Christmas haiku

by Susan Cameron

the
tree,
triumphant;
banishing winter
darkness, glittering
like
hope

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays,
and Best Wishes for 2010!

Susan Cameron, copyright 2009

Mrs. Schlobaum's Cookies

It started with Gary asking me to make Springerles, the German anise cookies his childhood neighbor, Mrs. Schlobaum, used to make. Three Christmases later, I am still in Springerle Hell.

Year One

Two days before Christmas I realize the cookies must mellow in an airtight container for two weeks. I abandon the project.

Year Two

I start earlier. My recipe requires a Springerle rolling pin engraved with pictures. I can’t find one anywhere. I find a new recipe that only calls for spooning the dough onto a cookie sheet.

Beating eggs and sugar for twenty minutes as instructed, I wonder if Mrs. Schlobaum had an electric mixer. I imagine a sturdy woman in a dirndl with a braid circling her head and Popeye muscles from beating Springerle dough. At nineteen minutes my mixer grinds to a halt. Overheated. Kaput.

What now, Mrs. Schlobaum? I still have to mix in the other ingredients. She tells me to do it the old fashioned way. I wonder if I need to wear a dirndl for that.

Baking Springerles is a two-day project. After letting the unbaked cookies dry at room temperature overnight, I bake them and store them in Tupperware until Christmas Eve.

“They’re really good,” Gary says.

“Like Mrs. Schlobaum’s?” I ask.

“Yes, except hers were rectangular and had pictures on them.”

Hmmmm.

Year Three

To help me channel Mrs. Schlobaum, I ask Gary to tell me more about her. Here’s what he remembers: She had white hair and a thin face. She wore flowered housedresses and aprons. She had a real elephant foot ashtray. Her grandson mowed her lawn until he cut off his finger in the mower. This is not helpful. I prefer my Mrs. Schlobaum.

I am determined to roll out the dough and put pictures on top. I still don’t have a Springerle rolling pin, but I have a cookie mold with Christmasy designs, a nonstick baking mat and nonstick rolling pin. I feel hopeful.

I prepare the dough and chill it several hours. I flour everything in sight to prevent sticking, but the gloppy stuff sticks to every nonstick surface anyway. I start over several times until finally the dough is rolled out. I push the cookie mold into the dough and lift it off.

Happy little snowmen and Santas smile up at me. Mrs. Schlobaum and I smile back. I start to cut them into rectangles, but I can’t cut around one without cutting into another or smushing them all up. I try to pick them up, but blobs of Santa and snowman bodies stick to the mat, leaving holes in their once plump middles.

“No! No!” they scream.

I realize I am the one screaming when Gary rushes into the kitchen. Springerle dough hangs from my fingers, my cheek, my hair.

“I will never make these damned cookies again,” I growl.

Gary nods solemnly and wisely backs away.

I end up making plain old rectangles - no pictures. I don’t care anymore. I’m done with Springerle.

But Mrs. Schlobaum won’t leave me alone. I am, after all, descended from a long line of stubborn Germans who hate to admit defeat. I Google Springerle rolling pins and contemplate ordering one.

Copyright 2009 by Liz Zuercher

Holy Deception

When I entered the dimly lit hospital room, my mother was sleeping peacefully. Always a petite woman, she seemed even smaller, dwarfed by the hospital bed, almost like a child’s doll.

I planned to sit with her for the night so if she awakened, she’d know I was there. But it had been a stressful flight from California, so I went to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. Threading the maze of hospital corridors, it took a while to find the cafeteria and even longer to find my way back to mother’s room.

I was surprised as I entered mom’s room to see a nun sitting beside her because we aren’t Catholic. But, it was a Catholic hospital run by the Sisters of Charity, so perhaps not unusual. The nun rose, we whispered introductions, and I thanked her for visiting. Then she said, “Would you like to pray together for her?”

Now I am not a particularly religious person. Raised a Methodist, I had long ago switched my affiliation to the Church of Sporadic Spirituality whose major article of faith is: “Who knows, but hedge your bets and be kind.” We have only One Commandment: Thou shalt not sin— excessively. We’re theologically very flexible.

But this sweet nun had asked me to pray with her and I wasn’t going to decline, so I took mother’s hand and we prayed silently.

When I opened my eyes, I looked at mom’s pale face cushioned on the pillow. I hadn’t noticed before how much she’d changed in the nine months since I’d seen her. She was not just small, but frail now, even shrunken. She just didn’t look like herself. In fact, she wasn’t herself. This was not my mother. In my exhaustion, I had entered the wrong darkened room. I was holding the hand of a perfect stranger.

As this dawned on me, a priest entered the room. I sat paralyzed with embarrassment. There were whispered greetings, but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move. I resisted an urge to laugh, while at the same time I felt mysteriously bound to this stranger. After all, Sister and I had prayed over her and I had done so with sincerity, pagan that I was.

I startled when I felt drops of water, but it was just Father sprinkling us with Holy Water. Holy Water? Holy Cow, I realized, it’s Last Rites. I choked back a snort of laughter and bowed my head to hide my face. I had no choice. I could not abandon this stranger now. More importantly, I didn’t want to.

I hoped they would forgive my deception. Did it matter that Sister and I had prayed for different reasons, she to her God and me to whomever? Wasn’t it more important FOR whom I was praying rather than TO whom? I folded the stranger’s hand in mine tenderly. At times like this, we can all use a little help from our friends, whoever and wherever they are. Besides, surely the Pope wouldn’t begrudge a little holy water sprinkled on a fallen Methodist. I was sure I needed it more than the poor soul’s whose hand I held.


Susan Matthewson
Copyright 2009

Maybe something better...

Audrey was running out the door when remembered that she still needed to get her sister-in-law the yearly Neiman Marcus cover snow globe for Christmas – an unbreakable tradition of close to ten years. She went to the kitchen table, lifted the lid of her Mac, and checked her e-mails. She smiled when she found what she wanted: A half-day sale that started at ten central and ended at midnight. She checked her watch and smiled – definitely after ten central. She signed in, searched for the cover globe and found to her amazement that it was on sale – 30% off! It NEVER went on sale; AND there was free shipping. The song by Holu “Perfect Day” went streaming through her mind. She felt like Elle Woods going on her perfect day date. She saw other cute items on sale that her sister might want and called her but had to leave a message.

“Well,” she said to herself, “This sale goes till midnight, so I’ll wait to hear from Monica and finish this when I get back. She began to sing “…It’s a perrrrfect daaaaaay, Nothing's standing in my way, On this perrrrrfect daaaaay, Nothing can go wrong…”

Several easy and fruitful errands later, Monica, who was not interested in the mini snow globe nutcracker salt and paper shakers or anything else, called her back. She was so disgustingly frugal!

“Call me if you change your mind.”

“I won’t”

“Your loss,” said Audrey as she pulled into the garage.

She walked into the house and was greeted noisily by Mable, her ancient tabby cat. She tossed her purse on a chair and picked up Mable placing her in her arms like a baby. Mable demonstrated her appreciation for the scratching and loving by squeezing her eyes shut and purring. In baby talk she apologized to Mable, put her on the ground, woke the computer up with a swish of the mouse, and clicked on her basket. Time to purchase her prize.

“What the…?” she said in disbelief and went back to the search feature. She called up snow globes but there was no discount now.

“That is just not fair. It is not okay for them to say there is a sale and then take it away. What is this?”

She looked at the top of the screen for the 800 number and called. The phone rang too many times before it was picked up by someone rather young sounding with a southern accent.

“Thank you for calling Neiman Marcus. This is Wanda, how may I help you?”

“Wanda,” said Audrey rather sharply, “I was on line this morning a few hours ago, and your cover globe was on sale. I just went to purchase it, and it’s not. Can you please find out what is going on. The ad said that the sale was on till midnight.

