Hate Ignorant Mail

Maybe it's because I didn't get enough sleep last night, but an email I received this morning thoroughly pissed me off. It was sent by a religious acquaintance to a slew of her religious friends (how I got on the list I've no idea), telling everyone not to buy the USPS's Eid stamp.

It comes complete with a long list of atrocities committed by Muslims, and says in part, "How ironic is this? They don't even believe in Christ, and they're getting their own Christmas stamp . . . " How stupid is that? It's not a Christmas stamp, it's an Eid stamp, you dumbass.

Worse, I think, is this part: "To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors."

So . . . if you believe this email, the USPS has created a stamp to honor terrorists.

Any hope of laughing this off was extinguished by her next email, which arrived two minutes later. This one was a Power Point presentation on remembering the Holocaust. I have strong feelings about the Holocaust and absolutely want it to be remembered--but not by sending around emails containing very large, extremely graphic photographs of the piles of the dead, along with "patriotic" propaganda.

Accompanying the photos was an old lie. The slide show contains the "information" that the United Kingdom has banned teaching about the Holocaust in schools to avoid offending Muslims. That story's been around for years. I sent her a link to the Snopes.com article on the subject, and to her credit she passed along the correction to everyone on her list.

Speaking of lists, I took her off my Christmas card list. Yeah, she got credit for making that correction, but it wasn't enough to justify mailing her a card. Although I might have felt differently if I'd had an Eid stamp to put on it.

Memorizing the Ordinary

I try to memorize the ordinary. A mother easily remembers the highs and lows of family life. A baby’s first smile, first steps…the bout with colic that lasted six weeks…we remember those things. We remember Scout awards, the Honor Roll, and—if she tells us—our daughter’s first crush. But in between the Christmases and the birthdays, the sprained ankles and the chicken pox, are long strings, year after year, of ordinary days filled with ordinary things.

On a February night in 1979 I sat nursing my four-month-old son. We were in the living room, the only ones awake in our old farmhouse. The clock struck midnight. I looked down at him. “He is your last baby,” I told myself. “Put this where you can find it again.”

I held my son in my left arm, cradling his head with my right hand. Snow fell outside. New milk trickled across my stomach. I felt the silk of his baby neck, and his soft hair under my lips as I kissed his head. I listened to him swallow.

Years later I resurrected that memory. The baby of the family, well fed for 17 years, was six feet tall and bench-pressing 200+ pounds. His language flew from high-tech to hard core. In his room, an amplifier was pushed to its limits, along with his siblings’ patience. Dual exhausts rumbled in the driveway.

But I’d taken a moment to impress forever an hour of infancy into my brain. That kiss on his head was as real to me as the grin I was lucky to get in passing 17 years later.

Today, in my quiet retirement from child-rearing, when the hum of the dishwasher and the gentle jingle of the dog’s collar are the only sounds I’m likely to hear on a fall evening in this old house, I close my eyes and listen hard for the sound of a vintage Camaro peeling into the driveway, and the thunderous bass of a massive, vibrating subwoofer.

I grew up in my father’s darkroom, relying on photographs to capture memories. And they often do. But when I look through the pictures I took of my children, it isn’t the lovely portraits that pull me back again and again. It’s the candids that caught them in mid-laugh or mid-leap—just doing whatever it is we do on an ordinary day…which often isn’t very much, but which can mean everything.

The Circuitous Route to My Blog

A friend recently wrote on her blog, Women Over 50, about the search words people had used that brought them to her blog. She found some pretty sexy stuff, which I guess is what happens when you have the word "women" in the title of your blog. (You know how we are.)

I couldn't figure out how to bring up the blog stats for Sweet Rocket (do they exist?), so I took a look at my 40-words-a-day blog, Forty Thieves. Think about it: Forty. Thieves. What search terms would bring up the blog? Middle age crisis car? Safe-cracking instructions? Not exactly.

Here's a sampling:

Bath Fitter. A remarkable number of people clicked on my blog after searching for Bath Fitter. Apparently they weren't in a tearing hurry to get their bath fitted.

Forty Thieves Ali Baba. They must have been terribly disappointed.

She gets her kicks on Route. Any route will do?

Contractor from hell. Yup, I can sense the anger in those clicks.

Marjorie Holmes. How nice. I hope this reader was pleased with what I wrote about Marjorie.

1970s wardrobe. Well, he (she?) didn't find it on that click.

