Hatred Always Starts Somewhere…

The following is a letter to the editor I sent to the Rushville Republican regarding the mosque at Ground Zero issue.  Yes, you’re missing the original column I’m referencing, but I think you’ll get the gist.

Dear Mr. Barada,

 

I am a regular reader of your column and wish to thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions with the Rushville Republican.  I have even used an article of yours in a communications class I teach at IUPUC inColumbus.  I have always found your arguments and opinions to be well reasoned and thought out, but I must take issue with your column from September 28 regarding the Muslim mosque being built near “Ground Zero.”

 

While I realize that I am in a very tiny minority in this community, I believe that we should openly support the building of this mosque rather than opposing it.  We should be lending a hand rather than throwing up roadblocks, no matter how repugnant that idea may be to us personally.  Here are some of the many reasons why I disagree with your opinion:

 

-         You don’t fight intolerance with intolerance any more than you fight economic irresponsibility with more economic irresponsibility or drug abuse with more drug abuse or crime with more crime.  Mr. Gingrich says we should be intolerant because that’s how they act inSaudi Arabiabut this isAMERICA!  Since when do we lower ourselves down to the lowest common denominator?  We should be raising others up, not stooping to their level.  We’re Americans.  We’re better than that.  Or, at least, the signers of the Constitution were better than that.  (Yes, I’m playing the Constitution card.  It can’t be helped.)  Please, Mr. Barada, don’t use your voice to encourage people to take the low road.  There’s enough of that going around without any need for encouragement.  That sounds more like a politician than a statesman.  Politicians echo what others want to hear, regardless of how low.  Statesmen stand up and have the to courage to say, “You’re wrong” even when that sentiment is unpopular.

-         Far too many men and women have died in theMiddle East.  My question is why?  We like to think they’re over there fighting to preserve our American way of life, but tell me, what is that?  Did they die just to bring us cheaper oil?  If so, that’s not a fair exchange.  Did they die trying to kill as many Muslims as possible in order to reduce the number of future extreme radical terrorists?  If so, that’s amoral.  Or did they die fighting for freedom, religious tolerance, democracy, the right to free speech, etc?  If so, that’s more of a fair exchange.  Yes?  No?  Discuss.

-         As a Catholic who attended parochial school and even taught middle-school aged religious education classes, I believe we should remember the simple principle of “What would Jesus Do?”.  I try to apply that concept when things get tough as I can’t think of any better yard stick.  While you and I will never know in this lifetime, I think Jesus would say something along the lines of, “let them come and build a house of worship in honor of my Father.  By doing so, you show them the true loving heart of a Christian and you bring them closer to me which is the goal.”  I could be wrong about that, but I doubt Jesus would have said, “Shove your mosque up your ass.”  Obviously many others in this country believe otherwise.

-         It’s my understanding that the majority of people who use this mosque won’t be radical extremists commuting in once a week from Iraq for services, but rather, will be Muslims living in New York, many of whom happen to have been born in America and were just as traumatized by the events of 9/11 as Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, atheists and wiccan American’s were.  Many of these Muslims are the kind of people we want to encourage – open minded, modern thinking people rather than burka clad radicals standing in the back alleys ofBagdad.  They’re the kind of Muslims we should be embracing, not turning our backs on.  I can’t help but feel for the children inNew Yorkwho happen to be Muslim and who now feel like they’re somehow tainted and responsible for what happened on 9/11.  It’s not right and it’s not fair to burden them with the guilt of those radicals.  And can one blame them if they become defensive?  Every religion, every culture, every country, every community has its radicals.  You can’t right off entire religions, countries, communities, etc. because of the radical few.  And I realize you’re not writing off Muslims, but just saying, “Don’t build the mosque there.”  But that’s a beginning, and hatred always starts somewhere. 

-         What is the mosque free zone around the twin towers site?  What about the existing mosque that’s four blocks away?  What about the bars and strip clubs within two blocks of the site?  It’s ok to have those, but not another house of worship?  And does this mean that we’ll now have Catholic church free zones around playgrounds and parks (since every Catholic priest must be a pedophile)?  And no Mormon churches anywhere near singles bars (since all Mormons must practice polygamy)?  Tell me, what IS the acceptable distance and why?  IS there an acceptable distance?

-         Yes, it is extremely insensitive to build it so close to Ground Zero.  I really do understand that and appreciate that.  But since when do we deny people their rights for being insensitive?  If that’s the case, Tony Stewart, NASCAR, the Comedy Channel and the WWF are in serious trouble.

-         I am for the mosque being built near Ground Zero because I am against bigotry and prejudice in any way, shape or form.  Small injustices now are the acorns of hate that grow into entire forests of hatred – hatred that leads to such things as Nazi concentration camps, Japanese interment camps, KKK rallies, etc.  Those things don’t arise overnight, but grow out of years of fear and hatred and prejudice.  That kind of hatred has to start somewhere.  You mentioned World War II andPearl Harborin your article.  The Japanese government attackedAmerica, but we went to war against the Japanese in general.  That is why so many Japanese Americans ended up in internment camps in our own country during that war.  Are we not sowing hatred against Muslims Americans in the very same manner?

-         Regarding that hatred, please remember that Hitler ordered the Jews exterminated, but it took a whole lot of scared, silent, common everyday Germans with jobs and families and children and grandchildren to actually throw the switches on the gas chambers and kill those people.  In our lifetimes there has been so much genocide – Bosnia/Serbia, the Hittus in Africa, Jews, Japanese, the Japanese trying to exterminate the Chinese, the Chinese trying to exterminateTibet.  Doesn’t it get to you at all?  There should be no room in our hearts for this kind of hatred.  Isn’t it enough just to hate Mondays and taxes?

-         I understand that what is driving this hatred in this country is fear.  Before 9/11, so many Americans could pretend that this country was immune from war and terrorism and insecurity, etc. and as long as you didn’t leave its borders, you were safe.  But there’s no such thing as outright safety, and 9/11 took that mistaken belief away from so many people.  It shook people like my mother to their core and a part of them will never truly feel safe again.  Now these same scared people want to take something from those who hurt us.  They want retribution and even revenge.  But that sense of security will never return, no matter how many mosques we deny the Muslims or how many countries we invade.  It was never really there to begin with.

-         The irony is that more people inRushCounty, inIndianaand in theUnited Stateshave been more directly hurt by the actions of our neighborhood mortgage brokers rather than any Muslim – American, African, Middle Eastern or otherwise.  Keeping in this vein, it’s fairly insensitive to build a new bank with a lending department anywhere near a house that’s been foreclosed, don’t you think?  I suggest you do a poll in downtown Rushville and gauge the truth of this statement.  Tally up the injuries done to our neighbors by Muslims.  Now tally up the injuries done to those very same people by the mortgage-backed economic downturn.

-         I’m reminded of the adage that it’s a recession when it happens to my neighbor, but it’s a depression when it happens to me.  In America, if something bad happens on our soil, we act like the world is coming to an end because we are an individualistic culture that believes what happens to us matters more than what happens to others.  It’s a sense of self preservation.  But when bad things happen overseas, we certainly whip out our checkbooks (something I applaud), but we never really seem to take it quite to heart in the same way.  More Africans have died at the hands of tribal war than died in Americaas the result of terrorism.  Yet we want the world to feel our 9/11 pain with us.  We want to have one giant pity party and we expect the world to feel sorry for us, but so much of the world is just too darn busy trying to find food and shelter and health care and education and even running water, for heaven’s sake.

