunday school teacher fawned over my mother, telling her what I'd shared with the class and swooning over how thrilling it must have been to go swimming with Sammy Davis, Junior, my mother, who never swore - even in her mind - had a WTF moment. Immediately, she whisked me aside and abruptly demanded to know what that was all about.

Once I'd explained, and she saw how guileless I was, she laughed.

Then she had to explain things to my Sunday school teacher who probably thought James Farmer was a singer too.

But my Sunday school teacher wouldn't have had my excuse.

Remarkably Cute

As a culture, we seem to find children appealing from birth through about age nine. Then their enchanting qualities fly with them into a Bermuda Triangle for children. There is very little word coming from parents about the kids, very little word coming from the kids themselves, and very few of us asking their parents about them during this time.  

Image: Teece Aronin

This radio silence lasts until the children start achieving something beyond the usual infant-toddler milestones and gold stars from teachers on glue- and macaroni-slathered construction paper. If all goes well, at around age 17, children emerge from the Triangle with a free ride to Stanford, inclusion as an alternate on the U.S. Olympic Swim Team, or some other accomplishment guaranteed to save their parents thousands of dollars or land said child on the local news for reasons having nothing to do with drug busts or car thefts.   

Nine-and-a-half seems to be the cutoff for cuteness unless you have to be around the child, in which case you probably continue to find him cute, just not cute enough to comment on to anyone outside the family. Then, once he becomes a full-blown teen, he's not cute at all until the accomplishments phase kicks in at which time he is once again golden. 

Grandparents on the other hand, talk about grandchildren prior to the wee ones' conceptions. I doubt that even their own deaths silence proud grandparents for long. I'm imagining my mother in Heaven, chatting up the other angels over cards, and regaling them with stories about her grandson starting driver's ed and her granddaughter's horseback riding lessons.  

"She's learning - I forget what they call it - English style; that's it - you know, where they ride the horse and only have the reins to hang on with? I don't know how she does it, but she has me on extra angel duty, let me tell you. If she fell, it would be the second death of me. And of course, once Jon starts driving, I'll be watching one or the other of them all the time."

I'm not sure why children seem less "remarkable" - literally - once they approach their tween years, but many do seem to become sullen and anesthetized - temporarily. 

But whatever it is, we parents see them safely into the Triangle, cross our fingers, hope like hell, and proudly hail them when they come out the other side.

Treats

I have a history of eating dog treats, and I never seemed to find them; they seemed to find me. 

Image: Teece Aronin

When I was about two years-old, our next-door neighbor plopped me down in the grass of her backyard, face-to-face with her cocker spaniel, Reggie. Then she shook some crunchy, colorful dog treats into my tiny, cupped palms. 

"Reggie loves treats," she said, and walked away. 

I looked at Reggie. Reggie looked at me. I took one of the treats between my finger and thumb and held it in front of Reggie's black-lipped, drool-y muzzle, at which point, he tilted his head, leaned in, and gently took it. Cheerfully, he crunched it up, then looked expectantly at me.

He must be waiting for me to take my turn, I decided, so I put one of the treats in my mouth and chewed. The dog looked crestfallen. 

Then, I gave a treat to him, and the dog cheered up. When I took my next turn; the dog looked devastated. 

And so it was that Reggie learned to share. Reggie's owner moved away a few years later and couldn't take him along. Knowing how much I loved him, she asked my parents to take him in. They did, and he was my heart for many years.

One night a few months ago, my daughter, Sydney invited her friend, Maddy to a sleepover. Syd and Maddy are "dog people," and since I ate enough dog treats with Reggie that day to become part dog, my daughter might have earned her dog person status partly through genetics. 

It was early Saturday morning when I stumbled into the dimly lit kitchen, yawning and rumpled. Both girls were asleep in the living room. On the counter were these cute little ginger snappish things, and without thinking, I popped one in my mouth. It turned out to have come from a box of treats Maddy brought over for our dog. 

"Rule Number One:" lectured a friend," If it's in your kitchen but you don't know how it got there, do NOT put it in your mouth."

Actually, it didn't taste that bad, and it brought back memories of when I was plopped down in the grass and told that Reggie loved treats.

It's Just That This is How it Feels

I'm trying to maintain a more serene mindset and a healthier outlook, and I'm finding it helps me get through unpleasant but normal things when I accept that these things are just the way they are and though uncomfortable, they're being the way they should be, and that I am too.  

The other day, two snowflakes landed on my  

shoelaces in that very same parking

lot where just last month I pictured death 

stalking me in the cold. Photo: Teece Aronin.

Let me give you an example: I get out of my car at work and have a long walk ahead before reaching the building. It's cold, and I hate being cold, but when I remind myself that the cold is normal, and that this just happens to be how cold feels when it's doing it's thing, it's not as miserable anymore. 

I know what some of you are thinking; it was just last month, in this very blog, that I described myself shuffling across a parking lot in bitter cold, swearing the entire way and imagining Death shuffling behind me, unable to catch me only because he was just as cold. 

Well, I've grown since then, so let me have this! 

But seriously, stop and think. Would a Midwestern winter day with 70 degree temps be normal? No. It was the cold that was normal, just winter being winter. And given that I'm lucky enough to have a coat and gloves and a nice, warm building on the other side of the lot, I really should stop complaining. Winter is behaving as it will, and I knew the deal when I moved back to Michigan five years ago. 

Maybe this is a better example, or at least makes me look less mentally unstable: When my daughter was having surgery and dreaded the IV, I told her there's a difference between something hurting you and something harming you. The IV, I explained, would hurt, but it wouldn't harm her. The pain was part of a process intended to keep her safe.  

And lo and behold, I just now asked my daughter if what I'd said had helped her that day and as it turns out, it did. And I told her the truth was good no matter what because it would either prove my point here, or could be turned into a joke for the blog. It was a win for me either way, so I really wanted her to be honest. 

But I like this win better than the win I would have turned into a joke. It means I'd said something that helped by daughter through a tough situation, and maybe it will help you, or your child, or even me someday. 

Ripples, people, ripples.