“Yes mam, it is. Let me check.” Audrey was left to her frustrated thoughts while a musak version of “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen played in the background. This is a travesty she thought to herself. After too much time again, Wanda got back on the phone and apologized but that particular sale had been a very short term special. Even though she begged and cajoled, there was nothing Wanda could do. Audrey said, “Well I’ll just wait. Maybe it’ll come back around.”

Feeling stupid for not taking advantage of good things immediately, Audrey checked Neiman Marcus daily and often several times a day. She did get an e-mail that offered free gift-wrapping. Well, she thought, that, at least is something. This special was valid through the weekend.

When she went on-line on Monday morning and realized that she had lost the free shipping benefit she reverted to her five year old self and screamed to the house at large “Why does this always happen to me?” Mable shot across the floor as Audrey burst into tears. “I hate myself. Why do I do this? It’s not fair!” She went to the site and decided then to purchase it, but changed her mind figuring it wasn’t even December and something else had to come up. At least the free shipping seemed to be on-going.

Life went along more or less normally for her. She cooked, cleaned, played cards with her friends who, for some reason, had a plethora of right/time right/place success stories which made her feel even worse.

Going home after one of these depressing gatherings, she decided she’d just get the snow globe no matter what. She went on line, and her cart was empty. The globe had been in there every time she checked. She typed “snow globe” in the search box and it wasn’t even there. The cover globe was gone. Her heart dropped to her stomach and she picked up the phone to call.

On hold again for a long time, the young man got on the line and said it was sold out. There were no more.

Audrey hung up the phone and began to cry hysterically. One would have thought her child had been killed. She felt like Boris Yellnikoff in Whatever Works and considered jumping out a window to her death, but she figured that like Boris, she would probably just get injured.

She felt like a fool and idiot and called herself every name in the book. How could she face Wendy at Christmas without her yearly globe? Wendy would have purchased it herself if she’d known it wasn’t going to be a gift. She was panicked because she didn’t want to disappoint and felt stupid for not taking advantage of things as they appeared.

After calming down and realizing that this really wasn’t the end of the world, Audrey called her local Neiman Marcus store. She prayed that there was one in the back. Just one. She’d even take the floor sample.

Geri answered the phone. Sweet, and giggly, and said they were sold out. Audrey begged her to check their back stock. After waiting a long time on hold, which in this case she didn’t mind, she was told that Geri had not just found one, but an entire crate full. Audrey was saved. She gave her credit card and Geri even said she’d put a bow on it for her.

So she didn’t get her discount and she didn’t get her free shipping, but she did get a bow, and she did get the gift. Life was good.

copyright 2009 Nancy Grossman-Samuel

I Remember

by Susan Cameron

Reader alert: If you hate memoir, stop here. This is some of the material that's going to end up in a much bigger piece.

I remember driving to the cider mill in the fall. Michigan in autumn is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The trees! There are so many, so beautiful; scarlet, gold, orange, yellow, brown, leaves rustling and falling soft as snowflakes. As you walk through them on the pathways they make a soft swooshing sound. When you're a kid, you rake them into piles and jump in them, rolling around with your friends in the leaves, laughing and shrieking and getting leaves in your hair, all wild and tangled. We used to burn them -- that was one of my favorite jobs when I was a kid. I'd rake them into piles, carry the piles to the wire trash-burning basket in the alley, stuff it full and fire it up. The smell of the smoke epitomized fall.

The cider mill was out in the woods next to a stream, of course. You could buy fresh-pressed apple cider, doughnuts hot out of the grease, hunks of smoked cheese and fresh apples. You'd sit under the canopy of red/gold/brown and eat and drink and listen to the rush of water burbling over the rocks in the streambed. The sky would be that bright, fresh blue, and the clouds would be as light and puffy as cotton candy, and the air smelled like trees and cold fruit. Breathing spring air made me feel giddy and light-headed and like dancing in the street (and sometimes I did!), but breathing fall air made me feel calm, content, and hungry. I was ravenous in the fall. Was it the change in seasons? Winter coming? Getting ready to hibernate? Who knows. But I would roll those hunks of smoked cheese around my mouth, and close my eyes and sigh a little from the taste of those doughnuts, and chase it with a few deep slugs of fresh apple cider, and life just couldn't get any better than that.

I remember winter all too well. When I was in grade school, we would all go to bed and snuggle under our blankets and quilts, and the heat would be turned off to save money. When we awoke, the house was icy cold. My grandmother would turn on the heat, there would be a muffled "whoomph" from the basement, and in a while, heat would begin to rise from the registers in the floor. There were wooden grids that sat over the vents leading from the furnace. I would take a deep breath, throw off my warm covers, and leap from my cozy bunkbed to the cold wooden floor. I'd scurry to the register in the hall and squat over it in my flannel nightgown, holding it open like a tent, feeling the delicious heat rising up through my collar. That didn't last long -- my chilly school clothes awaited. At one point they no longer used the furnace and tried just heating the kitchen with the oven (whose bright idea was that? How did they think this would save money?), and it was horrible. My teeth would be chattering like a flamenco dancer's castanets before I could make it to the kitchen.

I remember how cold the basement was in winter. I would grab my schoolbooks, open the kitchen door to the landing and feel the chill by the drafty back door. I'd shut the kitchen door behind me, muffling the sound of the adults yelling at each other. By the time I'd walked down the flight of steps and arrived in my sanctuary, I was already shivering. The cold seeped from the cement floor through my shoes, and the cinderblock walls were freezing to the touch.

I enjoyed reading. I was an "A" and "B" student in high school, though I think my study habits were peculiar in retrospect. The basement's ambiance left something to be desired, but it was easier to concentrate in the quiet freezing gloom than it was upstairs.

There was only one 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling for the right side of the basement, but there was also an old lamp on my grandfather's desk. I had enough light to read by. I would wrap myself up in some dead relative's heavy drapes that had been stored in plastic and hung on the clothesline. They held in body heat really well. I would wrap myself in my long ivory robes, push my glasses up on my nose, and fire up the turntable. It wasn't exactly a record player any more, since the speakers were shot to hell, but I'd put on an album anyway and listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young whispering "teach your children well" in a sort of ghost song.

I'd spread out my books and papers, switch on the desk lamp, push my glasses up again, and start reading my homework assignment. Breathing correctly was extremely important. It was necessary to breathe through the nose, especially when exhaling, because the basement was so cold that a breath exhaled through the mouth would fog up my glasses. They would remain fogged unless I took them off, slid them under the drapes and wiped them on my shirt. (I couldn't use the drapes; they didn't absorb moisture and left the glasses smeary). Anyhow, I'd have to open the drapes and let out some of my heat in order to clean the glasses, so I learned to be more careful. As I read, I would tuck one foot under myself to warm it, then switch to the other one. ("...Your children's hell...will slowly go by...")

Writing was harder than reading. Gloves were too clumsy so I had to write bare-handed. I'd write until my fingers got too cold to hold the pen, then I'd tuck the right hand in until it was warm and flexible again. It had a mind of its own -- once it was warm, it didn't really want to go back out there, but like a good soldier it did what it had to do. Reading was easier on it -- it only had to zip outside to turn a page, then scurry back into the warm shelter of the drapes. Forearms and elbows could keep the book open while draped in the material.

I could barely hear the arguing and screaming from my little nook. I'd just tuck the drapes around me nice and snug, crank up the broken record player to maximum volume (barely audible Graham Nash -- "don't you ever ask them why...if they told you, you would cry...") and settle in for as long as I could hold out.

Piece of cake.

Susan Cameron, copyright 2009

The Cassie Chronicles - She's Back

Cassie’s learning a new way to talk to her customers - and to Skinny Bitch. It’s all about love and semantics. Do you feel it?