-         Last but not least, I have read that some opponents to the mosque say we should be opposed to it because the Muslim faith is an extreme religion that doesn’t recognize women as equals.  In that same vein, should I be worried about my Amish neighbors?  Or is their faith politically correct because they can’t bring down a skyscraper with a horse drawn carriage and their subjugated women make such darn good bread?  I had the good fortune to make friends with many people of the Muslim faith while working on my MBA inIndiana, and I found them to be enlightened, educated people who wanted the best for their spouses and children, regardless of age, sex, etc.  I found them to be open minded, curious, warm, funny, etc.  I can’t imagine looking them in the face and telling them to take their house of worship somewhere else.

 

In September 2000, I attended a bond management seminar in theWorldTraderCenterand I stayed at the Millennium Hotel/Marriott World Trade Center.  I shopped in the basement shopping mall, visited the observation deck, attended the seminar on the 34th floor of Tower Two, looked out the windows of the Windows of the World restaurant, had a drink with friends in the bar, and laugh along with the nice young man who checked me into the Towers because his favorite movie was Hoosiers.  He wanted to know ifIndianawas really like that and I told him about the old former high school in Milroy that my children were attending.  I told him about our cats, chickens, rabbits and horses.  We talked about my Amish neighbors and how the fields really do look like that in the morning when the sun is burning off the fog.  He was captivated by it all.  The memory of him still haunts me as a year later I would wonder if he were alive or dead.  I simply don’t know.

 

In 1997 my brother, a state trooper, was killed in the line of duty.  In 1998 I went to National Police week ceremonies and met an NYPD detective who had lost his partner that same year.  We talked about his job and how he commuted to his work downtown by ferry and how he loved it and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else or doing anything else.  Three years later I would wonder if he were alive or dead.  I simply don’t know.

 

The attack on the Towers was personal to all of us.  But we have to let this anger go.

 

Mr. Barada, please rethink your stance on this issue.  Don’t give in to spite and fear and anger and insensitivity.  Freedom isn’t acknowledging someone’s right to raise the flag, bur recognizing someone’s right to burn it, no matter how repugnant and hateful that action is.  Building that mosque there should leave a terrible taste in everyone’s mouth, but build it we should.  Because THAT is what makes this country great.  Let’s not lower ourselves to the rest of the world’s standards.  Too much is at stake.

 

Bubblewrapped Babies

We have to stop wrapping our children in bubble wrap.  Young people need to learn to deal with loss, pain, failure, disappointment, want, need, jealousy, and so on, or they’ll walk face first into adulthood unarmed and unprepared.  These experiences are vaccines for the soul.  Would you deny your child the sting of a needle if in the long run it made them stronger?

More to come later.  For now, keep pondering and challenging.

Lonely Planet’s Guide to My Children’s Bedrooms

Geographic Orientation:

My Children’s Bedrooms is a beautiful place of great geographic diversity, but it is an area of wild instability, characterized by volatile native populations and does tend to suffer from their environmental excesses. 

To the east one finds the large region known as “Jordan’s Room” which is highlighted by a vast expanse called the Plains of Legos.  Visitors would be wise to wear hard shoes and walk slowly when traveling through this region.  The reward for this hard-fought journey awaits at the gently rolling hills of Dirty Laundry which cascade into the larger mountainous range of Crumpled Bed Linens.  This picturesque range of tectonic upheaval is capped by the wide semi-barren steppes of Jordan’s Bed.  Visitors, be aware, however, as these steppes are often cluttered with discarded electronics.  Also, avoid such local hazards as Yesterday’s Underwear and Toenail Clippings Not Yet Discarded.

Southwest of Jordan’s Bedroom, visitors encounter the region known only as The Children’s Bathroom.  Note – Foreigners are strongly encouraged to avoid travel to this region as it is hazardous and lacking of any and all natural beauty.  If travel there is a must, use only local guides due to the many man-made disasters common to the area.  Also, inform others of your travel plans and itineraries to speed up emergency evacuation procedures, if necessary.

To the west lies the somewhat treacherous region known as Jackie’s Bedroom.  While traveling through the narrow but short Valley of Unread Books (Note – landslides are common), be on the look out for the vastly popular local formation known as Magazines of Teenage Interests.  While intriguing and colorful on the outside, the few occasional foreign visitors to this area often leave disappointed.  (Insider’s Tip – save your money and time and avoid it like the plague.  Instead, there are many pristine and untouched regions of local beauty in the area known as Literary Classics.  While difficult to reach, visitors can revel in the feeling of having this area all to themselves.)

After passing through the valley, visitors will encounter the foothills of Stuffed Animals.  Rock climbers take note – challenging opportunities are abundant, but the geography is unstable and is often impacted by the native population.  Further exploration west of Stuffed Animals is highly discouraged (See Local Customs – Hostile Natives).

Note:  Natives of My Children’s Bedrooms are not a neat people.  Visitors should prepare themselves accordingly.

What to Bring:

Disinfectant is a requirement.  Consider bringing ample amounts of cash in small denominations.  Avoid plastic.  Begging is common and handouts are expected. 

When to Go:

Any day in June after 11:00 a.m. local time is the best time to visit.  Native populations are at their most accommodating during this month, though only after 11:00 a.m.  Locals are not morning people.

Avoid late August/early September when natives are glum and often openly hostile (See Local Education Systems for more details).

Political Climate:

Despite arguments to the contrary from local natives, My Children’s Bedrooms (otherwise referred to by locals as The Upstairs) is not, in fact, an independent country, but rather is a dependent territory of the larger, benevolent country to the far south known by the locals as the Parental Unit.  Note – Rebellions and localize uprisings are common, though recriminations by Parental Unit are swift and totalitarian in nature.  Uninformed visitors drawn in by seasonal activities known as “slumber parties” (See Festivals) have been known to, on occasion, take part.  In many instances, lock downs of natives and military police rule have resulted.

Visitors to My Children’s Bedrooms would also be wise to note that civil unrest between regions to the east and west is also common, though regional hostilities tend to ebb and flow with the seasons (See Holidays – December and Vacations – Summer for more details).

Natural Resources:

While man-made resources are abundant, My Children’s Bedroom lacks any natural resources of its own.  All goods and services are imported from neighboring countries (For more info, see “The Lonely Planet’s Guide to My Mother’s Wallet.”)

Local Customs:

Local customs defy explanation.  Insertion into the culture for great lengths of time is required for even a basic understanding.  It’s best to view these customs from a safe distance.

Places to Eat:

Safe places to eat locally are non-existent.  Don’t drink the water.  Avoid native offerings out of season (See Holidays – October).  It’s best to consider day trips and pack meals accordingly.

