The First Fall

Kissing the ground is a rite of passage that all equestrians have to address, and this afternoon, it was Sissey’s turn. It had to happen eventually, and I guess today was as good as any other. She had recently adopted the sport of riding, a great opportunity for her to exercise not only the body but the mind as well, and I was thrilled at the chance for her to delve into a hobby that not only provided some stress relief but was clearly developing into a lifelong passion. She had bonded with the horses from the minute she first entered the barn, and she loved everything and anything about being out at the farm: the grainy smell of hay, the soft velvety noses, the fat cats roaming the rafters, the silly goat who thinks he’s a horse.  She loved brushing the horses, rubbing them down after a good ride, feeding them oatmeal pies and apples that they loved for a treat. She loved the freedom of movement that being on a horse provided, and told me that when she was sitting on top of a horse, she felt normal, like everyone else, and her cerebral palsy didn't even exist.  This was clearly her thing, she was in her element, and she was happy.

 Every sport comes with its own set of risks; it’s just part of the game with anything that requires a lot of physical activity.   In football, concussions are as common as touchdowns. Soccer involves fancy headwork, and with that comes fancy injuries.  I’m married to a golfer and very familiar with the bum shoulders, swollen elbows, sore knees, and blistered fingers that go along with chasing an egg-sized ball around a pasture of grass. Bikers crash, hikers fall, surfers wipe out, parachuters-- well, let’s not even go there. If you’re going to be an equestrian, at some point you are going to have to deal with your own set of pain. You and the horse are going to become separated, you’re going to fall, and more than likely, you’re going to end up eating dirt in a rather awkward position. It’s just part of the sport and you have to learn to deal with it or go home.

It’s a pivotal turning point, that moment when the rider first hits the ground, and it is the event separates the horse addict from the recreational rider.  The addict gets back up, spits the grit out of their mouth, wipes the dust from their hands, shakes it off, and gets back on. The rest pack up their saddle and exit the barn.

Jet had been cooperative in the small rink that afternoon as he and Sissey had warmed up, trotting easily around and around, turning upon command, shifting smoothly from walk to trot.  It was when they moved to the big rink that he became skittish and stubborn, not liking the fact that he was being forced to trot on ground that was wet and spongy after a morning of heavy rain. The coach had been hesitant to ride in the current conditions, but Sissey had brought her twin brother and grandparents to watch and was insistent that the lesson go on as scheduled. The soft sand sank over Jet’s hooves with each step, and it was with great effort that he responded to Sissey’s commands to trot and go faster. When he got to the back of the rink, an area that for some reason he despises, he spooked-- maybe from the sound of a truck rumbling down the nearby highway, maybe from sinking a little too deep in the mud, but for whatever reason, he startled  and stumbled and turned in a flash. It seemed like slow motion as Sissey slid to the side, dangled for a moment from the stirrups, then collapsed into a heap onto the wet ground.  I screamed as I started to run towards her, heart pounding as I visualized broken bones protruding from bloody skin.

I stopped running, however,  when I saw her head pop up  with a huge smile on her face. I put on the brakes and started to calmly walk into the arena .

“MOM!  DON’T TELL ME I HAVE TO STOP RIDING!”  was the first thing she yelled as I approached.  She was covered in mud from head to toe, wallowing in wet sand and grinning like she had just won the lottery.

 

“Did you see that?” she laughed. “I fell off!”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” I was trying to be oh-so-calm and cool and collected, but inside I was shaking like a dry leaf on a windy day. “You OK? Did it knock the breath out of you? Ready to get back up?"

I was rather proud of my ability to act like a confidant mom as we helped her up and back into the saddle. Water poured from the cuffs in her pants as she checked her helmet and reins. With a click of her tongue, a gentle pat, and a command to get going, she and Jet trotted back to the fence and continued to slosh around a very wet arena.

I’m glad the fall happened for several reasons. First, in the back of my mind, ever since she decided it was horses for her, I had worried about whether or not she would be able to manage a galloping beast that weighed approximately the same thing as an ice-cream truck.  Balance and muscle tone, two common areas of weakness in people with cerebral palsy, were an area of concern, but I put on a brave smile and said, “Honey, you’re going to be the greatest rider and I can’t wait for you to start showing!” All the while, I was secretly making pacts with God about how I would save a third world country, adopt an orphan, rescue a puppy, feed the homeless and shelter a refugee if He would just keep her safe on that beast she was straddling.  Secondly, we had just spent an enormous amount of money on a new riding helmet for her.  I was opting for the $24.99 plastic model with the adjustable strap, but Sissey had already spied the ridiculously expensive,  black velvet, Charles Owen model with a darling satin bow perched across the back. The saleswoman insisted that the more expensive model was the only one that properly fit her precious head, but she clinched the deal when she very calmly but matter-of-factly told me that the helmet cost less than a trip to the emergency room.  How are you going to argue with that? I figured this was not the time to  bargain shop, plus the cute little bow on the back was just too darn cute to resist.  At least now, after the fall, I was certain that I had made a very good investment as Sissey's helmet had not so much as tilted an inch and her cranium remained intact as she hit the dirt. And finally, as I watched her ride, covered in mud and soaking wet on a cold November afternoon, I realized that she could not only handle the horse, but could also handle whatever else happened as well. Riding, falling, whatever-- she just had this huge smile on her face, the kind that comes from doing something you really, really love, and it was worth everything just to see that.

It's Okay, Kay

Today, I lost a dear friend of mine to cancer. Her name was Kay, and she was vibrant and young and beautiful and funny. She had a great laugh and a wicked sense of humor.  She loved her family fiercely and with great joy, had an enviable marriage, and children any parent would be proud to call their own.  She adored her friends, loved nothing better than a girl’s day at the spa, and was a great admirer of the mani-pedi combo. She loved to laugh, laughed heartily, and with a contagion that spread throughout the room,  throwing her feet up and her head back as she giggled about the silliest of things; but what I loved most about Kay was not her ability to laugh, but her ability to love. She loved simply, purely, honestly and without hesitation. She loved unconditionally and with an energy that was infectious.

The cancer came quickly, and was mean and aggressive and ruthless and ugly. It snuck in; hiding like a coward deep in the darkest recesses of her body, undetected by a routine colonoscopy Kay elected to have in celebration of her fiftieth birthday. Then suddenly, and viciously, it roared to life and unleashed havoc on an innocent victim.  It took her energy, her health, her vigor. It took her beautifully highlighted, caramel and honey hair, first in single strands, then in great clumps. It took her appetite, reducing her already petite frame to a gaunt and fragile eighty pounds, and today, it took her life.   But cancer never, and I repeat, NEVER, took Kay’s heart or soul, her smile or laughter,  her love or joy.