Vocabulary Test

A few weeks ago we had a seminar for sales and customer service. Three days of a man named Chuck with slicked back hair, pungent cologne and loud ties, telling us how to interact with customers. It seems we’ve been doing things all wrong.

First was the vocabulary lesson. Chuck’s handout showed two columns. Column A listed words we currently use. Column B proposed better choices. I studied my handout.

Column A said “Project”. Column B said “Community”.

“Never say project,” Chuck told us. “The word has no heart. People can’t feel attached to a project. They’re looking for a community to belong to, a comfortable home environment.”

Column A said “Tract”. Column B said “Neighborhood”.

“Same principle here,” Chuck said. “Tract equals a lifeless plot of dirt. Who wants to live in a tract?” He waited for a response and seemed pleased to receive none. “That’s right!” Chuck exclaimed. “It’s a neighborhood people want. In a neighborhood, people look out for one another. Everyone wants that.”

“Are we supposed to use these words in Customer Service, too?” someone asked.

“Oh, yes,” Chuck replied. “This is a whole new company vocabulary. Put Column A behind you. Embrace Column B. Soon you’ll feel the love coming from everyone, buyers and co-workers alike.”

Skinny Bitch was beaming, eating up everything Chuck said. So was Art Baker, the head of customer service. The rest of us squirmed in our straight-backed chairs.

Since then there has been a steady stream of emails from Skinny Bitch reminding us of our new jargon. Replacement price sheets have arrived listing “Home Sites” instead of “Lots”. It’s not Tract 16632, but the Neighborhood of Bella Vista in the Community of Cantata del Mar. A new sign out front announces the Sales Gallery, not the Sales Office, and we don’t sell houses, we offer homes. People don’t go to the Design Center anymore to pick their upgrades, it’s the Design Studio. Oops, they aren’t upgrades, they’re customizing options. Standard items are now included features. And according to my new business card I’m a sales counselor, not a sales representative.

We are all trying very hard to embrace this change, because times are tough in real estate and we’re afraid we’ll be caught using the wrong word and be out on our keesters.

So, Skinny Bitch’s call today surprised me.

“Cassie,” she said, “We’re reviewing your project and need to know if the buyers of Lot 52 in Tract 16632 have gone to the Design Center yet to pick the upgrades for their house.”

Hmmm. Was this a test? I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Let me check the paperwork for my community, Tina,” I said. “Yes, the Wilsons went to the Design Studio on November 3^rd to select customizing options for their home on Home Site 52 in our neighborhood, just like I counseled them to do.”

I figure I aced it. And yes, Chuck, I do feel the love.

Copyright 2009, Liz Zuercher

The Autumn of My Life

The last week in October, during which I was on the east coast, was filled with many activities, but my favorite, even including my birthday, was my unplanned viewings of nature’s magnificent seasonal changes. Her comforting, shade giving leaves were changing from a pleasing, vibrant green to spectacular and awe inspiring pinks, reds, oranges, and yellows. I probably shouldn’t have even been allowed to drive because the shapes of the trees and the colors which were often almost translucent or florescent as the chilly fall sun sprinkled her magical light upon this changing spectacle caught my attention like nothing else has. I think I might have even made my passenger nervous from time to time or at least unsure of the age of her driver when I would blurt out with youthful exuberance regarding some tree or other.

The once leaf-filled trees were thinning out leaving bare and exciting looking branches whose various shapes and sizes reached out in multiple directions. It was like a tasteful and alivening strip tease! From one day to the next things were changing. It was very like remembering life with my baby daughter who is now almost twenty-one. When she was an infant and into her toddler years, she was often delightfully different from one day to the next; my experience with these magnificent trees was almost an emotional match as I watched things become slightly different and always more beautiful from day to day until the day I was leaving.

The day I left the east was the day I decided to take pictures, but many of my beautiful trees were now filled with brown, crinkly, and uninteresting foliage, and it hit me…

this was all just a death knoll. I had watched this beautiful, exciting season move from vibrancy to death. The leaves had gone from a beautiful extravaganza of color to dull yellows and browns. Supple, soft leaves splattered with color had become stiff and dull. Squishy, silent paths filled with newly fallen leaves had become walkways that announced one’s coming with a noisy crunching sound. And then I wondered: what judgment am I making about going from one state to the other. Perhaps, I thought, this was just a vibrational shift from one state to another.

Though it might appear that death is upon them, it is temporary. In six or seven months a new cycle will begin, and I would very much enjoy being there to watch as buds begin to appear, and the sexy, exciting branches begin to fill with a new kind of life.

And then I began to think about what this means for us as humans. I wonder why we can’t just live this way? Why is it that old age is considered an unpleasant, hated movement directly from green to crumbly brown? What about all the colorful possibilities and excitement that can exist in the middle from green to brown, supple to crunchy?

I have decided that I want my waning years to be colorful and bright. I want to shimmer and glow and be translucent and extravagant. I want to use the time I have left to explore and learn and grow and develop and sing and dance and play and have more fun than I’ve had, maybe ever. I imagine that a leaf has a wonderful time growing from bud to leaf, but then it just hangs out for the next six or so months; I would be willing to bet that the most fun it has is the change from green to vibrant and exciting colors, and it makes me wonder where the life of the leaf goes just as I wonder where the life of me will go when my body changes from red and pink and yellow and orange to the soft grey stuff that the Nautilus Society will hand back to whomever wants it when I’m done with it.

Time marches on, and rather than regret it, I intend to embrace it, and to find the joy and playfulness in it, and I invite you to enjoy this journey with me.

copyright 2009 by Nancy Grossman

Poetic Play

Today I offer a few poems. The first one is a copy of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, followed by my parody of his poem titled, Shall I Compare Thee to a Winter's Day: Or, Just Drop Dead. The final poem is The Artichoke

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY?: SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A WINTER’S DAY: OR, JUST DROP DEAD!

Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day?
Thou art more chilly, bitter, and extreme.
One look from you, one testy word convey
Such stinging slander one can only scream.
Yet sometimes even wintry days abate
And grant relief from frigid, freezing times,
Bring milder days that do not aggravate
And give one hope for softer, warmer climes.
But thy eternal winter does not fade
Nor lose intensity of harsh ill will.
My only hope’s for death to grant thee shade,
Deliver me from thy infernal swill.

So long as thee can breathe or thee can see,
So long lives this. I hope it torments thee.

Susan Matthewson
Copyright 2009


THE ARTICHOKE

The artichoke has no fashion sense,
Dressed in olive drab splotched with brown,
Like a raw recruit in jungle fatigues.

Camouflage is second nature to the artichoke.
It hides its tender heart and sophisticated tastes
Under a tough-guy exterior,
Thick-skinned, waxy petals and
Thorn-tipped leaves in overlapping layers
Like rows of shark’s teeth.

Overly sensitive to criticism,
The artichoke has a prickly personality,
It’s given to barbed responses
From its sharp-tongued thistles,
Stilletto-like bayonets fixed to the tips
Of its concentric leaves.

The artichoke is sturdy.
A hefty compact globe,
It looks like the accidental offspring
Of an amorous adventure
Between a cactus plant and a pinecone.

Instensely private,
The artichoke is hard to get to know.
It demands patience and pampering,
A thorough manicure
To prune its sharp edges
And a luxuriant lemon-juice massage.
A steam bath eases its defensive posture;
Its uptight petals relax,
Recline like sun worshippers on tilted lounges.
It shows its softer side then,
Becomes vulnerable to touch,
Secure in offering up its secret self,
Its tender-hearted core.

Copyright 2009 Susan Matthewson

Spin Cycle

by Susan Cameron

Hey, I finally found it! Sorry my post was late -- hope you think it was worth the wait.