Night Life:

Due to the totalitarian nature of Parental Unit, strict curfews are enforced during the week throughout the territory.  Exceptions are made on weekends and during holidays and local festivals.  When curfews are not enforced, expect extravagant displays of native customs and cultures by locals.  Such customs can include, but are not limited to: ritualistic dancing, binging on local food items of a non-nutritious variety, meditative trances brought on by a local feature known as the Big Screen, karaoke marathons, and uninvited excursions into neighboring countries (See The Lonely Planet’s Guide to Our Refrigerator).

References:

Travelers to My Children’s Bedrooms may enjoy these other Lonely Planet guides to nearby countries:

The Lonely Planet’s Guide to My Husband’s Underwear Drawer

The Lonely Planet’s Guide to The Crap in The Basement

The Lonely Planet’s Guide to The Kitchen Drawer of Misc. Items.

So THAT’S Sex!

As parents go, my Mom and Dad excelled at the art of the mixed message, the best example being that of raising my sister and I as good, proper Catholic school girls complete with knee highs, parochial school and daily mass with nuns while cloistering us on a small Midwestern farm fraught with dozens of animals engaged in wanton sex.  That Sister Mary sent my eight-year-old sister home from school in the third grade for wearing a sleeveless dress – her bare shoulders were deemed too sexy by 1972 Catholic school standards – to sit on her swing, brushing her naked toes through the grass while watching the family bull do the wild thing with one of our many compliant cows was an irony completely lost on me at the time.  Had Sister Mary only known, she probably would have kept Renee in detention for weeks and pumped her for details.

It remains one of the great ironies of farm life that these large expanses of landlocked Midwestern islands so many farm kids call home can protect us from playing doctor with the neighbor kid who lives too far away to be bothered, but meanwhile shoves the realities of animal sex in all its primitiveness right in our faces.  And in full three-D Technicolor, XXX Bob Crane porn style with surround sound to boot.  We’re talking orgies, people.

As a child, I knew that sex was a dirty word not to be discussed.  I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t know that in some instances it led to babies or worse – embarrassing morning-after explanations – but I knew it was something that adults talked about in whispered tones when I was around and that it was sometimes hinted at on late night TV.  Sometimes, on Friday nights when Mom and Dad would tire and lose their vigilance, I would sneak peaks at “Love, American Style” which seemed to deal with sex a lot though without quite giving away the secret.  I would sit there close to the screen, trying with all my might to figure out what was up, all the while secretly excited in a subtle, but naïve Catholic-school-girl sort of way, but the implications of the jokes and little innuendos never penetrated the thick shield hammered upon me by years of good Catholic upbringing.  Of course the very next day would find me sitting on a hay bale watching our large boar pork one sow after the other, but the only thing I got out of that was that we would have cute little piglets to play with in the spring.  It never occurred to me that THAT was sex.

In short, I was an idiot.  To quote a favorite radio character of mine, “Huh.  I never made the connection.”

As so often goes, the connection wasn’t made for me by those corny public health videos forced upon us in fifth grade or even the fumbled mumblings of one of my parents who weren’t exactly great communicators.  Perhaps they thought that all of the grunting and panting on the farm had clued me in, but, if so, they definitely underestimated the depth of my nun-induced sexual ignorance.  So in the end, I found out about sex the way every red-blooded American kid is suppose to find out about sex – on the bus from an older kid who, you guessed it, lived in the suburbs.

What they do in the suburbs and how they learn it all without pigs and horses and goats to illustrate the finer points, I’ll never know, having never lived in a suburb.  Looking back, it seems that suburban kids start out living in the land of theory – they know the language, the pros, the cons, the techniques, how to do it, when to do it, even why to do it, but the actual application often remains just out of their grasp – at least until the teen years.  With farm kids, it starts out as all application, albeit second hand, with little theory to impose a sense of order or purpose on the whole thing.  Whereas suburban kids can talk it out amongst themselves, bouncing ideas and stories and examples off of each other, with farm kids, animals don’t talk.  There’s no graphic explanation, no adjectives or adverbs to convey the want and the need.  It’s all just a matter of in and out.  There’s grunting, there’s squealing, and there’s even a great deal of kicking, but do they bother to expound upon what just happened?  No.  Not in the least.  Thus, as farm kids, we were left to mull these things over with little input from a crowd of our homo sapien peers.

At one point in my childhood no less than five different species of animals proceeded to use our barn and the surrounding pastures as a Midwestern version of Club Med – a veritable animal house of wanton lust complete with one-night stands and an occasional bout of incestuality if we weren’t careful.  If Caesar, our Hereford bull, wasn’t harassing Sally or Sis (no relation – not that that matters to a bull), you can bet our pigs would be wallowing around and not just in mud either.  Rose Pierre, our prize Duroc boar, lorded over his harem of sows like a suicide bomber finally unleashed with his 72 virgins.  At 715 pounds, the big lug could barely walk, and was content to lie prostrate in the mud while his beloved sows groomed him and massaged him on a daily basis with their firm, rubbery snouts.  But if the urge to reproduce came a calling – and, trust me, it came a calling often – the usually immobile Rose Pierre would manage to lumber to his feet, shuffle to the nearest expectant sow and suddenly become the twinkle-hooved Baryshnikov of wild piggy sex.  The guy was a regular animal.

 That these early introductions to reproduction would color my own approaches to dating and sex was, to say the least, inevitable.  After years of watching animals proceed to copulate in only a matter of minutes, my expectations for sex of the human kind were some what lowered to say the least.  Foreplay?  What’s that?

My father once pulled me away from an after school special to hold the halter of our mare, Princess, while our stallion got lucky.  It lasted all of two minutes and involved a great deal of kicking on the part of Princess – who was neither willing nor impressed – and a lot of panting on the part of Piper – who was neither a gentleman or choosy.  When he made his first approach, Princess kicked him square in the chest.  It stopped him in his tracks for only a moment, but the denial was lost on him and he made another go of it.  It was a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” coupling in every sense of the word and the implications were not lost on me.  That I once kicked my then boyfriend, now husband in the chest when I wasn’t in the mood and he was remains a thorn between us to this day.  You can only apologize so much, you know.

With my own children I’ve decided to avoid the whole school bus issue altogether, thus I spend mile after mile driving them to and from school where their interactions with the clever suburban kids can be limited to recesses and feeble interactions over Twinkies and Ding Dongs at lunch.  No, with my kids, my plan was to let the health ed videos lay the ground work while I followed up with a thought provoking, meaningful discussion afterwards to make sure the implications of the applications of sex all sank in.  It was to be a marriage of thought and action, theory and application.  Thus one warm fall evening after my Catholic-school educated daughter, Jackie, had watched “The Video,” we sat down on the back porch for “The Talk.”  It went something like this:

“So, you saw the video today.  What did you think?”

“It was ok.  The music was really corny.  Oh, and we heard Adam got sick and passed out.”

Poor suburban kid, I thought.  Stick with the theory, Adam.  Stick with the theory.  “Forget about the music.  That’s not the important part.  What did you think about the video?”

“It was a little cheesy.”

*Sigh*

“Ok, let’s cut to the chase here, kiddo.  Do you know where babies come from now?”

“Yes, Mom,” she replies in an exasperated sort of way.  “The sperm meets the egg, they join, fertilization takes place, the egg implants itself in the womb and nine months later, out pops a baby.”

“Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.  But, just to be specific, do you actually know now HOW the sperm gets there?  You know – in the neighborhood with the egg?”

