Monthly Archives: May 2013

Training My Butterflies

vivi with butterflyWhen’s the last time you had a stomach full of butterflies?  I’ve got a big change coming at work so my tummy has been fluttering a lot lately.  I have to remind myself that butterflies come from a GOOD place.  Unfortunately, anxiety and anticipation live next door to each other in my stomach and I’ve got to check in with the butterflies every now and then to corral them into the right zone.  

The first time I noticed their proximity was December 25, 2001….almost midnight.  I lay in a narrow wrought iron bed in my parents’ extra room.  Couldn’t sleep.  In the morning, I would wake and drive myself to the airport where I would meet Richard.  We were taking our first big trip together, to Amsterdam and Bruges for New Years.  I had joy and adventure ahead, but I couldn’t sleep.  I lay there with my stomach tied in knots and I asked myself, “Why am I so anxious?”  

I was one year out of a decade-long bad marriage to Fartbuster.  We had never managed to adventure much in our years together…not from any lack of wanderlust on my part.  I couldn’t talk Fartbuster into going out on a Friday night for pizza and a movie because it was just too much trouble for him.  We might SEE PEOPLE.  For 10 years, the only butterflies I got were from anxiety, that creeping feeling that something was going to go wrong and it would be my fault.   

But there I was, hours away from a grand adventure with someone I loved, who loved me.  Someone who had a lot of experience with adventuring and was excited about showing me how to step out into the world.  Richard lived by the mantra, “If it doesn’t hurt anyone else, why not?”  Lying there in that narrow bed, that’s when it hit me:  this isn’t anxiety; this is anticipation!  Maybe because it was Christmas.  Remember Christmas Eve night when you were a kid and you could try and try and try as hard as you could to fall asleep but you just couldn’t make your body stop being excited?  That’s where I was that night–32 years old and feeling the excitement of Christmas for the first time in my adult life!  So I lay there and let myself be excited and happy.  These butterflies were from the sneaking suspicion that something was going to go RIGHT and it would all be my doing!  

Mistaking anticipation for anxiety is simply a habit that I often fall into.  I catch myself interpreting all this nervous energy about my new opportunities and labeling it “anxiety” when really it’s anticipation.  I’m thrilled to have something new to do.  I’m excited to have a new space and new coworkers and new challenges.  I feel alive again.  But being alive comes with far more risks than living numb.  I have to retrain my butterflies to flutter over to the side of my stomach that is ready to grow.  

The best case of butterflies I ever had happened in February 2007.  I had been antsy all night and at about 11pm, I found myself sitting on the sofa with my hand on my belly…wondering why I was anxious.  After all, I had butterflies in my stomach and that equates to anxiety, right?  Then it dawned on me that that fluttering feeling inside me was my baby girl, stretching her wings in a way I could finally feel. 

So when WAS the last time you felt butterflies?  Anxiety or anticipation?  

A Tale Told By An Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury

William Faulkner rendered in words from The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner rendered in words from The Sound and the Fury

My afternoon drive home today got me to thinking about William Faulkner’s masterpiece The Sound and the Fury.  Have you read it?  Do you find it infuriating or mesmerizing?  I’ve read it 4-5 times and it gets better with every read.  The first chapter can drive a reader mad because it is narrated by Benjy, an adult man with the mental capacity of a young child.   Benjy simply has a different sense of the flow of time.  The narrative shifts between time periods, three decades apart, with little orientation to the shifts.  Benjy’s thoughts about his long gone sister, Caddy, flit from one time to another like a drunk butterfly.  I love it, because I love me some drunk butterflies.

Faulkner wanted to cue his reader to shifts in time by presenting the narrative in different font colors, but the printing of the book would have been prohibitively expensive.  Oh well–the publisher did agree to some use of italics to indicate a shift. 

Have I bored you to death yet?  Well, if you’re still reading along at home, here’s why I thought of Benjy on my drive home.  There I sat in an SUV filled with:

  1. a frazzled mother carrying a five lb sack of mommy guilt at having spent the day away from her babies who therefore wants to have Quality Time and Meaningful Conversation
  2. a loquacious almost-six-year old who is attending theater camp to ratchet up her innate dramatic tendencies
  3. a babbling toddler who has discovered His Voice but has not yet mastered English

All trying to talk at once.  It goes something like this.

