Topic 119: Church Theatricals

Carol:

The Play’s the Thing

My fellow dog-walkers let me down this morning. When I asked  what they remembered about church theatricals from growing up in the mid-west, Marilyn didn’t say a word (she has laryngitis), Jim didn’t say a word (he doesn’t talk about church) and Mary reminisced about a particularly special puppet show at a Christmas Eve service ( she belonged to a conservative church). Now I know that churches used to have theatrical productions because my mother told me so. Even though she met my father when they were both students at UCLA, their courtship took place not at school but at church, namely the young people’s group at Maywood Methodist Church.
 

Maywood Youth Group outing, 1925.

My grandparents moved to southern California from Pennsylvania in 1920, and they were one of the first families to build a home in Maywood, which incorporated in 1924 with a population of 1000 people. They lived on 58th street, a short walk from their elementary school, Heliotrope. Education was important to my grandparents, but their life revolved around their activities at the Maywood Methodist Church. Grandpa was the Church School Superintendent, Grandma taught in the church nursery school, and my mother and aunt participated in all the youth activities. Our family scrapbook shows happy groups of teen-agers hiking and sledding at Lake Arrowhead. No pictures of the plays, but my mother talked about how much fun she, my father and their friends had rehearsing small play productions in the church basement.
 

The Maywood Methodist Church was the beginning of my mother’s love for music and acting. She started high school at 12 and joined the glee club at Huntington Park Union High School.  I still have the program from their 1924 production of The Mikado, in which she played Yum-Yum. She later appeared in a production of Robin Hood at Hollywood High School. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. loaned them his sword from from his 1922 movie.
 

I suppose my parents’ marriage and life raising a young family in the 1930’s and 40’s put an end to any secret ambition my mother had for theater. By the time we returned to  Los Angeles  in the 1950’s, she had again refocused on family life centered around church, this time at a much bigger Wilshire United Methodist church where she sang in the choir and taught Sunday School in the family tradition. She took her singing seriously enough that she worked with a voice teacher, and I would sometimes go with her to lessons.
 

Probably the most significant aspect of my mother’s singing “career” was a very different kind of church theatrical than the light-hearted productions of the 1920’s Maywood youth group. Beginning in the early 1950’s when we lived in Houston, my mother would sing  in the chorus at performances of the Easter Passion Play, the solemn reenactment of the trial, suffering and death of Jesus Christ.  It was common at the time for traveling theater companies to audition in the local cities for the Passion Play chorus, which my mother did in both Houston and Los Angeles. 
 

My mother continued to enjoy an active life with a church “family” wherever my father’s job transfers took her, and when she moved to Prescott at the age of 80, the United Methodist Church choir welcomed her. They all showed up at her 85th surprised birthday party, and they all sang at her memorial service a few weeks short of her 90th birthday. She always enjoyed church theatricals, especially the Christmas pageant where her grand-daughter performed a brief solo at the age of 11.  Theatricals—I guess it’s in the blood.


Sources:
Maywood City history http://www.cityofmaywood.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=73
 

Megan:

On Friday night, I went out with a few friends to see a band play. At the same event was the principal of our old Catholic school – although she was not the principal while we were there but she was excited to meet two graduates.  She asked us if we owed our "success" to our K-8 Catholic education and my friend, a math teacher, and I hesitated because our current circumstances (ie being back in our hometown)  were never a part of either of our plans, and also because we had absolutely hated that school by the time we graduated 8th grade.  We informed the principal that we had been part of the very worst class that school had ever seen (something we could confidently qualify with anecdotes about broken windows, and of making teachers cry and then resign).

The principal insisted that the school must have done something right to turn out a math teacher and a librarian, and asked how our classmates had fared. One of our classmates has died, and my friend the math teacher hadn’t known so that diverted our conversation. Otherwise, I could have told her that from that same class, we also have a fireman, a pediatric nurse, a social worker and a radiation therapist.  We have a doctor and a medical student, and a police officer, a lawyer and a documentary filmmaker. We have at least one veteran of the Iraq war. We didn’t all start kindergarten together, and some of us changed schools and there are many I’m no longer in contact with, but that list there is pretty respectable – and service orientated.  I hadn’t realized that until I wrote it out.

I’m not sure to what extent my classmates would credit our elementary school with their career choices. I owe mine to my college work placement position. When I think back to my childhood school, I mostly think of the times we got in trouble. But I also remember the Christmas Pageants (ah ha, you say, now she is getting to the point). I know I played an active role in every one, and I remember being excused from class and sitting in giggling groups with the social worker, the radiation therapist and the nurse,  in the back of the church waiting for our turn to rehearse. But I only remember one play by name-- called “Angels Aware.”

In the 9 years I attended the school, we did that play twice – when I was in kindergarten and again in 6th grade.  The pageant is narrated by the Angel Gabriel, played first by the brother of the pediatric nurse, and then by the brother of the radiation therapist. The first time I was either a shepherd or a baby angel, I can’t remember. The second time, I was in the Angel choir and I had a solo, along with the future documentary filmmaker.  The solo came shortly after Gabriel informed the angels that God was going down to Earth to fix some things. Then the angels sang a song speculating about what form the Lord would take upon arrival. During my solo, I was supposed to sing “If it were up to me, He would be a famous man, more well known than Abraham, a household name across the land” and while I sang, the future veteran played air guitar and head banged down the aisle. During the dress rehearsal, his wig flew off his head and into the audience and I started laughing and forgot my lines. Then I burst into tears and ran off the stage. The veteran apologized for being so funny, and on the main night, I managed to sing all my lines with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t get distracted.

I haven’t been back to a Christmas pageant since my brother graduated from that school two years after me. I remember being bored, sitting in the audience and I realized that our amateur productions were probably a lot more fun for the cast members than the people watching. But it’s funny now to remember my classmates and friends when we were little, before we knew what we were going to be when we grew up, when it probably seemed to our teachers that we would never amount to anything.