A pause.

A giggle.

Eye rolling.  Definite eye rolling.

“Ohhhhhh yeahhhhhh!” replied my virginal Catholic school girl in a very un-virginal and non-Catholic sort of way.  “I know.  Trust me, I know.”

“So the video explained it all.  Good.  I’m glad we got that all worked out.”

“Well, yeah, the video explained it,” she added as she rolled down her white cabled-knee socks and twirled her little gold plated crucifix with a shiny naked Jesus on it, “but I already knew about that stuff.  I figured it out last year.”

“What?  You figured it out?  How did you know?  It was the cats, wasn’t it?  I told your father not to plant that cat nip!”

“Gees, Mom, no, it wasn’t the cats,” said my car-driven, private school-attending, well protected daughter in a gee-my-Mom’s-so-slow sort of way.  “Adam explained it to me when we went on our field trip to the museum last year.  You know, on the bus.  He told me on the bus.”

So much for theory.

A Mother Is Only As Happy As Her Saddest Child

  A few months after my grandfather passed away, I joined my parents for dinner at my grandmother’s home.  When we arrived, she and my Uncle Mickey were sitting at the dining room table pouring over boxes of old family photos.  As my grandparents’ marriage had been a true romance in a decidedly Catholic sense of the word, one of the many results was a brood of ten very different children.  Needless to say, when we arrived that mid-winter evening, there were many boxes to go through and even more photos to review.

 

As one of four, I was use to having siblings.  After Vatican II, four to six children were what moderate thinking Catholics brought into the world.  Gone were the days of rhythmic birth control and offspring numbering into the teens.  It was a compromise and it was a number that, as a child, suited me fine, though there were days, thanks to my younger brothers, where sometimes even four felt like too many.

 

But as I sat there, pouring over those many photos, a quick glance at one memory captured so long ago caught my attention and gave me pause.  As I looked at it, I couldn’t help but wonder just how many IS too many?

 

A close up of a double bed clad in basic white sheets filled the frame, but more importantly, child after child after child filled the bed, all sound asleep with mouths open and pajamas askew, and all as equally entwined together as a kite string in a tree.  It was hard to tell under the bunched up sheets and assorted lumps where one child ended and another began.  That they could be so knitted together like a well worn sweater while still obviously sound asleep amazed me.  A middle class upbringing and four siblings may have forced me to share a room, but as long as I could remember, I always, at least, had my own bed.

 

My one and only encounter with that picture was 16 years ago and, frankly, I had forgotten about it.  What prompted that long-lost memory and it’s feelings of shock and awe to resurface, however, was the recent news that a single mother on disability had willingly given birth to octopluts – bringing her own burgeoning brood to a grand total of 14.

 

I may still not know how many is too many, but I’m sane enough to know and brave enough to admit that a parent/child ratio of one to 14 is not good, not good in the least.  It’s too many, regardless of what the mother, an only child herself, cares to admit.  As a Catholic, I’ve been around the block with more than my fair share of large families and, sadly to say, there are repercussions to rampant breeding.  With limited parental attention to go around, it’s eat or be eaten.

 

It’s a mentality I saw all too often in my own father – number four in that family of ten.  He was the second son of eventually four boys, and after him a string of three girls separated him from the next.  That Dad felt the need to fight for his existence I have no doubt.  A sensitive, sometimes brooding man, he often related tales to his own children of how rough he had it growing up.  A favorite dealt with the time when it was his turn to help his mother cook supper and he used food coloring to dye everything blue in order to make it unappealing – the mashed potatoes, the corn, the homemade gravy, even the flour for the fried chicken – so as to have more to eat himself.  It was obviously a success, because he repeated it again one morning with blood red pancakes and green scrambled eggs.

 

As a child, his was a world of hand-me-downs and doing without, and as an adult, he slayed that dragon by bringing home any and all junk that he would stumble upon on the various construction sites he worked as a plumber.  He was a collector of stuff, believing eventually it would serve some purpose, and it piled up over our many acres, filling the barn, filling the basement, filling the fields.  When he died, six gigantic sheets of commercial grade tinted glass leaned against the large wild cherry tree in the yard.  As we tried to estimate when he had put them there, our best guesses tended toward ten years or more.  For ten years or so those sheets of glass leaned against the tree, never to move until my brother-in-law broke them up into manageable pieces and eventually hauled them off.

 

But limited food and limited stuff and even limited privacy don’t even begin to strike me as the harshest legacy of being part of a burgeoning family.  It’s the emotional toll that seems to leave the greatest scars.  Over the years I’ve worked with several individuals who come from large families – one of 14, one of 15 and, unbelievably, one of 18.  What strikes me most about so many of these individuals is the need for attention – ironically the very thing that seems to have driven Octo-Mom to have 14 children.  It’s as if standing out in a crowd is a seemingly insurmountable task, and they fight tooth and nail to be heard, to be seen, to be recognized, to be acknowledged.

 

And it’s what bothers me the most about this woman and her many, many children.  As she has stated time and time again to anyone who will listen, she lacked both siblings and attention from her mother.  Odd, that last one.  As an only child, one would think there would be little competition for her mother’s attention, but that’s her story and she’s sticking to it.  But I can’t help but wonder what the situation would have been like if there HAD been siblings in the mix.  Would they have filled the void created by her inattentive mother?  Or would they have only served to suck even more attention away from this bobble-headed baby machine, ultimately driving her to hate the very siblings she claims to crave?

 

Even as one of only four, I can somewhat understand that need, though apparently not on her level.  When I was 13, I remember being excited about my first school dance at the junior high.  I made no special plans and I didn’t think it was important to anyone in the family but me, so imagine my shock when I arrived home from school the day before the dance and found a brand new dress and a tube of my very own lipstick waiting for me on my bed.  It stopped me in my tracks and for many, many reasons.  One, it was my first actual makeup of any kind and I remember the excitement I felt as I opened the tube and twisted it up and down, watching the petal pink lipstick bob up and down.  Second, we didn’t get much in the way of new clothes – most certainly not a dress – and this one was beautiful, even if it was polyester and came from K-Mart.  It was white with short fluttered sleeves and a multi-tier skirt that fell just above my knees.  When I put it on and spun around, the skirt and its many layers floated around me like a cloud and I fell instantly in love.

 

But what left the biggest impression on me was not the lipstick or even the dress, but rather it was the knowledge that at some point in the day my mother – my very overworked, exasperated mother – had thought about no one else but me.  Not my siblings, not my father, but me.  It was as if for the very first time in my life, I realized that my individual needs DID matter to my mother and that she DID see me and hear me and love me.  I always knew she did, but before that moment, it had always felt like a “group” effort, as if, these are my children and I love them all.  That she could separate me from the crowd was a new concept entirely.

 

And that, to me, makes Octo-Mom’s reasoning even more disturbing as she has sentenced her own children to the same fate she apparently suffered through as a child – a lack of real maternal attention.  She now has 14 children clamoring for her looks, her touch, her hugs, her stories, her smiles and her tears.  And despite her best intentions, it will not be enough, that much I know.  It can’t possibly be, given that so many of her children have special needs.  So they’ll turn to each other, yes, but they’ll turn against each other too and like an elementary school yard at recess there will be clicks and niches and bullies and battles and winners and losers.  It will get ugly and it will be brutal and, for those 14 children, it will be life as they know it, and I say God help them all.