Mommy?  Yes?  PeePeeBooBeebee  We um played this game there was this boy named Aidan and he was by the fire?  I mean a pretend fire.  Was this a scene you were acting out in theater camp? Peekaboo Beebee!  No, um, Mommy, wait…let me start over   Peekaboo Peekaboo Peekaboo Beebee  Mommy?  Yes?  Aidan saw Bigfoot in his backyard.  Dukadukaduka Dukadukaduka Dukadukaduka   Huh, I’m surprised by that.  Usually people say Bigfoot lives in really remote places.  What’s remote?  Daddy!  Up in the mountains or far away from everyone.  Aidan has a big yard. AIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEYYYYYYYY!  OK.  So what happened when you were around the fire? MOMMY!  Peekaboo Beebee There wasn’t a fire.  Peekaboo Beebee We were ACTING. Right. Shoe!  Hand the baby his shoe.  Thank you.  Why is the O in Schlotzky’s a different color?  PeePeeBooBeebee  That’s called marketing–their sandwiches are round so they’re trying to get you to associate the shape of the O with the shape of the sandwich.  Peekaboo Beebee So um this girl not that other girl but this new girl she was NOT listening to Miss Dukadukaduka Kimberly today and she got in trouble.  She was on red? Dukadukaduka  Noooooo!  That’s school.  Dukadukaduka  This is CAMP.  Can I have a show?  After you’ve had your 10 minutes. Dukadukaduka  CarLOS!  MOMMY!  Carlos hit me with his shoe!  

And trying to keep up with all these threads?  This is why Faulkner drank himself to death.

It’s a lot to manage, this working mother gig.  But now that they are in bed, the lunches are packed, laundry sorted, clutter ignored and bills paid, I creep into their rooms to listen to them breathe and I try to tell myself that I’m doing an OK job.  The last lines of Benjy’s chapter are some of my all time favorite.  They capture the peace and wholeness of falling asleep as a child wrapped in the arms of someone who loves you.  Even if that world has fallen away, it was there for a time.

“Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.” 
 

The title of this piece, like the title of Faulkner’s novel, comes from Act V, Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Our family lore holds that my dad has been known to quote this passage when he’s had too much bourbon, which hasn’t happened since shortly before my birth.  Legend has it that he got knee-walking drunk one night at a cocktail party, started quoting this soliloquy and my mother decided to drive him home.  Unfortunately, she was nine months pregnant with me, 5’2″ tall, and stuck trying to drive a stick shift.  I think she cussed him so bad that he hasn’t been past tipsy since.

GEEK ALERT!!!  In researching this piece, I found awesome news for Faulkner fans.

Well, thus ends today’s lesson.  Please read Absalom! Absalom! before tomorrow’s quiz.

Jenny’s Fighting Hitler and Looking Great Doing It!

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Ladies, your busy schedule–what with working in a munitions factory AND keeping the home fires burning–is no excuse for not being fresh as a daisy.  Please remember to shower before slipping into your brogans, coveralls and…what is that red thing, veal cutlets?  

(I really have no room to talk.  I woke up late yesterday and my beauty routine consisted of a double dose of Secret and a baby wipe to the face.)  

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Nothing is more important to wartime productivity than eight hours of restful sleep, girls!  So slip into your peignoir and wrap your hair around some pork rinds (if you have the ration points).  

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Styles designed for VICTORY!  Make THAT work, Heidi Klum.  

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Girl!  Where did you get those shoes?  I tried kitten heels but they kept getting wedged in the scaffolding.  

We’re halfway through the work week and here’s Jenny’s advice thus far:

  1. Eat a man size meal.
  2. Don’t act like monkeys in the bathroom, nasty.  
  3. Wash that thang.
  4. Get to bed.  Nothing good happens after midnight.
  5. Denim coveralls and snood are optional but white gloves are mandatory.  
  6. Leave the platform stilettos at home, Miss Kardashian.  