She fought aggressively, and she fought hard, but for Kay, cancer was never the problem.  The problem, as she saw it, was protecting her family and her friends from the sorrow and pain caused by her disease. She spent her last few months taking care of us.  She prepared us for the ultimate release from her disease by taking on the onerous task of making all her final arrangements.  She completed her bucket list, comforted her friends and family as they grieved over her disease, and said her goodbyes with compassion and love. She looked cancer straight in the eye and said, “You may take my life here, but you will never, ever, take my soul or my joy.” And by God, it didn’t.

She left us today in body, but she will never leave us in spirit.  I hope that when my time comes to depart this earthly planet, I will do so with the dignity and the love and the compassion that my friend, Kay, exhibited.  She is gone from us at this moment, but it is with great joy that I anticipate meeting up with her in heaven, swinging on a cloud as we ponder which color to paint our toenails and what to have for lunch, laughing by a crystal stream and singing “Hallelujah” as we march into glory. So it's Okay, Kay, to go on home.  Sign me up for a mani-pedi,  I’ll see you again on the other side.

Runty Bread

     Just when you think you know something, you find out you don't.  I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about bread.  It's made either with or without yeast. It comes in loaves. It can be round, oval, rectangle,square, even triangular. Bread can be light and fluffy, hard and crusty, or just plain flat. You can add spices, nuts, raisins, herbs, seeds, chocolate chips, in fact, just about anything you want, in order to change the texture and flavor. There are sweet breads and beer breads, cheese breads and fruit breads. Bread can be cooked over fire, in an oven, on a griddle, even in a microwave. You can fry bread, make it into stuffing, add it to casseroles and meatloaf as a filler.  Cupcakes, crackers, croutons...all are bread in their infancy. Every culture has a regional adaptation of bread.  Italians have their long, crusty loaves. The French favor baguettes for their jambon et fromage. Americans love their overly processed and somewhat bland white bread for pb&j's and tomato sandwiches. Germans are partial to dark ryes and hearty pumpernickles with their cheese and sausages.The English prefer to nibble on scones while sipping their afternoon tea. Nothing compliments hummus like pita, hotdogs have to have a bun, tacos aren't tacos without the shell,  and you just can't have pizza without the perfect crust. Oh, I love bread in any way, shape, or form, and  thought I had just about tried them all. Until I stopped at a roadside vegetable stand in the mountains of North Carolina and ended up coming home with a loaf of runty bread.
     I wasn't even looking for bread as I drove down the mountains that Saturday afternoon.  We had spent the day rambling through the hills, stopping for a picnic by Linville Falls, then searching the surrounding towns for orchards that had Honey Crisp or Mutsu apples ready for harvest.  We got lost on a road outside of Spruce Pines that ran out at the top of a mountain and had to backtrack all the way down the same hill. A quick but severe summer storm forced us to pull over as lightning crackled across the hills and rain pelted down in blinding sheets. We stopped by a swollen creek to watch the muddy water rush over boulders that created little waterfalls and swirling eddies.  We didn't mind all the delays as we really had no agenda, just one of those weekend drives with no true destination, a meandering mountain journey on backroads through small towns with names like Cranberry, Hawk, Minneapolis. As we wound down the road towards Grandfather Mountain, my dad wanted to look for a vegetable stand that had some of the sweet, local mountain corn that you just can't find in a grocery store.  I passed such a spot as we approached Linville, did a u-turn at a gas station, and pulled up as close to the shed as I could. Rolling down the car window, I leaned over and hollered at the young boy inside.
     "Do you have any sweet corn?"
      "Yes ma'am, we sure do!" he hollered back.
      I put the car in park, got out, and walked inside.
      "Bet you didn't know this was a drive-through store, did you!"I joked to the boy sitting on a stool behind a make-shift counter.
     He just laughed and said, "Well, I never knew I could work at a McDonalds!"
     With a natural, nice smile and a pleasant disposition, he was the rare teenager that you instantly liked. He pointed out some of the local produce, smiled as he chatted with me, and told me to look around.  None of the surliness or disrespect that so many of the city teens suffer from marred his character; he was as fresh and pure as the mountain air he had been raised on.
      I walked through his little stand and checked out the produce. Homemade birdhouses with bright red roofs lined the entrance, and I wondered if he had crafted them with his own hands. There were shelves made out of boards on top of cinder blocks that held baskets of squash, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, okra.  A fresh batch of muscadines were spread out on a counter beside jars of apple butter, local honey, and blackberry jam. The corn was piled high beneath a sign that read "3 ears for $1.00."
   " Ï'll take a dozen ears,"I told the boy as he lined them up by the register.  And that was when I saw the loaf of bread.
    It was obviously home-made, wrapped up in a plastic bag, and tied up with a little green wire twisty.
    "Is that sour dough?"I asked.
    "Yes'm." he answered.
    "How much"?"
    "Five dollars a loaf."
    I yelled to my dad in the car, "Do you want a loaf of sour dough?"
    He nodded "Yes," so I told him to add it to my pile of corn.
    As I got ready to pay, the boy told me that he was only going to charge me four dollars for the bread.
   "Well, that's really nice,"I said.
    "That just don't look like a five dollar loaf," he replied.
     "Do what?" I asked
     "Oh, it's real good,"he answered. "My momma makes it fresh every morning and it tastes great, but she thinks she can get five dollars a loaf. I don't know why, but that's what she thinks.  I think five dollars is high for a loaf of bread to begin with. But this'un here just don't look like a five dollar loaf. It's a runty bread."
    "A what?"
    "A runty bread. See how it's kinda flat on top? It ain't fluffed up all high like most of the ones she makes, and I just don't think this'uns a five dollar loaf. It ain't puffed up, so I'm only gonna charge you four dollars for this ole runty bread."
    I loved this boy! Not only had he taught me something I never knew, but he gave me a bargain to boot. I love a deal almost as I love a good slice of hot, homemade bread, and if runty bread was a dollar less, then it was my new favorite. ''
    "Well, OK, but you keep the change and that'll make us even", I laughed as I gathered up my corn and runty bread.
     He smiled his sweet smile and told me to come back again.
     "You bet."
     Good food, good manners, and runty bread.  I was certain I'd be back again.
  
  

The highest level of vegetation....?