Topic 107: Garden Friends

Carol:

No Gnomes Allowed

I have always envisioned myself becoming a serious home gardener when I retired. I priced greenhouses, investigated composting techniques, and read Sunset magazine for monthly planting tips for high-desert climates.  In truth, my garden has declined since I retired and its current state is pitiful. The most I can hope for is that the neglected plants are hardy enough to make it till spring and the return of my favorite garden friends. 
 

When we moved here, the yard was wild with natural vegetation: cactus, cat claw, juniper and ponderosa pine.  The weeds and granite rocks afforded the perfect habitat for a variety of animals,-- peek-a-boo rabbits and sun-catching lizards. Some of our garden friends  were heard but not seen, a night owl  perched on the roof of our shed, the javelina that huffed around and chewed on the cactus leaves.

A particular favorite was the horny toad population. Most of them would  lie around the edges of our cement driveway, then skitter underneath the  deck when we got too close; but, they would sit still long enough for us to observe them up close. Most were about the size of the palm of my hand, but the cutest were the babies about the size of a quarter, miniatures of their parents in every detail.
 

We called them horny toads because the kids were little and that just seemed to fit better than the more formal horned toads.  They might have looked scary with their horns and bumps, but we were reading a lot of dinosaur books at the time so any initial fear was overcome by curiosity. Had I been less of a English teacher and more of a naturalist, I would have done some research on the horny toads and found out they were not toads at all but lizards. That makes them reptiles, not amphibians, with the official title of the ones in our yard Short-horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi).
 

I enjoyed the horny toads almost as much as I did our other favorite garden friends, the top-knotted Gambel’s quail (Callipepla gambelii)  that woke us up in the morning as they called back and forth to each other from the branches  of the juniper bushes. My father had hunted quail  when I was growing up, and I had eaten them from time to time. Once I saw them running across the road,  with a covey of babies running behind them single-file, I lost any desire to eat them again. 
 

I realize that I have been writing this essay in the past tense as if something has changed and my garden friends have abandoned us. Unfortunately, our little neighborhood eco-system has changed.  Some of the change has come from years of drought, some from the increasing encroachment of human life as the hills behind us became dotted with new homes. I haven’t seen a horned lizard in years, not since right after I bought a horny toad sculpture at the Desert Sonora Museum to put on a rock in our newly landscaped yard a few years back. I read that they are now endangered in several states and under protective laws. The quail are still fairly abundant, so I expect to see little families around the yard in March when the weather warms up and their hatching season begins. I always drive especially slowly then so the string of baby quail crossing the road don’t get separated from their mothers.
 

I have finished this essay early because my webmaster daughter has plans for the day and wants to post our daily themes early. The temperature is climbing into the forties, not a sign of moisture, a perfect day to prune the butterfly bush, clip back the cat claws, or…. maybe I’ll do a little reading instead.

Sources :

Desert USA. Gambel’s Quail. http://www.desertusa.com/mag01/apr/papr/gambel.html
Arizona Game and Fish: Quail. http://www.azgfd.gov/h_f/game_quail.shtml
Gambel’s Quail Photo. Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by “Snowmanradio” SearchNet Media from Tucson, Arizona, USA

Horned Lizard Conservation Society. http://www.hornedlizards.org/hornedlizards/hornedlizards_frame.html

Megan:

I'm spending the day helping a friend move. Depending on when I finish, I may add an essay here later in the day. Maybe. Probably not.

Topic 106: Outgrown Opinions

Carol:

Teaching Old Dogs

Last week I went to my first OLLI class, part of a series on Mythology and the Human Experience.  The Osher Life-long Learning Institute is a peer- facilitated program for “seniors” around the idea of learning groups.  Some of the classes (and facilitators) are so popular that lotteries determine who will get into the class.  Although the Institute is housed at the College, it is overseen by an independent Governing Council.  Sounds dry and dull when described this way, but OLLI is anything but.
 
When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
 
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC  Lifelong Learning Division).
 
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center).  The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities.  We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
 
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
 
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes.  Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
 
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.

 

Megan:

The Only Democrat in the Village

The first presidential election I can remember was the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race. At 7 years old, I proudly declared myself the only Democrat in my class and drew cartoons of a donkey giving an elephant a black eye. My most vocal opponents were twin boys, the sons of a local political aspirant who lived near my neighborhood. These boys regularly rolled the window down to yell at passing Prescott College students to “take a shower you stupid hippie.” My cousin (the one with the chickens) eventually attended that college, as did her future husband. Despite the fact that we had such different world views, they were my classmates who lived the nearest, and I spent a lot of time with them (our political differences didn’t seem to get in the way of our friendship).

By the time I reached 8th grade, Bill Clinton was in office, but I was still the only Democrat in the class. The twins had changed schools, but my liberal leanings earned me constant bullying by my classmates. I admit I could be obnoxious, threatening sexual harassment lawsuits at boys who peeked under girls’ skirts, but didn’t think to follow through when the harassment became legitimate – when my classmates called me a lesbian, when my best friend put distance between us out of fear of the same accusation levied at her.

In high school, I was in a class of 400 instead of 11, and was comfortably invisible most of the time. Political leanings on both sides shifted into apathy, and despite the fact that I became much more involved in the Catholic Church, even going as far as picketing Planned Parenthood, I think I still (guiltily) considered myself a pro-choice liberal.

In college, in Oakland CA, I felt I’d finally found “my people.” I met actual lesbians, and discovered communists and anarchists, people so far to my left they were practically on the right. Now a part of the majority, I discovered I had no taste for political rallies or protests. I could hold a sign, but I could not shout, I could not even chant. I felt stupid and sheep-like, even though I believed in the cause and admired my politically active friends. I registered Green but voted Democrat at the last second, and along with everyone else I knew, believed Bush stole that first election. 

