Red, White, and Water

There was a time when I worked as a recruiter. You might be more familiar with the term "headhunter," people whose job it is to track down and court talent at one company, then get that talent to join your client, the competition.

Red, White and Water by Teece Aronin. 

Available on products at Redbubble.com. 

Just go to the phylliswalter store: 

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and click on the Flourish Collection. 

Most headhunters specialize in specific fields. My first headhunter job was recruiting engineers and technical sales reps. I wish I had a dollar for every time I said these words: "The position offers a 30 - 35K base with an 80 - 100K top end."

Translation: "The position offers a $30 - $35,000 base salary with potential annual earnings in the range of $80 - $100,000 dollars after commissions." 

The only thing I liked about the job was slinging those numbers around followed by a K; there was a certain kool kwotient in that. 

My second recruiting job was recruiting actuaries. I've written about that job before in a post titled Dial D for Dick.

In that post I confessed the hatred of that job that bloomed in my heart from Day One. It wasn't the actuaries themselves, it was the sneaking around on the phone to find the person I was looking to recruit, along with the sense of stealing and trickery I perceived to be going along with it.

That was when I started thinking about priorities and choices and what really mattered. I knew nothing about life coaching or career coaching or all the other means open to help me chart another course. But I was beginning to sense there was a better fit for me somewhere.

Blessedly, I had several gal-pals at that job, my two closest being Marti and Sharon. One day, Marti and I were at Sharon's place, sipping drinks with her by the pool. As it turned out, Sharon also had a hot tub and soon she and Marti and I were in it, sipping Chardonnay and gabbing like little girls.

We were laughing hard about something when Sharon's fanny slipped off the fiberglass seat and she was going under faster than Lehman Brothers. The lower she sank, the higher she held her wineglass in an attempt to keep it from going with her.

Marti and I sobered up immediately and lunged forward snatching the glass seconds before it would have gone down and seconds after Sharon had gone down.

Immediately, Marti and I realized what we'd done, set the wineglass down - carefully - then hauled Sharon back up. We apologized while Sharon sputtered water. 

Then Sharon said: "You did the right thing."

And that was the day it occurred to me, as I poured myself more wine, that deciding what's most important in life can be downright intoxicating. I'm still deciding all these years later, right now with a nice glass of red. But sometimes it's a white, and sometimes it's cold, perfect water, more refreshing than anything a grape could ever dream of being. 

Bottoms down, dear Sharon, wherever you are.

My Mother Dated Mickey Rooney?

The day after my mother's memorial service in June of 2016, I hosted a picnic and invited my family and a few extended folks. There were several reasons for the picnic: to honor my mother one more time, to celebrate my brother's birthday and to give the family an opportunity to go through some of the things my mother had kept in storage.

Image by Teece Aronin

There were photos and dishes and tissue-thin letters, a portrait of me in a little smocked dress and one of each brother taken at the same time as mine, both of them wearing blazers, dress shirts and ties. 

One of us sitting among the piles of pictures held up a framed photo of my father and asked, "Do you mind if I slip the photo out and see if there's anything behind it? You know how people used to do that - slip one picture in on top of another?"

She slid my father's picture out and lo and behold, reposing beneath was a publicity shot of a youngish Mickey Rooney. The room erupted in surprised laughter and those of us of a certain age recalled how, in the golden age of Hollywood, picture frames and wallets were sold holding pictures of popular film stars instead of the fake, paper flower versions of loved ones we see on store shelves today.

Silently I mused how wild it would be if the photo was stashed back there because my mother dated Mickey Rooney before she met my father. How close might I have come to being even shorter than I am? What if my mother, as faithful a mate as any swan, had married Mickey and through no fault of her own found herself Ex-Mrs. Rooney Number Umpty-ump?

What else didn't I know about my mother? Maybe she'd been a studio starlet and met Mickey that way. Maybe she was a cigarette girl at the Biltmore Bowl in Hollywood and caught his eye one night as he wined and dined Ava Gardner. 

I know my mother's past didn't really include Mickey Rooney or even a stint as a cigarette girl at the Biltmore Bowl. She was a kind-hearted, pretty Clarkston girl who met my father before her twenty-first birthday and they were married soon after. And besides, she was allergic to cigarette smoke.   

But for a few minutes, imagining my mother's secret life with Mickey Rooney, I almost forgot how much I miss her. 

