One Hundred Sows

Like most things in life, the term “rich” is subjective. I once read a silly joke in a children’s book … if you want to get rich, build a fence. In this fence put a hundred pigs and a hundred deer. Voila. You now have one hundred sows and bucks.  With the holiday season upon us and Christmas rapidly approaching I find my self once again wishing that I were richer than I am.

I don’t mean rich in love, it abounds in my life. I have children and grandchildren who amaze me every day. The amount of love in my life can be measured by the amount of refrigerator visible between the artwork. Stuck on with alphabet magnets, family photos and crayon masterpieces cover the entire contraption, crowding each other, overlapping each other, sometimes getting so deep that the magnets no longer hold them and they come softly drifting to the floor. Scribbles from the youngest, coloring book pages with blue dogs and chartreuse trees, bug-eyed body-less people with arms coming out of the sides of their heads and three hairs and a necklace standing under brilliant yellow suns, superheroes and imaginary friends brought to life in intricate story boards filled with smiling good guys and colorful explosions defined by starbursts, they are the perfect canvass for these perfect children’s imagination. I rotate them regularly but it is always full.

I don’t mean rich in events. My life is ruled by events. Illnesses, car wrecks, new loves and divorces, births and deaths, new homes and foreclosures… with the sheer volume of people in my family an uneventful day is just about unheard of. A perfect example: One daughter had been in the hospital three weeks trying desperately to not lose her third child. My younger daughter was days away from giving birth to her first daughter. I was waiting to find out if we had a renter for my old house while bunking down at my sister’s. I was also waiting for a call setting the closing on my new (hopefully) house. My granddaughter’s had their big 5th birthday that weekend and we were deliberating what we could do for them. My brother was visiting from out of state and we wanted to see him at some point in his short stay. It was Valentine’s Day weekend and my husband and I wanted to make some plans for us, to get away, to be alone for a short period of time without being out of touch or spending much money. I was at work trying to meet a deadline when the phone rang and I saw it was my older son. Panic hit me like a brick to the head, had the baby been lost? Had the baby been born? Was the closing off or the renters backing out? I broke out in a cold sweat and seriously debated just not answering, not sure if I could deal with the news on the other end.

“Mom, I am so sorry but I totaled your car” Not what I expected to hear for sure. The first words out of my mouth were “Thank God! Is that it” He was stunned, I was sincere. In the grand scheme of things at that moment in time a wrecked car was on a par with spilt milk. We teased him about it later but I honestly had so many other balls in the air that I just couldn’t work up enough energy to give a damn about that particular one.

I don’t mean rich in memories. My head is crowded with them, fighting for attention, trying to escape into the light of day. Some are so sweet they make me cry with happiness and some so tragic they make me want to disappear into a cloud of mist and become part of the universe, cold and quiet and very, very far from here. I have learned to indulge myself with the sweet ones. I take them out and run them across the screen of my consciousness when I have solitary moments. Like the “touchy feelies” in Orwell’s 1984 I smell the scents, feel the vibrations, relish in the entirety of the experience. I can remember times when I was a baby, when I had babies, their babies… it keeps me sane. When the black memories come, oozing out like phantoms from cracks in my subconscious I try to distract myself, read, draw, cook, play solitaire. I don’t write when these memories are seeping out because they dampen the page, smudge it beyond all legibility.

At this time of year, I wish I was the most common, the basest kind of rich. I want to be able to get everyone everything they need and want and wrap it in beautiful paper and present it with a flourish and a kiss. Every child’s heart’s desire calls to me, a doll, a bike, a puppy, a car, a house? Sure, here you go! I want to ease the fear and worry in their parent’s hearts, to give them strength and love and hope enough to see them through the difficult times. I want to treat every person I care about with a token, a wee gift that might give them an inkling of what they mean to me in the grand scheme of things. I bake, I buy, I wrap and tie with ribbon. It is always too much, but could be piled to the rafters and it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough.

Sadly, well into adulthood and many thousands of dozens of cookies later I realize that this is my weakness. Even if I were Midas it wouldn’t be enough to show what value these people hold for me.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one holiday that is uniquely American. It is so ingrained in our culture that, even though the story of pilgrims and Indians is burned in our brain by the age of six, we still constantly ask foreigners how they celebrate it or what they eat that day.