 

At least as an exclusive member of the now famous 14, one of them will eventually write a best selling tell all which will provide him or her with the funds so lacking in childhood.  He or she will have money enough to begin to soothe those demons of doing without – at least on the surface.  I only hope for all taxpayers everywhere that the future author stills remembers how to share with the siblings.

 

 

 

Coming of Age with Coq Au Vin

            When I faced my first plate of snails, I was all of 16, a far-flung foreign exchange student who had never once set foot on a plane until that fateful trip.  The half dozen that arrived were plump, meaty things with tiny antennae long past wriggling, and they were swimming in a buttery, drippy sauce fragrant with garlic.  With sheer abandon, I tugged the first morsel from its shell and sank my teeth into the juicy flesh.  The heady scent of garlic engulfed me, and I surrendered myself to the thin veil of pungent seasoning.  Raised on pork chops and meatloaf, the texture of the little beasts overwhelmed my palate, and I was transported somewhere around heaven.  It was a gastronomic epiphany.

            Perhaps it was the skill of the chef, but I believe the magnitude of the meal had more to do with the decidedly French atmosphere.  No doubt the bistro kitchen had a hand in the level of perfection, but these were no garden-variety snails.  No, these were real honest-to-garlic-goodness French snails prepared by a French chef in the intoxicating white hot heat that is the south of France.  Sitting at the outdoor table of the crowded little bistro, I could have been served burnt toast and would have declared it a triumph.

            Raised on a small Midwestern farm, my experiences with good food were extensive, but while grand in quality, they were severely limited in variety.  My domestic dinnertime “adventures” barely extended beyond your basic meat and potatos.  These were quite competently fixed in ample quantities by my mother, but, as is often the case in the land of the frozen dinner, creativity and range was sacrificed at the hand of convenience.  Needless to say, while my mother is an excellent cook, variety was not a regular part of our dining experience.  Breakfast usually came from a box, except on Sunday mornings when my father took over the stove and whipped up inch-thick pancakes studded with apples.  Lunch was the standard American childhood fare – Spaghettio’s, bologna sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly crackers.  They were filling and we were kids – we didn’t care.

Lunch sometimes bordered on the adventurous when my mother would break out a can of Campbell’s Chicken Gumbo soup.  As she served us steaming bowls of processed broth with gumbo chunks and things that resembled chicken, she relayed fascinating tales of stalking the wild gumbo at night with our trusty tomcat, cleverly named Tom.  We never saw the cans, and we bought the whole story hook, line, and sinker.  I imagined my mother dressed in black, stick in hand, crawling through the backyard brambles with Tom pulling forward on the end of a crude leash made of hay rope.  Together they would spy a herd of the rogue gumbo and Mom would release Tom who would attack the wild beasties with all his might.  I imagined the work it took to catch such a beastie, and wondered how many it must take to make a whole pot of soup, since obviously Mom only used the intestines.  At least, that’s what I imagined the sliced pieces of gumbo to be, and I ate them heartily as any tomboy would.

Mom usually followed up her gumbo soup with warm molasses cookies.  She once told me that it took a great many moles to make all of those cookies and after that, I could no longer eat them with raisins.

            While lunch was not exactly a culinary tour de force, my mother always did go all out for dinner, and the meals were good, hot, and substantial.  It was stick-to-your-ribs, this-is-Indiana kind of food, but the repertoire of dishes included a limited cast of characters.  We ate two vegetables – corn and green beans – mostly because these were planted by the acre in my father’s garden and canned by the quart in my mother’s kitchen.  Dad hated peas, so they never made an appearance, and broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus were rare treats that I inhaled by the forkful at my grandmother’s house on the holidays.  If we couldn’t grow it well in large quantities, we usually didn’t eat it.  Tomatoes we had in abundance, but the majority of these were processed into chunks, sauces, and ketchups.  Potatoes were considered a separate category altogether, but they too made their appearance in limited form – mashed and fried.  Mom sometimes threw in cheese, but it was always Velveeta.

            The meat course was usually dictated by whichever family pet was currently taking up precious space in our freezer.  We would butcher a few hapless pigs in the spring and eat pork for six months.  Then, suddenly, we would see the bottom of the freezer and, in short order, in would go one of our luckless steers – one year Clover Rover, the next Alfalfa Fred.  Beef would grace our table for the next nine months until we practically begged for our father to “do in” another pig.  These monotonous streaks of chops and roasts, loafs and steaks would be broken by the occasional Sunday chicken, but for the most part, that was it.  .

            And then I went to France.

            To say that it was a gastronomic awakening is an understatement.  I was fortunate as a child – most of the food I ate, from the goat’s milk we drank, to the eggs we fried, to the green beans I hid under my napkin, were home grown.  But I come from a small town that once voted Taco Bell as its favorite Mexican restaurant.  Seafood to me was Mom’s tuna casserole (light on tuna, heavy on the egg noodles and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup) and occasional trips to a fast food fish joint after Friday night Lenten services.  Cultural variety of any kind was not an option.

Then suddenly, overnight, I found myself surrounded by a culture that thrives on the creativity of its cuisine, and my taste buds, primed through years of 1970’s Midwest monotony, were ready for the challenge.  The family I was living with for the summer resided in Basel, in northwestern Switzerland but my host mother, Marmee, was French through and through – a product of Alsace-Lorraine who bled coq au vin.  Thus on my first day in Switzerland, we packed up and headed out for a month-long holiday in her homeland.  Our destination was a quaint, little rustic cottage with no TV or phone, and which contained a kitchen barely measuring ten feet by seven feet.  The refrigerator was no bigger than a cooler, the stove was small, ancient, and gas fired, and the entire room included maybe three feet of counter space, but it was all the canvas Marmee needed for her daily creations.  It was in this charming little home, perched on the edge of a deep, pine forest three miles from the Cote d Azure, that I soon discovered in France, meals – even every day, little meals – are an occasion.

            Breakfasts were an event served rain or shine on a little covered porch with a view of our neighbor’s vineyard and chicken run.  Two loaves of French bread arrived fresh daily, delivered beside the morning newspaper in a little plastic bag hung on the mailbox.  We ate three-minute eggs out of painted egg cups, and sipped huge bowls of cafe au lait served steaming hot with slices of biscotti.  As breakfast ended, we scooped up the few remaining crumbs and fed them to our neighbor’s chickens that stood watching us with obvious envy.

            Breakfasts were followed by long hours at the beach where we lay soaking up the sun, conquering the waves, or reading.  Lunch was usually light, straight out of a picnic basket, and involved fruit, bread, wine and still more cheese.  But the bread was always fresh and crusty, the cheeses different each day, and the wine was intoxicating in a way that alcohol alone could not impart. 

Late afternoon would bring a slow stroll up the boardwalk to the seaside town of Contis Place with plenty of stops along the way for Marmee to pick up her instruments for that evening’s performance.  There was no one store, no huge one-stop shopping extravaganza.  There was a fruit and vegetable stand overflowing with artichokes, eggplants, and more kinds of mushrooms than I knew even existed.   A little further on still stood a tiny market that specialized in dairy items, especially cheeses, ice creams, yogurts, and crisp sorbets.