* * * * *

"GO! GO! GO!" Brittany screamed into the wind roaring past her ears as she opened the throttle. The boat bounced into the air and splashed, bounced and splashed, leaping through Tomahawk Lake like a skittering, screaming cougar hot on the heels of a deer. The wind, the spray, the roar, the vibration of the wheel jittering through her hands, up her arms, the sting of her long hair whipping her back, thigh muscles trembling as she half-crouched, bracing herself, unwilling to throttle back and slow the beast -- "GO!" -- and Kenny waiting on the other side, Kenny and his slow grin and his slow kisses, long, deep, spearmint-flavored kisses, football-player muscles solid as bedrock under her hands, the very bones of her body melting like warm butter under his hands -- "GO!" -- and she was going, going away from Zombie Mom and Dad the Perv, him checking her out in her bathing suit, my God! -- and Kenny waiting on the other side, with his truck and dog and money from his summer job framing houses and a rented room at his cousin's house just waiting for them -- "GO!" -- and her duffel bag of clothes and her money in her backpack stuffed under the seats, ready for real life to begin! And there, up ahead, there was Kenny on the shore, just like he promised, waving, grinning at her! She throttled back, waved, screamed "I LOVE YOU!" Brittany felt as if her heart would burst open like a ripe, juicy plum. Nobody could have ever felt this way before, this excited, this happy, this much in love; nobody in the world had ever been this ready!

* * * * *

Brittany's father, the richest, most successful Chevy dealer in the state of Wisconsin, began his career in automotive sales by stealing a car from a dead woman in Detroit, Michigan.

Marvin Miller was eighteen, living in a dump on the lower east side. He heard that the nurse who lived down the street had just keeled over with a heart attack. After the ambulance hauled her away, Marvin heard opportunity knocking; he stole her car and sold it. With the profits, he bought a new suit from Sears, a bottle of Mad Dog 20-20, his first whore, and a Cadillac with a transmission that chattered. He packed the tranny with sawdust and banana peels to quiet it down, then sold the Caddy for triple what he'd paid for it to some illiterate ex-cotton picker working the graveyard shift at the Ford plant. Marvin counted the grubby cash, grinned in amazement and realized he had found his true calling.

Thirty years' worth of creative capitalism later, Marvelous Marvin Miller, king of the late-night car commercials, swayed gently at the wet bar in his study as he poured his fourth Glenfiddich on the rocks since lunch. He carefully wrapped the glass in paper napkins so he wouldn't drip scotch on the Aubusson rug and shuffled past the shelves of leather-bound books the interior decorator had installed. She had done a good job. The study looked classy. He had tried to install a little something in the curvy blonde interior decorator, too, but hadn't been able to close the deal.

He paused to look at the huge mahogany and glass display case full of plaques and trophies, sales awards he and his various dealerships had earned over the years. The case was lit up day and night, and it gave him as much pleasure as the wet bar. He checked his reflection in the glass, ran one hand over his thinning hair, sucked in his gut.

The French doors leading to the balcony stuck a bit in the humid summer air of Tomahawk Lake, Wisconsin, but Marvin forced one open without spilling a drop of scotch. He leaned over the railing and took in the view. His bloodshot eyes drifted around the rim of the steep hillside that plunged to the lake, and the nearby houses squatting on the edge -- past Harvey's huge English Tudor next door, and then Elmo's Venetian palazzo, and then the massive tile roof of some radiologist's hacienda -- house after house looming over Tomahawk Lake, sparkling below them like a shattered windshield in the sun.

Marvin grunted as he lowered himself onto a chaise longue and pulled a contraband Cuban cigar out of his pocket. He was focusing his attention on keeping the ash the proper length when the ferocious howl of a boat engine distracted him.

Marvin peered through the railing down toward the water, and he scowled. He watched his daughter Brittany blasting away from his dock in the Boston Whaler he'd bought her for her most recent birthday, her seventeenth. She was wearing that tiny bikini again, the one that matched her golden tan exactly, the one that made her look like a naked Victoria's Secret model. He'd forbidden her to wear it. He didn't want her running around looking like that. But she was headstrong and stubborn and boy-crazy and was probably going off to cock-tease her boyfriend, that big football-playing bastard who lived on the poor side of the lake. What the hell was his wife thinking, letting their daughter run around acting like a little whore?

Come to think of it, where was that fat bitch, anyhow? He checked his Rolex. Not dinnertime yet, so she was probably lumbering around the stores in town, taking his credit cards for a walk. Or down in the laundry room again. What the hell was this mania she had for doing the laundry herself? Why didn't she have the cleaning lady do it? He certainly paid the hired help enough. He shook his head, puffed his cigar. A man in his position, stuck with a wife who looked and acted like some slow-witted big-assed Polack washerwoman. Lucky for him the world was full of attractive cocktail waitresses to keep him distracted, and call girls at sales conventions, women who looked and felt as good as the wife used to when he married her. Divorce would cost him an arm and a leg. If it weren't for that, he'd divorce the wife in a heartbeat.

Or would he? He sipped his scotch and thought about it. Having the wife around kept the golddiggers in their place. Probably saved him trouble in the long run.

* * * * *

Juliana was in the laundry room. She didn't mind doing laundry. She didn't mind much of anything since she'd discovered Prozac. It was a nice addition to her fruit salad, the colorful collection of pills she took before each meal. Lots of doctors, lots of prescriptions, lots of pills, pretty pills, red and green like Christmas, pink and purple like Easter, a holiday in every handful.

Her big hands drifted slowly from laundry basket to folding table, basket to table, floating back and forth like seaweed in the surge. She loved the smell of detergent, fabric softener, soft and clean. She smoothed the wrinkles out of Brittany's size five underpants, tiny as doll clothes. She herself had never been a size five. She stood the same five-foot-seven as her husband, but was wide-shouldered, big-hipped, built for field work and birthing babies. The long, powerful legs she'd once wrapped around the happy, scrawny young man who would become her husband had gained ten pounds each and sprouted ropy varicose veins that spread under her flesh like roots looking for water.

She folded and smoothed, folded and smoothed, hands drifting, watching the big diamond in her wedding ring sparkling even in the dim light of the laundry room, a huge diamond, catching and reflecting the light, winking at her. And she listed to the jingle of her charm bracelet, the present Marvin gave her the first time he won the Salesman of the Year award. She shouldn't wear it while doing laundry, but it was so pretty. A thick golden chain, empty at first, now heavy on her wrist, loaded with golden charms, souvenirs of their life together. The Eiffel Tower; that was from their tenth anniversary celebration in Paris. A tiny Cadillac with diamond headlights. After Brittany was born, Marvin gave her the baby carriage with little gold wire wheels that really turned. He gave her crabs, too, and gonorrhea twice, and it turned out he'd started cheating on her before they were even married -- but no no no, she mustn't think about things like that anymore. One or another of her doctors said it was important she not get upset, and really, she hardly ever got upset these days.

She stacked Brittany's fresh clean folded clothes into the basket and drifted like a rudderless ship toward her daughter's bedroom. She opened the door and floated into a foreign country.

Brittany had annihilated all the interior decorator's good work as soon as the woman left. The tasteful country French furniture was buried somewhere under an explosion of stuff Brittany brought home from the thrift store where she insisted on working. Clothing, junk jewelry, brass incense burners, candles, Navajo fetishes, Chinese good-luck charms, collections of rocks and stones and shells and beads. Not a speck of flowered wallpaper was visible behind the layers of rough cotton Indian and Pakistani bedspreads tacked to the walls, and so many more were layered on the floor that you couldn't see the cornflower blue wall-to-wall carpet at all. The light was blocked by the burgundy velvet drapes Brittany had rescued from their neighbor Harvey's trash, and Marvin would have killed her if he knew where she got them. A blacklight shrine on one wall was filled with images of rebellious rock and roll heroes who died before Brittany was born, and live ones who looked dead. Brittanyland smelled like patchouli and sandalwood, Coppertone and mildew.