I spent most of Bush’s terms in England, where I was the token “good American, “ the exception noted whenever anyone wanted to trash America and its bullying foreign policy. “Not you,” they would say, “you’re okay.” When I decided to return to the States, I joked with friends that Obama was the reason I was returning to the States, “now that it was safe.” As I get older I realize more that being president is just a really hard job, that promises about change are made to win elections, but that there’s not a lot of difference between the main parties.

I’ve gotten to know my childhood friends again. Some have outgrown their parents’ political leanings, and some have not (including me). One of my very best friends is a self-avowed “gun-toting conservative” who complains regularly about the unwashed. Part of me thinks she does it to embarrass me, part of me knows she believes it. But I love her anyway. And the twins? We met again after 10 years, their Republican father still heavily involved in Arizona politics, and the boys are more liberal than I ever was as a kid. 

Re-creation of 1988 drawing

Topic 103: Reflections While Shaving

Carol:

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

It has been a really long time since I shaved. I cared about it the most when I was also using the most make-up and wearing the biggest bouffant, i.e. around 1962 when peer pressure ruled my life and I really cared about what people thought, especially the merciless teasers at my school.  I guess shaving for girls could also be seen as small rite of passage much as buying the first bra or getting the first high heels. Each of these milestones of Western female culture involved an argument with my parents who weren’t as anxious to see me grow up as I was.
 

Even then, shaving wasn’t my favorite thing to do, especially since I was doing it on the sly.  I would perch on the edge of the bathtub, soap up my leg and pull the razor up from ankle to knee, stopping periodically to watch the blood spatter into the tub. And, shaving under the arms was a contortionist’s feat. I was also using my Dad’s razor, so once in a while I would hear a yell from the bathroom, then my father would show up at the breakfast table with little, red-stained pieces of toilet paper stuck to his face, muttering about dull blades and inferior razors.
 

My brothers were grown up and long gone from the house by 1962, so I had no recollection of what it was like when they started shaving. I imagined it to be a big deal for a boy since so many commercials showed fathers teaching their sons how to shave, a bonding experience accompanied by the father’s pride that his little boy was becoming a man. Movies showed little boys lathering up their faces with bladeless razors, standing on stepstools to reach the mirror, evoking a warm and fuzzy  “Ahhhh, how cute” from the audience.
 

Shaving for men is just a lot different than for women. Or maybe I am mythologizing a daily routine that is no more significant for my husband than flossing teeth. It’s the idea, though, that a man stands in front of a mirror to shave, a perfect time for reflection. The only thing I ever thought about when I was shaving was “Am I going to be able to stop the bleeding before I put my stockings on?” or “Did I get the patch of stubble behind my knee?”
 

My husband is a pretty bright guy, so I figure he thinks deep thoughts while he’s shaving in the morning.  I imagine him looking into the mirror as he grabs his nose to shave his upper lip, going over   legal cases if it’s a weekday or mulling over Eckhart Tolle if it’s a weekend, “Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world?” (89). He spends enough time in front of the mirror that I decided to hang a list there for him to reflect on as he shaves, “101 Ways to Manage Stress.”
 

The reality, Marc tells me, is that he is more apt to be thinking  “Am I getting a close enough shave? Did I miss a spot under my ear? Does my truck need an oil check-up?”

I can’t remember exactly when I quit shaving because it was too much of a nuisance to bother. It t was after I had kids, moved to a colder climate, had a full-time job, no longer wore make-up and was in too much of a hurry all the time to really care what people thought. Now that I’m retired and not so hurried, I do spent more time reflecting when I look in the bathroom mirror, the perfect opportunity for really deep thoughts.

Megan:

I fell asleep thinking about this topic last night, and then dreamed I was desperately trying to find a place to shave my legs. I knew I had to write this essay and I thought it I would record my thoughts in the process. By the time I found a bathroom that wasn’t occupied and that had running water, I became distracted and shaved my head instead. I woke up pretty upset.

I also thought about lathering up my face and then “shaving” it minus the razor blade, because “reflections while shaving” is obviously a pun about mirrors, and again recording my thoughts. But my razors have about 50 blades and they are not easily dissembled.  Also, I’m worried about the effect shaving cream and water might have on this laptop.

So, instead, you’re gonna get my thoughts about shaving.
1.    Temperature – there’s nothing more annoying than shaving the legs and then hopping out of the shower to freezing cold temperatures and then your bare legs go into goosebump over-drive trying to force the hair to grow so the legs will be warm. But they are not warm. They are prickly.
2.    Standing up in the shower vs sitting on the edge of the tub vs lying in the water with legs in the air. Now, I tend to do the latter because I take a lot of baths, but when I was living in England, I didn’t have a bathtub. So, I would boil the kettle and pour it into a plastic tub. Then I would sit on the floor of my living room with one foot in the tub and two space heaters aimed at me (because of the aforementioned temperature thing). Obviously this was a complicated procedure. Other times I would just use the bathroom sink.
3.    I consider waxing. I’ve only tried it once, in high school with a homemade kit. I’m not particularly worried about the pain, but I do have very sensitive skin so I’d probably get a rash and then there’s concern about ingrown hairs and burns and having to wait until the hair is a quarter inch long before you can do it again. If I was okay with hair that long on my legs, I would probably not bother removing it all.
4.    I always forget to shave my feet. I have hobbit toes, but the hair is blond so that’s ok.
5.    I always miss a spot, usually around my ankles or a strip on the back of my calf. I never find it until I’m applying the lotion.