Playing the Sympathy Card

There are still days when I can't believe she's gone, my mother who was so full of life - until, suddenly, she wasn't. And one of the harshest truths about grieving is that no matter how debilitated, laid to waste, and torn apart you feel, the world keeps spinning.

Image by Teece Aronin

When my mother died, it was like being dropped in cold, waist-deep water and having to get ready to run. Run and get paperwork to the lender so I'd close on my new house on time; run and grab my laptop so I could pay the credit card bill before it was late; run and get the permission slip in to my kid's choir teacher so my kid could go on the class trip. First World problems, I admit, but still slogging, wet and weighty burdens when you're grieving. 

When all this was too much for me to bear, I'd play my sympathy card and pray that it bought me a little time, a small break, a minute to catch my breath.

I was pulled over by a State Trooper about a week after my mother's death, and I couldn't help it - as soon as my window went down, words came blurting out of me about how I'd just lost my mother, how I must have been distracted, and how I could barely think of my own name right now, much less read a speed sign. Before I knew it, I was on my way with a gentle warning to slow down. 

Then there was a request for paperwork from one of the outlying parties associated with the escrow on the house I was buying. "Please, may I have a few days on this? My mother died about a week ago." I can't remember the woman's exact reply but the gist was: "I'm sorry for your loss, but we really need this done as soon as possible." We ended up closing on the house two weeks early so I'm thinking maybe she's never lost a mother or maybe she never had a mother in the first place.

When the agent handling my homeowner's insurance made a similar request, I played my sympathy card again. I could hardly navigate my way through the grocery store, let alone whatever his request was. Steve (Free-thinking) Freemire leaped into action. He expressed his condolences on the death of my mother, very sincere ones, it seemed to me, and spoke of his own similar loss. Then he told me not to worry about the paperwork and that he would take care of it. Not even, "You Can Have a Few Days," but "I Will Do it For You."

He was one of the few people who not only accepted my sympathy card but placed a little kiss on its cover before offering it back. Those are the people you remember, the ones who when you're going through hell actually do something to help. 

It's been three-and-a-half months since my mother "went away," leaving me the world's oldest orphan. I don't use my sympathy card anymore because my mind is almost as normal now as it ever was, which many would argue, wasn't close to normal ever. 

But to anyone who accepted my sympathy card when it was all I had to offer, especially Free-thinking Freemire, thank you. 









  

Sometimes It's Just Nice to Have Someone Do Your Work for You. Thank You, Help You Flunk Essay-writing Service!

Where is it written that everything should be written? Take this ad for the (let's call them) Help You Flunk Essay-writing Service. I found them when I was Googling around for something else. 

Dr. Bertha Baumgartner of 
Ainsworth, Iowa. Patience pays off.
Image by Teece Aronin. 

Please know that I am a gentle soul, even when it comes to other people's writing, and especially when said other people are writing in a second language. But when I saw this ad for an ESSAY WRITING SERVICE, I needed to be physically restrained. Please note that the italics are mine; everything else is all them. I also broke up some of their block paragraphs which were longer than anything you'll find in Manhattan:

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Teece here again. Note the case of Bertha Baumgartner pictured above. Baumgartner finally graduated from University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine and is now a practicing urologist. She'd been a client of Help You Flunk since 1943 when the service still typed its essays on Underwood typewriters. Said Baumgartner: "Hindsight is always 20-20. Maybe I should have switched to another service, but I never change horses in midstream." 

"This is Memorial Day weekend and I decided that I deserved to phone this one in. So I kicked back and let the Help You Flunk Essay-writing Service write today's blog post for me. 

And it's staying here until I receive a cease and desist letter from their lawyer, which would have to be better written than their ad. 

Moved to Tears

The kids and I had waited a long time for this day, the day we would finally move into a house of our own after five years of apartment-living. And everything was going so well until our dog, usually the lovable lunk type, shot out our new front door like something fired from a circus cannon to attack a neighbor's 11-year-old Basset hound.

Hope, waiting for
"her kids" to come home. 

Everyone had been distracted. Hope was corralled in the fenced-in back yard, but was staring through the window like we'd abandoned her on Pluto, so someone felt sorry for her and let her in. When the movers opened the front door, and Hope saw sweet little Selma trundling along across the street, it was all over but the sutures.

Giving Hope the benefit of the doubt, she was in a strange place with a lot of commotion, she likely felt a need to stake out her new territory and protect us, and she might have mistaken Selma for a housewarming present. 

