March 13, 2017

The Danger Zone

The conversation began like this, “Enable Grammarly on your documents Mom. It will help with proofing.”

“I already use it,” I replied.

“You do?” my gentle son, Trouble, asked skepticism more than evident.

“Yes, I copy and paste the document I write into the site and then note the corrections,” I replied with a touch of Gen X pride. (Take that, you smug Millenial.)

“Ah,” he sighed with satisfaction. “Mom, I was almost impressed with you, but you haven’t enabled the app on Word or for your emails yet, have you?”

“No, Brat,” I sighed.

Don’t tell him, but I didn’t know how until I googled ‘how to enable Grammarly on a word document.’

Also, don’t tell him but I take a bit of pride that my ‘jump first, look later’ boy has grown up enough to be able to guide me. There were (many) years where I was uncertain that this would ever happen. And now this, somewhat former, caveman is getting married in two months.

The boy who wore spaghetti sauce in his hair and on his face at every meal. The boy who thought that clean flip flops could be considered ‘going out to dinner shoes’. The boy who thought that surfing counted as a shower. Yes, this boy is getting married.

And his fiancé is more than everything we could want in a future daughter-in-law. Beyond all that we love about her…my personal favorite is that she loves candy just as shamelessly as I do, she even spent a day weeding his closet of over 50 tee-shirts and then added in collared shirts with slacks and shoes that actually tie and are not meant for any form of sports.

The boy who had to run to the next-door-neighbor and ask him how to tie his tie for game day in high school can now perform this function without thought. For ten years, he has officially been an adult, but his adultness creeps up on me when I least suspect he has it in him. When my father died a few months ago after a year-long illness, he comforted me, not with sticky hands and a crayon colored piece of art (some of my favorite treasures still) but with memories of times with my dad and frequent visits and phone calls.

Sometimes I miss the boy I had to herd like a Border Collie just to keep him safe (and alive), but then he’ll announce that he’s going to run the Angeles Crest 100 Mile Endurance Run along the Angeles Crest Forest and my heart expands a little. There he is, my little danger zone. I recognize this kid and know exactly what I’ll be doing that day. Following his trail (by car) with my husband and his fiancé, supplies, a first aid kit, a head full of worries, and a touch of ‘is he crazy’ pride.

I don’t have to google anything to know how grateful I am for my soon-to-be married little bundle of joy!

August 19, 2016

A Pure Perspective

For the past 16 months, I have studied the world through the eyes of my grandson, Bam Bam. Each Wednesday he and I take on the world, one little step at a time. And the world looks pretty incredible from his pure perspective. A ball is not simply to be bounced. It is to be thrown, and not just to someone, but also over couches and into other rooms. Then, it is to be chased down and thrown all over again. For close to an hour.

Another human being is to be stared at. Smiled at. Waved at and then blown kisses to. Yesterday as Bam Bam and I sat at an outside table at Whole Foods eating an Acai bowl, he struck up a conversation (if signing and one syllable sounds count) with a man across the table from us. Bam Bam saw cars going by so he did the sign for cars and then said, “Vrmmm,” with a smile. The man understood him fully and they ‘discussed’ the cars at great length. When he got up to leave, he said, “Best lunch break I’ve had in a while.” He left with a smile.

Life on a good day can be rough, but if it takes someone with less than 600 days in to show me the good side, I’m going to grab at it with everything I have. Bam Bam has taught me the full wonder of being outdoors. Dirt is an endless source of fascination and sometimes (if I’m not quick enough) for tasting. Birds can never be caught. Front yards vary in design and are always worth exploring. And the sounds of outside are never ending.

When he sits in my lap as I read, I struggle to focus on the words because he smells so heavenly; a mixture of joy tossed with a hint new baby. We find colors on the pages. Boats, people, dogs and everything has a sound. We roll on the floor. Chase cars down the hallway. Eat when we are hungry. Sleep with the sense of a morning well played. And then start everything all over again with the same sense of happiness.

As a grandma, I have the freedom of not worrying about his homework or cleaning the house or worry about prepping for dinner or any other household chore. My biggest Wednesday decision is what park we should play at, is it cool enough to go to the zoo and should we play with the water table now or later? I appreciate this as so much of life is regimented, work filled and often sucked free of fun.