I can get behind that plan!

Jenny On the Job

In WWII, millions of American women entered the workforce in heretofore unfamiliar jobs–in factories, in shipyards, in transportation.  To help these women adjust to the demands of working in the wartime economy, in 1943 the Office of Public Health commissioned a series of posters to dispense clever advice to those scores of Rosie the Riveters.  The posters were intended for display in break rooms and restrooms of wartime production plants…places where the gals might gather to chat, y’know.  The character of “Jenny on the Job” chirped illuminating messages about taking care of oneself in order to maintain one’s vital role as a cog in the war machine.  

Here’s Jenny’s advice on nutrition:

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Hmm…I’m starting to like this Jenny.  We can assume her last name isn’t “Craig,” because check out that lunch pail.  Two sandwiches on whole grain bread, two carrots, two stalks of celery, an apple, an orange, and a quart of milk.  A healthy and hearty array of food that is guaranteed to keep Jenny…moving.  

Which probably explains the necessity for this next poster:

Jenny on the Job

Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In other words:  Your mama does not work here and Jenny ain’t got time for your mess.  

So here’s to the women who work–in the home, outside the home, under the home and up in the sky!  Tomorrow I’ll share Jenny’s beauty tips…because we can defeat Hitler AND take care of our skin.  

Fartbuster’s Red Hot

Back in the day, Fartbuster went through a vegetarian phase.  It didn’t really work out the way he had planned it.  As one of our coworkers put it, “Don’t get me wrong, but you’re the BIGGEST vegetarian I’ve ever seen.”  Basically, we just replaced meat that we had been eating with an equivalent portion of cheese and gained a bunch of weight.  But this was back when he was being all Zen so I guess he didn’t mind looking like the Buddha.

That year on Christmas Day, we went to Pop and Grandmama Irene’s house for breakfast–homemade biscuits with blackberry jelly, scrambled eggs, chow chow, and red link sausages from that little gas station up the highway in Brooks.  Deeeee lish.

We’re all fixing our plates and filling coffee cups and passing bowls around.  Grandmama looks over Fartbuster’s plate of eggs and biscuits and says, “There’s plenty of sausages.  Get some.”  She holds the bowl out to him.  He tells her “No, thanks” and keeps on eating.

A couple of minutes later, she says, “I’ve got more on the stove, go on and have some sausage if you want.”  He got kind of nervous at all the attention and stammered, “Oh, I’m OK, I’m fine.”  Grandmama Irene pops my grandfather on the arm and says, “Dick!  Pass him the sausages!”  But Pop had his hearing aids on the “holiday” setting.  Off.

Finally, my mom cuts in and say, “Mama!  He doesn’t EAT sausage!  He’s a vegetarian.”

Grandmama throws her hands up in the air and huffs, “Well why didn’t anybody tell me?  I could have made HAM.”

Beef question mark

Gatsby’s Penny

“See a penny, pick it up.  All day long you’ll have good luck.”

This morning when the young woman at McDonald’s handed me my change from a drive thru breakfast, the wheat sheaves on the back of a penny caught my eye.  Out of curiosity, I flipped the coin over and checked the minted date.

1923.  

1923 United States Penny

1923 United States Penny

This penny is so old that it’s silky smooth.  I can barely feel the bump of Abraham Lincoln’s nose when I rub my thumb across the face of the coin.  It feels thinner, because time has worn away much of the soft copper.  It’s so light that it feels like a coin from another country and in a way, it is.  When this coin was minted, the Civil War was only fifty eight years past.  A former slave could have held this penny, looked upon the face of Lincoln, and smiled.  In 1923, the world had survived its Great War only to have millions die from the Spanish flu.  Electric lights and motorcars…and this penny in my hand.  