Selma's owner, a tiny woman in her sixties, had been walking her dog and minding her own business when Hope skidded up, clamped down on Selma's elephantine ear and wouldn't let go. One of the movers sprinted over, grabbed Selma's leash, and tried to kick Hope off. My daughter Sydney screamed. I went running, grabbed Hope, then had it pointed out to me by the mover at the top of his lungs, that Selma's ear was still trapped between Hope's teeth; yanking on Hope wouldn't help Selma.

What felt like hours in slow-motion was probably about 30 seconds, and Hope somehow became detached. I hauled her up in my arms yelling, "Stupid dog! Stupid dog! Stupid dog!" all the way across the street, up the driveway and into the house until I could dump her in the bathroom and shut the door.

I ran back to where Selma's owner, understandably distraught, was standing with the mover who was also shaken up. 

"I'm so sorry!" I said. I was in tears for Selma who, unbelievably, nuzzled my hand, making me cry harder.

"I need to wash my hands," said Selma's owner. "I have blood on them."

"Of course," I said. "Come in the house with me. Do you live on this street?"

That, I admit, was a self-serving question. The only thing that could make everything worse was Selma's owner living two doors down with all that ammo with which to bash me to all the other neighbors before I'd had a chance to make my own bad impression.

"No," she said, and indicated another street up the road from mine.

Oh, thank God, I sighed inside my head.

I escorted Selma's owner into the house where she nervously glanced around like a guest of the Munsters. I took her to the kitchen sink and she rinsed her hands.

"I have to take Selma to the hospital now." Her eyes were huge and her voice flat with shock. 

"Would you like me to go with you?"

"No."

Now really, what had I thought she would say?

"May I ask your name?" I queried.

"Karen O'Brien," she answered as we went on to exchange phone numbers.

"Please know that whatever it costs, this is obviously my responsibility and I will pay for everything Selma needs." 

"Thank you. I'll be back later," Mrs. O'Brien said, and left.

When several hours passed with no word from Mrs. O'Brien, I took the kids out to eat but left a note on our door so she wouldn't think we'd blown her off. While we were out, Syd and I made a stop at a pet store to buy Selma some treats. When we got home, we saw that Mrs. O'Brien had left a note in place of ours. It read cryptically:
                             
                                Selma and I stopped by. Please call.
                               ~ Karen O'Brien 

I called Mrs. O'Brien immediately. She was calm, polite and direct while telling me that Selma had surgery and the bill was $753.85. My brain glazed over and this soothing image arose of Hope's head on a platter, garnished with chocolates and chicken bones, her mouth stuffed with one of her own kongs.

Syd felt she should go too, so we walked up to Mrs. O'Brien's neat as a pin little brick house and knocked on the door. It was a storm door and when we knocked, Selma waddled up, forgot about her cone, and bounced off the glass. 

Mrs. O'Brien gingerly sidestepped Selma and let us in. She wasn't exactly warm; tolerant is a better word, but who could blame her? She indicated two empty seats then sat down on her sofa. Sydney offered the treats to Mrs. O'Brien with the first of the visit's many apologies.

And then Mrs. O'Brien smiled. "Oh, wasn't that nice of you." She offered Selma the treats but the dog didn't show much interest. "Well, I'm sure Selma will love these once she's feeling better."

When Mrs. O'Brien offered me a copy of the bill, I saw that one of the items was an "Elizabethan collar." Why should I have to pay for a fancy new collar? I thought, feeling a little ticked off until I realized that the Elizabethan collar was that cone Selma would be stuck in 24/7 for at least a couple of weeks.

I handed Mrs. O'Brien a check then glanced around the room. Beside the fireplace was a small Kelly green leather wing-back chair with little steps leading to the seat. 

"I take it that's Selma's chair,” I said.

"Yes." Mrs. O'Brien smiled again, this time fondly in the direction of the chair. "I didn't buy it for Selma, but she claimed it as her own. As she got older, she couldn't get into it by herself so now she has a little help."

There was a back support pillow reading WOOF in a bentwood rocker opposite the wingback. Clearly Mrs. O'Brien, who was a widow, cherished this dog and just as clearly, she was a very nice person. Syd and I teared up again as the three of us discussed what happened. Then Mrs. O'Brien, proving herself a straight shooter said to me:

"Well, I admit for a while there, I was thinking about bombing your house, but I'm pretty much over that now. And I'm pleased to see how seriously you've taken this. The two of you can stop by and visit Selma and me whenever you like."