Topic 99: Butterfly Fancies

Carol:

Butterfly Days

I have never been good at anything that required attention to minute details or memorizing names. That’s why I have resisted taking a birding class, content to let Marc point out the various birds by name and sound. Most of the plants in my yard I can identify because I am either allergic to them (juniper for instance) or because I picked them out myself. Right in front of our house is a butterfly bush, badly in need of pruning before the arrival of spring. Megan says I neglect my plants now that I am retired, both inside and out.
 

My niece actually helped me choose the butterfly bush the summer she got married. To make extra money for the wedding, she landscaped my front yard with sometimes the help of her fiance and sometimes the help of my son. The butterfly bush was a perfect choice because: (1) once established it needs little watering; (2) it is not fussy, i.e. it takes neglect well; and (3) it provides color, not just with its yellow  flowers but by attracting butterflies. Some 7 or so years later, it has lived up to its reputation and I really enjoy sitting in a chair on my porch in the early morning watching the butterflies flit from branch to branch.
 

Today, I must not be so “riddled with parasites” (see T98) because I have combed my hair and managed to write two paragraphs. However, my only fancy this morning is a desire to go back to sleep and perhaps dream about butterflies. So, here are two of my favorite poems by two of my favorite poets about butterflies.
 

Eastern Tiger Swallow-Tail

1521 (Emily Dickinson)
The Butterfly upon the Sky, 
That doesn't know its Name
And hasn't any tax to pay
And hasn't any Home
Is just as high as you and I,
And higher, I believe,
So soar away and never sigh
And that's the way to grieve –



 

Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly

Blue-Butterfly Day  (Robert Frost)
It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:
And now from having ridden out desire
They lie closed over in the wind and cling
Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Megan:

Dragonfly Fancies

My mother started giving me dragonflies about ten years ago because she thought I should have a “collection.”
 

In my childhood I had tried collecting things, but as I was dependent on my parents for the money (nothing’s actually changed there), their endorsement of the collections was directly related to it’s size.

First, I remember the My Little Ponys. I think I was drawn to them because their human companion shared my first name. I wanted to enter my collection (of about 8 ponies, plus the Megan doll)  into the county fair, but then I discovered that someone else had beaten me to it – and that they had dozens and dozens of pristine, still in-the-box ponies. I looked at my own grubby figurines, stained from so much play, and thought maybe I could start again. My parents suggested I find something else.

So, then it was porcelain dolls. Over a few of years' worth of birthdays and Christmases, I racked up a collection of six. The final doll was a baby, dressed for its christening in an immaculate white dress and bonnet. She probably cost 5 or 10 times what my other dolls cost and I was confused at the sudden increase in the quality of my gifts.  My mother informed me that this doll was to be the crown jewel of the collection, the final piece to make it complete. I was sorry to hear this, and felt this conclusion was premature. Unlike the ponies, I had taken care of these dolls – they all stood on their little stands, and I knew not to play with them. Unfortunately, our new puppy did not know that and of course it was the nicest doll whose baptismal dress was stained with puppy drool, whose left leg was first shattered and then amputated.

Anyway, that was it for my collections until I left for college and then, inexplicably, I started receiving dragonfly paraphernalia from family and friends. “Don’t I get to choose what I collect?” I asked my mother. “You never ask for anything specific,” she said. “I had to tell them something, and dragonflies are nice.”

(They aren’t nice, actually. One time, at a lake, a really big dragonfly dive bombed my face and chased me around for awhile. )

I gave into it though, without any more resistance. There must be something in the human wiring that leads us to collecting. I have friends who collect penguins, elephants, and lizards. My mother collects Santones (which are also just dolls that can’t be played with. She has a lot more than 6, but she justifies it because they are French and therefore classier than my poor one-legged baby doll). As my dragonfly collection has grown, so has my affection for it. I now actively seek out additions myself. But a strange side effect is now I also feel a jealous sense of entitlement whenever I see someone else with a dragonfly something. My aunt has a pair of dragonfly sandals. My cousin (who I believe has collected dragonflies far longer than I) has a pair of dragonfly earrings. When I noticed both the shoes and the earrings, my first thought in both cases was ‘Oh, are those for me?’ Even as they were being worn by someone else. Without really meaning for it to happen, I now consider dragonflies to be my thing.

Topic 79: On Wearing Overshoes

Carol:

Oh My Galoshes

The last time I owned real overshoes, I was in grade school. In L.A. it rained a lot, and galoshes were a must. They not only kept my feet dry, but they  protected me  from the millions of earthworms that migrated onto the sidewalk after a storm. It took forever to pick my way along without touching, or worse,  squishing, a worm.

My mother had overshoes that fit over high heels. They were transparent plastic wedgies  that matched the transparent plastic rain hat she woreto protect her 1950’s perm. My mother’s fashion rule, what mattered most, was Sensibility over Style.

Calgary winter, 1962.

When we moved to Calgary, we bought all the gear for long, cold winters.  On weekends, I would bundle in parka, mittens and snow boots for  neighborhood  snowball wars or take the toboggan up the steep lane next to our house with our old cocker Taffy tucked in front.  I walked to school when the bus wasn’t running (they never cancelled school), so I really needed overshoes. Mine were rubber, big, warm and clunky with plenty of traction. My mother found winter twins for her transparent rain shoes, cloth boots that pulled over her high heels and had fake fur at the top. Sensible chic.

In  high school, I banished the clunky rubber boots to a box in the basement. I was into chic not sensible. My friends had been skiing since they were toddlers, and I was clumsy at best. I tried to fit in with fashion, which meant matching stretch pants and ski parka. We bought the jacket and stretch pants on a Fall trip to Spokane, at a store with  poor lighting. When we arrived back in Calgary, I opened the package to find a black jacket and brown—dark, mud-colored brown—ski pants. No amount of pleading would convince my mother that this perfectly sensible outfit, wasn’t good enough for the Banff ski slopes.