In 1923, The Great Gatsby was barely an idea.  That was the year F. Scott Fitzgerald began dreaming up the story, inspired by the raucous parties he had attended on Long Island the previous summer, the summer of 1922.  Wild parties, crazy parties, parties that cost a pretty penny.  Have you seen the new Baz Luhrmann adaptation? I thought it was a delight for the eyes and the ears, but some of the story compression bothered me.  Overall, worth the 1000 pennies it cost me to see it.

When Fitzgerald began planning the book that would become his most famous work, he desired to create  “something new — something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.”

A story as bright as a new penny.  Simple and beautiful, intricately patterned.  For ninety years, this penny has been going in and out of pockets, lost under a bed, saved in a piggy bank, into a till and out of a till, dropped in the garden, plowed up in the spring, saved up for something precious or tossed away with the trash in the bottom of a purse.  What things were bought with this penny when it was shiny and new?  How many times has it been thrown into a fountain, carrying a wish?  It’s already precious to me, so I’ll tuck it away into my treasure box to show my kids some day.  

So there I was, in my SUV, going through a drive thru to get a Diet Coke.  Bruce Robison CD playing and my smartphone charging up.  I got to thinking about just how different the world was when this penny was shiny.  How much one year can change the world.  Here are some of the things that happened in 1923:  

Jan 1st – Union of Socialist Soviet Republics established

Jan 2nd – Ku Klux Klan surprise attack on black residential area Rosewood Florida.  Eight people are killed.  The town is destroyed and abandoned

Feb 16th – Howard Carter finds Pharaoh Tutankhamen

Mar 3rd – Time Magazine publishes 1st issue

Mar 6th – Cardinals announce their players will wear numbers on their uniforms

Apr 7th – 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic performed (Beth Israel Hospital in NYC) by Dr K Winfield Ney

Apr 10th – Hitler demands “hatred & more hatred” in Berlin

Apr 15th – Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics

Apr 18th – 74,000 (62,281 paid) on hand for opening of Yankee Stadium

May 3rd – 1st nonstop transcontinental flight (NY-San Diego) completed

May 4th – NY state revokes Prohibition law

May 28th – Attorney General says it is legal for women to wear trousers anywhere

Jun 12th – Harry Houdini frees himself from a straight jacket while suspended upside down, 40 feet (12 m) above ground in NYC

Jun 14th – Recording of 1st country music hit (Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane)

Jul 13th – The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads “Hollywoodland ” but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.

Jul 29th – Albert Einstein speaks on pacifism in Berlin

Aug 3rd – Baseball games cancelled following the death of President Harding

Sep 15th – Gov Walton of Oklahoma declares state of siege because of KKK terror

Oct 16th – Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio founded

Oct 29th – “Runnin’ Wild” (introducing the “Charleston” craze) opens on Broadway

Nov 12th – In Germany, Adolf Hitler is arrested for attempt to seize power on Nov 8

Nov 20th – Garrett Morgan invents & patents traffic signal

Dec 6th – 1st presidential address broadcast on radio (Pres Calvin Coolidge)

Dec 31st – 1st transatlantic radio broadcast of a voice, Pittsburgh-Manchester

Houdini and Einstein and Hitler and Disney.  Names we say every day, still.  Rosewood, a name we should remember more often.  Pants for women!  Traffic lights.  Insulin.  Brain surgery.  Radio and airplanes.  Liquor flowing again….let’s drink a toast to King Tut!  Yankee Stadium, the Hollywood sign and Time Magazine.  All in ONE YEAR.  

The art teacher at Terezin camp whom I wrote about this week?  In 1923, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was a 25 year old cosmopolitan woman who studied and taught at Weimar Bauhaus.  She was bright and shiny as a new penny.  This penny.  

This penny has seen ninety years of human history.  It’s been touched by thousands and it has meant something to many.  I’m going to hold on to it now, so it can remind me to pay attention to simple things, for there are always great stories hiding in the most ordinary objects.  

What’s something old that you’ve stumbled across?  What do you consider old?  

It’s Almost Towel Day!!!

This is my super duper glamorous friend, Moxie Anne Magnus

the currently reigning

Intergalactic Towel Day Ambassador 2013!