            The town contained a butcher shop with interesting displays of fresh cut, unwrapped meats and poultry, their heads fully intact.  Rabbits and venison were also on display – things I had never seen on a butcher’s counter before.  The rabbits still had their legs on – proof that they were indeed rabbits and not cats – but the sheer thought of purchasing a cat for dinner, I thought, was an amusing gamble.

            My favorite stop, by far, was the seafood shop, where every day was a different experience, depending on the morning’s harvest from the Atlantic.  Shimmering whole-bodied fish lay in deep rows, nose to tail, at attention, and ready for inspection.  Huge sections of freshly caught tuna, too big to display in their entirety, took up their own counter.  Earthenware containers heaped with ice held shrimp, mussels, clams, and crabs by the dozen.  A wooden barrel teaming with snails stood by the door and as I watched, several of the slow-moving creatures tried to make a break for it down the sides.

            After Marmee had collected her treasures for the evening’s repast, we would head back to our little cottage in the woods to relax and unwind while she worked her magic.  Often Marmee’s son, Phillip, and I would head out into the woods in search of mushrooms.  Our prey in question were chanterelles – large, fairly flat with curly edges, but most impressive of all, they were the most marvelous shade of pumpkin orange.  We would arrive back home an hour or so later, our sacks swelling with fungi, and relate our adventures as we cleaned our harvest in the small bowl of the white porcelain sink.

            There was always an adventure to tell – deer we spooked, large hawks swooping down after unfortunate squirrels, interesting rocks to pick up, large pine cones to lug home, big, rotten logs to roll with hopes that mushrooms, and not snakes, would be hiding underneath.  It gave our meal an added element of interest to be able to relate an adventure with each course.  To think that our tuna steaks braved the cool Atlantic waters only the day before and that our mushrooms spent the previous evening under the same July moon gave dinner a hint of romance, an aura of elegance.

            The culmination of our six-week long holiday in France was an elaborate evening event prepared by Marmee as an exuberant farewell to her many family and friends in and around Contis Place.  It was truly a magnificent display of talent involving a great deal of planning and preparation.  The day before the big event, we made our way to a nearby vineyard where, in the searing heat of the August sun, we sat at red checkered tables, sipping vintage after vintage – sniff, swirl, sip, spit, repeat as needed – until Marmee found just the right family of wines for both cooking and serving.  Cognac came next, followed by a generous selection of brandies and port.

            We returned home, bottles in hand, and Marmee sequestered herself in the kitchen, making her lists.  The next morning dawned warm and sultry and Marmee and Poppy headed to the markets early, lists in hand, while Phillip, Myri, and I sat up large folding tables under the big trees in the back yard.  Stiff, white tablecloths soon followed suit and were anchored down with thick, cream colored candles surrounded by pine sprigs and cones collected from the surrounding forest.  An odd assortment of wooden chairs, benches, and stools were placed around the tables and then mismatched glass lanterns and candleholders suspended from wire were strewn overhead in the trees.  Finally, long, creamy yards of bridle netting, remnants from Marmee’s seamstress sister, were draped over limbs and twigs, creating a dreamy, makeshift canopy.  It was quaint, it was homey, and it was the most romantic thing I had ever seen.

            When Marmee and Poppy arrived, we all sprung into action.  I sliced warm honeydews in half, scooped out the seeds, and added a tablespoon of sugar to one half.  The sugar was topped off with a ruby colored port, the top of the melon was returned, and the whole concoction was left to ferment in the sun.  Phillip sat nearby slicing plums for Marmee’s tartlet.  Myri busied herself cleaning and de-bearding mussels, while Poppy worked feverishly on the shrimp, peeling and de-veining like a madman.  Marmee orchestrated the entire event from the kitchen where she somehow simultaneously, with the help of Myri, shucked oysters, de-boned cod and lightly kneaded the pastry crust for her piece de resistance, her seafood pie.  This mouth-watering concoction of jewels from the sea not only brought joy to the taste buds, but also delight to the eyes.  A small, cardboard roll which once held toilet paper now graced the top of her pie, encased in layers of pastry and hiding a tiny tea candle up top, in reverent initiation of a lighthouse.  The pie was served at sunset and when the big moment arrived, Marmee emerged slowly from the kitchen with a deliberate pace – much like a blushing bride – and carried her grand creation slowly to the table, candle lit, for all to admire.  It was a radiant performance and we banged on the table, cheered immensely and toasted her with raised glasses of wine.

            We sat under those tulle-draped trees for hours, eating and drinking, laughing and talking.  As the coffee and cognac were brought to the table, decks of playing cards and cigars appeared from pockets and purses.  The smaller children chased lighting bugs and tried to tempt the chickens out of their snug nests with crusts of crunchy bread.  Marmee and her sisters sat clustered together, talking animatedly, drawing pictures with their arms and hands, all the while cradling their drinks, not spilling a drop.  I sat at the table in total rapture, a glass of merlot in my hand, and drank everything in.  My spirit was intoxicated.  The sultry night air was fragrant with warm earth, pine needles, and vanilla candles laced with just a hint of salty sea air.  The toasts were frequent, the coffee and cognac were incredibly strong.  The friends and family were warm and generous.  It was to be my last night at the cottage – we would board a train bound for the Paris the next day – and I sat there with tears welling in my eyes.  The next day would bring more adventures, but that night, surrounded by those lovely people and their warm hospitality, I knew, was special.

Dying in Dog Years

When our lives are spread out over decades, we tend to lose sight of the gradual degradation of our mobility, strength, vitality and youth until suddenly it seems as though we’re forty or fifty and we can’t remember when we lost the ability to put our feet behind our heads.  Where did it go?  When did it leave us?  Why can I no longer see my feet, much less move them past my shoulders?

 

And so, inevitably, it happens.  Our bodies seize up.  Muscles refuse to stretch.  Our memories give way to a confused void.  We wonder where our sense of balance went.  It’s subtle, slow and progressive.  Then one day we look back and realize that all opportunity to learn to do a backbend has past us by.  Gone is our chance to really master water skiing.  And forget about snow boarding, bungee jumping, rock climbing, or leaping blindly into a mosh pit.  We’re now lucky to make it in and out of the bathroom without breaking a hip.  In short, it may take us seventy or eighty years to get there but, eventually – if we’re lucky – we all grow old.

 

When I first moved to our small farm and surrounded myself with animals, mortality wasn’t on my mind.  Riding horses through blazing autumn colored woods, farm fresh eggs, and snuggling up with a soft, fluffy kitten were more of what I had in mind.  But when you surround yourself with animals, mortality becomes an issue that can’t be ignored and with it comes questions regarding our own personal time on this earth.  When you surround yourself with good, sweet, patient friends who have a life span of 10 to 15 years at best, mortality, unfortunately, becomes a reality.