Bam Bam reminds me weekly what life is really about; living it. With impishness as he tosses a cup of water on me and dares me not to laugh with him. With fearlessness as he asks for “Mo!” as the swing spins around and around. With love as he grabs me by both cheeks and plants a sweet baby kiss on my nose. And by being able to find out that you have spent an entire day with your shirt on inside out (because you dressed long before the sun came up) and you discover that you could care less about it.

July 11, 2016

Chocolate Tomatoes

For the simple fact that at times reality can be a bit too real, I sometimes like/choose to focus on the minutia found in life. Like the fact that a few months ago I found myself at a tomato festival (yes, my life is that big) with my husband. We quickly separated because I like to peruse in my own, step above plodding, fashion where my husband skitters from thing to thing like a humming-bird.

As I looked at each leafy green plant, I decided that while I love to eat tomatoes, I just wasn’t that excited about the whole planting it, tending it, de-bugging it stuff. I know my husband has that part handled because this is how he de-stresses from life and all its reality. Four years ago, he found his Zen in gardening and if that’s where he finds peace, then I’m all for it. Especially since the results are yummy.

But I was more an observer to the whole process until that day. Then, the word ‘chocolate’ caught my eye. There, I stood buried in a farm full of tomato plants, with intimidating farm-like people and that delicious word leaned nonchalantly against a 4” trembling plant.  I ran to find my husband.

“Look!” I shoved the poor plant in his face. “This is a chocolate tomato plant. We have to buy it.”

Sweet man that he is, he took the plant from me and added it to his cart.

When we got home, I was more than eager to find out when he was planting it and where. He planted it along with seven other varieties of tomato plants that we had to have.

Every evening after work, he tends his garden. When he has (literally) done all of the dirty work, I go out and we harvest together. I fill a colander daily with tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, green beans, and green peppers.

I love the predusk time we spend together harvesting. The tomato plants stand over 7’ tall now so obviously I pick low, while my husband picks high. Reality is still reality, but when my hands smell like dirt and tomatoes, I can turn the volume of worry low for those precious few moments.

It hums in the background, but there is nothing like manual labor to shove thoughts away. I pick the vegetables. Wash them. Find recipes that I can’t easily ruin. And make batches and batches of incredible marinara sauce. (The recipe is so basic, that I cannot destroy it.)

Sadly, though, it turns out that a chocolate tomato is named that not because it tastes like chocolate (!!!) but because it has a dusky chocolate color. I have overcome the disappointment. There are worse things in life.

 

 

May 26, 2016

Arms Akimbo

When I am talking with someone, I never know what to do with my arms. Should I cross them? No, that looks too closed off and serious. Should I let them dangle? Too stiff looking. Put my hands on my hips and let my elbows jut out? Too, hey look at me-ish. See what I mean, how is a person to stand and talk to someone without calling unnecessary attention to their inherent awkwardness? And that is my real issue. I love people (usually), but I am so over aware of myself that I have trouble relaxing in new conversational situations.

The lure of writing is that I can speak without having to be looked at. I don’t have to worry about broccoli bits in my teeth, an itchy nose that begs to be blown right in the middle of talking to someone, or flapping arms with nowhere to land.

Being the family/friend photographer is even better. You can snap away and never have to worry if you winked one eye closed in the middle of a snap, or if your smile looks like you are minutes from heaving. I only love a good selfie if I’m wearing a hat, sunglasses and trying to get the scenery from hiking behind me. No ducklips and close-ups for me.

I want people to chuckle at my sarcastic comments, admire my amazingly comfortable Hoka hiking shoes, and maybe even notice my grandbaby-toting induced biceps that have recently formed. But there is no need for you to look deeply into my eyes unless you are an optometrist performing the dreaded glaucoma eye exam.

Why?

Because I don’t flow like a river stream. I don’t glide like a boat on water. I trip over my own ankles. I’ve been known to occasionally gleek while speaking. I’m an accident waiting to happen. I’m the 105-pound girl who walks as stealthily as a hippopotamus. My husband used to beg me to tiptoe when the kids were sleeping. He claimed my footsteps shook the entire floor.