     I wonder who decided to call aging a process? Seems to me that the minute I turned fifty, it happened overnight. I woke up one morning to the sound of my knees popping and my ankles snapping as I rolled out of bed. My back refused to crank into an upright posture, so I hobbled into the bathroom in an inverted u-shaped position. I cried as I peered through my reading glasses into the mirror and plucked two gray hairs from my eyebrows (gasp!). I continued to cry as I stood in the steaming shower, hoping the hot water would loosen whatever stricture was contorting my frame. Struggling to reach body parts to wash, I discovered that gravity was rearranging my skeleton without my permission, and I could not twist or turn or bend as I had before.
     "This is not good," I remember thinking (thankful that at least I still had my mind). I was soon to discover exactly how right I was.
      Part of the "process" of aging is that all those rearranged, sagging, deteriorating body parts don't work as well in their new positions as they did in their original.  Joints that were made to slide smoothly against one another tend to scrape and grind when misaligned.  Discs that no longer retain adequate layers of cartilege to cushion the load (a load, I must admit, that has enlarged just a tad over the years)--those discs begin to bulge and slip, press on nerves, even rupture as they struggle to perform adequately under less-than-adequate conditions.
   No, this was not good. This was going to take some professional help.
   I had my first steroidal injection in March.
   Now, steroids are a good thing. They make your body think it is twenty and your mind sixteen. Suddenly, you're standing straighter, the pain dissipates, and you're full of energy and vigor and vim. The problem is, however, that the effect is only temporary.  The first injection gave me about a six-month reprieve from my aches and pains, enough time to shed fourteen pounds and learn to walk upright again, but not enough time to return my skeleton to it's pre-aging state.  While hiking and horseback riding in Montana, I discovered that my body no longer functioned at full capacity, and once again, the pain indicators that signal the need for professional intervention registered at the "HELP!!!" level.
   So this morning, I arrived bright and early at St. Mary's Hospital for injection number two. 
   "I have private insurance," I  blurted to the admissions clerk before she had time to ask for a medicare card. I wasn't going to go there, no sir, so I proudly slapped a Healthkeepers insurance card on her desk before she had time to ask.  The body might be creeping up on AARP status, but the ego was still wrapped around pride, and I was not going to be humiliated by some young hospital employee assuming I was "of age."
    She got me back my slapping a wristband around my arm with AGE: "51" glaring up at me in bold print. It was hard enough having to check the blank on the admission form that declared I was in the "Fifty and above"  age bracket,  but staring at the numbers "51" on my armband seem to be overkill on the age-thing.  At least they let me walk into the angio-lab on my own two feet.
     Things just went downhill from there.  An extremely pleasant RN greeted me with a sunny "Hi!" as I sat down to have my vitals taken.  "Let's get your medical history," she began, stylus prompted at the computer terminal , ready to enter all my pertinent information.
     I began to give her the necessary data,  listing my height at a generous 5'7", whispering my weight behind my hand as my husband turned his head.  We went over medications, vitamins, previous surgeries, family history, etc. I answered each question promptly and efficiently,  but I was stumped when she asked, "What is your highest level of vegetation?"

     I sat there for a minute, thinking, "What in the world does she mean? Does she need to know that I hiked above the tree line while in Montana, or that I ate Brussels Sprouts last night?"
     I wasn't quite sure, but I decided Brussel Sprouts were the most current, so I went with that.
     She gave me an odd look and tried to stiffle a laugh, which signaled to me that perhaps I had misconstrued her question.
    "Didn't you just ask me for my highest level of vegetation?" I asked, feeling a bit embarrased by my answer, thinking it obviously should have been the tree line.
     At that, she burst out laughing as she tried to tell me, ""EDUCATION! I asked for your highest level of EDUCATION!"
    And that is when I knew for sure.
    I was old.
    The mind and the hearing and the body may be going, but I'm happy to say that I still have a sense of humor, and even a dodgy-old coot that can't walk, can't see, and obviously can't hear, can still laugh at herself.  I laughed so much that the nurse had trouble keeping me still on the table as the x-ray machine snapped pictures of my skeleton. I was still laughing as the doctor order me to "Hold still" so he could insert a monstrously long, flexible needle into the base of my spine. I was laughing as the volunteer rolled me down the hall in an ancient wheelchair, and as he slowly helped me get into my car, I was still laughing.
     I may be old, senile, half-blind, and deaf, but I'm very proud to say that this quinquagenarian has the very highest level of vegetation, and that's nothing to laugh about.
    
    

Tree line? Did you tree line? Key lime? Sure, I'll have a margarita!

It all started with the vacuum....

     It all started with the vacuum cleaner.

     The mistake I made was going to Costco.  It was actually a trip to return an item, maybe pick up a few packages of chicken and a bag of dog food while I was there; but for anyone who has ever ventured into a mega-box warehouse store, you know it is impossible to walk out with just the items on your list.  They get you at the entrance with all the weekly specials---the beach chairs and the garden hoses and the fifty pound bags of potting soil that everyone needs to fill up their garage. Then the electronics, which American consumers seemed to be hard-wired to purchase-- they are just sitting there, rows and rows and rows of gadgets and devices, cameras and phones, televisions and computers, blenders and juicers–just sitting there in their shiny boxes sending secret signals into your brain that make you buy them on impulse.  I don’t even know how that blu-ray DVD player ended up in my basket, but when I got home, there it was, hiding in the backseat of my car.

     But it was the vacuum that caused all of the problems. You see, it was on sale…$90.00 off the regular price, so the savings more than covered the cost of the  DVD player that ended up in my cart.  I really needed a new vacuum cleaner anyway, since my old model had been practically used to death by my obsessive-compulsive cleaner of a husband, so this wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment impulse purchase.  I had been researching them for about a year, knew this was the model and make that I wanted, plus it was on sale, so I really didn’t even had a choice in the matter.  I had to have the power-ball, animal-hair removing, nuclear-powered, mega-suction vacuum cleaner.

     Well, let me tell you this. That vacuum lived up to all the hype.  It sucked up every particle of dust in my house.  Floors and rugs were spotless after I power-balled them. I even rolled up the rugs and vacuumed underneath, tackling third-generation dust that had practically mutated into super-soil.  Next, I attacked baseboards and windowsills, which led to walls and ceiling corners. This only made the air-conditioning vents, covered in years of grime, more conspicuous, so I vacuumed all of those, and made a quick swipe of the light fixtures in the process.

     Did you know that you can vacuum your drapes? It was amazing how clean those suckers looked after I power-balled them.  So of course, I had to do all the blinds next, which caused dust to settle on the furniture, which I immediately sucked right up with the nifty little furniture nozzle. You wouldn’t believe what all ends up beneath the cushions of a sofa. I found enough change to almost cover the cost of the vacuum cleaner, so with the $90.00 discount and the newly-found change, I was actually MAKING MONEY off my purchase!

     But the problem was, I couldn’t stop.  After walls and ceilings, floors and baseboards, furniture and vents, that little sucker just wouldn’t quit going. It pulled me into the bedroom closets, which were a disaster zone all to themselves; I spent an entire day cleaning out drawers and shelves, vacuuming up old dust from shoes that I hadn’t worn in years, which went with out-dated clothes I hadn’t tried on in ages, which meant I had to go through everything to see what to keep and what to throw out.  When my husband walked in from work and saw the piles and piles of clothes, he figured it was a good time to do the same with his closet, so another garment mountain was constructed in the middle of the bedroom floor, and we were up until midnight cleaning out closets.