 

With animals, one can really begin to get a sense of time’s impact on the body.  Because the lives of many animals are often shrunk down into the space of a mere decade or two, it’s like watching the aging process in fast forward.  Nine years ago, my dog, Ginger, was a bouncing, bounding Great Dane puppy.  Today, she has gray on her muzzle, is the mother of 27, and sometimes needs an aspirin for a flair up of arthritis in the winter.  In the span of nine short years, she migrated from being a total spaz who would fall spread eagle on a freshly mopped kitchen floor into a regal, majestic behemoth content to lie on the floor in front of the fire with her nose resting ever so slightly on the hearth.  The spaz is gone.  Long live the Queen.

 

Junior, our black and gray striped tabby cat, at the age of 14 reigns in as the farm’s leading Methusala, and her once sleek physique has given away to mounds of ample kitty flesh, thanks to daily doses of Meow Mix supplemented with more than the occasional field mouse.  Where once she use to prowl the pastures like a sleek huntress leaping on small scurrying things with abandon, she now slumbers in quiet repose 23 hours out of 24, only waking up to down a bowl of Meow Mix or occasionally sit on a poor, dumb mouse.  Sadly, she’s become the kitty-cat equivalent of Dom Delouise minus the bad toupee.

 

In contrast, our daughter, Jackie, at the age of 14, seems to be just entering her physical prime.  The hand/eye coordination is improving, she’s picked up some height, and her years of practicing dance, basketball, swimming, etc., have added real strength to her arms.  The awkwardness of childhood is fading away and, in its place, she’s inheriting a level of grace befitting a young woman.  She blunders through the house less and glides more.  It’s as if, after years of trial and error, she’s finally coming into her own in terms of her body.  Ironically, her movements are more cat-like in execution.  She’s becoming what Junior has already left behind.

 

This fast forward version of aging really struck me as I watched my two goats, Annie and Arnie, out in the pasture behind our home.  The two are a study in contrasts.  Annie, a mature, maternal Nubian will be six soon.  She is a soft brown, overstuffed chair in goat form, with long white ears speckled with black, and a black streak that runs down the back of her neck, along her backbone, ending in a fanned out sprawl at the tip of her shaggy tail.  She is a sweet, loving creature who gives out kisses and likes to be near us, and she moves with the speed of a sloth, though, if possible, even more deliberate and reluctant.  Annie doesn’t like to move.  Rather, she prefers to stand still, and when she does move, she tends to be very owl like in nature.  She turns her head sideways and leaves it that way for minutes at a time as if to say, “so that’s what the world looks like sideways!”  When she gets bored with that, she’ll bend her neck backwards as if trying to reach her tail.  She’ll stretch, she’ll sigh, she’ll hold a pose, voguing in a way that would surely try Madonna’s patience.

 

Yes, poor, sweet, honest Annie, saddled with age and pregnancy, merely waddles slowly a few feet at time, coming to rest in front of her feed bowl which she stares at with her big doe eyes until someone fills it up with her beloved grain.  Annie loves her feed bowl and she loves standing in her feed bowl, with her two front feet placed ever so gracefully side by side in the middle of its black plastic shell.  Annie, frets over her feed bowl, and she stands in it as if to keep it from blowing away or disappearing altogether.  Her devotion to it reminds me vaguely of my grandparents who, in their later years, had a great fondness for their matching insulated tumblers that held their Canadian Mist and Coke with singular purpose.  When we visited their cabin up in Michigan, we knew not to touch those tumblers under penalty of death.  

 

Were Arnie to love his feed bowl as much as Annie, he would probably pee on it and call it a day for Arnie, at the age of eight months, is a study in contrasts.  He is a mere baby, and he is a small explosion contained in the fluffy white shell of a budding Boer buck.  He is all white, with the exception of his head, which is a deep chestnut brown that stretches half way down his neck.  A white blaze splits his face in two and his ears, also brown, hang down, constantly swinging yet also framing his fat, fluffy face as he goes about his goaty business.  Two spiky horns top his head and he seems to take great pride in them for such a little, fluffy, curly-tailed buck.  He spends ample amounts of time each day rubbing them and scratching them upon something, including, sometimes, poor, slow Annie as she stands solidly in her feed bowl.

 

And he doesn’t just walk.  No, Arnie explodes!  He leaps, jumps, twists, and runs as if every walk across the pasture were reason enough to launch into an acrobatic ballet of epic proportions.  It’s as if standing still were an affront to his manly, smelly goat hood.  In between acrobatics he spends his time standing on things, climbing on things, scratching on things, nibbling on things, butting things, and leaning on things – including, again, poor Annie.  The whole world, to Arnie, is an accessory, put here for his enjoyment and use.

 

Watching these two – Annie as she stands, Arnie as he leaps – I can’t help but to marvel at the difference a few short years can make in the life of an animal.  I, myself, have become quite like Annie.  My movement is slow, I don’t leap for fear of pulling something, I tend to waddle, and I’ve grown very attached to my big, round tea cup that my small son gave me for Christmas one year.  All nostalgia aside, I wish I could say that my primary attachment to it is because of the love my young son invested in its selection, but in truth, it’s just a really big cup.  I can get a lot of tea in it, which saves me waddle time to and from the stove.  For that, I’m grateful.  The kids aren’t allowed to touch my cup.

 

Because mortality can’t be avoided – especially on a small farm – we’ve buried our fair share of four-legged friends.  As difficult as it has been to say goodbye to each animal, the saddest parting by far was that of Gigot, our precious pony.  We’re not sure of her age, though expert estimates (our farrier) put her to be in her late thirties.  As horses go, that’s old, but it was her age, in fact, that made her such a perfect pony for our two small children.  Nothing fazed her.  A worldly pony, she had seen it all and so, as our children would tie her to the fence on warm summer days and bathe her with the hose and a bucket of soapy water or crawl over her or climb under her, she would stand there, unruffled, chewing her grain and occasionally letting out a deep, contented sigh.  Loud noises, barking dogs, screaming kids, it was all just background noise to Giggy.

 

She was a sweet pony, though unattractive, but what she lacked in equine flair, she made up for with steadfastness and trust.  She was tall for a pony, but her legs were out of proportion to her stubby body and she looked somewhat like those tall, moving machines in the Star Wars movies that roamed high above the surface of whatever planet they were attacking.  And she moved like them too, somewhat stilted and jerky, with her black and white tail swishing and flicking flies from her bony black and white body.  She had a large, bloated grass stomach, but it was the only place where she carried any weight, for her bones loved to stick out, all pointy and hard.  Her big brown eyes tended to bug out of her head and her face was long, even for a pony.

 

She had foundered as some point in her long, happy life, so by the time we got her eight years ago, her hooves had lengthened and thickened to the point that she looked to be walking on high heels.  Our farrier would pay us a visit every six weeks to keep her feet neatly trimmed and afterwards, he would give her a big horsy aspirin to help with the stiffness that would surely follow.  He would crush it up and put it in the end of a short piece of garden hose and then stick it into the side of her mouth.  Blowing hard, he would force the dust down her throat, and the children would laugh as a puff of white dust would fly from her soft, downy nostrils, turning her momentarily into a gentle dragon.  Her bug eyes would bug out even further, but only for a second and then she would take it in stride and go back to her meal of grass or hay.