There are a couple of ways people react to this phenomenon. First, that we, as a nation, are arrogant and expect EVERYONE to do what we do. This is the common belief in countries I have visited. People find it offensive and either snort derisively  or use it as an opportunity to launch into a tirade about Americans taking over foreign peoples and forcing our capitalist, democratic, Levis and Hollywood and Coca Cola culture on them.

The second reaction is to shake their head and smile at us like we are either 2 years old or brain dead. One eye brow raised sardonically, condescending smiles and a pat on the shoulder as they try to explain to us what we already know. Both reactions, though understandable, bug the heck out of me.

National holidays are plentiful enough. Christmas is all about the pageant and drama. Incense, lights, glorious music, a renewing of faith and hope all make Christmas. And then there are the wants, I want this and I want that and what do you and the kids want? We try to make children believe in magic at Christmas. It seems as if the entire nation lines up behind the sweet lie of the little elf and his industrious helpers. Christmas is frantic in its intensity. Exhilaration and exhaustion it’s hallmarks. 

New Year’s is all about ending. We call it New Year’s Eve but it is really a loud drunken party to say farewell and get the heck out of here to the old year. Whew, we get to try again! A clean slate, a new dawn, a second or third or fiftieth chance at getting it all right awaits at the stroke of midnight.

Martin Luther King Jr. day is kind of a kick in the pants to our national conscious. You get the day off of work and marketers launch huge white sales (ironic isn’t it?), but you better not feel good about your sorry self. It is a day set aside as special to remind us not to get too big for our britches because we screwed up terribly once and will probably screw up again.

Memorial Day is an oxymoron. We are asked to remember the men and women that gave their lives in service to our country, to visit cemeteries, to salute veterans, to fire 21 gun salutes. At the same time we go YAY, schools out, summer starts… wait for it, wait for it…. NOW. Swimming pools open, grills are fired up and beaches are wall to wall tight Lycra, sunscreen and beer coolers.

Fourth of July celebrations are outrageously marshal, and we love it. Marching bands, patriotic speeches, parades in every small town roll by homes with tri-color bunting and kids with Popsicle stains on the chins grab candy tossed by Shriners in little funny cars. We are American and we are proud! I admit it, I cry when the explosive fireworks grand finale is timed perfectly with the National Anthem and I see kids running around waving sparklers and calling to each other in the night. All over the country we celebrate the fact that we exist together, together.

Labor Day is a last hurrah. A celebration of workers it also is the period on the end of summer’s sentence. School is starting, pools are closing, and gardens are withering all over the country. We are gearing up to be industrious, to put our nose to the grind stone, to lift that barge and tote that bale. While Memorial Day’s start of summer celebration is raucous and indulgent, Labor Day’s is more often a gathering of friends offering a fond farewell to the golden days just passed.

Halloween is not a national holiday but it may as well be. This day is celebrated across all races and almost all religions, all ages and socio-economic boundaries. Halloween is nothing but a party. We get to change who we are, eat stuff that we know is terrible for us, stay out after dark and run around without our parent’s watching us like doves on a hawk farm.. Halloween is such a great hedonistic adventure that adults are catching on to it. Why should kids have all the fun, eh?

That brings us to Thanksgiving. While we may decorate our homes with gourds, Indian corn and men with shiny buckles on their shoes, we are thinking about so much more. Thanksgiving allows us to stop, to re-examine our lives on a yearly basis. We are not waving goodbye or good riddance to anything in the rear view or creating unbelievable expectations for the coming months. We are not dreaming of what we want, or wishing we were somehow different, better or stronger or smarter or funnier or more beautiful. We are not beating ourselves up for past mistakes.

Thanksgiving is a time for just that. We thank the powers that be and each other for the joy and turmoil of family, the roof over our heads, the food on our plates, and the very gift of life itself in all its imperfect glory. Who could not expect this to be ritual all over the world? Who would not want it to be?

Tastes Like Cake Mama

Every family develops its own language over time, it’s own inside jokes and phrases that can speak volumes in five words or less. We bandy them about without thought, tossing out these tidbits willy nilly, using them to enrich and re-enforce the bonds that chance and need and lust used to knot us together in the first place.

