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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over ~ Aneurin Bevan

I love my Dodge Caravan. It’s the second one I’ve owned, each for 10 years, the first purchased with my now ex-husband in 1989. We (the car and I) were very proud to recently celebrate our 176,000th mile together, but leaks of oil and other auto liquids are causing a leak of dollars that screams inevitable divorce, or maybe death. Need-A New-Car-Every-Three-Years is more like divorce.

This process of car shopping is decision making by torture. I can easily choose what I want for breakfast though there is that voice that tells me I will never lose weight eating "that," but making a decision about a car feels life threatening.

The problem is that I slept through Know Your Own Mind 101, but was alert for Second Guessing the Future 320 (aka You’d Better Get It Right) and its prerequisite Everyone Knows Better Than You 110. No one told me 320 and 110 were a direct path to the loony bin or I might have chosen different courses.

I want so badly to blame my mother for this inability, but she has carefully catalogued every bad decision I have ever made and any confrontation would leave me wounded and bleeding on the battlefield. She just never trusted my decision-making capacity, and I learned not to trust it myself. It wasn’t as if she never asked my opinion, it was just that I learned there was a right and wrong answer, and should I get the answer wrong, there were consequences of the embarrassing/feeling incompetent kind. If only she had trusted my choice in clothing, or at least let me make my own mistakes, things might be different today. I learned that I did not know what looked best on me or what was most appropriate for an occasion, and today I still hate to shop for clothes (or anything else). It’s the having to make a choice thing. When I’m around my mother even today, the wrong choice of a video, vegetable, or pan to cook in brings me back to feeling like, and maybe even behaving like, I’m eight.

Now that I am facing this car purchase decision alone it feels titanic in scope, and I keep wishfully and unrealistically hoping that my van will heal itself and last another 176,000 miles. My mind is battered by questions I do not feel I can answer by myself: Should I get new or used?  Should I get a hybrid or regular?  Should I get a sedan or a small SUV?

I am certain of one thing. I want a light-colored vehicle. Why? Because as a kid, my father educated us as to the safety factors inherent in driving a light-colored vehicle; they are easier for other drivers to see, therefore less likely to get into accidents. Provable logic, especially of the safety variety is easy to kowtow to; therefore, even though the purple Elantra called my name, I tested the white one because the ancient voice in my head was saying, “Purple is not very easy to see.” But that voice is deep from my past and was not coming from the ancient head in the wheelchair beside me. I am pretty sure that if I really wanted the purple one, real-time-dad would be okay with that. Long-time-ago dad actually told me, as I was giving excuses for not being able to do something, that I didn’t need to give reasons, just answers, and that I really ought to stop behaving like a doormat; however, every time I decide it is time to heed that advice a myriad of voices show up in my head:  "What if you make a bad or wrong decision, what if there is a better choice, what if everything goes wrong, what if someone doesn’t like this decision?, really, is because you like it a good enough reason, how will you defend yourself?’ I know this sounds and is neurotic, and I am embarrassed that at age 56 I don’t trust myself and care so much about what others think that I cannot decision make for myself.

So how will I make this decision? When the car dies (and though I do believe in miracles, I’d rather not chance getting stuck on the grapevine), I’ll have to. Maybe I’ll get a psychic reading or toss a coin. Maybe I should ask for an answer from my dreams and hope I remember them. Or maybe, with the help of Consumer Reports and Road and Track, I will logic my way into it, but that just doesn’t feel right for me.

So I will do my best to lay those voices to rest assuring them that I do know what’s best for me (even if I don’t yet believe it). And once they are quiet, I know I will get into one car, and as I navigate surface streets going to the freeway, I will sense that it feels right, that I am with an old/new friend, and that this will be the beginning of a beautiful, and long-lasting relationship.


copyright 2009 Nancy Grossman

Monday, April 20, 2009

Storytelling

Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner once said that a writer would sacrifice “honor, pride, decency…to get the book written” and that if he “has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.”

I began my career as a storyteller not by robbing my mother, but by robbing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I started down the slippery slope of literary piracy in first grade during Show and Tell. And Faulkner was correct; that moment was worth any old poet.

I loved Show and Tell. I listened week after week to my classmates tell how the dog ate mom’s new shoes or brag about a new baby sister or brother, and I couldn’t wait for my chance. But by November, I still hadn’t had a Show and Tell moment. Nothing exciting was happening in my family. My mom wasn’t having a baby, my cousins didn’t come from Texas to visit, and we hadn’t bought a new car or acquired a new pet. I was desperate. I needed a story to tell and I needed one badly.