     When one closet is clean, it makes every other dirty and disorganized closet in the house scream out for attention. Instead of spending my weekend puttering in the garden or lounging by the pool, I cleaned out linen closets, medicine cabinets and  junk drawers, vacuuming like a banshee as dust ball after dust ball fell victim to my new machine.  The vacuum wasn’t the only thing on a roll at that point. I was the energizer bunny on steroids, a whirling dervish, a conquering soldier, a world-leader of all things vacuum, just going and going and going, a maniac with a power-nozzle that could obliterate microscopic dust cells with the touch of my hand.  Nothing was safe from my vacuuming force-field. Ceiling fans and television screens, bookshelves and piano keys, lamp shades and canopies…all fell victim to the great power of the  monstrous sucking machine. I was a potent warrior, marching through enemy fields, conquering all with my mighty nozzle…..

     That was when I knew I had a problem.

     It had been three days since I had fallen victim to the power of the machine. I was chronically attached to the nozzle, couldn't break the suction of the grip it had on me. I had become the roller-ball, an inhaling machine that obliterated everything in my path.  In the vortex of its powerful suctioning canister, it had almost consumed me, and I knew it had to stop.  With shaky hands, I reached down and unplugged the machine, silently ending its reign of terror and power over my house, my life, and my family.  I coiled the cord around its slender neck, wrapped it tightly and secured it to the base, deposited the vacuum into the back of the hall closet, and shut the door. It was over.

     I stumbled into bed, exhausted from my three day crusade with dust, but exhilarated that I was liberated from the power of the machine.

      I awoke the next morning to the sound of the vacuum. Sometime during the night, my husband had freed it from its cage, and the battle had begun again.  

A Mother's Day Pledge

     My mother thinks she's going to jail.
     She is not a violent woman, nor is she a dishonest one.  She has never committed a felony, doesn't even have a misdemeanor charge on her criminal background check. She doesn't shoplift, or lie, or steal, or cheat.  She pays her taxes on time and will return an item to Walmart if the checkout person forgets to scan it.  I don't even think she's ever gotten a traffic ticket. But she thinks she's going to jail.
     Her crime?  Failure to pay multiple times for a Good Housekeeping  subscription for a dead woman.
      My mother has not moved into the computer generation, so she still orders things the old-fashioned way: fills out a little subscription card, writes a check (yes, some people still write checks instead of using credit cards), then puts a stamp on an envelope and sends the order via snail-mail.  I am often amazed that this process still works.
     She loves to send magazine subscriptions as gifts, especially if it is a magazine she particularly enjoys.  Real Simple, Garden and Gun, Southern Living....those are favorites that she sends to her children, her grandchildren, her friends, her relatives, and magazines, I must say, which have never threatened to have her arrested. It makes a great gift, giving a prepaid subscription to a really interesting magazine.  Usually, it's quite an easy process to sign up a loved one for a year-long subscription, slip a check in the mail, and be done with it. But ordering the old-fashioned way can get complicated, and not having a computer-generated receipt in today's world throws a wrench into the process and creates havoc for customer service reps, who cannot problem-solve if there is no computer trail to follow.
     The problem with Good Housekeeping started over a year ago.  My mother had ordered as a Christmas gift a year-long subscription to Good Housekeeping for my 93 year old aunt (which I thought at the time was rather optimistic). Unfortunately, Aunt Virginia went to her heavenly reward in June, thereby leaving a six month paid-for subscription which could not be forwarded to heaven.  As you all know, magazines start sending renewal notices the day after your check for the original subscription clears the bank, so starting in January, my mother began receiving notices to renew her Christmas gift subscriptions.   She ignored these notices until after the funeral in June, when, after receiving multiple requests to renew Aunt Virginia's subscriptions,  she sent a very polite note to Good Housekeeping informing them of the untimely passage of Aunt Virginia and would they kindly cancel the remainder of her subscription. They immediately sent her a renewal notice.  She sent another personal note, informing them again of Aunt Virginia's death, to which they sent a renewal notice and a bill. She wrote a third note, perhaps not quite as polite as the first two, asking them to please stop sending a magazine subscription to a dead woman, to cancel the remainder of the subscription, and to stop sending her renewal notices. She got another bill.
     In the meantime, the magazine started sending my mother two copies of the same issue each month. She sent them a notice that she did not need TWO copies of the same magazine, she only wanted them to cancel Aunt Virginia's subscription, and would they kindly correct the problem. They sent her a bill.
     At this point, somewhat exasperated, she decided to just pay the bill, so she sent them a check to renew a subscription for a deceased woman and for two copies of the same subscription for herself.  Shortly thereafter, she got another bill.
     This time, she had my older sister, who is usually quite good at problem-solving,  call the magazine and explain the situation.  They pulled up her account, noted the numerous gift subscriptions she had ordered, and promised to cancel the subscription to Aunt Virginia and to cease sending her two copies. They assured my sister that the problem had been resolved and no more bills would be sent.
The next week, a bill arrived with a notice that declared, "Final warning. Please remit before collection begins."
     My mother was horrified.  She had my father call the magazine, and once again explain the situation. They assured him the problem would be resolved. As a precaution,  she sent another note, asking them to cancel a subscription she had paid for twice for a dead woman and to quit sending her two copies of the magazine.
     The next week, she got a bill that stated she was "Severely overdue. Please remit immediately."
At this point, she announced that she was just going to pay it AGAIN because she didn't want them to report her as delinquent on her account.
     I had to intervene.
     "DO NOT PAY THAT BILL!" I yelled. "Mom, this is not your problem.  They obviously have an accounting issue at the magazine. You have done everything possible to alert them, and they can't keep their records straight. Just throw the notices in the trash."
     "I can't do that," she replied.  "I can't throw away an unpaid bill. They might send me to a collection agency. What if I go to the door one day and there is a collection agent standing there? They might arrest me and take me to jail."
     I couldn't help but laugh at her. She was actually considering paying a bill that she had already remitted multiple times for subscriptions she didn't need.
     "You are NOT going to jail. The worst thing that can happen, Mom, is that they will cancel your subscriptions, and that's what you want them to do anyway."
     Sissey, who had been sitting on the couch listening to the entire conversation, cracked up laughing as she asked, "Gans, really, do you think you're going to jail over a magazine subscription?"
     My mother was a little miffed that we were not taking this seriously.
     "I have never been accused of not paying my bills," she said.
      I knew at that point that she was secretly planning to write another check to the magazine.
     "Give me those bills," I demanded.
     "I'll toss them in the trash, " she promised.
     I knew her better than that, so I waited until later in the day when she wasn't looking and put the bill  in the paper shredder. I fully realized because of my actions that if she went to jail, it would be my fault.
     But Mom, in honor of Mother's Day, and because I love you so very much, I make you this solemn pledge:
 I promise that if you do go to jail, I'll come visit you every Sunday. And I'll bring you some magazines to read!