One of my favorites, being the mother of five, is “No Blood, No Problem”. I started saying this on a regular basis after my third child was born. I worked part time and tended my little family, trying to be like June Cleaver and succeeding in being just a shade better than Peggy Bundy. Kids fall down a lot it turns out. They fall up and down stairs, off curbs and out of chairs. Kids can even just be standing there, telling you they learned nothing in school for the 150^th day in a row and fall down. One minute they are looking at you happily chattering away and the next they are in a wad in the floor, looking shocked and little and lost. They love to pinch their fingers in things… front doors, refrigerators, car doors and silverware drawers just to name a few. They fall off big wheels, bikes and trikes. They attempt to jump curbs on skateboards, think it would be fun to roll down a hill in a shopping cart and firmly believe it isn’t a real wrestling match until they have executed the perfect flying leap off of the back of the couch onto their brother’s or sister’s head. No Blood, No Problem became my mantra.

My sister in law gave me a maxim which I adopted because it was so charmingly country and sadly quite often true. “That child’s so spoilt she ain’t even worth throwin’ rocks at”. Thankfully she wasn’t describing one of mine at the time. Over the years I have seen many children and quite a few adults that can be aptly described as too spoiled to throw rocks at.

My brother, wanting to make sure we knew he was damning each and every one of us, stood on a dining room chair and, making large circular motions encompassing the twenty of us around the table, said “Damn ALLLLLLL y’all” to end a political “discussion”. Now, regardless of the content of the comment being directed at a group, we all swing are arms around and say ALLLLLLL  y’all. After so many years we don’t even need to add anything to it, All y’all is sufficient to get our point across. On the very rare occasion where there is real discord it is usually enough to wring a laugh out of even the most obstinate character there.

My older son coined a term which makes me cringe. It is simply “MAMA”. It is said in such a loud nasally voice, with a certain timbre to it, that it can be heard across an entire WalMart store at Christmas. If he had been a little child it would have been annoying, but coming from a 17 year old that has no clue what decorum or embarrassment might mean (I once rounded an aisle to find him pretending to be frozen in the ice cooler) it is blood curdling. Picture a six foot tall kid calling “Mama” at the top of his lungs while he literally swims the back stroke across the front of the store, grinning at you the entire time. Needless to say, we didn’t run errands together for years after that. He is almost 28 now, and when he walks in the house he still hollers Mama in that paint peeling tone. My husband does it too. Argh.

My daughters say “I just got stupider” when confronted by verbal absurdities. The first time I heard it I thought... well, I may as well admit it, I thought “I just got stupider”. It is amazing how many times in a day you can find yourself confronted with utterly ridiculous turns of phrase or well embellished prose. I guarantee you will find yourself repeating this one.

My absolute favorite though is one my youngest son came up with. Now, I am a pretty good cook. He was a really good eater. Like all of my children he loved food, all food (except fried okra it turned out). He was my biggest fan. Thankfully my kids all inherited their father’s physique which is lean no matter what they do. Henry would eat plate after plate of whatever was set before him. If I wanted to try something new I waited until I was sure he would be there to taste it. I would make enough for six and have barely enough for the three of us. No matter what I put in front of him, smashing success or barely palatable mess, he always said the same thing. “Tastes Like Cake Mama”.

A family’s private language is something we don’t think often about, but we should. It is a gift, a history, a wonderful work of art, a tapestry of sound woven into memory that defines us all.

Veteran's Day

Wow, where did that come from? We have all felt it at one time or another; A sudden surge of emotions that seemingly comes from no where and slaps us right in the kisser, almost bringing us to our knees with it’s intensity. I had such a moment last week which left me fighting back tears, and pride and an ocean’s deep wave of sorrow washing over me.  I was left sodden and shaking on the side of the road.

It was November 11^th, Veteran’s Day. My husband and I met with our daughters and their children for a fun and hectic dinner at a local pizza joint  in our home town. The kids were, as usual, utterly hilarious. Six little charmers moving and talking non stop. We had a five month old, 2 almost two year olds, a four, a five and a seven year old keeping us entertained mightily. An amoebe like swarming mass of sticky fingers and snotty noses, gap toothed grins and giggles. For most people this is probably daunting at best or terrifying at worst. For me it is God’s gift after a hard life, a reaffirmation that there is always hope and joy and second, third, one hundred chances to get it all right.