Mortification could only be offset by the perfect pair of boots, which I put on my Christmas wish list. The vogue in 1964 was sealskin; that’s what my friends were wearing with their powder pink ski ensembles, and that’s what I needed to distract from my black and brown mismatch. My mother bought me those sealskin boots, and I loved them dearly. This was back in the olden days before the documentaries showing hunters separating baby seals from their mothers and clubbing them over the head, before PETA.

After two good seasons of wearing the boots, I went away to college and began to feel uncomfortable about wearing animal fur in public. Eventually, the boots were stolen from the back of a van Marc had driven across country.  I mourned the loss of My Favorite Boots Ever, then I realized the thief had taken care of my moral dilemma of owning (and loving) a pair of boots I could no longer in good conscience wear in public or private.

Prescott winter 1986

When we moved to Prescott in the early 80’s, we bought all the winter gear, including not just the mittens, hats, and sensible overshoes but a 4-wheel drive vehicle. The weather changed over time, a lot less snow, no need for 4-wheel drive.I banished the overshoes to a box in the basement. They were ugly. 

Today’s forecast is 90% chance of precipitation. I can see a little sprinkle of white at the top of Granite Mountain, and a light mist is falling.   We have a wedding in two hours, and I will probably get my one pair of dress shoe soaked.  Maybe I have time to go down to the basement and look for, somewhere behind the boxes of children’s books, camping gear, and summer clothing, a box with  overshoes. The sensible kind.

Prescott New Years, 2010

 
Megan:

So, as I’m sitting down to write this with no idea what to say, I’m looking outside at blizzard-like conditions. Usually this would thrill me – the first big snow of the season – but tomorrow morning I’m supposed to fly to Denver to meet up with a friend. Usually I would be flying out of Phoenix, but I managed to find a flight from our tiny local airport, which seemed like an excellent idea at the time.  Instead, I’m looking at a massive snow storm which, according to the weather channel, is going to last until tomorrow night and may drop as much as 16 inches.  Needless to say, I’m not sure I’m going to make that flight.

I’m still going to act like everything will be fine. My clothes are in the washing machine, my room is on it’s way to being tidy(er) and I’ve suddenly remembered I forgot to get some appropriate footwear. Even if the snow does stop here, there’s still going to be about 20 feet to wade through in Colorado. I told my father that since skiing isn’t on the agenda, I only need to get from the car to the house and back again but I’m rethinking that now… now that it’s too late.

More stylish than the typical green pairs

In England they have a universal pair of shoes for dealing with wet weather – the wellies. Originally made of leather and popularized by the Duke of Wellington (hence the name), these mid-calf or knee-high boots are now made of rubber and are the quintessential English country footwear. Approach any house in the country (by country, I mean rural areas) you will find piles of wellies by the back door. I have never owned a pair, but on more than one occasion (including this one) I’ve wished I had. The thing is, for all the times I’ve seen them in people’s houses, I’ve only ever seen anyone wear them once or twice – usually on anglers or a dog walker plodding through the marshy fens.

Having never worn them, I always assumed they went over the shoe (which is why I mention them here), but now that I take a closer a look at Wikipedia that’s wrong. A google image search of “overshoes” reveals a whole world of seriously strange looking footwear that I cannot imagine anyone but fisherman and dog sledders or hazmat cleanup crews choosing to wear.

Anyway,  this was again one of those times where I had nothing to say, was distracted by other things and have cobbled together words into paragraphs in the shape of an essay, without any real substance. Sorry about that. But there’s a lot to do. Assuming I do make the flight tomorrow, we will be taking a break until next Tuesday because I’ll be on vacation and Mom doesn’t know how to work the website. Have a happy new year!

Topic 74: The Monotony of Student Life

Carol:

Letters Home

First day of college, 1966

Freshman Year—Nevada, Missouri
“For the past two days we have had a guest speaker from the Danforth Lecture Series. His name is Dr. Robert Speaight . . . a Shakespeare scholar, and an actor. He is considered to have given one of the best performances of King Lear in this century. . . He gave four lectures in the two days he was here and he was just terrific. Spoke on Macbeth, Shakespeare and the Theater, a comparison of British and American theater, and King Lear. Often he would give a few lines from one of the plays and he was just amazing.”
                                
 Sophomore Year—Spring Break trip to Washington, D.C.
 “Guess I’ll start at the beginning   . . Saturday morning we went to the White House but found out we could take the nicer Congressional tour on Tuesday,  so we went up to Arlington to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Kennedy’s grave, which is very impressive.  While we were at the graveside, Ethel Kennedy and most of her children arrived, knelt and prayed before the grave, then left. (This was about one hour before Robert Kennedy announced his presidential plans, and their appearance at this time of day was considered very unusual.)

Tuesday, our last day in D.C., we went on the Congressional tour of the White House, and up to the Capitol. Mullie and I went to our Senator’s office (didn’t meet Murphy, though), got passes to both galleries, then went on the Capitol tour while waiting for the Sessions to open. We were quite disappointed to see only three Senators at the session although one was Margaret Chase Smith.  We had seen Mark Hatfield earlier, but he never showed up."                                                           

Hacienda Restaurant, 30 years later

Junior Year—Aix-en-Provence, France
 “Lor and I both worked at the Hacienda [restaurant] this week. . . while the cook Jean-Pierre and his wife Francoise the waitress took a trip. Monday night I worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes, cutting bread, etc. It was really fun for one night and we got our meals free for two days. Casualties: Lor cut her finger on the bread knife and ran into a low doorway, which was a kind of laugh because she said I was the one who’d have all the accidents.  We also had fun because the husband of the girl who works in the kitchen did the cooking and nobody really knew what he was doing, so we laughed a lot and Georges [the owner] almost had a heart attack.  The couple’s really cute, Rabaye is 18 ½, Chafee 24, they’re from Tunisia, been married for 2 years and live in a tiny apt above the Hacienda. They like us because we are good sports, and asked us to Sunday dinner sometimes. (I can imagine you’re sitting there amazed at all this, thought you’d never live to see the day when I’d get a kick out of peeling a potato. I have to admit it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to work the potato peeler, but after that….)"