Later we learned that Mrs. O'Brien was to have shoulder surgery in a few days, so the day after her operation, Syd and I walked over to her house with a plant. The storm door was closed, but the front door was open and a coloring book and crayons were scattered on the floor. In the driveway was a car with Massachusetts plates.

"Oh, how nice; Mrs. O'Brien probably has family helping her after her operation," I said. I knocked softly and when no one answered, I hung the plant in its gift bag on the door knob.

A few hours later, I received a text from Mrs. O'Brien thanking me for the plant and explaining that her daughter and son-in-law drove up from Boston to help after the surgery, but the surgery was postponed because Mrs. O'Brien wouldn't be able to oversee Selma's recovery with one arm. How could things get any weirder? Surely, next up, Selma would somehow manage to explode. 

"But it's fine," the text continued. "Now we'll just have a nice visit instead." 

Since moving day, when Hope "helpfully" introduced us by mauling her dog, Mrs. O'Brien has continued to allow us to befriend her. We've exchanged more texts and the other day Syd walked over to her house with a slice of cake. While they chatted, Syd offered to walk Selma any time and Mrs. O'Brien said that she would be happy to pay Syd for her services.

Replied my daughter, of whom I am immensely proud: "Oh, I think that under the circumstances, walking her for free is the least I can do."

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.  









  

Honey, People Like You Should Never Go to Those Places By Themselves

Recently I lost my mother. In its grief, my brain scrambles to recall details of her more recent self while things that happened years ago spring to mind in stark detail. My father, who died nearly 15 years ago, is often part of these recollections.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

I have a cat named Kitt (hang in there; my parents will be back soon) who lives for the times she can spring onto a newly purchased or freshly laundered bedspread, smear her scent all over it, knead it, and just generally break it in for me. 

I also own a quilt, hand-stitched by my great-grandmother but stored away because Kitt would love to break it in for me, too.

The other day I brought home a store-bought quilt that reminded me of the one I keep in storage. The bonus was the sewn-on strips of colorful fabric and the rumply texture that would make any breaking-in Kitt could do less noticeable. 

The second the quilt hit the bed, so did Kitt. She rolled and stretched and followed her usual routine until the other usual thing happened: she got a claw caught in the quilt. With her arm stretched over her head, she freed herself with a thread-popping snap and I thought how badly I wanted to roll her up in the quilt and chuck her like a padded torpedo straight into a dumpster. Then I remembered a mess I got myself into with cats more than 20 years ago - and this is where my parents come in. 

I had just bought a little house. What would be nicer, I thought, than to adopt a cat to share it with? One weekend I drove to the nearest animal shelter and saw that the place was loaded with caged cats. An employee strolled over and pointed out a cage with four cats inside. Those four cats, she whispered, would be put down the next day if they didn't find homes this afternoon. I put my hand against the cage and one of the cats pressed its paw against my palm. I told the woman I'd take them all, keeping two and finding homes for two. It seemed so reasonable. 

Before I knew it, I was driving home with boxes of cats in the backseat. "Ninety-nine boxes of cats in the car! Ninety-nine boxes of cats!" I sang. The cats sang too. It felt good to save a life and saving four lives felt four times better. I got home, carried the boxes into the house two by two, then opened them gently so that the cats could become accustomed to their new environment. Cats are funny that way, you know; very timid when introduced to new surroundings.

After charging from their boxes like a swarm of killer bees, the cats made what appeared to be a coordinated attack on my house. One of them shimmied up the drapes where he hung like a spotted aerialist before flinging himself against the blinds. 

"Oh, my God, they're feral!" I screamed, as afraid of them as if they were bats or bears, even. I called my parents and blubbered into the phone. Somewhere in there, my mother caught the words cats and feral and figured out the rest. 

"Don't worry," she said, "I'll make some phone calls. We'll see you tomorrow."

The next morning my parents were at my door wearing reassuring smiles and leather gardening gloves. They helped me get the genies back in the bottles and loaded them in their car. My mother had found a woman who took in stray and feral cats. 

Before they left, my father gazed down at me with a loving but serious expression. "Honey," he said, "people like you should never go to those places by themselves." 

I don't get myself into feral cat predicaments anymore, but the reason for that is . . . well, I don't know exactly what the reason for that is because I adore cats, even ferals provided I know what I'm in for. But I like to think it's because I always listened to my parents. 

If they were with me now, I'd gladly listen to them all over again - even if the topic was feral cats.