Dorothy was NOT a hooker!

One of the wonderful things about having a daughter is that she is always available to go shopping with you. Marathon shopping-- the kind that lasts all day with no particular destination or item in mind, just browsing and hunting, gathering bargains and finding deals and searching for steals. It's a bonding ritual that mothers and daughters exclusively enjoy.  Sons---not so much.  Boys are destination shoppers, heading to one store, to buy one particular item, and BOOM! they're done.
My son will say, "Mom, I'm heading to Orvis to pick up a pair of pants."
"Great, " I reply. "I'll ride out with you."
What I really mean is "Great! Orvis is at Short Pump Mall,  right next to Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel, which I can dash through on my way to pick up a latte at Starbucks before I pop into Nordstroms to check out the shoe sale on my way to Soma and then on to Macy's and maybe we can catch lunch at Tara Thai before we pick up the pants."
But by the time I've gotten the car parked and gone into the first store, he's bagged the pants and is ready to head home.
"O.K., I'm done," he announces, as I'm browsing through shirts (on the first floor, for heavens sake!).
"But I'm not done," I complain.
 "Mom, I told you I just needed pants. Let's get out of here," he'll say, and before I even have a chance to head up the stairs to the second floor-- the fully stocked and fabulously enticing second floor, home of women's wear and home goods-- he's grabbed my hand and pulled me to the door.
So sad, so sad.
But daughters? Now daughters, they can go all day! Oh yes, girls can shop and shop and shop, rambling from store to store, aimlessly searching for some unknown article of clothing, that elusive garment that you will want only when you see it, that dress that you have to have the minute some other woman starts to reach for it, that coat you don't really need but would be so foolish to pass on at such a good price. This ability to marathon shop is usually a good thing, until you get to about 7:00 after a loooong day of strolling through store after store, hours of walking across hard cement floors, eyes tired and burning from the stress of searching for bargains beneath the fluorescent lighting. Things can start to get a little silly, judgement can get a little blurry, and tempers can start to fray.
We had just endured such a day last Friday, a full-blown, 10K marathon of shopping. I was tired; Sissey was tired; but we had just enough get-up-and-go left to wander down one more shoe aisle.  I headed over to the size 9's, my poor old feet, having fallen victim to old-age spread and fallen arches, now relegated to sturdy shoes with lots of cushioning and good support. Sissey rolled over to the cute and petite size 6's, that coveted section of sky-high stilettos and strappy sandals, shoes that just screamed "Young and beautiful!"
After a few minutes of browsing, I heard her yell, "Come look at these cool shoes!"
I rounded the corner, expecting to see her holding up a pair of cute sandals or summer wedges, but was somewhat surprised  (to say the least) to see her sitting there with a big grin on her face holding up a pair of 10 inch high, gaudy, gold, and glitzy hooker shoes. Yes, you heard me. Hooker shoes.
"Please tell me you're joking," I said, as I stared at the most hideous pair of shoes I had ever seen.

"These are great!", she replied, "I'm trying'em on."

"Mary Lapsley," I said, in my "I'm-serious-so-I-am-using-your-given-name" voice. "Those shoes are obnoxious.  They are hooker shoes and you are NOT going to put those on."

"Mom, these are not "hooker" shoes," she said with a grin. "These are Dorothy slippers!"

"Sissey, I don't know what strange wind just blew through here and rattled your brain, but those are definitely NOT Dorothy slippers."

"Oh yes they are. They're sparkly and they're glittery and they're modern day Dorothy slippers."

"Hooker shoes. Period." I wasn't going to budge.

"No, Mom. These are Dorothy shoes." She wasn't budging either. "And I'm trying them on"
"Well," I said, "I just never knew Dorothy was a hooker."

"Dorothy was NOT a hooker, Mother. I can't believe you can't tell the difference between a hooker and someone who just wanted to follow the Yellow Brick Road."

"Maybe so," I said, "But those are hooker shoes."

I laughed as she slipped the golden slippers on, fully expecting her to tap her heels three times and end up in Kansas.

"Sissey, time to go home. Take off those shoes!" I told her. "I don't care how badly Dorothy wanted to go home, but if you plan on going home with me, you had better not walk through the door in those shoes!"

I have to admit, though, that I really, really, really wanted to try them on before I placed them back on the shelf.

Smashing into Angels

Let me begin by stating that Tuesday started off badly from the git-go.  I overslept by ten minutes, which put me an hour behind for the rest of the day. From the moment my feet touched the floor, it was a race to make up time as I  threw on jeans, gobbled down a dry breakfast bar with a java to-go, threw books and keys into the car, then pushed as much as I dared over the 55 MPH limit while keeping a close eye in the mirror for those dreaded blue lights.  

By the time we reached Lancaster, I was feeling the stress of the morning rush and had become a bit frazzled.  Before we could dash to class, however, Sissey had to make a customer delivery for her newest financial venture. She had recently joined the cottage-industry route to fortune and fame and was slowly making her way up the corporate ladder of success, one pocketbook sale at a time, as a serious and dedicated personal consultant and sales representative for a purse company. She was adamant that "the customer comes first," even if it meant pushing it close to getting to class on time. The purse delivery added fifteen minutes to an already-rushed schedule, but the package was safely delivered, and she had her commission in hand.  

For some insane reason, I figured I had just enough time to run to the bank to deposit the check the customer had given her and still make it back to campus in time for class.  I flew to the Wells Fargo across town, pulled up to the ATM, scrambled through the car for a pen, found one that was out of ink, accidently dropped the check between the car seat and the console, yelled "Dadgummit" as I dug around for a second  pen, retrieved the check from between the seats, inserted the debit card,  punched the PIN into the machine, and got an "Error Message" that stated "This machine is unable to accept deposits at this time."

"Darn it!"I hollered as I retreived the debit card. "Now I've got to go to the drive-through window. We're going to be late for class!" 

Thinking I could just back up, then pull through the adjacent line, I threw the car into reverse, mashed the gas pedal, and ..."BAM!"

The jolt jerked us both forward as we screamed.

"What happened?" Sissey cried.

I looked into the rearview mirror and saw nothing, so I opened the door and jumped out of the car.

A squat brown car hovered behind my oversized SUV like a small brown beetle hiding behind an elephant.  A woman about my age was standing in front of a little Chevy HHR, looking at her fender as I approached.

"I-I-I, I'm just, I'm just so, so sorry," I stammered, embarrassed and mad at myself for the stupidity of smashing into a car while exiting the drive-through in reverse. "I honestly didn't see you. I didn't see anything. Are you O.K.?"