“Hey, Trouble (my son),” I said the other day. “I outdid myself today. In the middle of my new client meeting, I realized that not only were my arms crossed, but I had crossed one leg over the other and had stood that way for over five minutes.”

When he was done laughing at the picture of his live pretzel standing mom, I realized my purpose in the family. Not only do I make them laugh – at me, but I also make them feel better about themselves. Because really, when compared to their arms akimbo mother, they are swans, ballerinas…or just normal people who know what the heck to do with limbs.

April 11, 2016

Words and Things

The other night I left a full glass of water elbow level for my husband. Right on schedule, it went flying, along with a great picture of my then six-year-old daughter, Princess, in full riding gear, sitting on top of a giant horse with my husband smiling alongside her. After the water was sopped up, I told my husband, “Oh, I love that picture of you two and that Chambray shirt you are wearing.”

“That’s not a word,” he stated.

“Of course, it is,” I replied my tone just a hint smug.

“You’re making that up.  I’ve never heard that word in my life.” By now he was giving me that look which meant that he had caught me making something up and couldn’t wait to tell the kids.

I googled it on my phone and tossed it to him. This time even my smile was smug. As I have pointed out a time or two here, I am not good at a lot of things; sports, technology, anything requiring patience and zeal…those sort of things, but I am good at/full of words. Yep, I was the cool kid who read the dictionary…for fun. No, I didn’t get stuffed in lockers, but I wasn’t too far up on the social scale from the kids who did.

It’s a fun trick to pull out when my scientific children are artfully conversing on medical issues in their field and it’s making my eyes cross in boredom when all of a sudden they use an obscure word that means exactly what I know it means…in the real world. It quite bedevils them.

My husband is sweet enough to think that this knowledge of mine makes me smart. He’s the one who can spend thirty minutes fixing our TV when after minute five, I’m ready to skip the process and just read a book. The other day our scanner (something I use hourly for work) stopped working. I did what I could. I turned the computer off and then back on. I swore at it, then announced that we needed a new scanner. My husband sat down at the computer and ordered it about for an hour and now the scanner is working.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“I just tried everything until it worked,” he said.

See what he doesn’t understand is that my everything is less than 30 seconds. I don’t understand all the parts that make the computer, printer, scanner and whatever else talk to each other. He has the patience and the ability to go through all the layers until it works again. To me, this is what smart is.

I will always love words. Especially ones I rarely hear. Last night as I read the Alexander Hamilton book because I’m obsessed with the soundtrack and cannot wait to see the play, one page alone had three words I had never heard/read before. Yes, this is exciting for me. Autodidactic. Heterodox. And Puerile. And I’m only on page 60…glorious!

I’ll take my so-called word smarts and mix it with my husband’s everything smarts and be happy that we still impress each other in our own way.

As for the definitions.  Google them.

March 10, 2016

Happy Birthday, Bam Bam!

He started out on a 3’ by 3’ square. Placed gently on his back, he spent hours snoozing with occasional bursts of bleary-eyed wakefulness. (I remember, somewhat ironically now, that we couldn’t wait until he woke up.) Tummy-time entered the fray at about eight weeks. He looked mostly like an alien being trying to lift his too-large head off the mat. On my ‘grandma Wednesdays’ we lay side by side on our backs, reading books, playing with the toys swinging above us and staring into each other’s face. Then, he started to roll.

Once he mastered rolling over and over, the mat grew too small. The mat was removed and a 6’ by 6’ quilt took its place. He rolled, scooted, army crawled and then pulled himself up against anything that appeared stationary; fellow toddlers were fair game if they got close enough to his reaching hands.

What if we had to learn all that a baby did in a mere 12 months?! The process viewed up close, even while wearing spinach-colored spit up and changing an odorific diaper, is mesmerizing. I’m convinced that a baby brain with grown up hands could master the maddening and ever-changing technology on a computer far better than an adult. (Or just this adult.)

As my never-weary grandson, also known as ‘Bam Bam’, nears his first birthday I notice that there are no mats now in his playroom. Instead, the room has been carpeted wall to wall to cover his endless movement. Words and sounds now punctuate his bellows, laughs, and pterodactyl-like grunts. Eh-fant for elephant, A-plane for airplane and ba-ble for bubbles.