Very long nails. Hmmmm . . . . maybe this is the closest I got to sexy stuff.

Librarian from hell. How many people deal with them?

Lamaz instructor. First rule of giving birth: Learn to spell Lamaze.

Bath Fitter problem. Who knew my blog was going to become a haven for people with faulty bathtubs?

Mammography textbook. I hope this wasn't a DIY endeavor.

What is Lamaze instructor. Ah . . . a Jeopardy fan!

Jackie Kennedy. Harry Belafonte. Stavros. Who's Stavros?

Butches. Butches? What butches? I didn't write about butches. I don't think I wrote about butches. I hope I didn't write about butches.

The Forty Thieves gang in Harlem. More potential for disappointment.

Big boobs. I know—you're saying, "Isn't this sexy stuff??" No. It isn't.

Left the priesthood. Left the priesthood, and landed at my blog. Cool.

Bath Fitter salesman. Bath Fitter pitch. Bath Fitter quote. Enough said.

Intimidation as a Marketing Tool

Remember the scene in "Pretty Woman" where Julia Roberts is sneered at (and worse) by the Rodeo Drive sales clerks? I'm sure that sort of thing goes on all over the place. Scranton is far from Beverly Hills in many ways, but I got sneered at in a day spa last week.

You'll be relieved to know that I wasn't dressed in thigh-high patent leather boots and a mini-skirt, and my hair wasn't three feet long, and my eyelids weren't peacock blue from lashes to brow. (Come to think of it, neither were Julia's.) I was dressed in a style best described as Decent Casual, which in my book is one step above jeans. I wasn't dressed expensively, because I never dress expensively. But my jacket was from Lands' End, and if the clerk had been so rude as to pull the neck of my shirt out to read the label, she would have seen Jones New York. (There would be no need to tell her that I bought it at Salvation Army.)

More to the point than my clothes, I think, was my demeanor. I was smiling, friendly, happy to be at the spa, where a friend was treating me to a massage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a cheerful, polite customer (or non-customer) deserves a sneer.

The person doing the sneering was a not-terribly-attractive woman with ugly hair and a middle European accent. I assume the accent is what landed her the job. I see this a lot. Somehow Americans got the idea that foreign accents are classy and intimidating. Want to staff your sales force with people who sound like they know more than the customers do? Hire some Brits. Want to make your spa clients feel inferior, perhaps to encourage big tips? (We've all seen it: people whose self-image inflates in direct proportion to the size of the tips they leave.) Put a Russian at the front desk.

As the sneeree, I was more amused than anything else, especially when my friend showed up and I told her the story, complete with accent. We had a good laugh. But it made me realize something. Since I do accents pretty well, I could have given Ugly Hair's right back to her. Next time I will. And won't that be fun.

My mom in jewelry

Another portrait of my mother taken by my dad.

My mom in an apron

NYC Apartment, c. 1940

This must have been my parents' first apartment. If so, it was on Barrow Street, in the Village. See the painting between the windows? It's a watercolor, rather monochromatic and very soft, and today it hangs in my bedroom. Long before I saw this photo, I decided it would look good between two of my tall windows.

Those Tricky Interview Questions

I had a job interview today. My daughter warned me to be prepared for tricky interview questions, so I spent last evening reading up on them. I was ready to tell my prospective employers what kind of a car I'd like to be (if I had to be a car), who my role model is, and how my friends would probably describe me. In addition, I was prepared to describe my finest accomplishment (besides my children, of course), demur when asked about my previous boss's faults, and deflect any concerns that I might be overqualified.

I got to do none of those things. The interview was straightforward. Everything related to the job, and everything made perfect sense. How disappointing!

In the process of doing my research, I ran across this list of undesirable qualities in a job applicant.

* Too self-assured
* Too aggressive
* Too domineering
* Critical of previous companies and superiors
* Non-enthusiastic
* Cold
* Badly dressed
* Non-eye contact
* Too much talking
* Being unprepared
* Being late for interviews

Let's see if we can provide some examples, shall we?

* Too self-assured
"I knew you'd give me an interview, you sucker."

* Too aggressive
"I hope you don't mind if I share your chair."

* Too domineering
"Why yes--I always wear thigh-high boots and carry a whip. Stand up when I talk to you!"

* Critical of previous companies and superiors
"My last boss? Pond scum, I tell you!"

* Non-enthusiastic
"I'm sorry. I didn't hear a word you said. I was thinking about lunch."

* Cold
"No, you may not call me Susan."