Damp bathing suits were festering somewhere -- under the bed? in the closet? The last time she looked for the source of the smell she found two baggies of marijuana. Kids and drugs, oh my God, and she had cried and cried, not knowing what to do. She couldn't tell Marvin, not with his temper. She eventually flushed the marijuana down the toilet, took a couple of pills and went to bed. If Brittany noticed the baggies were missing, she never said a word.

Her daughter didn't say much about anything these days. She was rarely home, always out with her friends somewhere, showing up for meals sometimes but eating in silence, bolting from the dinner table as soon as she was done. Marvin would try to talk to Brittany and ended up yelling at her, saying things he didn't really mean. When she tried to intervene, her words just wouldn't come out right. Her brain and her voice seemed slow and disconnected somehow.

But that was sad, and she didn't want to think of sad things. She sat the yellow plastic laundry basket on top of a pile of magazines with tattooed musicians on the covers, and opened Brittany's underwear drawer. It was completely empty.

This was confusing. She looked at the little pile of clean underwear, looked at the drawer. There should be more in here, she thought.

She opened the next drawer, where Brittany kept her cute little T-shirts. Empty.

And the next. No socks. Empty.

A sunbeam of panic sliced through her brain's gray fog. Check the closet. Half empty. The clothes all over the bed and chair and floor hadn't been dropped there after being worn -- they'd been discarded. The backpack on the closet shelf -- gone. The duffel bag -- gone. Another thought hit her with such force that her knees buckled and she staggered backward, stumbling to the bed. Brittany had turned seventeen.

Emancipated minor. She hadn't thought of the phrase in years.

She herself had once been one, a seventeen-year-old runaway with a minimum-wage job, living in a converted garage, desperately in love with a boy named Marvin who wanted to marry her. The police told her parents they couldn't touch her. She hadn't been afraid of being poor them; she'd been afraid of being trapped.

Juliana sat for a long while, staring vacantly at her right hand twisting the wedding ring on her left, eyes open but not seeing, hearing one word whispering itself in her mind, a soft small wave gently breaking on beached driftwood: Go. Go. Go.

Susan Cameron, copyright 1999

Be a Secretary

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. As a little girl in the Fifties, I did all the girlie things. I performed modern dance routines in our basement rec room, leaping and twirling with abandon around the room. I played piano and sang in the school chorus. I drew floor plans of imaginary houses and designed fancy dresses on a pad of paper with my crayons. I had big ideas about who I could be, but mostly I was a goody-two-shoes daughter, who did well in school and obeyed her parents.

In 1966, when I graduated from college, a girl was supposed to find her future husband at college, marry him right after graduation and support his career choice. For those of us who didn’t meet Mr. Right at school, the acceptable choices were limited. You became a teacher or a nurse or a secretary. I had a degree in English composition and thought I’d be a writer not a teacher.

“You can’t make a living at that,” my father said. “That’s a hobby.” He was a corporate executive who thought business was the way to go.

“The only way for you to get into the business world, Elizabeth, is to be a secretary,” he said. He always called me Elizabeth when he was being serious, so I listened carefully.

Since I thought he was always right about everything, I said, “Okay, Daddy.” And since I didn’t even know how to type without looking at the keys, I signed up for secretarial school in Chicago. Within four months I was ready for the business world, having learned to type at blazing speeds and take passable dictation. Secretly hoping to get my foot in the publishing door, I became a secretary for The New Yorker magazine’s Chicago advertising sales office, where I corrected my boss’s writing and made him look good. I moved to California and had a string of secretarial jobs until I got married, always doing someone else’s writing, my own creative instincts long neglected, always relegated to the “someday” category.

While I knew the choice had ultimately been mine, I resented my father’s advice for years, even after I was happy with my life as a wife and a mother and a business owner. It still bothered me that I never became a writer like I had thought I would.

Years later, my father was visiting from Chicago and we were all out for dinner – my father and I, my husband and my two teenage boys. We were talking about my life path, beginning with those years as a secretary, when my father spoke up.

“You know, I never could figure that out. I was so disappointed that we spent so much money to send you to college and all you did was go to secretarial school and learn to type and take shorthand,” he said.

“But you told me to do it,” I said.

“I did?” he replied, a puzzled look on his face.

I gaped at him, incredulous. All these years, for different reasons, we had both resented my decision to be a secretary, the choice I thought he wanted me to make. I could have been anything, I thought. I could have done so many other more important things. But I looked at my husband, whom I’d met while I worked as a secretary for a real estate developer, and I looked at my boys, who were my most cherished creations, and realized I didn’t regret my decision after all. And I could still be a writer when I grew up, if I wanted to. The choice was mine.

Copyright Liz Zuercher, 2009

Addiction

I became addicted to adjectives when I wrote my first story in fourth grade. My teacher raved about my descriptive powers. Encouraged by her praise, I began to collect adjectives like some people collect stamps. They became my drug of choice and I loaded my writing with them. Eventually, the addiction proved debilitating as addictions do, but like all addicts, I was unaware.

So imagine my shock in my first college creative writing class when I encountered a professor who preferred verbs and nouns. On my first assignment, he politely noted: “Lovely imagery, Miss Harris. You use language beautifully, but I suggest pruning the adjectives. Concentrate on strong verbs and nouns.”

We addicts are notorious for our denial, so I ignored him. By mid-semester his polite suggestions had taken on an edgy, caustic tone with notes like “Too many adjectives bloat your work” and “Wordiness is not a virtue, Miss Harris.” Finally, on a poem I wrote about a ruby-cheeked milkmaid, he spewed: “Miss Harris, your milkmaid is burdened with buckets of adjectives that are sloshing over the sides. She’s never going to make it from the barn to the farmhouse. Give her a break. Lighten the load. If nothing else, kill the cow producing this mush.”

Confronted thus, I became obstinate and sullen. At the next class, I glared at him as he lectured. He was young and handsome, tall and tanned, with a broad-shouldered, athletic build. He sauntered back and forth in graceful strides, running his hands through thick coal black hair that draped fetchingly over his high, smooth forehead. His piercing blue eyes radiated a sultry, seductive magnetism. His hands with their long, elegant fingers sliced the air like fan blades to emphasize his words. He was divine, irresistible as a plump ripe peach, and his magnificence only magnified my aggravation.

He had paused in front of my desk when suddenly I felt a movement at my feet and noticed that my thesaurus had slipped from a pocket of my backpack and lay open on the floor. I watched amazed as an army of adjectives rose from its pages and hurtled in hordes toward my professor. A platoon led by two brothers named rebellious and vengeful leaped upon his trouser cuffs and climbed his legs. Adjectives attacked from all directions, led by grizzled veterans with names like ugly, bald, beaked, sallow, gnarled, faded. They swarmed him, crawled through his hair, pounced on his shoulders.

In minutes, he transformed into a geriatric, stooped old geezer who moved with the halting step of a hunchback. His face was sallow and pocked, his once noble Roman nose now beaked and bulbous. His bald head sported sparse white wisps of fuzz. His faded watery eyes peered out bleakly while his gnarled hands clawed at the air.

Astonished, I gazed at my now decrepit professor dressed in the shabby rags and remnants of all the adjectives that I had finally gotten rid of—all, that is, except triumphant and gratified. They sat on top of my head waving and smiling.

Copyright 2009 Susan Matthewson

Perfect

by Susan Cameron

Sheba loped along Dog Beach, focused on her mission: Find The Perfect Stick. She nosed through piles of seaweed and tangled fishing line, pulling out driftwood sticks roughly two feet long and two inches thick. When she'd assembled her collection, she picked up the first stick, checked it for balance, chewed it a little, then moved to the next. Sheba chose the winner and dropped it at my feet. Then my part of our ritual began.

I flung the driftwood over the rolling breakers and squinted into the afternoon sun. Millions of stars twinkled in the water. Sheba the Surf Dog waited for the splash, then hurled herself into the Pacific. She was doing what she loved most in the place she loved best.