In school, we were learning about the First Thanksgiving with the pilgrims and the Indians. I was fascinated with Indians, so one night my father read me the story of Hiawatha’s childhood from Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” which begins: “By the shores of Gitche Gumme, By the Shining Big Sea water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon.”

I was captivated by the music of the language and the story of Nokomis teaching Hiawatha about the forest, the animals, and their wonderful natural/supernatural world. I would have killed to be a Daughter of the Moon, to flit among the woods with Hiawatha and “Way-wah-taysee,” the firefly, to listen to the pine trees whispering “minne-wawa,” and the water gurgling “mudway-aushka!”

My head swam with images from the poem. I was ready to burst, so at the next Show and Tell morning, I raised my hand eagerly. I finally had a story to tell.

Somehow as I began to talk—it must have been magic—Hiawatha’s childhood merged with mine and his story became my story. I told the class that my late grandfather had been an Indian chief, that I was an Indian Princess, and that my real name was Little Fawn. I said during the summer my family went to the woods to live in my grandparent’s wigwam, hunt rabbits, bathe in the river, and cook our meals over a fire. I said my grandmother, who lived with us, could talk with the animals and birds and knew all the animals’ secrets. I turned Longfellow’s poem into a Show and Tell moment that was all mine. I was a huge success.

In fact, I was so convincing that the teacher called my mother that afternoon to invite my grandmother to talk to the class about Indian customs. When I arrived home from school, my mother and my grandmother met me at the door, grinning broadly, sporting large feathers in their hair, and lipstick warpaint smeared on their cheeks.

I have been known in my family as Little Fawn ever since. I’ve also been telling stories ever since, because that, after all, is what we Daughters of the Moon were born to do.

Copywright Susan Matthewson 2009

Monday, April 13, 2009

Snacks

Both pantry doors are opened wide and my son, Eric, studies the contents. He sighs. He closes the pantry, opens the refrigerator and stares inside for a while before sighing again and closing the fridge. He reopens the pantry, as if something new has miraculously appeared in the three minutes since he last looked. The question will come next.

“What do we have to eat?” Eric asks me.

“Chips?” I say.

He shakes his head.

“Cheese? Crackers?”

“Nah,” he says. With a shrug he goes upstairs to his room without a snack.

Fifteen minutes later his brother, Greg, does the same thing: the pantry, the fridge, the pantry, the question. I offer suggestions that get rejected.

“There’s nothing good to eat,” he says. “I’m going over to Mark’s house.”

I never have the right snack in the house. If they want chips and salsa, I have cheese and crackers. If they want cookies, I have chips and salsa, since I stocked up from when they wanted those before. I buy potato chips and they want peanuts. I buy peanuts. They want Cheetos. I buy Cheetos. They want Wheat Thins. I buy Wheat Thins and they crave apples, but I’ve thrown out the apples that rotted in the fruit bin from the last time they asked for them.

You’d think by now the pantry and fridge would be so full of stuff they used to want, that sooner or later I’d hit the jackpot and everything they could possibly want would be ready and waiting. But no, I always come up short in the snack department.

I find myself wondering what Mark’s mom has in her pantry, and I decide to call her.

“So Kathy, “ I say, coming right out with it, “What kind of snacks do you have for the kids after school?”

“Nothing they ever want,” she says with a tone of exasperation I’m familiar with.

“Well, what are they eating right now?” I ask, desperate to know what perfect snack my son has found there.

“Oh,” she says. “The two of them stared into the pantry for ten minutes. Then they did the same thing with the fridge. Pretty soon Mark said they were going over to Jimmy’s house and off they went. I don’t think they ever ate anything.”

Still obsessed, I call Jimmy’s house and ask Mary what the kids are eating.

“Nothing,” Mary says. “I think all three of them are on their way to your house.”

I swell with pride. For once I must have the best snacks! I can’t wait to see what they’ll eat.

Meanwhile, Eric is back at the pantry, and I’m feeling more confident now. Bring on “the question”. But before he can ask it, Greg and his buddies swoop into the kitchen, grab Eric, and in a flash the four kids are outside playing street hockey. What about snacks? Don’t they want my snacks?

Deflated, I start to think about fixing dinner. I open the fridge and stare inside. I check the freezer. I open both pantry doors, searching for options.

The kids are right. There’s nothing good to eat in this house.