* Badly dressed
"If you were up on current fashion trends, you'd know that lots of people wear jammies to work. May I have my bunny slippers back now, please?"

* Non-eye contact
"Mmmmm . . . what?"

* Too much talking
". . . so when I realized I'd be interviewed here I called my girlfriend to see if she wanted to do some shopping afterward, but she had to go to Middletown to visit her son at college because he ran out of money—apparently he has a gambling problem, which we think he inherited from his deadbeat father, who was only active as a parent for three years before he took off with a dental hygienist--who works just down the road, by the way. Do you know Dr. Flatko?"

* Being unprepared
"Very nice to meet you, Mr. Rockwell . . . excuse me? You're not Mr. Rockwell? Oh, sorry . . . Mr. Anderson? Oops--not him either?"

* Being late for interviews
"I did it again, huh? Trust me, I always want to be on time, but stuff happens, ya know? I'm sure you've been late, right?"

Good luck to all my fellow job hunters.

Gone, and Forgotten

I don't know how cemeteries work. That is, who takes care of them? Yesterday I set out to find an old cemetery in a remote location inaccessible by car. I hiked up a long, steep hill (a very long hill . . . so long that I went up backwards part of the way—or maybe that says more about my lack of conditioning than the length of the hill) and was rewarded with the sight you see above. Despite the tangles of bushes and sapling trees, the place had a stately quality common to most old cemeteries. And peace, of course.

I was sorry to see that so many stones had almost disappeared into the ground. They'd sunk so low that their tips were buried under grass and leaves. I kept tripping over them. I was also sad to see that the remaining gravestones were so overgrown. They were erected to honor the memories of people who were loved, by family members who probably never imagined that 100 years later visitors would have to fight their way through brambles to read the inscriptions.

But read them I did, at least the 21 stones that were readable. And I photographed them, and uploaded the pictures to the FindAGrave database. As I've said more than once on this blog—and many more times elsewhere—gotta love the Internet.

A Great Day

I'm gonna miss wearing my Obama buttons. They sparked conversations with all sorts of strangers. Like the cashier at the redneck butcher shop who was turning 18 in a few days and who said he was so happy to be able to cast his first vote for Obama. And the psychologist at a nearby table in restaurant where a friend and I were having lunch, who said, "Excuse me . . . I just wanted to say how glad I am to see the two of you wearing those buttons so proudly." And the somewhat elderly Home Depot clerk who said if Sarah Palin found herself assuming the presidency she would "excuse herself." Uh-huh . . .

I had a bunch of them (the buttons, that is). There was my favorite, BLONDES FOR OBAMA. And the one that looked like an album cover, JAZZ FOR BARACK OBAMA, with his profile in blue. I was qualified to wear REPUBLICANS FOR OBAMA because, well, I'm still on the books. And then there was my extra-large purple MICHELLE OBAMA button.

I'll miss them. But I'm resisting the impulse to order one that says I TOLD YOU SO YES WE DID.

Just Beautiful

My beautiful daughter and her beautiful family have a beautiful new house on a beautiful lake. This is simply the best word I could think of.

Now You See It . . .

. . . now you don't.

I was vacuuming a little while ago when I spotted a wasp walking on the living room floor. I picked up a piece of paper—a photograph of Jennie and her family, actually (hi, Jennie!)—and held it on the floor near him so he would walk onto it, which he did. Then I stepped outside and blew on him, thinking he would drop and land on one of the foxglove plants. That's what wasps tend to do this time of year.

Instead, my breath launched him into the air. He flew from the porch, past the Winesap apple tree, and over the hydrangea. I stood there, marveling at the miracle of flight, no less miraculous in its natural state than in a Pan Am jumbo jet, and ever so much more appealing. Isn't that something, I thought.

He flew past the green-and-brown remains of the flower garden, heading . . . well, we'll never know where he was headed, because after he passed the flower beds he flew into a truck.

I hope my vacuuming is more successful.

My Favorite Son

I know . . . he's my only son. But on his birthday he deserves favorite status.

A Little More Fiction

“Here we go,” Tanya said. “How about him? He walks with a certain air of confidence.”

My sister Tanya and I were making our way from the supermarket to our car, our hands full of groceries in ecologically-correct fabric bags. “Him” was pushing a cart ahead of us, just out of hearing. His walk did, in fact, border on swagger. His shoulders were broad in a grey tweed jacket, and I liked his hair. But . . .