I knew Sheba didn't have many days like this left. At fourteen years old, her eyes were clouded with cataracts, and her movements had slowed and stiffened. In the water, however, she had all the enthusiasm of a puppy. She turned toward the beach, looked over her right shoulder, caught a swell, and paddled in on her large paws. Shaking a gallon of seawater out of her black fur, she brought the conquered stick to me. Again I hurled it back into the sea. Again she retrieved it.

Eventually her legs tired and we retreated to our blanket. I poured a bottle of water into her blue plastic dish, grabbed another for myself, and we watched the ocean dance. I looked at Sheba. How many times over the years had we jumped in the Toyota and made the short drive to the ocean? Here we were surrounded by beauty, by the crayon colors of childhood: cerulean, azure, cobalt, aquamarine; clouds flecked with rose and lavender, Catalina Island backlit by a scarlet blaze in the distance. My happy dog even had rainbows caught in her wet black fur, glints of green and purple when the sunlight hit it just right.

Sheba leaned against me, sighed, and rested her head on my knee. I watched the tide roll in and stroked her back. I inhaled the scent of warm sand, salty breeze, and clean wet dog. My pulse slowed to the beat of the world's great blue metronome.

It occurred to me how time is different at the beach. It's not a solid thing. It can't be broken down into office-sized ten-minute increments. The ocean pulls time in, slows it down, liquefies it, and pushes it back out with the tides. Languid and leisurely it flows, and it feels like however much time you have, it's enough.

Sheba was almost dry. I stroked her gray muzzle. I massaged her arthritic legs while the incoming tide massaged the sand. Soft as a mother's kiss, it erased my footprints, her pawprints. Soon there wasn't a trace of us left, and it was time to go home.

Sheba's dead now, of course. All you can expect from a big dog is a life the length of a human childhood. The time flowed by so gently; I scarcely noticed it. Most importantly, Sheba and I didn't waste it. We spent many perfect days together, wisely, at the beach.

Susan Cameron, copyright 2002

A Forever Ocean View

In honor of my mother, Maudie Weidman, who passed away fourteen years ago this week, here’s a reprise of a piece published in Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover’s Soul. She was a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner who told great stories, played a mean piano and always kept a supply of Snickers bars on hand. She loved a good joke, the color red and hot fudge sundaes for lunch. She was the best Little Mommy ever, and I still miss her every day.

A Forever Ocean View

My mother and I longed for an ocean view, the kind that went on forever just like the real estate ads boasted, where we could be swept up in the sea’s changing moods. Neither of us could afford a house on the ocean, but dreaming was free so we did plenty of that. Still, we hoped someday at least one of us would realize the dream and share her good fortune with the other.

In the meantime we took every opportunity to be near the water. Each Friday we had a standing date and usually managed to fit in lunch at a seaside restaurant. We ate our way up and down the coast of Southern California, seeking new ocean view spots to savor. We even joined a beach club because it had a great restaurant on the sand. We could lunch to the sound of waves licking the shore, watch the sea birds swoop and soar or track the progress of the California gray whale migrations. It was, we decided, the closest we would ever get to owning any part of an ocean view.

We would talk at our whitewater lunches, but words weren’t always necessary. Sometimes we would just watch the ocean in silence, perfectly content. Once I asked my mother about her wistful look, and she said she was imagining herself a gull flying free over the water, becoming part of the seascape. We agreed that would be a perfect way to spend time.

One Friday at the beach club her voice broke a long comfortable silence, “Next Friday I need your help choosing my niche.”

“What’s a niche?” I asked.

“It’s where they put people’s ashes at the cemetery,” she said as a wave crashed into the sand. She’d been on a mission to get her affairs in order since a recent hospitalization for congestive heart failure.

“I always thought you’d want your ashes to be spread at sea.”

“Oh, no,” she said, a hint of a giggle in her eyes. “You know I can’t swim.”

She had me laughing, breaking the somber mood that had overtaken me at the mention of cemeteries and ashes. I preferred to ignore the subject, but she was an undertaker’s daughter, practical about death. She wanted to be cremated. There would be no viewing, no funeral and no arguments. I wasn’t anxious to spend our Friday at a cemetery, but I couldn’t refuse my mother.

“Where’s the cemetery?” I asked, resigned to a gruesome day.

“Corona Del Mar,” she said. “Pacific View Memorial Park.”

Of course, I thought. She was going to have her ocean view if it was the last thing she ever did.

We met at Pacific View where the “counselor” showed us available niches. We narrowed it down to two locations in Palm Court, which resembled a giant stucco planter with marble-faced niches on all four sides and palms growing in the middle. It sat atop a hill with a panoramic view of the Pacific. That day the ocean sparkled azure blue and Catalina Island rose up from the horizon.

One niche faced the ocean, the other looked inland. But even ocean view niches are more expensive than ones looking away from the sea. My mother’s face fell when she learned this. She probably could have afforded the view niche, but it went against her practical grain. She regrouped and began to assess the virtues of the inland niche.

“Look,” she said. “It’s right on the corner. You can sit here beside the niche and see the view when you visit me. I can just peek around the corner.” She was teasing me again, easing the tension. “Why should I plunk out all that money to be on the view side?”

I could see she had made up her mind. She was buying the niche on the corner, without a view.

Eighteen months later she died. My sister and I placed her ashes in the niche and watched the attendant secure the marble plate with mortar. We held onto each other, eyes straining through gray haze to see the ocean our mother had loved to watch.

My Fridays were free, but I found myself at Pacific View often. Like my mother had instructed, I sat down facing the ocean. Sometimes I looked at the view, but mostly I closed my eyes and turned my head skyward. I’d see a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and orange swirls pulling me inside the changing design and wrapping me up. It felt warm and sustaining, like a hug. When the colors subsided, I would leave, hardly glancing at the view.

After a year I was still aching and empty, crying at odd moments. A college friend came to visit and as a lark we went to a psychic. I was stunned when she said, “Someone has recently passed on. They are worried about you and can’t be free until they know you are all right.”

Days later, at the niche, I thought about the psychic’s words. I normally took such pronouncements lightly, but I couldn’t shake this one. I sat at the niche, eyes closed as usual. I was edgy, though, and the colors faded almost as fast as they came. Hearing a bird’s call, I opened my eyes to see a gull circling above. I felt the words come before I said them, “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’ll be fine.” As if in response, the gull dipped a wing, circled once more and flew off toward the ocean. My spirits lifting with the bird, I watched until it was out of sight. And there before me was that beautiful forever ocean view my mother had bought to share with me. I sat for a long time absorbing every part of it.

Copyright 2002, Liz Zuercher

25 Things You May Not Know About Me and Probably Could Care Less About

Okay, last week was the first half of 25 things you don't know about me. This week is the last half. Another one of our writers gets to post next week...aren't you glad?

13. I actually voted for Richard Nixon. I know…many of you who know me won't believe it--I can't believe it either. I’ve been trying to live it down ever since. But I figure if Hillary could overcome being a Goldwater Girl, I can overcome this.

14. When I was young and single, I once partied a little too hardy one night so a friend dropped me at my apartment, but she left before I realized I didn’t have my apartment keys. Since it was 3 a.m., I was too embarrassed to wake the apartment manager. So, I walked around the block until I found an unlocked car and lay down in the back seat until 7 a.m. when I felt okay about asking the manager to let me in to my apartment.

15. With three college friends, I took off from Boulder, Colorado and drove to San Francisco for the weekend once. We left on a Friday night, had car trouble in Wyoming, had to be towed back to Laramie, Wyoming, got the car fixed, continued on the trip, got to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, spent the night with a friend attending a Catholic women’s college, did San Francisco that night, then got back in the car on Sunday, and drove all the way back to Boulder. I bought four cheap art prints of the city of San Francisco that I framed and still have to this day.