As part of her official duties, Moxie criss-crosses the galaxy on her quest to teach the masses about the late, great author Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  And to snatch up some harh.  

moxie

Here’s a little taste of Moxie’s bio:

I was born in space on the SS Eva Gabor, a merchant class ship trading in hair and beauty products. At six years old, I was abducted by pirates and sold as a slave in the Orion markets. Ironically, I ended up in the great and ancient Orion wig factories of Verex III (Wig making was one of the few ancient Orion technologies that survived into the modern era). To ease my pain, I threw my little self into my work. I was a natural wig-maker, a recognized child prodigy. At age 15, I won my freedom by defeating the greatest wig-maker in the Orion Syndicate. I made my way to Paris, an orphan. My wig-making skills had preceded me and I was on my way to becoming a fashion icon and intergalactic celebrity, but I gave up that life to answer the call of fate and duty: I applied and was accepted into Starfleet Academy. I graduated in record time with a double PhD in xenocosmotology and Astrobiology. My thesis, “Zero-G Styling Technology: Captain we have Lift-off”, is still recognized as the seminal work in its field. I was assigned to the USS Enterprise as chief cosmetology officer under Captain James T. Kirk.

And she’s been making the universe more beautiful ever since.

Check out Moxie’s webisodes at her blog:  http://moxiemagnus.blogspot.com/

Do you know where your towel is?

Doris and the Dragon

I am still thinking about the idea of “shielding the joyous” and specifically the things that we do to shield our children from the horrors of this life.  The story that I am going to attempt to tell has been haunting me for a couple of days now.  I’ve told it to friends before, but I’ve never tried to write it out.  Here goes.

In the spring of 2004, just a few months before he was diagnosed with leukemia, and just a few months after we had set up house together, Richard and I went to Prague for spring break.  He had been a few years earlier, when the Czech Republic was established after the fall of Communism.  Prague has suffered under many masters in the 20th century–the Austro-Hungarian empire, then a few decades of republic, then the 1939 takeover by the Nazis, followed quickly by the Soviets.  It would take another 40 years to overthrow the Communist stranglehold in Prague’s “Velvet Revolution.”

See?  It’s a huge story and I don’t know how to explain it.  We know what the Nazis did all across Europe–Prague was in no way spared.  Prague had long been a center of Jewish culture, with five robust synagogues in the Jewish Quarter before 1939.  This was the city of the “Golem.”  But, like 6 million others, most of the Jews of Prague were murdered.  Modern-day Prague’s Jewish community finds itself with more synagogues than it needs for worship, so five of the old synagogues have been turned into a collective museum of Jewish history.  The Maisel Synagogue holds a permanent exhibit of Jewish history from the 10th-18th century.  The Spanish Synagogue (designed in Moorish style) serves as a repository of precious silver artifacts and a concert hall.  Klausen Synagogue features displays about everyday Jewish life and traditions.  The Old New Synagogue is the home of the Jewish cemetery with graves dating back to 1439.  The fifth synagogue–Pinkas Synagogue–is the one that brought me to my knees.

pinkasovaThe building itself has been unconsecrated and all ceremonial fixtures have been removed.  All that remains are its sandstone walls, a soft and glowing pinkish hue.  On those walls have been painted the names of every one of the 80,000 Bohemian and Moravian Jews who were murdered.  It took two artists five years to inscribe eighty thousand hand-painted names, with their dates of birth and death.  The names of the dead are arranged in families and grouped by the towns and villages in which they lived, so neighbors are reunited in this memorial.  Pinkas Synagogue is one of the most holy places I’ve have experienced.  Every wall, every silent surface…rings with names.  Beside the space for the Holy Ark are painted the names of the death camps where these people were turned into sky and earth and memory.  Pinkasova is “a long epitaph commemorating the names of those for whom a tombstone could not be erected.”

One of those names is Doris Zdekauerova, age 12.