"Oh honey, don't you worry about anything. It's nothing," she said with a smile, as I nervously leaned over to examine the damage to her car. 
"But I hit you! And it was completely my fault!" I said in a shaky voice, tears filling my eyes. "Let me go get my insurance information, and I'll write down my name and address," I continued, as I turned to head back to my car.
"There's no need for that," the woman said, "There's not any damage done."
 I looked at the obvious dent in her fender, a perfect impression of the trailer hitch protruding from the back of my car, then looked back at her. I pointed to the hole in her car and stated the obvious.
"There's a dent in your fender."
"Oh, that's nothing," she said. "I hardly see anything at all. You just go on now and don't worry about it."
I knelt down and ran my hands over the fender, feeling the circular indentation in the panel of the bumper.  I stared at the dent, not quite sure what to do.
"Well, let me give you my name and number in case you change your mind," I told her as I stood back up.
"No, I don't want it," she insisted.
"Then at least give me your name so I'll know who I hit."
She laughed and said, "Nope! I'm not even going to give you that.  You just go on now and don't worry about a thing."
I walked back to my car, shaking, confused, not fully understanding what had taken place. I sat in the driver's seat, grabbed onto the steering wheel, and looked over at Sissey.
"I'm not quite sure what just happened," I said, as I slowly put the car into drive and nervously inched forward, this time driving around the bank parking lot instead of backing up through the ATM line. As I entered the drive-through window from the proper direction,  I glanced over at the car that I had smashed just as it was exiting the teller line. 
The car had new tags on it!  New! It was a brand new car!
I had just put a dent into the front fender of a new car, and the driver didn't even want to know my name!
Yes, I was definitely confused.
What had just happened? Why hadn't she called the police, dialed 9-1-1, reported the accident, filed for insurance, called an ambulance, screamed "Whip lash!"? There were plenty of witnesses; in fact, the entire teller line at the bank as well as several customers had been in full view of the crash and it was obviously my fault.

What could have possessed her to let me put the first dent into a brand new car and get off scot-free?

Was it a new car and she didn't want her husband to know she had secretly driven it?

Was it a loaner car while her car was being serviced?
Was she driving without a license, with a suspended license, with a revoked license?
Was she returning from a three martini lunch and thought maybe she had smashed into me?
Was she an escaped convict in a stolen car, planning a bank heist until I smashed into her?
Or was she a kind, forgiving soul who knew ordinary people did stupid things and who didn't think a little dent was a very big deal?
I couldn't decide if my day had gotten worse, or if it had just gotten a whole lot better, but as I drove back to campus, I thought that possibly, just possibly, I had run into an angel.

Blockage

     For the past 6 weeks, I've had a serious blockage. A writer's block, that intangible web that wraps around your brain and squeezes your mind so tightly that you can't think outside of the moment.  A huge blank page stares at me each time I open my computer to write, and as I begin to type...nothing. I can't get started, can't focus enough to complete a sentence, much less a paragraph.  I look at the keys, stare at the luminescent screen, glance back down to the keys, type a few random letters, switch to Solitaire, play a few hands of Spider, check Facebook, read my email, check the weather, check the local forecast, the hourly forecast, the extended 10-day forecast,  click  back to Solitaire, read a few online newspapers, scan the photos on People magazine, surf through eBay, play Words with Friends, flip back to the blog and.... nothing. 
     "Have you written anything lately?" my mother asks, as she flips through the weekly paper.
     "No," I reply, "I've got a blockage."
     "Oh look!" she continues, "Miralax is on sale at CVS! Do you need some Miralax?"
     "I don't take Miralax, Mom."
     "But maybe you should, it's on sale."
     "It's not that kind of blockage," I mutter, all the while thinking I might give it a try anyway and see if it helps.
     I'm not sure why I have a blockage. It started the night of the accident, the night the french professor got hit by a hemi-truck while leaving the library. Somehow, by some centrifugal force, all the thoughts and words and ideas that had previously meandered through my wandering mind got smacked right out of my head at the same time as Dr. Davaut collided with that truck; and  while watching and waiting as she underwent six operations and thirty days in intensive care, I just didn't have anything else to say at the end of the day.  My meager words seemed worthless and uninteresting when in the midst of the reality of watching someone fight for life, fight through unbelievable pain, fight back to a life of normal.

     And so, I have had a blockage. 

     But this weekend, something extraordinary happened.  We drove to Charlotte with a vase of  white  virburnum, pink camellias, and blush hellebores, hoping to bring a breath of spring air into the fourth floor room of the rehab facility where Dr. Davaut had been transferred. With a gentle knock, we opened the door to her room, expecting to find her lying quietly in the bed. To our great surprise, she was sitting upright in a wheelchair, hair washed and brushed, playing Scrabble with her mother in French. She had real food on her lunch tray-- a pork chop, petite green peas, broccoli.  She was dressed in real people clothes- a coral colored T-shirt instead of a drab and shapeless hospital gown. She had a windowsill full of flowers and cards and balloons. 

       Her parents had wheeled her outside for her first glimpse of blue sky and fresh air in over a month. She had seen the brilliant  blooms of spring in the garden by the parking lot and had felt the warm March sun shining on her face.

       She displayed a stack of photos from her most recent doctor's visit: x-rays that showed all her new hardware-- plates and pins and screws and rods, enough titanium to build a rocket ship, an impressive collection of metal. She told us she was learning to transfer from bed to wheelchair almost by herself and had started to regain movement in her left leg.  It had been almost two months since the accident, but it all seemed to happen overnight--she was slowly, slowly, slowly starting to make progress on the long road to recovery.

     And best of all, she had a huge smile on her face!

      It was a healing moment to see her that way,  and I think my blockage is starting to move. 

  

Learning the hard way....