By the time we paid our bill and managed to weave our way over to the parade route (there was a wall, fountains, fences, and steps all between us and the place we needed to be. Anyone with kids knows with that many entertaining obstacles there is no straight line) the curb was pretty well full of people anxiously awaiting the parade. We squeezed them into a break between two short hedges just in time for the first group, veterans on motorcycles to come roaring past. While my granddaughter Caitlin shouted WOW WOW OWOWWOWOW along with their gunning engines and the others looked on in frightened, excited awe my fist sign of impending emotional meltdown was felt.

I love motorcycles. I can’t ride them, due to the whole going blind thing, but my first husband, my kid’s father, loved them to distraction. He always had at least one. I had a frame for a Ninja sitting in my living room for two years, looking like some sort of weird modern art while he worked to put it back together. Our towels were piled in the top of my clothes closet because the linen closet was a parts repository. He passed away in 1994 unexpectedly. The sight, the sound, the joy my granddaughter took in their sound and smell all served to pull the rug under my psyche just a hair. A sharp little tug at my heart strings.

I        I grew up in the sixties and seventies, daughter of a military man, in and around families of military background. In those turbulent, toxic times images of such brutality, such kindness, such hate and such compassion as to be almost indescribable were woven into my brain and our national fabric. The raggedy group of Vietnam vets that ambled by next, their proud, sad faces set glumly, sudden bright, sharp smiles at all of the kids cheering them on and clapping pudgy little hands took my breath away. I felt an almost audible tear in my emotional stability. I stepped back from my family a bit, trying not to ruin the moment for them, trying to get a grip on myself.

In stepping back, I saw my oldest grandson rest his hand, protectively and lovingly on his cousin’s two year old head. At that moment, that very instant a group of ROTC students marched by. Young, unbelievably young children marching, white wooden guns over shoulders thrown back with purpose and pride in tight formation called cadence. At that moment I lost it. I could no more have prevented the flood of tears than walked on water.

I was proud of these men and women, these young children with wooden guns. More than just a sense of patriotism I knew from personal experience how they would gladly march into battle full of determination and valor. How, even after being shot at, blown up, taunted and terrified they would go back and back again to do the most thankless of jobs. At the same time, I have seen the devastation caused by one tiny piece of metal tunneling through human flesh and bone. I knew the ramifications of their choice not just for themselves but for their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. I wept for their greatness, I wept for my son, I wept for all I have loved and lost and I wept for the promise these men and women offer. I wept for us all.

It Only Takes Once

I have noticed a phenomenon. Young people married or not, are actually trying to get pregnant. If you are over 35 re-read that sentence… TRYING to get pregnant. How weird is that?

I spent a good part of my youth trying NOT to get pregnant. I wasn’t promiscuous. My mom had drilled the words “IT ONLY TAKES ONCE” into my head since I first started to “blossom” as we called it then. I have seven siblings so I pretty much figured she knew what she was talking about in the ease of conception department. I was entertaining the idea of college in a vague sort of way. At seventeen I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life but figured a campus quadrangle might be as good a place as any to find out. My boyfriend was Belgian, still had his mandatory military service to do and had no clue what he wanted to be when he grew up either.

I am not going to say sex just happened. Nothing just happens. I will say it was inevitable though. I was pubescent, he was good looking, spoke a foreign language, drove a fast motorcycle and wore leather. Ooh La La! Be still my heart. I can still see him roaring up, still smell the aroma of two stroke exhaust mixed with Eau Sauvage by Dior, and still feel the rush of heat as I climbed on that bike. The aroma of a mechanic gets my blood flowing to this day. As much as is possible at that age I was in LOVE with that boy.

Our first attempt at birth control was the tried and true condom. As my first born, a daughter will attest, it is only 98% effective just like they say on the box. Go figure! I never knew I was one of the special two percent until I woke up hurling a mere 48 hours later. God made me fertile and he gave me the gift of knowing almost immediately that I was carrying a new life which would immediately and forever supersede mine. Well hell.