16. My favorite job was as a book store clerk at a used bookstore. My favorite frequent customers were: (1) a little old lady with specs perched on her nose, her hair pulled into a little white bun on top of her head, and who looked like everyone’s lovable old grandma— but she was a retired zoologist who specialized in rats, had published research papers on rats, and came in every month or so to see if we had any new books on rats--she told me more about rats than I ever knew there was to know; (2) a couple I called Ken and Barbie—Barbie always wore a little short skirt that barely covered her fanny and they walked around the store arm in arm, Ken with his hand up her skirt, resting on her fanny and rubbing it up and down; (3) the homeless couple who lived in their car in the parking lot and came in to use the bathroom, then picked out a section in the bookstore and spent the day reading;if they were getting along, they sat in the same section; if they were fighting, she sat by the Divorce/Death and Dying section in the Psychology nook and he sat in the Guns and Hunting section; (4) the very stacked, wow-looking, airhead blond who came in one day and asked for “that book on the Oprah show”—she didn’t know the title or the author, but said it was a “big yellow book” –our single male manager, his tongue hanging out in lust, told her we only had a red book section and a blue book section, but had not yet developed our “yellow” book section, however, he happily offered to walk her around the store looking for yellow books...They spent a long time in a back room we called the “vault” because the bookstore was located in a former bank—the vault housed sets of books like old encyclopedias, Great Books series, and other sets—there were NO yellow books back there…I checked later.

17. I once thought Lawrence Welk played classical music because my grandmother loved him so much and she was a classical pianist and piano teacher.

18. I still miss Johnny Carson—Jay, Conan, and Dave just can’t compare.

19. I watch the movie, Love Actually, every Christmas and cry every time.

20. I have always secretly been in love with Tommy Lee Jones.

21. I have a crush on Chris Matthews of MSNBC. So does my sister, but I think he’d like me better.

22. I once got so mad at my 12-year-old son and his messy room where he had let, among other things, an overturned bottle of Elmer’s glue drip off his desk, down the wall, and onto the carpet that while he was at school one day, I moved all his furniture, clothes, and belongings down to the garage and put a “condemned” sign on his bedroom door. I still don’t know how I did it all by myself—just motivated and strengthened by anger I guess because I got everything—the bed, the desk, the bed table, the lamps, the clothes, the stereo, the books, etc.— downstairs to the garage except for the triple dresser and mirror. When he got home from school, he and his friends were thunderstruck at what I’d done. They laughed and laughed and helped him move it all back.

23. When I was in junior high I decided to read through the set of encyclopedias we had. I think I made it to about C before giving up. I still occasionally like to browse through an encyclopedia just for fun and, sometimes, I even read the dictionary for fun.

24. I love watching home improvement shows on HGTV. They’re so imaginative—did you know you can build a backyard gazebo over just one weekend as shown in one half-hour show. I know…I don’t believe it either. My fantasy is that Divine Design, Designer’s Challenge, or This Old House will find me and remake me one day. My major question to home improvement experts is: We can go to the moon, we can send drones by remote control to bomb places, we are the most electronically sophisticated generation ever, so with all this technological knowledge and expertise, why can’t we make a sliding patio door with rollers that actually slide effortlessly and smoothly and last for more than 6 months?

25. I love hardware stores. I love looking at all the gadgets I don’t need, will never buy, and don’t know how to use. I don’t know how to do anything, so I really admire tools and people who know how to use them. Along with my hairdresser, my handyman is my most indispensable person. I have told both of them they absolutely cannot die before I do or it will ruin my life. I sometimes think I’d like to move to another state, but I can’t stand the thought of leaving my hairdresser or my handyman. Doctors, accountants, and lawyers you can replace easily. Good hairdressers and good handymen—almost impossible.

25 Things You May Not Know About Me and Probably Could Care Less About

Just for fun, I'll post the first half of this list this week and the second half next week. Now you know all my secrets (well...maybe almost all).

1. Instead of Susan, I would have preferred to be named something exotic and sexy like Serena, Desiree, or Jezebel. However, I am grateful that my mother prevailed over my father who wanted to name me after my two grandmothers, in which case you would be addressing me as Oma Viola Valentine. One grandmother was Oma Hall Harris and the other was Viola Valentine McCoy, both lovely ladies, but thank heaven I didn’t have to answer the roll call in school as Oma Viola.

2. I once worked for the public relations/advertising agency that handled Duke Kahanamoku’s, a well-known and popular restaurant/night club in Honolulu, Hawaii and their biggest star, singer/entertainer Don Ho. The head account manager, the vice president of the firm, and I (a lowly copywriter) once had a publicity meeting in Don Ho’s Waikiki penthouse at the Hawaiian Village. At the time, he was in bed with his latest blond girl friend and we conducted the meeting sitting on his bed, sipping Mai Tais. Unfortunately, there were no cell phones with cameras back then.

3. I almost got arrested by the secret service for trespassing on President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch near Austin, Texas. On a spring break trip during my sophomore year, my friends and I, who had been staying at a sorority sister’s ranch near Austin, decided on the way back to school to stop and see LBJ’s ranch. The ranch house sits on a big hill overlooking the Perdenales River outside Austin. It was hot and dusty, and we were hot and dusty and cramped (four of us travelling in a Volkswagen), so we decided the President wouldn’t mind if we took a swim in his river to cool off. We were having a great time splashing around and never batted an eye as we watched two cars speed down the hill from the house and cross the river to our side on a secret road built just beneath the water. We waved and hollered and whooped at them as they approached. When they slammed to a stop in a cloud of dust right by us, we thought it was hilarious. Please be advised, the Secret Service does not have much of a sense of humor.

4. My genetic heritage (from the deep South) is predisposed to Hershey bars, popcorn, nachos, cokes, chocolate pie with meringue, and gravy on everything. Vegetables, with the exception of black-eyed peas and spinach (and only if they are heavily laced with bacon grease), and fruits, with the exception of strawberries (and only if they are layered on angel food cake and topped with whip cream), are not and never were part of my family’s daily nutritional plan. I never even knew what kale or chard looked like until my daughter and her husband bought a farm and grew it. I just recently found out there is a vegetable called raddichio.

5. When I was 15, I accidentally cracked a window pane in my parents’ house. It was in the bathroom off the family room, and I didn’t think anyone would notice so I didn’t say anything. They did notice and went into an uproar because they thought a burglar had tried to get in the house and had broken the window. My mom installed security locks on the back doors. She and my dad put a lock on the backyard gate and even considered getting a burglar alarm. Every night for the next week before he went to bed, my dad took a security walk around the house, checking for unguarded entry points. I never told them I was the one that cracked the window.

6. I am terrified of the common moth that flits around lights. When I was a kid, if one got in my room and I heard it flapping around the ceiling, I would go into fits of hysteria until someone, usually my parents, killed it. It didn’t matter if it was 3 a.m. in the morning, I’d wake them up to get that little bugger out of there. I’m still terrified. In fact, when I was nine months and two weeks overdue with my first child, I was sitting on the sofa when a moth flapped around the light next to me and then into my hair. Terrified, I jumped six feet off the sofa, fell over the coffee table, and rolled on the floor screaming. My water broke the next afternoon and my mother was convinced I’d still be pregnant if it weren’t for that moth.

7. I love movie theater buttered popcorn and often go to the movies just so I can get a bag of popcorn.

8. I cannot make gravy. No matter what I do, it turns out lumpy.

9. I used to bribe my sisters to rub/tickle my feet, which I find the most relaxing thing in the world to this day. I’m absolutely shameless about what I’ll do to get a foot rub.

10. I have had my thank you speech for accepting the Academy Award for best actress written for the last 40 years, though I update it annually at awards time. (I always secretly wanted to be an actress.)