Graduate School—Riverside, CA.

“I had the strangest thing happen when I was driving the Bluebirds home yesterday.  Debbie started asking me all about government, and [why] there hadn’t ever been a black president, could there be a black president?  All of a sudden, after three years with those girls [as their  Bluebird leader] I had finally heard the question of color brought up.  She also asked me if there was going to be a war in this country, and that some people said the blacks were going to start a war because people treated them like slaves.  Then she said, “A person can’t help what color he is.” I was kind of sad because, well for two reasons. One, that a nine-year-old child would worry about that kind of thing, and two that I wouldn’t know how to answer them.”
                                       

Graduation Day, 1972

Love, Carol

Megan:

 Typical British Students

When I first moved to England to study my junior year, I was placed in the residence halls with a group of first year students. Being several years older than them I didn’t immediately make friends with them, and spent the first couple of months annoyed by the inconsiderate way they would run screaming down the hall at 3 AM after getting in from the Brighton clubs.

My class schedule was light. I had a two hour class on Tuesday mornings and a one hour class on Wednesday (at the end of the term I would discover that there had been a supplemental lecture twice a week and I had missed every single one – but no matter, I still passed the exams). This left quite a bit of free time so I took long walks and went to the movie, and was generally bored and homesick. On Thanksgiving (which of course is not observed in England), I bonded with the other residents over a shared resentment of being locked out of our kitchen while the other American student made a turkey dinner for her friends. That I was not invited bothered my new friends more than it did me, and sitting in the hallway, I was introduced to what would become a regular experience for me all the time I lived in England. Drinking and Insulting America and Her People (“But not you, Megan. You’re all right.”) This was late 2002, the US was preparing to invade Iraq, so there was a lot of animosity.

From that point on, we were a united group of three girls and three boys and they showed me how British students spend the 165 hours a week they are not in class -- Binge drinking and dancing, smoking pot and watching Asian action films. We became nocturnal. During the winter months, we would rise at sunset spend the night in gleeful debauchery and go to bed as the sun came up. It was the craziest, most fun time I had in college and it’s a wonder any of us passed our exams (in fact, one of us didn’t).  But that kind of lifestyle is unsustainable.

When I returned to Brighton for library school, I lived in off campus housing with most of the same group. Now in their third year, things had calmed down considerably. Our workloads were bigger and we were all a bit more serious about studying, saving money, and graduating from our respective programs. Nights out clubbing were reduced from several times a week to maybe once a month (although the Asian action film routine was still popular with the boys). The girls had boyfriends and the boys had Playstation and I was just grateful to be back in England again.

Topic 71: Too Much Momentum

Carol:

Falling Bodies
 

Most of what I know about physics comes from watching falling bodies-mine or my family’s. I want to blame it on our house,  which is a veritable booby trap for the young or careless. Stairs up to the front door and off the back deck, stairs up to the second storey and down to the basement, an open loft and upper hallway  protected by the flimsiest of railings good only for hanging decorations at Christmas.
 

We  raised two children here with fairly simple safety precautions.  We bought kiddie gates for the stairwell and installed child-proof latches and outlet plugs.  We even covered the upstairs railings with chicken wire, inelegant but effective in keeping them from sticking their heads between the posts,falling through the rails or throwing anything dangerous off the balcony. 
 

Unfortunately, we adults seemed to be the weakest link in our safety system.  I was the one who left the door to the basement open while carrying laundry down to the garage, the basket blocking the sight of my toddler following behind. It was pretty amazing actually that, after bouncing off one section of the stairs and hitting his chin on another section, my son didn’t break any bones. He  did put his teeth through his bottom lip. it  sounds worse than it really was, I swear.
 

Child-proof Fence

The outside of the house wasn’t much better than the inside with its wrap-around deck,  railings edged by cat claws and other prickly shrubs, and the varied drop-off from the deck because of our sloping property. We put up fencing there as well, but only after—omigod, same kid—our 2 year -old son got too much momentum going on his Big Wheels and went through the railing and into the bushes while Marc was playing with him. Oh, the wails and tears…from my husband at the sight of the plastic cycle hanging precariously off the deck, his baby boy caught in the cat claws.
 

As the children grew, our inelegant safety system was dismantled. Countless children have stuck their heads through the balcony and not one has ever fallen. The only damage from  throwing things off the balcony was not done by children. Who woulda  thunk that #1  I would be such a lousy thrower, and that  #2  a flimsy piece of clothing could actually snap a propeller arm off the ceiling fan?
 

The chicken wire and baby fences are still in use, moved outside to contain a dog who can leap tall buildings and the front gate of our deck in a single bound. A barricade of chairs and fencing inside the gate has worked so far, but I was stingy with the chicken wire, thinking that the increasing drop-off and the huge bushes alongside the deck would be a deterrent, and they were until yesterday.  A chocolate Lab wandered into the yard. Milo, sitting atop his favorite outdoor perch, our glass-top table, spotted the intruder. Squeezing through the railing just where the chicken wire ended, he leaped off the deck, up over the gigantic bush right into the chocolate lab. According to Milo’s sister (Megan hates it when I call her that), the confrontation between Lab and mutt was a frenzy of gyrating bodies, a collision of tails and squeals as the two powerful animals became instant pals, running huge circles through the neighboring yards. I now have several more plastic chairs barricading the railing, inelegant and probably not very effective.  