 

Because she was old and had seen it all, she would often sleep flat out on her side in the field, not worried or caring if something would sneak up on her as she dozed away.  Often I would see her lying out there in the pasture, oblivious to everything else and for a moment, my heart would skip a beat.  Was she sleeping?  Was she dying?  I would call softly to her and after hearing her name three or four times, she would eventually raise her head up, and turn it toward me with a look that would say, “What?  Can’t a girl get some sleep, for heaven’s sake?”

 

But one spring Saturday I saw her lying in the pasture, peaceful and content as I had seen her so many times before, though when I called her name, she didn’t move.  Her head didn’t lift and her tail didn’t swish and as I approach her, I knew then that she was gone.  Our daughter, Jackie, took it especially hard and she sobbed over her poor old pony as if her heart would break.  We buried sweet Giggy in a ravine far out near the woods.  We took a clipping from her mane, said a prayer and wished her well.  I am sure that, now that she’s up in horsy heaven, the stiffness is gone and the hooves have healed.  She now remembers how to gallop and jump, and she runs with the best of them as any long-legged pony should.  The worries and cares of being a thirty-something pony are gone and the bloom of youth is back on her bony frame.  I miss the old girl, but I know that when it’s my turn to go up to heaven, I’ll love her all the more.

 

 

Just An Ordinary, Average Day…..

 

2:17 a.m. – Dog barks under bedroom window.  On sixteenth bark Husband raises window and shouts “Shut UP, Shhhhuuuutttt Uuuuppp!  SHUT up!”  I’m reminded of a Kid Rock song and fall back to sleep.

 

2:19 a.m. – Dog barks under bedroom window again.  On twenty-fourth bark, Husband leaps from bed, dashes out the front door wearing only tidy whities and begins hurling stacked firewood in general direction of Dog.  I give thanks for no close neighbors and down two Tylenol PMs.

 

5:00 a.m. – Alarm goes off.  The 5:00 a.m. me curses the 10:00 p.m. me who made plans for a two-mile jog before work.  5:00 a.m. me makes mental note to punish 10:00 p.m. me with 100 ab crunches before bed.  5:00 a.m. me sets snooze alarm for 5:45, gives thanks for the lingering affects of Tylenol PM, and promptly goes back to sleep.

 

6:45 a.m. – Cursing the effects of Tylenol PM, I stumble out front door after a typical morning of scrambling for socks and burning toast.  Herd children toward car and spy Dog asleep under the shrubs.  Grab stick of kindling and metal ash bucket near barbecue pit.  Sneak up on Dog and recreate the drum solo from Wipeout then laugh manically as Dog heads for the hills.  Humans 1, Dogs 1.

 

6:47 a.m. – Spy headless carcass of my best hen, Gertrude, lying next to doghouse in side yard.  Decide Dog will not reap the rewards of his betrayal, grab Gertrude by her skinny wattled leg and toss her on hood of car.  Humans 1, Dogs 2, Chickens 0.

 

6:50 a.m. – After three unsuccessful attempts to “toss” Gertrude’s still limp carcass off the hood by swerving slightly to the left, I realize the folly of my plan as Gertrude’s aerodynamic wings catch the 40-mph wind and roll her floppy carcass up against the windshield where she lays splayed across my field of vision.  Before I can stop, the approaching headlights of Neighbor Joe’s truck penetrate the gloom, siloetting Gertrude in the light.  Somewhere behind me, a child screams.

 

6:51 a.m. – As Neighbor Joe passes by, giving me one of a thousand odd looks, I stare straight ahead and whistle Zip-pa-dee-do-da.

 

6:52 a.m. – Neighbor Joe’s truck disappears over the hill so I stop the car, grab Gertrude by the foot and heave her ungrateful carcass into the weeds.  Humans 1, Dogs 2, Chickens 1.

 

7:45 a.m. – I arrive at work, giving thanks I don’t carry a gun.

 

8:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. – In between surfing the net and reading emails, I manage to squeeze in some work while planning a long, healthy walk in the park for lunch.

  

11:30 a.m. – Drive to Wal-Mart and spend majority of lunch hour buying toilet paper and toothpaste before heading to White Castle.  Down three sliders and large onion chip on the way back to office.

 

1:50 p.m. – Really regret the onion chips.

 

2:25 p.m. – Co-workers really regret the onion chips.

 

5:00 p.m. – Quitting time!

 

6:00 – 9:57 – Evening disappears into a foggy haze of complaints about dinner, too much math homework to check, a cityscape of dirty dishes towering over the kitchen counter, protests over evening showers and childish bedtimes, and a horny husband hinting that he wants to “have fun.”

 

9:58 – 10:00 p.m. – Husband has fun.

 

10:00 p.m. – Bedtime!  I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m., thinking tomorrow is the day to start my new health regimen.  I skip the 100 ab crunches because I’m starting tomorrow and crawl in bed.

 

10:01 p.m. – Hear distinct and audible sound of Dog clearing throat under window.

 

10:02 p.m. – Dog barks under bedroom window.  I make a mental note to have Dog neutered.

 

10:03 p.m. – Husband begins snoring.  I make a mental note…..

 

 

A Winter Poem for an Ice Bound Day

 

It’s a serious business, this thing called winter.

A time for reflecting on goals not met

And dreams not realized.

A time for planning redemption,

The reclamation of what should have been

Or could have been but for lack of effort and will.

 

And though we wish to start anew

And make it right, we falter,

Haltingly at first, then with dread

Frozen in our too often tread tracks,

For we know, we have always known

That the way will not be easy

 

For winter comes not on soft feet

Like broken in slippers,

As some would have us think,

But, rather, in hard heeled loafers,

Unforgiving and tight.

 

She comes in serious and determined

Ready to show us our weaknesses,

Pointing out where we went wrong

And got off track, knowing that

All too soon we’ll go astray again

 

And so winter blows in, sweeping around us

Like downy flakes of snow.

And though she may point out the path to us

Our feet want not to go.

Random Thoughts to Make You Think….

 

Here are some random thoughts to get you through the day.  Enjoy!

 

-          If your child isn’t potty trained, don’t take him to White Castle.  Ever.

 

-          Whoever said a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work obviously was never a lifeguard.

 

-          Hugging a tree is good. Hugging a tree with poison ivy is bad.  Very bad.

 

-          Your child won’t remember that you told her to pick up her clothes, but she will remember that you said Aunt Hazel needs to drop fifty pounds.

 

-          If you must kiss the cute squirming little puppy in your lap, expect some tongue.

 

-          Whoever said it’s not the destination, it’s the journey never owned a Pinto.  Or a Gremlin.  Or a Yugo, for that matter.

 

-          Good friends are hard to find, but great dogs are everywhere.

 

-          Never look at your bottom in the mirror after sitting on the toilet for more than ten minutes.  Trust me on this one.

 

-          The sound of a child vomiting is strong enough to propel a full-grown man to the nearest bowling alley.

 

-          If a man can rebuild a truck engine from scratch, why can’t he curl a seven-year-old girl’s hair with a curling iron?

 

-          If, after 25 hours of labor, a woman can force a screaming, heaving eight pound bundle of joy into the world, why can’t she change a tire?

 

-          When things get stale, why do hard things get soft and soft things get hard?  If hard things got harder and soft things got softer, wouldn’t we all be a lot better off?

 

Hope you like!