“He has tiny feet,” I said.

Tanya leaned her head to the left. “Oh, yeah. They are tiny. We don’t like tiny feet.”

“Not on men, anyway,” I said. “Maybe we should loosen up a little on our criteria.”

“Mmmm . . . We do have a rather long list.”

“But every item is important,” I said. “Like the car.”

“The car is definitely important.”

I watched the man in the grey jacket head toward a group of cars not far from ours. “Oooh . . . oooh . . .” I poked Tanya. “If he gets into that S550, I’m gonna flag him down and tell him he has cute feet.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Tanya said.

The guy stopped his cart one car short of the Mercedes and used his key to unlock the trunk of a large white sedan.

“Oh, crap,” Tanya said. “The Crown Vic.”

“With rust,” I said.

“With rust,” Tanya echoed.

Our pace slowed as we approached my car. “Another one down,” I said.

“How many is that now?” Tanya asked.

“I dunno . . . I’ve lost count.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you suppose we should start over?” I said, unlocking the trunk and placing groceries inside.

“Like making that guy number one?”

“Well, we could,” I said, opening the driver’s side door. “Or we could make the next guy number one. After we take a look at our criteria and maybe do a little updating.”

We both got in the car. “Yeah,” Tanya said. “A little updating sounds like a plan.”

And with that I started the engine of our late aunt’s 1988 Ford Festiva, and we drove away.

A Little Fiction

I've started writing some flash fiction from a daily prompt on a writers' website. This morning's prompt was an unspeakable act.

On the Couch
Joy wasn’t somebody who made things up. I know this because she had been coming to me for years, ever since her husband, a Rock Hudson kind of guy with no effeminate traits to give him away, had left her for the male nurse who had been given the task of shaving him before his appendectomy.

Totally shocked, like so many wives in these cases, Joy needed someone to help her process this. Her sister, whom I had helped after her experience with large-group hypnosis had resulted in a weight gain and craving for cigarettes, recommended me. And so Joy became a regular occupant of my couch—sitting on it, of course, not lying down. Only one of my clients has ever chosen to lie on it, and that only lasted until he suggested that I join him.

So here she was on an ordinary Tuesday morning, sun streaming in the window behind her, telling me something that with anyone else would surely sound made up. It began in a normal enough fashion.

“I want to talk about something I experienced last night,” she said.

“Did you go out?” I asked.

“No, no . . . this happened in bed.”

“You were with someone?” I asked, surprised.

“No!” she practically shouted. And then in a calmer voice, “No, just let me explain. I have to figure out how to say this.”

I sat there in the silence, hoping she wasn’t going to tell me she’d just discovered masturbation at age 42.

She began again. “I wasn’t asleep yet, but I wasn’t quite awake.”

I wondered if I was allowed to talk now. I took a chance. “The hypnagogic state,” I said.

“Right, that’s it,” she said. “I forgot the term.”

She was quiet for another moment.

“Okay,” she said, “so I was lying there listening to the summer night sounds, feeling close to sleep, when I started hearing things.”

She paused, and I figured she was waiting for the obvious question. So I asked it. “What kind of things?”

“People’s voices,” she said. “Little snatches of conversation. As though I’d overheard them during the day without realizing it, and now they were playing back to me.”

“Do you think you did overhear them?”

“If I did, it wasn’t yesterday,” she said. “I was home all day because the kids had off from school. Anyway, I just lay there, listening to these voices—male and female, none of them familiar to me—and then I saw something.”

I waited, and then asked the obvious again: “What did you see?”

“That’s my point,” she said without impatience. “I don’t know what I saw.”

“Were your eyes open?”

“No, my eyes were closed. It was a vision. Or a snapshot of a dream.”

“Okay. Well, what can you tell me about it? What did it look like?”

“That’s the problem, Vera,” Joy said. “I can’t tell you a thing. You know how people have near-death experiences and come back to life and say they have no words to describe what they saw? And you think, ‘Don’t be silly . . . we have all the words for shape and height and color and everything else.’ And still they say they have no words to describe their experience? Well, that’s what I’m telling you about last night. I saw something, something that scared me. But I have no words to describe it. No words at all.”

October, From 120 Feet Up

My son climbed to the top of his 12-story ham radio tower this weekend and took pictures of fall foliage. This isn't our barn (ours isn't nearly as pretty), but I love the shot.