I love my house even if it may appear to be a death trap. Hopefully, our youngest child doesn’t remember his accidents as well as his parents do. And hopefully, our latest dog will forget how easily he flew off that deck, unharmed despite the speed from too much momentum.

Dog-proof fence?

 

Megan:

When I was little I was quite a gymnast, according to my parents. I was enrolled in gymnastics at the age of 2.5 and I guess I was a little darling or something. What I remember is an exhibition and being the only one who could do neither the splits or a back flip. We went down the line, every girl doing the back flip and when it got to me, I did a somersault. Every time I would gear up to try a back flip or a handspring or something, I would freak out and lose momentum. That’s  how I remember it.

What I was good at was somersaults, cartwheels and headstands. Especially headstands. My little party trick was to tuck my shirt into my pants and then stand on my head for as long as I could – sometimes it was 45 minutes. I only stopped because I got bored. My favorite place to do them was in the living room against the door that leads to the basement, but I didn’t need a wall for support so I’d do them anywhere – the playground, PE, in front of the TV. I remember (although I’m not sure if it actually happened) my brother throwing toys at me, trying to knock me over.  The last time I tried to do a headstand was sometime in college, but I had to use a pillow under my head.

At some point I learned to do a back bend from a standing position, but again I didn’t have the strength to flip my feet over into a handspring. The last time I did a back bend was shortly before I quit gymnastics. I was in the gym at school and my arms gave out so I landed on my head. After that I lost my confidence, and wouldn’t even do one on a padded mat. Instead I lay on my back and then pushed myself up.  I walked around that way, not unlike Linda Blair in The Exorcist but not as fast, and definitely not down the stairs.

Growing up we were not supposed to play on the stairs. I remember mom warning us, “Someone’s going to get hurt” in sort of a singsong voice and then when it turned out she was right, there was no sympathy.  So, one time I was playing by myself  and I had this brilliant idea that if I did a somersault down the stairs, I would be going so fast I could launch myself as I came up and jump really far – maybe all the way to the couch. Maybe it would have worked if I’d started at the last step instead of the top, but I was right about going really fast. I lost control mid-way through the first roll and then did two or three more. I only slowed when my head slammed into the bottom of the banister and hooked my chin in the corner. I lay stunned at the bottom of the stairs, amazed that I had survived such an ordeal and I was waiting for someone to rush to my aid before I started crying. But my mother was in the kitchen around the corner and had missed the entire thing. Not even my brother had been watching.  So I didn’t bother crying. 

Later I came up with a new game to play on the stairs. Suitcase sledding. It's a wonder my brother and I survived our childhood.

Topic 70: On Growing Up

Carol:

Writes of Passage

I have a fairly substantial collection of books signed by their authors. Sometimes, it is a fluke, like when I bought a used mystery novel by Tony Hillerman and found his signature inside.  Sometimes I wait in lines at literary readings to gather an autograph for a gift book. I also like to write in books myself to show know why I chose that gift especially for them. When I receive a gift book, I always look right away at the inside front page to see if there’s a message for me.  I am sentimental that way.
 

Bismarck, North Dakota:   The date on The Tale of Tom Kitten is June 6, 1953 the day before my 5th birthday, so I must have had a birthday party that day.  I can only read part of the dedication from Susan, who is now in her sixties. We only lived in North Dakota for eight months before my father got transferred to California, so I don’t remember Susan and we were too young to become pen pals. But, I have kept the book through all the transfers and travels and would never think of giving it away.
 

Los Angeles, California: I wrote my own name in Carolyn Ten Eyck Appleton’s Cocky Cactus, which was probably another birthday present around 1955. I couldn’t print well enough to fit my crayoned name in the little cartoon on the first page  that said  “This book belongs to…”  I wrote my name in a lot of books to show the world they were mine.  But, most of my favorite books weren’t mine; they belonged to my brothers: Holling C. Holling’s The Book of Indians (1935). Paddle to the Sea (1941) and Tree in the Trail (1942), and an old copy of Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle.  Sometimes I just scribbled out the names “Hugh” or “Doug” that were already written inside the books, replacing them with Carol Scott, or sometimes I would just pick another page to write on.  I had quite a tug-of-war with myself as an adult when I looked more carefully at the children’s books I had been lugging from place to place and admitted my theft. I returned them all to my brothers, but I still miss the little canoe from Paddle to the Sea.
 

New Haven, Connecticut:  August 25, 1973 my wedding day, the planning of which had been tricky as my mother on the west coast and I on the east coast tried to coordinate the cake, the music, the bridesmaid dresses, the menu. It was a family event: my big brothers whose books I stole as a kid were ushers along with Marc’s brother, my 5 nieces were junior bridesmaids, and Marc’s   sister from Massachusetts was a bridesmaid.  Hugh, a pilot for a commercial airline, was flying the Hawaii route, so he joined us on our honeymoon one evening for dinner.  His gift of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet seemed like a symbol to me that he knew his baby sister was all grown up, kind of a turning point in our relationship.
 

Prescott, Arizona:  On April 28, 1991 I wrote in the front of a beautiful book illustrating the words of St. Francis of Assisi’s “Hymn [Canticle] of the Sun.”  I was weeping a bit  while the rest of the family was dressing for Church and the ceremony of First Communion. There wasn’t any sentiment in the message I wrote, however,   just our  names and dates to mark another rite of passage.  What I really felt like saying was, “Dear Megan, stay my little girl. I’m not ready for you to grow up.” 
 

Practical people have told me not to write inside books. Hurts the resale value, makes it hard to exchange a book for one more interesting or useful. I prefer the personal touch of a date, a signature and a special message. I am sentimental that way.

Megan:

What do I know about growing up? I live with my parents and I spend all my time going to movies, or coffee shops or hanging out in the shed. Washing my hair is a chore, I fantasize about shaving my head but I am afraid I might have a misshapen skull.  It feels bumpy under my finger tips. These are the thoughts of the comfortably unemployed.