     Sometimes in life, we are the teacher, sometimes the student, and we don't get to pick and choose which role we get to play.  Some lessons are hard to understand; in fact, there are times when we never fully comprehend the lecture, but we put on a brave smile when the test arrives, act like we know what it's all about, and give it our best shot. Perhaps that is the only thing we are meant to learn: that life is dubious, complex, precarious, fluid, ethereal, and we have to keep going even when the going gets rough. This week's lesson has been painfully hard to apprehend, and it involves a reversal of rolls, where teacher becomes student, and student becomes teacher, and both have to quickly learn how to absorb new occupations.
     Almost two weeks ago, at 9:00 on a Thursday evening, the unthinkable happened.
     Mary Lapsley's French professor had once again worked late at the university, and after a long day and an even longer week, she finally pack her bags, left the library, and headed for her car parked across the street.  She crossed the main road on campus in a well-lit crosswalk and was half-way across the street when she heard the roar of an approaching engine. The impact occurred before she even had time to glance up, and her next memory is of lying on the gritty, cold pavement, staring up at a darkened sky.
      "Am I having a dream?" she wondered, as she gazed up into the black night. "Am I in my bedroom?" 
       And then, the dream became a nightmare as the pain hit.  The whirrr-whirrr of the ambulance could be heard in the distance, the blue flashing lights of the police cruiser lit the evening sky, and as the officer 's flashlight beamed into her eyes and he called out "Can you tell me what happened?",  the reality of her situation began to sink in. 
     When a human being comes into contact with a forward-moving, massively large, hemi-truck, the truck always wins.  Bones met metal and crumpled upon impact.  Pelvis, hip, femur, back, large bones, small bones. The only thing from her waist to her knees that didn't break was the rod in her spine which had been surgically implanted after breaking her back in a car wreck two years ago.
      On the ambulance ride to the hospital, her thoughts reeled with "Not again, not again" as the painful memory of that previous car crash flashed through her mind.
       But reality super-imposed itself over wishful thinking, and "Not Again" became "Yet Again" as she was transported from small regional hospital to major medical center.
        While her family in France made plans and arrangements to come to America,  we assumed the role of "Care Partner" until they could arrive in the states.  We received official "Care Partner" badges  with pictures that identified us to the ICU staff,   long-term parking passes for use in the complex maze of the parking deck,  and made the hour drive each day to Charlotte to anxiously sit by her side.
       On the third day in the Trauma ICU, as she began to regain consciousness, I gently tapped her on the shoulder and tried to waken her.
       "Nathalie, Nathalie," I asked. "Do you know where you are?"
         In a raspy whisper, with eyes still closed, she answered "Yes."
        "Do you know what happened?" I continued.
         She nodded.
         "Tell me, Nathalie, tell me what happened."
          I wanted to make sure she understood my questions and that she full comprehended where she was and why she was there.
          "I was hit by a truck," she softly answered.
          "How do you feel?" I asked her next.
           Her eyes shot wide open, she looked at me as if I were crazy, and in a much stronger voice she replied, "Like I Was Hit By A Truck!"
          I couldn't help but laugh. Her strong spirit was still there, her sense of humor was emmerging through the pain, and at that point,  I knew she was on the road to recovery.
          So now, as the professor lies in the hospital bed, facing months of recovery, rehabilitation, and therapy, her devoted student sits by her side and holds her hand. It is time for student to teach, and teacher to learn.
         It's funny sometimes how life falls into place.  When we question "why" things happen, like why a child is born with a life-long disability, or why someone is crushed for the second time in a wreck, it's hard to find an answer. But sometimes, it's not the "Why" that we need to understand. It's the "What" and the "How" that we need to learn.
       "What do we do now?" was a question we all needed to answer after the professor's accident.
        That one was easy.
        We went, we prayed, we waited, we stayed. She would not face this alone, she would have someone by her side until her family arrived and for as long as she needed.
        "How do we move forward?" was the next.
         Mary Lapsley already knew how to respond.
         "Dr. Davaut," Mary Lapsley told her, "I'm here for you, just like you were there for me.  Do you remember when I was struggling with french and you told me that you knew I could do it? You told me to be like the little engine that said 'I think I can, I think I can?' Well, that's what you're going to have to do now. I know you can do this, but  you're going to have to keep telling yourself  that you can do this. And I'm going to be right beside you all the way."
     "I'm going to show you how to get around in a wheelchair, how to use a walker, and how to keep trying. We can even have wheelchair races when you're ready! You can do this, I know you can, I know you can."
         Her words sounded so familiar. I could hear the voice of Dr. Davaut echoing through my daughter's speech as she encouraged her professor to keep on trying.
         And so, as the professor fights through the pain, the student becomes the teacher, and the teacher learns to heal.

Ticket to good karma

According to our studies in psychology, we face life and its daily challenges utilizing either an internal or external locus of control. Those individuals driven by an internal locus believe they have the ability to take control of their own destiny; they make things happen, they create their successes, and they take charge of their life.  In direct opposition are those controlled by an external locus. These are the ones who rely on karma, fate, good luck, bad luck, happenstance, chance, superstition and the roll of the dice.  Nothing they can do or say will change the “que sera, sera” of life…whatever will be, will be. 

I’m not sure exactly where I fall along the continuum; some days, I’m a Donald Trump, out there moving and shaking and making the world happen, grabbing onto my internal locus and having a heck of a ride. Other days, I’m  Eeyore….just a depressed little donkey with no hope, no motivation, no good karma, and literally drowning in my own external locus of just plain old bad luck. 

But for my husband, today definitely began as an Eeyore kind of day. That crazy ole karma was on a downward roll, and his external locus of control was in full-throttle overdrive. 

Chris called me early in the morning, I can’t remember quite why, but I do remember that he was emphatic about the fact that this was going to be a bad day.  He had to run from one end of Richmond to the other, crossing boundaries and city lines and county borders: Hanover in the morning, Chesterfield in the afternoon, downtown, uptown, east end, west end, just circling the loop as he rushed from appointment to appointment.   He had to find time in all of that looping to run home and let the dogs out for a potty break, otherwise he would have an unwelcome wagon greeting him at the door that evening. There were problems with this and problems with that, and nothing he could do would change the fact that all the new government regulations were making the simple business of doing business an impossible nightmare.  To finish off an already hectic day, when he got home that evening, he had to take Alf to doggie school…remedial doggie school at that. Alf was the only child we’ve ever had, furry or not, to flunk school, and it was humiliating to have to haul him back in for lessons on such simple tasks as “Sit”, “Stay”, and “Come.”  At home, he had mastered “Watch me eat this entire roast beef”, as well as “If you think I’m moving off this couch then you’re crazy,” but the basic commands were still a bit of a problem, and Alf was repeating the second grade.

So as he rushed from point A to point B, focused on phone numbers and addresses and loan amounts and mortgages, paying attention to every kind of number except the one on his speedometer, Chris got pulled for speeding.  Dashing through a 35 MPH zone, hurrying to his next appointment,  the blue lights of a motorcycle cop flashed in his rear-view mirror and the strident call of the siren echoed through the car.  He glanced at the speedometer, knew he’d been nailed,  so he slowly pulled over to the edge of the road, rolled down his window, and handed over his license. 

He started with the mandatory, “Was I speeding, officer? I thought it was a 45 MPH zone,” which translates into “Do you really have to do this or can you just give me a warning?” Speeding is one thing, but speeding through a school zone is another, and once again, there was nothing he could do to change his fate, his destiny, his externally controlled situation. The officer's face said this was definitely a non-negotiable transaction and no amount of pleading or bargaining was going to change the outcome.   To make matters worse, when the officer asked for the registration to the car, the only one Chris could find in the glove compartment was an expired version, the recently renewed version being safely tucked into the back of my wallet all the way down in South Carolina.  Yep, things were definitely out of his control at this point.