Once married and ensconced in our pre-WW I military housing, we tried an alternative method, the sponge. This was new and miraculous.  The sponge was easy and cheap, so popular and effective, so easy to use that even Jerry Seinfeld has done an episode about it. It worked slightly better than the condom. Slightly. Meet Steve. For about five months I used the ultimate birth control method, abstinence. Not because I was trying to avoid pregnancy but because I was absolutely exhausted. Two children in 23 and ½ months will take it out of a body, even a young one.

After the sponge came the pill. Still a risky business in 1979, I signed on in a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable.  I took them religiously. I never missed one, I had my perfect child bearing experience already, and I was satisfied with the role I had played in the continuation of the human race.  Being pregnant was great, having the babies even better. I had no horror stories to tell and liked it like that. All it took was one minor ice storm and a pint of moonshine to destroy five years of careful (okay, obsessive) attention to birth control usage. Three hours after falling asleep I realized I had not taken my pill on time when I woke up to the oh so familiar nausea and heat flash. My second son made his appearance just under 9 months later.

In case you are keeping track, that is birth control 0, Mother Nature, 3. Never one to hedge my bets I started doubling, sometimes tripling up. Condoms, spermicides, sponges (while they were still on the market) all took up residency in my medicine chest. I didn’t want to use an IUD because I knew people born with them clutched in their hand. I was in a panic knowing that all I had to do was wink at my husband while unclothed and we would be welcoming a new addition. I even threw in some good old fashioned rhythm. 22 months after my second son, my second daughter was born.

I had had enough. I was 24 with four kids. I loved them to death but my husband was a mechanic, not a millionaire and I was a stay at home mother by default. I worked every crappy nighttime or weekend part time job to bring in a few extra bucks and to get me out of my self created isolation. I was going for the gold, the anti-everything I had learned in Catechism, procedure of sterilization.

We fought about it tooth and nail for 6 weeks. My husband wanted a soccer team, I wanted a vacation. The day arrived and he drove me in silence to the hospital. I was happy, really really happy and feeling in control of my body and my destiny. I kissed my babies and was wheeled off humming a little melody into the operating theater, my last look back revealed my forlorn husband and the cherubic faces clustered around him that I lived and would die for standing in the open doorway waving farewell.

After several weeks of recovery from the surgery I was feeling GOOD. For the first time I was going to have a relaxed intimate encounter with the man I loved without worrying about it being an invitation to reproduce. I bought the candles, the wine, the negligee… Yay for freedom!

The next morning I didn’t feel well, too much ‘activity’ too soon after the surgery I assumed. Six weeks later I was in my doctor’s office looking at test results repeating no no no no no no as my bare legs dangled off the table. It can’t be. It has to be a tumor. Please tell me you can cut it out and keep it here. No freaking way in hell did this happen. My husband was all but dancing a little jig repeating yes yes yes yes yes yes, giving himself mental high fives and hugging the babies so hard they squealed. Mother Nature was having a perfect season.

Tales Of A Non-Pet Person

I am confessing in this public forum to being a non-pet person. This is a big deal as it seems most of the world (at least my corner of it) are definitely pet people. You have your cat people and your dog people, you have your reptile lovers and people who thinks bugs lead fascinating lives. There is a huge subculture of fish lovers out there and bird fanatics and vermin adorers. It seems if we can catch it and keep it in a container or feel it's warmth against us or feel protected by it , it has become a pet for somebody somewhere.

Over the course of my life I have had probably all of the creatures listed above rely on me for their very existence and I am here to tell you they, and I, were traumatized and saddened by the ordeal.

We had a family dog when I was a tot whom the others in my clan remember fondly but we tended to ignore each other. I couldn't do anything for or to him so he politely let me go my way while he went his. He was replaced when I was eight by a very little and in my mind satanic ankle biter named Poncho. He was given to us by a fellow military family when they were shipped overseas. Who names their dog after an article of Peruvian clothing? In my heart I know this is why he had such a terrible attitude.