I miss him the minute I leave my daughter and son-in-law’s house. I stare at his pictures and watch videos, even after spending a ten-hour day with him. He makes the world feel pure and wonderful. Birds flying overhead are cause for great discussion and endless staring. “Burd,” he says with wonder coloring his sweet voice as it flies overhead. (I do still defensively duck just waiting for that flying thing of wonder to shit on me… I’m not perfect like Bam Bam.)

As his world expands, so does mine. I appreciate every minute I spend with him. I put my phone down on our Wednesdays together. I don’t work. I simply exist to make his day, and thus, my day, fun. Each moment is directed by Bam Bam. We push cars around the room. We have dance parties. We read. We eat and eat and eat. Me, who is never late for anything, misses every class we try to take on Wednesdays. We are so busy playing and not following a clock, that I cannot seem to make it to his 50 minute My Gym class. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mind.

At the end of our day, he has sand in his neck creases, dirt beneath his fingernails, and bits of his meals stuck to the tufts of his hair. He smells like happiness and rainbows, and I can’t inhale enough of this boy.

Happy First Birthday, Bam Bam!

January 8, 2016

Pondering the Past

I am officially of the age where I sometimes ponder the past as well as the future. No ten year old spends more than a minute remembering his eighth year of life. But when you have lived five decades, there is a lot of material to choose from and sometimes it leaps up and begs to be noticed. Remember when you made two spaces after a period? Why after all these years did it have to be changed to one space? And what brilliant person made that happen? Making one less space has not benefited my life in the least.

The other day I found myself driving to an appointment and reached for my water bottle only to find that I had forgotten to fill it. Slight panic ensued. I was thirsty. I had a few hours of appointments/errands. Water was necessary. After I calmed my ridiculous self down, I remembered that I wasn’t alone on Mars. There were places I could stop to get water, but it got me to thinking. What did we do before water bottles?

I don’t remember lugging my Girl Scout canteen around. How did I go through an entire school day without a water bottle in my backpack? And wait, how did I carry everything when I didn’t even have a backpack? In my arms, resting against my hip. Remember denim notebooks that you spent the class periods writing/doodling on?

I would head out early in the morning, go to school, a friend’s house, work and then home, all without calling and/or texting my parents. How did they survive without knowing where I was every minute. (Happily, I’m sure.) They had no app ‘find my friends’ that they could use to see where I was based on my cell phone. And they certainly had no cell phone they could call/text to check in where I was. I don’t recall them being crazed when I walked in the door in the evenings. The first thing I usually heard was, “It’s your turn to do the dishes.”

Then, I would fight with my siblings for use of our one telephone. The one that rested on the kitchen wall with the endless cord that I pulled taut searching for a private place to hold a conversation with friends. I never heard a beep as I talked because call waiting didn’t exist so my siblings would pace frantically in front of me, sure that I was blocking an important call.

Were things better back then, with our less than 20 television stations, record players and typewriters that clacked when you struck the keys? I not sure, but simpler, less frenetic, maybe. Keeping possession of my cell phone at all times is exhausting. I love all its many features, especially the one that keeps me from getting lost and sitting in traffic daily. But the pressure to not drop it, remember it, check it, be tied to always at times is stifling. I hope that it never fully becomes waterproof because the ocean, pool and shower still remain cell free. (Please don’t tell me anything different, because this is what I want to believe.)

Technology is important in so many ways and yet I wonder if it has added a more urgent tone to our lives. People can’t seem to drive any length of time without checking their text messages. (I readily own up to the fact that when I hear the ping of an incoming text, I battle not to look down to see who it might be.) Since it is never going away, my solution, for now, is to attempt to limit the tether. I put my cell up high on the days I watch my grandson; one, because he loves to lick it, and two, because I just want to focus on him. I mute it when I practice my yoga. And when I’m with another human being, I use the out of sight, out of mind method…I shove it in my pocket and pretend that it does not exist. It’s a work in progress but unless you’re telling me the two spaces have been added back after the period, then it can wait.