The good thing about living an externally controlled life is that sometimes, the dice rolls over, lady luck is smiling, you draw an ace and a king, and you find the four - leaf clover. Chris’s karma was about to change.

As the officer strolled back to his idling motorcycle to write up the ticket, Chris watched him in the rear view mirror.  He saw the officer straddle the bike and begin to write up the ticket, and as he waited for the dreaded verdict, Chris did some mental calculations about the effect another speeding ticket would have on his insurance premiums,  his chances of making his next appointment on time, how he could recoup the lost minutes in an already too-busy day.  But then, as Chris watched him through the mirror, the officer appeared to grow agitated and stopped writing on his clipboard.  He fiddled with some controls on the bike, turned some switches off and on, got off the bike, walked around it with a puzzled look on his face, rattled the frame a little, then finally picked up his hand-held radio and began an animated conversation with some unseen force on the other side.   After ending his conversation and putting his radio back onto his belt, he walked to the car, thrust the license and invalid registration back through the window, and said to Chris,
" Slow down when you're driving. You can leave."

 No ticket had been issued, not even a warning.

“This is odd,” my husband thought, as he glanced back at the officer. That was when he realized that the source of his good luck was not some unseen mystical spirit or a benevolent force at the end of a radio line,  but rather a broken down motorcycle.  The officer’s mode of transportation, his lifeline to the police station, his only means of verifying driver’s license and vehicle registration, his travelling office-- all was ka-put, ka-plooey, on the blink, out-of-order.  Talk about karma! Whew!

Chris rolled his window back down, leaned his head out, and in his most pleasant talking-to-an-officer voice, politely asked, “Do you need some help?”

“Can I give you a jump start? How about a lift?”

“Just get out of here,” the disgruntled officer replied, perhaps somewhat embarrassed at his equipment malfunction, maybe frustrated that his day had suddenly taken a trip down Broke Down Lane, could have been just a guy thing, but Chris didn’t ask twice. He hit the road at an appropriately safe and perfectly legal 35 MPH and got the heck out of there before his luck changed. 

Karma comes, and karma goes, and you better know which way to roll.

Old taters and young'uns

My son has a favorite dish (one of many!), and tonight, perhaps because I was subconsciously missing him in a post-holiday funk, I decided to make a batch of his much-beloved white chicken chili, a sumptuous, spicy concoction of poultry, legumes, peppers, onions, garlic and seasonings. I ran to the grocery store early in the morning and stocked up on ingredients, came home, and began to assemble the recipe and start the preparations.
The chicken was happily stewing in an enameled iron pot, bathing in a sensuous bath of parsley, sage, basil, and thyme, as celery and onions sizzled nearby in a pool of extra-virgin olive oil and freshly ground sea salt. An array of spices were lined up on the counter top, waiting for their moment to dive into the mix: cumin, garlic, crushed bay leaves, white pepper, paprika, rosemary.
It was time to put a batch of potatoes on to boil, so I headed to the basket in the laundry room where my mother stored her tubers, and started to rummage through the pile.  There were several firm, young potatoes on top, obviously from the latest purchase, perky little numbers that were smooth of flesh, fresh, adolescent. Underneath these youngsters were a few tubers starting to show a little age, yielding just a bit when I squeezed them, but still having enough life left in them that they could serve a future purpose.  On the very bottom of the basket,  resting on the cloth that covered and cushioned the weave of the split oak fibers, five old taters formed a pathetic, shriveled circle.  I pick the old boys up, looked them over, pinched their shriveled flesh, picked off a few odd growths, and decided it was the last act of courage they could perform by diving into the pot of boiling water and sacrificing themselves for the greater good of mankind, namely, dying for chili. I felt noble as I picked them up, rescuing them from the compost pile and a slow, rotting death, destining them for a greater cause.

As I stood at the sink scrubbing the old boys, it struck me how similar their life was to my own.  They had started out young, vigorous, full of life, firm of flesh, unlimited in possibilities.  In their youth, they would have been selected for exotic dishes, exciting dishes, cutting-edge dishes: roasted with saffron, creamed with cumin, scalloped with goat cheese, pan-fried with truffles. In their middle-age, an era I could sympathize with, these potatoes would have been selected for substantial but important duties: Saturday night steak fries, Sunday mashed casseroles, Wednesday creamed soups. But now, in the twilight of their lives, they lay forgotten on the bottom of the pile. It bothered me, looking at the basket, and I felt the need to rescue the old boys and let them fulfill their purpose, their cause, their mission. 

 So what if they had a few odd growths protruding from their flesh, a little wrinkled skin? I scrubbed each one with a stiff brush, doused them in cold water, and plunged them into a salt bath.  With surgical precision, I sliced off the hairy extensions, the lumps and bumps and protrusions, and shaved the wrinkled skin from each tuber. I peeled old flesh away from vibrant pulp, salvaged the usable body, and plunged the taters into a pot of salted, boiling water. These guys still had life left in them, and as they boiled away, as they waited for their next assignment, I felt noble in my cause, my rescuing them and helping them fulfill their destinies.

The old boys filled out the subtle layers of the chili, giving it a texture and a depth with their mature taste that it sorely needed. Had it been lacking, had these potatoes been omitted from the recipe, the dish would have been disappointing, flat, bland.  I could have opted for a pre-mixed package of generic, powdered chili-mix, could have used the younger, firmer potatoes, but the combination of mature vegetables, stewed chicken, and fresh spices created an aroma that caused the gastric juices in my stomach to rumble and churn in anticipation. The effort of blending old with new, fresh with seasoned,  the process of chopping and slicing, dicing and prepping, the melding of mature with adolescent,  produced a product I was proud of, eager to share, and which satisfied both my creative soul and my gastric longings.

Finally, after Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune had both finished, my creation was complete. I scooped steaming ladles of spicy chili into thick ceramic bowls, shaved jalapeno pepper jack cheese on top, and finished each dish with a dollop of sour cream.  I was proud of my little old men, the shriveled potatoes that had seemed lifeless, the fellows that gave the bulk and the stamina to the chili. 

And I learned something in the kitchen tonight.  Everything has a purpose, and a time, and a season.


Two old taters and a young'un


Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

1For everything there is a season,

a time for every activity under heaven.

2A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.

3A time to kill and a time to heal.

A time to tear down and a time to build up.

4A time to cry and a time to laugh.

A time to grieve and a time to dance.

5A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.

A time to embrace and a time to turn away.

6A time to search and a time to quit searching.

A time to keep and a time to throw away.

7A time to tear and a time to mend.

A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

8A time to love and a time to hate.

A time for war and a time for peace.

   Everything has a purpose, and a time, and a season.