At the same time we owned as a family a tank full of goldfish (my mother's idea) and guppies (mine). The guppies had babies every three hours it seemed. All guppies do is procreate. The goldfish, stuck with the randy guppies and evidently having a more prurient nature jumped out of the tank on a regular basis, presenting us with guilt inducing dried up fish carcasses when we came in from school. Snails were added to the tank to help keep it clean on some fish fanatic's advice and turned out to be a slutty as the guppies. I tossed them in the bird bath. We also had at this time a cage full of gerbils which ended up being dinner for our cat one New Year's Eve, a ferret named Rufus and a mouse named Dart in honor of the store he was captured in. Between running from Poncho who had decided I needed to die one little sharp needle teeth bite at a time and scooping up papery thin suicidal goldfish while hollering at guppies (who haven't ears as far as I can tell) to leave each other alone for God's sake the pattern was set... this is how a non-pet person is created.

I had several blessed pet free years following my entry into the adult world. After Poncho had come the chicken killing dachshund Ginger and a black cat who loved to eat mice on my pillow. These two charmers pretty much sealed the deal for me. I could have happily gone pet free forever. Then I had kids. Kids love pets. Kids actually need pets. Pets help teach kids that the world is bigger than their bedroom and that they have a responsibility to the universe and all of it's parts, big and small. I was going to do this right though, no pets I knew would be trouble. My daughter brought home a goldfish from the county fair when she was four. Just seeing that thing swim in circles, looking for a way out of the bag so it could die in agony writhing and gasping in front of my baby and scar her for life pissed me off. I promptly flushed that little bugger. He could die if he wanted to, but not in MY house.

My husband carried home a kitten found in a barrel of parts cleaner at the garage he worked in. The thing was an oily matted mess we named Dextron (the cleaner). We took him to the vet, cleaned him up, fed him, nourished him, loved him. The day I realized he was healthy and quite nice looking he took off for parts unknown. Bye Bye Dextron. My daughter talked me into getting another kitten a few years later. It was an adorable, fuzzy grey and white sweetheart. She walked it on a leash and it would get out in the yard and chase a ball with the kids like a dog. It definitely had species issues.... We had had the cat for a couple of years and I was used to having it around, even, I might say, loved the little bugger. The cat had kittens in my bedroom closet several years after her adoption. She had gotten out when one of the kids left the door open and promptly got herself knocked up. Cats are like guppies in that they procreate quite easily and well. Everything was great until a tornado hit my house, taking off the roof and exposing my closet to the great outdoors. We found the cat with her kittens under a pile of someone else's clothes in what had been our bedroom. From that point on she was quite literally crazy. She went from a sweet family pet to a feline version of Cujo. After she attacked the kids for the umpteenth time we had to have her put down.

The kids found Cyclops in the woods a few years after that. A little one eyed cat, infected and malnourished and on the brink of death. They nursed him religiously, cleaning out his eye socket, bushing, dosing with antibiotics, vitamins and loving, loving, loving him until he was a stout little man full of affection and moxie. We were all outside one day when he darted out the open door, racing for the kids and was squashed by a car coming fast on his blind side. A tearful funeral was held, my husband crying harder than any of the kids, and I vowed once again to stay pet free.

Right. Sure, that will work.... Two months later we had a dog named Hannah, part lab and part German Shepherd. Hannah was a giant pain in my ass, but a good dog all the same. She couldn't swim, loved to eat trash, and was afraid of everyone and everything except rainy days and kids. She had a sense of humor... once, sitting outside with my daughter and her friends she let out an evil blast of doggy gas. She leapt up, horrified and embarrassed, and turning one quick circle, sniffed my daughters rear and barked at her. I am assuming this is the doggy version of you smelled it you dealt it. She was good at soccer and liked a party. We had Hannah 12 years. I was with her when she died and I will admit it freaking killed me.

During this same time frame we had two cats, Big Man and Little Man. Big Man, whom we adopted,  was perfect except he lived to kill small furry things and deposit them on the porch for our inspection. Since I am blind and hate small furry things this was no problem. He was with us 9 years. Little Man adopted us. Someone tossed him from a moving car breaking his tail and tearing up his face and ears on impact with the asphalt. Little Man didn't mind furry creatures but he loved to chase down snakes and bring them home. They were never dead, which I guess is good but turning and seeing a live snake wiggling around your living room is not good for the blood pressure. He was always a little skittish, afraid to be touched though he craved affection. He was a wee bit weird but a good cat too. He was with us for 12 years.