December 10, 2015

The Cosmic Smack in the Face

Two things happened the other day that only solidified how I want to be in this world. I always know how I want to comport myself, but I don’t always follow my soul’s own advice. Sometimes a cosmic smack in the face is called for now and then.

The first “Hello, are you listening?!” happened in the morning at my local post office. I stood midway in a line of about ten people watching the single worker slowly help a woman with her multiple transactions. I shifted foot to foot in an attempt to tell myself to calm down, I’d get out before dinner…maybe.

An elderly man (yes, he had twenty years on me so I can use that term), shuffled in with his caretaker. She loudly told him they had to wait in line. He mumbled that he didn’t know if he could stand that long. I looked at his cane, his bent shoulders, the slippers on his feet and I offered up the prayer that I always do when confronted with my own body’s frailty…please G-d don’t let that ever be me!

The woman in front of the man said, “It’s not much, but you can go in front of me.”

I stood two people in front of her and said, “Me too, come up here.”

As soon as I said that everyone in line in front of me shifted. They all waved him to the front and within seconds, he stood at the front of the line. The postal worker got into the spirit and playfully joked that he was cutting the line like he was in high school again. He was a bit confused, but was in and out of the post office in a few minutes.

Everyone in line had changed from quiet seething over the wait, to happily talking about the fact that the man had been helped. The man in front of me who had been sighing loudly as he waited, said, “I wasn’t in that much of a hurry anyway.” It was like watching an old black and white movie suddenly shift to vibrant color.

The warm, I-love-people – feeling stayed with me the entire day.

Then, I went to a city council meeting that night where the agenda topic was to make an existing park into a dog park for a few hours each day. The meeting began with a full room and 4 city council members. As the 20+ speakers got up to speak, two were in favor of the dog park, and over 18 were not. A few of the council members appeared to be ready to give the dog park a six-month test period.  Each opposing speaker spoke passionately against the dog park; parking issues, dog waste, sound, and the nearness to their homes was their major concerns. Everyone listened quietly and respectfully to each speaker, until a proponent got up to speak. During her 3-minute speech, the audience heckled and interrupted her.

This is when I got upset. We are grownups. I understand and respect their concerns. I didn’t agree with them, but this is not my point. Whether I agreed or disagreed, I didn’t interrupt or taunt a speaker. I didn’t waggle my finger at the council member and tell him to “Wait a minute!” when he tried to stop her tirade, and I didn’t waive a packet of papers threatening a law suit if I didn’t get my way.

It was appalling and I was embarrassed for my fellow humans. They acted like bullies. They were rude. And they were able to use this behavior to cause the council members to change their minds (they didn’t want to be sued or worse, have their names sullied) and they ended up tabling the idea of a dog park.

The homeowners had valid points. But I didn’t appreciate how they got their way. It reminded me of the school yard days where the loudest, biggest, and strongest person got to lead the way. Always.

Life isn’t fair, but the ill-behavior at that meeting was a reminder of how we all should not behave. People should not get their way through scare tactics and threats but that is what happened. I know there are larger issues in the world but on a day where people treated an elderly man with such care and kindness. I had hoped that my fellow humans were on to something; which would definitely impact some of the important problems in our world.

I’ll keep searching for random acts of kindness. Once people see how incredible it feels to be nice and giving, there will be no going back. I’m counting on it. And I’m listening.

September 28, 2015

The Journey

My husband came home from work a few months ago brimming with the ‘hey we should go backpacking bug.’ A friend had spent thirty minutes rhapsodizing about the fact that he and his wife had just discovered backpacking and from the sounds of it, it was better than…well just about anything. My husband is no sheep (singular of course) but he got caught up in the ‘camping in the great outdoors’ party and the next thing I knew we were headed to REI to buy gear.

The head scratching thing is that we did this three years ago, paid a fortune too, and then months later returned everything without once shouldering our gear. So there we were at REI, again, minimally buying what we would need for an overnight trip. The plan this time was, if we liked it, we would more fully equip ourselves at a later date.

A few weekends later found us driving our fully loaded car up the Onion Valley grade. We parked our car in the campground parking lot, which stands at 9,600’, and began to load ourselves up. My husband put the pack on me and I literally staggered back. Not a good opening sign. I told myself that we were only hiking 3.5 miles, yes we would gain 1,800 feet in elevation in that puny mileage, but I walk that daily, mostly without breaking a sweat.