Copyright Liz Zuercher 2009

Monday, April 6, 2009

Little Bit Haiku

by Susan Cameron

It's a beautiful April day, spring has sprung, and it's time to clean house. I opened some files and drawers, dumped the contents on the floor, and found some things I'd like to air out and show you.

Today, a touching haiku series, in honor of the seasons that change, and the people who don't.

RESPONSIBILITY

My neighbor, weeping;
Ten unpaid parking tickets
Landed Earl in jail.

The meter maid sighed.
Citations fell like blossoms
On windshield, ignored.

Sheriffs come like winter.
Twelve motherfuckers and Earl
Share a cell. Cozy?

No! Bail me out, now!
Lynyrd Skynyrd play "Free Bird"
As cash opens gate.

Street sweeping again.
Rednecks don't read calendars.
Another ticket.

Susan Cameron, copyright 1999

Okay, that's it for today! See y'all later!

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Little Bit Revenge in Tasty Sauce

I cannot think of a more appropriate topic than revenge, given that it is 3:35 a.m. and I am wide awake and have been so since 2:15 a.m. The reason I am awake is that I live in Huntington Beach, California, better known as Surf City. Huntington Beach is a lovely little community with the longest stretch of beautiful beach in the continental United States—eight miles of surf, sand, shorebirds, wetlands, beach bunnies, surfers, and three—count them, three—police helicopters.

One of those police helicopters flew over my house at least three times beginning at exactly 2:15 a.m. this morning, waking me from a sound and profoundly restful sleep, to which—despite a healthy dose of self-medication—I have been unable to return. I am currently brainstorming methods of revenge, which so far include standing on my deck waving my fist in the air and flicking the deck porch light on and off (unacceptable because my neighbors might get more aggravated at me than at the helicopter).

I might not be so aggravated if this didn’t happen far too often, not quite once a week but more often than it should. And yes, I have called the police department to complain, and was told by a somewhat huffy receptionist that the helicopter police are looking for criminals and trying to keep my community safe. I am very appreciative of our police force's commitment to keeping our community safe. However, I suggested that a patrol car might have a better chance of catching a criminal down here on the ground, and asked if the police department had considered that at 2:15 in the morning, sending a patrol car might be a more efficient, and certainly a more considerate, response to criminal activity. Because you see, Huntington Beach simply doesn’t have any criminal activity worth mentioning for the most part.

The latest police blotter reports as of April 1 include the following: a caller said her car had been vandalized with shaving cream; a fight occurred over a parking space; a juvenile was seen putting stickers on a MacDonald’s sign and then taking pictures of it (the police, the blotter says, made him remove the stickers, took him home and explained what had happened to his mother); a resident reported that he tried to sell a watch on the Internet and that the transaction was cancelled without his consent; a surf store employee said a co-worker had “drank a blue energy drink” two days ago and has been “flipping out and shaking ever since”; a caller complained that someone left a dog locked in their vehicle; and a taxi minivan driver drove away from a gas station with the pump still inserted into his vehicle (and what, pray tell, is a helicopter going to do about him if they find him, which ought to be easy since a gas station pump attached to a car and dragging along the street is likely to be somewhat noticeable).

This is the type of criminal activity typical of our sleepy little beach town. Exactly how effective a helicopter looking for a typical "criminal" in the above examples might be is highly dubious. I'm still angry, but it is now 4:30 a.m. and I'm going to try going back to sleep now. Perhaps I can dream my revenge because as angry or aggravated as we might get, revenge usually turns back on the person who exacts it, particularly if he or she does so in a hurtful way.

However, revenge can be a great motivator, a source of energy if exercised in an appropriate way, and even a path to fame and fortune. Sue Grafton, author of the A is for Alibi, etc., mystery series, became wealthy and celebrated as a result of revenge, you might say. At a session at a recent LA Festival of Books, she noted that her series of novels were inspired by a nasty divorce. She was broke, out of work, and hardly surviving along with her two children. The soon-to-be ex-husband was being extremely difficult in her opinion, so she often lay awake at night and thought of ways she could murder him and get away with it. Eventually a friend suggested that she take her vengeful imaginings and turn them into a book—and voila, A Is For Alibi, etc., and super-sleuth Kinsey Milhone were born—and Ms. Grafton got rich and famous, got rid of the difficult husband, and found a new wonderful husband—so you can see what a Little Bit of Revenge moderated in a Tasty Sauce can do for you.

Copyright Susan Matthewson 2009