I keep trying. Snakes (YUCK), budgies, gerbils, cats and dogs, turtles and rabbits have all called my home theirs over the years. As I write this our cat, Oscar, is running around over my head sounding like a heard of horses on the prairie doing God knows what...Okay, maybe I am a pet person after all.... 

Embarrassment Is Relative

Okay, for those of you that don’t know me, I want to let it be known that I am legally blind. This is a catch all phrase developed at some point in time before I gave a darn that encompasses all states of blindness between “What is that over there?” to “HOLY COW, I really can’t see shit!”. The only reason I am writing out this incredibly informational and scientific explanation is to set the mood, dress the stage so to speak, for this entry.

I do a lot of things that would be terribly embarrassing to a well sighted person. For instance, if I had a dollar for every time I walked into the wrong genders bathroom I could buy at least two really, really good steak dinners. It has happened so often that now I just pretend that urinals belong in the ladies restroom. I have fallen both up and down numerous flights of stairs either assuming they were a ramp (blind folks hate monochromatic color schemes) or, by the same token, assuming a ramp was instead a flight of stairs. You can liken it to picking up something you thought was heavy and finding out it weighed next to nothing; we have all done that, only I tend to do it with a huge audience who gets to see my panties in the process. I have looked under my desk at work for something I dropped and realized I was wearing two different colored shoes. I have walked into glass walls, windows and doorways and dropped back soundly on my hind end while the noise of large sheets of safety glass rattling reverberates through the room calling attention to my flustered state.

I have dashed out through the rain and hopped in a car I was sure was mine, turned to grab my seat belt while leaning in to kiss my hubby and realized a totally terrified stranger is looking at me wondering what kind of nut I am and how can they defend themselves against me.  I have mistaken total strangers for people I know and love with all my heart. One time, trying to get my brood motivated about helping me get ready for a party, cajoling, coaxing, begging, bribing, even threatening, I had come to my wits end. Coming around the corner I saw my son, stretched out in the chair in front of the TV while everyone stepped over or around him. Being the totally awesome parent that I am I yelled “Get your ass out of that chair and help dammit!” Jumping as if he had been shot out of a cannon, the little boy who lived next door leapt up and said “yes Ma’am” while my kids absolutely fell out on the floor laughing so hard they cried. Whooping and hollering at the poor befuddled kid, mocking me with great glee while I tried to explain the situation to him. To top it all off, Greg is black, and my son is not. They still tell that story at family get togethers…..

The good thing about being embarrassed regularly and spectacularly is that nothing phases me.  I react with hoots of laughter to situations that would leave the normal person a mere puddle of shame on the spot. When my daughter was 5 she had a best friend called Maurice. He was an adorable little boy, sweet round cheeks and bone straight bowl cut. He was very very shy. Quiet as a church mouse and afraid of his own shadow.

We had been working for months on bringing him out of his shell. My daughter had just started kindergarten, uit was all half days then, and was due on the bus any minute. The few short weeks she had been enrolled had shown me just how much Maurice loved her. Every day he would be knocking on the front door at the same time she was coming in the back. I choose to blame what followed on post natal fatigue. My son was six weeks old and colic was his middle name. I am normally a sane person and would never ever do this to anyone but it seemed like a fine, funny idea at the time. When I heard the kindergarten bus pull into the neighborhood, I dropped to my knees and crawled stealthily across the floor to the front door. Bracing myself, I screwed my face into a horrible grimace, stifling laughter the whole time. Right on cue I heard the back door open and a gentle knock on the front. I leaned back, yanked the door open and yelled—BWAHAHAHAH- AS LOUD AS I COULD. Instead of a startled and adorable Maurice I realized I was howling at an insurance salesman’s crotch. I should have been mortified, I should have jumped up and begged his forgiveness, tried to explain, thrown myself on his mercy while choking on humility.

Alas and alack, nothing embarrasses me anymore. Instead of doing any of the things any sane person would have done, I burst out laughing, and pointing. The man, God bless him, turned twelve shades of red and walked away. He never came to my door again.