Here’s the part where I wonder where my good sense hides. I do not hike above 10,000 feet in elevation, without acclimating daily. I do not carry 22 pounds on my back. Nor do I climb 1,800’. All those nuggets of good information didn’t reveal themselves until I was suffering my way up the trail.

The hike began with smiles and good cheer but within fifteen minutes, I began to wonder if we were almost there. I never trudge when we hike and I found myself trudging like a fossilized old woman. I tried to admire the over-blue sky, the air that smelled of purity, and the lakes that shimmered with green sparkles, but I couldn’t summon the energy.

We arrived at our campsite a few hours before sundown. My pack and my butt met the dirt at the same time. I pretended to help my husband set up the tent and then crawled inside. I couldn’t feel my brain. My husband watched me do nothing for an hour and realized I was in bad shape.  He told me we were going to pack up and hike down. He says he knew I was doing poorly when I simply began to load my backpack.

Just as the last wisps of dusk fled the sky, we got to our car. I wanted to kiss it, but it was too much of a cliche. Within an hour of steady, lung expanding, lower elevation oxygen, I was back to myself. Meaning I talked about everything and nothing at my usual warp speed. We amused ourselves with how we were going to explain to all the people who said we were crazy to plan the trip the way we had, that they were right…this time. Within minutes of stepping in our front door, we were asleep. That sleep that wraps you up in layers of ‘wow do I need this.’

The following weekend we returned all of our gear, again, to REI.

We’ll hunt up another journey and another. Some will be epic, while others will be best forgotten, but I won’t mind the bad ones any more than I’ll love the good ones, because I will be with my husband and I’ll follow him anywhere. Always.

IMG_7723

It got tough here…still in view of the parking lot

July 10, 2015

Technology Tentative

You know those fabulous children that I rhapsodize about so often? Hard to admit but they do have a flaw or four. A glaring problem, in my opinion, is that they have little patience and even less sympathy for their tech-tentative mother. I can be happily using an app and have, what I think, is a justified question about how to use said app and my angels will reply to my question with, “Figure it out, Mom.”

I don’t want to figure it out. I want my daughter, Princess or my son, Trouble to show me how to use it. Why should I fiddle around and possibly make a giant mess of what I’m using when they can easily explain it to me?

“Push a button or two, Mom,” they say in an exasperated tone. “It’s not that difficult.”

I know that, but if they know the answer, shouldn’t they just show me? When they were younger, I didn’t tell them to figure out how to tie their own damn shoes. I tied them, bunny ears and all, for years. I always used my patient mom-voice and stopped whatever I was doing to make sure those bleeping shoes were tied.

I did not grow up with a computer, and an iPhone. Forgive me if, even after all these years, I still have a healthy fear/respect for these technological things. How do I know that I won’t lose hours of work by pressing the wrong button? I’m not comfortably trotting around the recesses of my smart phone or computer like my kids.

I saw a child, well under the age of two, recently playing with his mom’s phone. I watched as he nimbly swiped his finger across the bottom of the phone and then typed in her pass code to unlock the phone. No joke. The kid couldn’t talk, but he could work the phone. I’m ashamed to say that I felt a tad envious of this toddler.

Way back, when my lunch bag contained an apple (that I threw away), a Ding Dong and a Bologna and Cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread time were different and we were not being fed to expand and grow our minds. Accordingly, my brain cells are far too filled with preservatives to learn to navigate technology the way our vegan, organic eating children can.

To be honest, I never stop trying, but I’m no match for Princess and Trouble. They shift, control, swipe, press and tap away fearlessly but I can do things they cannot. So there.

I did not grow up with a calculator. Therefore, I can readily add, subtract, divide and multiple in…gasp…my head; without paper and a pen. I can spell without computer help. Multi-syllable words too. I only use spell-check to check my aging brain. I can type, without looking, using every finger because back in the dark ages schools made you take typing classes…for a year.

It’s not much and not even impressive but it’s what I use to console myself when one of my darlings answers my plea for help with, “Google it, Mom.”