11. I also would love be a detective because I’m nosy, observant (good for a writer), sneaky, like to pretend, and am a good liar.

12. In my next life, if I’m not an actress or a detective, I want to be a stand-up comedian.

East Side Story

by Susan Cameron

"Dave got really mad at me when I told him he shouldn't smoke dope near the kids any more, but I don't think I'm wrong. A contact high can't be good for little kids," says Elizabeth. Sarah and I nod our agreement, mouths full of Elizabeth's homemade chocolate chip cookies. Little Jimmy had just turned two, and baby Carly's nine months old. We know smoking dope in front of children must be a bad thing; there isn't a mother on TV who'd put up with it.

The three of us are eating cookies, drinking milk, and listening to George Harrison's latest album, the one to benefit Bangladesh. It seems incredible that people are starving to death in the 1970's, as if we were still in the Dark Ages. I feel a little twinge of guilt about eating the cookies, but that doesn't stop me.

The kids are down for their naps, so the music's too quiet to fully appreciate the power of Dave's stereo system, but that's OK with us. The music's not drowning out our talking. We're in the living room of Dave and Elizabeth's HUD house. HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development. It's a government agency that sells dilapidated houses in dangerous neighborhoods to unqualified people who will never pay for them.

Elizabeth married Dave and gave birth to Jimmy six months later, the week she turned seventeen. At eighteen she had Carly, and that's about the time I entered the picture. Dave supplements his boxboy income by dealing on the side; I like kids, and I'm willing to baby-sit for nicely rolled joints instead of money. It works out for everybody.

I like Elizabeth. She's a misplaced earth mother hippie girl -- she struggles to grow vegetables in the dead ghetto dirt in her backyard, she cooks way better than the rest of us, she loves fussing over her kids. We all think Dave is attractive. He is tall and cadaverously thin, with long, dark hair and skin so white it's almost blue, like ice on the Detroit River in February. He looks like he should be the lead guitarist in some famous rock-and-roll band, and he does play guitar, but badly. We decide he looks kind of like James Taylor on the cover of the Mud Slide Slim album, except Dave used to do a lot of speed and is far, far skinnier than James Taylor, who does heroin. And Dave has a couple of bad teeth you can see when he smiles, but you don't see them often.

"The thing is, I know Dave really loves me, and I know he really loves the kids, but sometimes he just doesn't think," says Elizabeth. "He gets mad and says things he doesn't really mean. He says, 'You know smoking weed mellows me out, you know I need it so I can stand to be around these crying rug rats, and you just want to hassle me!' but I'm not trying to hassle him, I just don't want the kids to get high, that's all. And then I get really angry because he calls Jimmy and Carly rug rats, and I yell at him, and then we start really arguing, and he yells and screams and slams the door when he leaves, and the kids are crying, and then I start crying too, and I'm tired of him coming home stoned and sorry sorry sorry all the time, you know?" The last two words come out all quavery, and she grabs the empty cookie plate and heads for the kitchen so we won't see the tears in her eyes, and Sarah and I pretend we don't notice them. Elizabeth comes back with her famous oatmeal raisin cookies this time, but my stomach doesn't feel quite right and I don't want any, although they're my favorites.

Sarah's the one who blurts out the question. "Has Dave tried to hurt Jimmy again?"

A long silence. My stomach is really hurting now. Elizabeth sighs. "No. It was just that one time. He kept all his appointments with the therapist, just like the judge said, and the social worker doesn't have to come around any more. The doctor said Jimmy's fracture healed perfectly, the arm is fine." She takes a deep breath. "But I'm worried. Dave says weed does him more good than therapy ever did, and I know he's getting high at work behind the grocery store with the other guys. What if the boss catches him? What if he loses his job? We're not making payments on this house now as it is, and Dave's spending all the rent money we collect from our tenants downstairs. I don't know where the hell it's all going, and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do," and she loses it.

She's sobbing, and Sarah's holding her, and I'm holding her, making inadequate comforting noises, when Jimmy stumbles out awakened from his nap, sucking his thumb and clutching his blankie, and he sees his mother crying, pulls out his thumb and starts wailing, which wakes up his sister, who starts wailing, and it sounds like the air raid sirens the city of Detroit tests on the first Saturday of the month to give us time to kiss our asses good-bye when the Russians finally nuke us. Loud. It is loud. I wouldn't break my baby's arm for crying, though, and my stomach wrenches again, and I realize what I'm feeling in my guts is rage, and I want to beat Dave unconscious. We all snuggle together on the couch, everybody calmed down and cuddling like a litter of exhausted puppies.

So it's no big surprise when Elizabeth and the kids show up on my doorstep the following week. We make up my ex-roommate's bed in the dining room. It's only a double, but the kids are so small that all three of them can fit. Sarah and Patty and Mary Ann drop by. We pop a half a ton of popcorn and read Cat in the Hat aloud way too many times, and after the kids are asleep we talk about men and life and the future and lots of other things we don't know anything about.

It's also no big surprise when Elizabeth calls Dave a few days later, they make up, and he comes to take her and the kids home. This is the first time they break up and make up, but it's far from the last. The pattern develops: Dave loses his temper, yells, throws things; Elizabeth fears for the safety of the kids and brings them to my place; Dave cools down, apologizes; Elizabeth goes back to him. This cycle repeats itself for almost two years. Our little circle of friends no longer find Dave attractive.

"Thanks for taking care of my family again, Sue," says Dave, his eyes skidding off my face and landing somewhere behind my right shoulder.

"No problem, Dave." I smile, looking straight at the eyes not looking at mine. Punkass.

It's a very steep staircase leading to my second-story walk-up. As he begins his descent I have the urge to give his bony back a hard shove, watch the scrawny rooster try to fly -- "Squawk! Squa..." as he hits bottom and his skinny neck snaps, stringy carcass fit only for a long, slow simmer in a stewpot -- but I don't. Booting his ass is his wife's job, not mine; and after our friend Sarah tells Elizabeth in exasperation to shit or get off the pot, Elizabeth finally succumbs to the inevitable, and the marriage is over.

* * * * *

Things we don't know at the time: Dave will make his court-ordered child support payments until he falls in love with another stoned, skinny boxboy and runs away with him. Elizabeth will take her children and move to a farm in upstate Michigan where welfare payments stretch farther. She will marry a truck driver with two children whose wife abandoned them to run away with a musician, a really bad guitar player. They will have a son together. They will divorce. Time will pass, and I will lose track of everybody.

* * * * *

I went through some old Detroit photographs the other day. There are Jimmy and Carly on their red-and-yellow plastic Big Wheels, huge smiles, showing off, tearing around the cracked asphalt driveway the weeds were destroying. There's Elizabeth smiling at the camera in front of the peeling yellow garage, all that long dark wavy hair, good-natured hippie gypsy in bellbottoms and bare feet. And there's me. I am nineteen years old, about to turn twenty. I recognize the earrings I'm wearing in the photograph; they're at the bottom of my jewelry box now. The gold wore off and they turn my earlobes green, so I don't wear them any more, but I keep them just the same. I am sitting on Elizabeth's rickety back porch steps with that damned broken ripped screen door behind me, the one that always banged shut and startled me no matter how many times I heard it. Carly is sitting on my right knee with my arm wrapped around her. She has one tiny hand on mine, the other on my leg, and her mouth is open, laughing loud. My other arm is around Jimmy on my left, and his around me, and he's smiling. We're all happy, our three blond heads gleaming in the high-noon sunshine of a perfect late spring day. They have my hair. They have my hazel eyes. They have my nose. How can this be? They look like my children, and I stare at the faces that look like mine and wonder if I could have done more to help them. They even have my smile, three identical smiles for Elizabeth, the black swan mother of the golden chicks, behind my camera, taking the picture.

Susan Cameron, copyright 1999