Someone Else's List

I found a list in an old book I bought at the library sale last week. A shopping list, I realize, is a rather intimate look into someone's life and thoughts. From now on I'll be more careful about where mine end up. Here's the list:

Go to Chinatown, it begins. Who puts “go to Chinatown” on a shopping list? That’s like saying, “Get a job.” Or “Try skydiving.” But maybe “go to Chinatown” is a navigational directive. Try saying it in a GPS voice: “Go tooo Chynatown.” Could be it’s like something on a Monopoly board. Go to Chinatown. Do not collect $200.

Call Rhode Island Historical Society. When? After we get to Chinatown? And what do I say when they answer?

Get Av. Fisher Tkts. TeKanawa and PDQ Bach. Well, that narrows the year down somewhat. Avery Fisher Hall got its name in 1973. Before that it was Philharmonic Hall. So this isn’t a terribly old list. Just an unusual one. (I, too, love Kiri Te Kanawa and Peter Schickele.)

Order Garden of Heavenly Delights. This could be anything. A work of music. A film. A selection of pastries from an uptown bakery.

Library: Lulu, MG, read new MG book. I’m not sure about Lulu, but I’m curious about MG. Who might s/he be? Any ideas?

Listen to F. von St. records. Frederica Von Stade, I assume. I liked her, too. Great voice, great face. I wonder if she still records. Probably not.

Check out Arne’s Love in a Village. I had to Google this one. “Love in a Village” is a play, but who is Arne? A cast member, perhaps? A friend of the list maker’s?

Check out Church Windows by Respighi. Uh-oh…..if she (or he) is checking out a piece of music, s/he probably means check it out of the library. That makes Arne, above, all the more mysterious.

Check out The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Another Google. It’s music. By Janacek.

Check out Berlioz Les Muits de Ete. More good taste in music.

Get new shoes at Capizio. Well, that settles the gender issue. Or does it??

See Places in the Heart. Okay, we’ve narrowed the year down to 1984. Twenty-four years ago.

Go to CDSS. Is this like, “Go to Chinatown”? What is CDSS? Did CVS used to be called CDSS? I don’t think so. CDSS . . . CDSS . . . Chinese Dim Sum Soupery? Probably not.

African Art at 3 places. Oh, fine. Tell us African art is here, but don’t tell us where it is. You’ll notice she didn’t say “Go to” African art at 3 places. Even the most intrepid list-maker eventually gets tired.

Reading in the Car With Annie

Late this afternoon I went outside to close the car trunk, and found myself drawn to the interior. Said interior was even messier than usual, with the dog's comforter still draped over the passenger seat. But the sun had disappeared behind thick clouds, and the wind was picking up, and the dog comforter looked cozy.

I opened the door and got in. I was right; the car was warm inside, and once I shut the door I was insulated from all sorts of things, including the shocking financial statement that had arrived in today's mail.

I picked up the book on the front seat and started reading. David Sedaris. I saw Annie moseying down the path from the house, and I opened the door for her. She jumped in without hesitation, and went right into rub-face-on-everything-especially-the-book mode. My laughter went back and forth from Annie to Sedaris. Eventually, she settled down on the dashboard.

We didn't stay long, but it was a pleasant interlude.......Annie, me, and David Sedaris in the cozy car, apples occasionally falling on the roof.

For Gillian (1975 - 2001)

The horses are gone now
What memories they leave
Whippoorwill Aurora: the first light
Streaks of gold in the barnyard

What memories they leave
The Whippoorwill Morgans
Streaks of gold in the barnyard
Bays glistening in late-day sun

The Whippoorwill Morgans:
Such strength, such heart
Bays glistening in late-day sun
Everything my daughter wanted

Such strength, such heart
In a lovely young girl
Everything I wanted for her
And the woman she became.

In a lovely young girl’s dream,
Her Morgans carried her,
And the woman she became,
Above fear, above pain.

Her Morgans carried her far.
What memories they leave
Above fear, above pain
The horses, gone now.

Cat Caper

This really made me laugh. I’ve been wondering where Pogo sleeps in the afternoon. He hasn’t been in his basket, and I haven’t seen him on the living room chair. Then yesterday I bent down to straighten out the dog bed by the fireplace, and found that it suddenly weighed a ton. Pogo had gotten inside it! The bed isn’t sewn together; I fastened it with Velcro. Somehow he opened it up and got in. Such an enterprising cat!

Just now when I went into the living room to turn on the light, I saw the dog bed moving. I’m glad I already knew why.