Sometimes  I get an urgent feeling. I think I must grow up and I must do it now. Soon. I have, in the past, believed that I had grown up. Certain events, as they occurred, I thought “This is it. I am now a grown up.” Getting my Master’s Degree, moving alone to England (3 times!),  taking the job in the prison, taking out a loan and buying a car with no parental input …  setting up a house: buying dishes, a vacuum (two actually – the first one didn’t suck) an iron, a kettle, a wok, automatic payment via the Internet of bills for phone, water and taxes, but not electricity.

I often forgot to prepay for electricity and then the power would go off, usually while I was in the shower and I would have to bundle up for the cold with shampoo in my hair and eyes, dripping out of my flat to hit the emergency credit button on the box.

And then, in the middle of The Great Recession, I willingly gave up a guaranteed government job, sold my car and got rid of my household items (I left the iron in a pub, with a sign “Free Iron – Never Used”). I packed four years of my life into two suitcases (the excess weight fee at the airport took a third of my final paycheck), and moved back into my childhood bedroom with the expectation that I’d find a new job within a month of two, after I recovered from the “ordeal” of having spent 4 years in a prison in a foreign country – accepting (fearing) that the only thing that may ever make me interesting is behind me, finished, and tell me – how can these be the thoughts of a grown up?



 ---
For another point of view on this topic, please see Allie Brosh's This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult at Hyperbole and a Half (which is where I got the idea to add cartoons to these essays).

Topic 64: On Asking Why

Carol:

A Word to the Why’s

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.  

(Rudyard Kiping, from Just So Stories 1902)

For a couple of years in college I was a journalism major, that is until I became assistant editor of my college newspaper and found out I couldn’t handle the pressure of deadlines and the ritual of all-nighters to meet those deadlines. However, I did take journalism classes and I did teach a print media course that analyzed different types of journalistic writing. So, I both learned and taught what are called the 5 W’s and the H although not by way of Kipling. The 5 W’s and the H are “honest serving-men” because they elicit factual responses and because they can’t be answered with a simple yes or no.

Kids are really good at asking questions because they are naturally curious about the world around them. They don’t understand yet the idea of the rhetorical question. Why on earth would someone ask a question he or she already knew the answer to?  At a certain age, the questions seem to be incessant. But, they are a natural stage in child development; the questioning starts around three and eventually becomes internalized as the curious child is encouraged to seek the answers for him or herself, the pathway to self-directed learning and information-gathering.

In an article called “Why Children ask Why," pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene writes quite beautifully about this stage in a child’s conversational development:

But by the time children are able to speak in sentences, it sounds deceptively like they mean the same thing we [adults] do. This happens at about the same time their curiosity, imagination, and creativity skyrocket. They begin to ask, "Why?" "Why?!?!" "WHY, Mommy, WHYYYYY?"

According to Dr. Greene, adults assume that children are asking why about a particular thing and that we need to answer that question. And we adults get frustrated when we don’t know the answer to the question, or when giving the answer doesn’t stop the next why. Dr. Greene says that what children really mean—that we adults  don’t mean when we ask questions—is  “Let’s have a conversation, “ not “Tell me the answer.”That seemingly endless series of   questions is the only way young children can express their need for attention and interaction. And, as Dr. Greene points out, we can fully satisfy the child’s need for that interaction without even answering the “why.”
 

Soon enough, the why question seems to get turned around, and we parents are the ones who are craving the conversation and attention from our children. Somehow in the relationship between parent and child the table seems to flip, and the children learn pretty fast that even  the 5 W’s and the H can be answered with one word.
       Who are you going to the movie with? Nobody
       What’s on your mind, son? Nothing.
       Where would you like to go for dinner? Nowhere.
       When are you going to apologize to your sister? Never.
       Why didn’t you let me know you’d be late? Dunno
       How about we try to talk this thing through?
Whatever.
        

Sources: 

Dr. Allen Greene. “Why Children Ask Why.” Pediatrics Naturally. 

Rudyard Kipling. “The Elephant’s Child." Just So Stories.
                

Megan:

Why Why is Pointless. Or not. (Whatever)

Of all the questions typically asked (How, Who, What , Where, When) Why is probably the hardest to answer and often the most important.
Or the least important.
Depending on how much value one places on reason, purpose or motivation.

According to the slackers of the dictionary world:

Definition of MOTIVATION
1a : the act or process of motivating
  b : the condition of being motivated
2: a motivating force, stimulus, or influence : incentive, drive

Now that the word has been so clearly defined, you can see why I get exasperated sometimes.

There is a reason I’m struggling with this topic. I’ve decided to get off my lazy, unemployed rear-end and start writing The Book. The last time I tried to write this novel was in 2002.  In the process of compiling notes and observations that I recorded years ago, I’m running into the same problem I had the first time I tried to write it – I’m not sure why the characters act the way they do, or if an explanation is even necessary. At the moment, I’m thinking I’ll leave the Why until the 12th draft.

This essay is a welcome interruption and a chance for me to reflect for a moment on the problem.  Instead of letting this question stall the project like I did before, I’m just carrying on with all the other questions – the HWWWW parts.

An example:
Using my computer (How), I (Who) am typing this essay (What) in my shed (Where) at 9:28 AM (When) because…  um…

• I guess the biggest reason is that my mother and I made an agreement with each other and with you readers to meet here 5 days a week and share some ideas. 
• But another reason is that writing daily essays is a practical exercise to keep our brains stimulated.
• Or because we have an inflated sense of the importance of our ideas, and you should be grateful we have deigned to share them with you.

 Maybe not that last one.

This is the problem with Why. There’s always more than one reason. It’s the hardest question to answer, but it’s also the only one that’s interesting.