How do I tell this next part?  How can I explain?  Outside Prague lies Terezin, the “transit camp” where many of these Jews began their journey toward the gas chamber.  Terezin, or Theresienstadt, was the Nazi’s model camp.  It’s the one they let the Red Cross film.  It’s the one they made a propaganda film about, called “The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews.”  Terezin had an orchestra and even staged a children’s opera.  It was a prison, but on the surface it looked nicer than most.  Still, it was a place of hunger, brutality and terror.  Terrified parents and children were forcibly kept apart.  The children were housed in large dormitories.  Doris lived there, for a time, until she was “sent East.”

The adults of Terezin decided that the best thing they could do to shield their children from the darkness surrounding them was to set up structure.  School lessons, plays, art classes–all conducted furtively with whatever supplies could be scavenged.  One teacher, an artist named Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, has gone down in history for her work with the children of Terezin.  Friedl had trained at the Bauhaus and her lessons with the children grew from the Bauhaus philosophy of exploring emotion and inhabiting experiences.  She encouraged the children to paint, draw and make collages to express their experiences.  Most importantly, Friedl ensured that her young students signed every piece of their work.  It was theirs.  Something they had created.  Their truth.  Their story.  Like most of the 60,000 prisoners of Terezin, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was transported to Auschwitz where she was killed.  But before she left Terezin, she managed to fill two suitcases with 4500 pieces of art made by her 660 students.  Of the 660 children who signed works of art, 550 were exterminated “in the East.”  But their teacher hid their work and after the war was over, the two suitcases were discovered and turned over to the Jewish Museum of Prague.

Collage made from scavenged paper, Terezin

Collage made from scavenged paper, Terezin

You can see it.  I did.  The art collection is on permanent exhibit in the second floor gallery at Pinkas Synagogue, the house of the names.  You climb the stairs as if your life hasn’t been changed already by the silent witness of 80,000 names and then you see the children’s drawings.  Those rooms are some of the quietest I’ve ever witnessed.

Each piece of art is labeled with the child’s name, date of birth and date of death.  The first time I saw one without a date of death–with the caption “Survived”–I sobbed.  The drawings are arranged by theme:  “Traditions,” “Family,” “Transportation,” many of them feel like “Life Before” and “Life After.”

I found Doris in the section labeled “Fear.”  I remember one drawing, by another child, of a screaming guard.  That’s what I had expected from a child in the camps who was asked to describe fear.

But Doris Zdekauerova–born July 15, 1932 and died October 16, 1944–drew this:

A drawing by Doris Zdekauerova

A drawing by Doris Zdekauerova

A princess with flowing blonde hair in a clean white dress with puffy sleeves.  Standing calm beside a fire-breathing dragon.  That was Doris’ expression of “fear.”  She had to have known that her life had descended into the belly of a more dangerous beast, but while looking at this drawing, I felt an overwhelming sense of what the adults at Terezin had been trying to do.  They created a world within a world.  A safer place for the children to remember a few things about being children.  Those adults did such a good job of shielding the children that Doris, when asked to depict fear, drew a dragon.  Doris and the Dragon.  A girl.  The fire.  Her name.

She Won’t Remember Any of This

Last night, we kept the TV on Max & Ruby.  I grilled hamburgers and boiled up some corn on the cob.  Carlos stomped around in one shoe while saying, “Cars!  Shoe!  Banana!  Hug!  All Done!”  Vivi and I made banana muffins with the new mixer.  She and G read a book called “100 Ways to Make Your Dog Smile.”  She asked the difference between a terrier and a bird dog, so I told her all about hunting dogs–terriers, pointers, sight hounds, retrievers.  I told her about the German Shorthair Pointer we had when I was her age, a dog named “Circles” for the three aligned spots at the base of her tail.  The TV sat silent.  Vivi made up songs about my favorite colors and belted them into a plastic Dora the Explorer microphone.  We packed her lunch for camp the next day–she chose strawberry milk, sour cream and onion potato chips, carrots, applesauce, ham and cheese sandwich and a couple of banana muffins for snack.

We didn’t talk about tornadoes.  Just like after Boston, when we didn’t talk about bombs, or Newtown when we didn’t talk about guns.  Or all the other days before that, when we kept the TV silent, those days where G and I shared long looks over the top of the children’s heads and whispered sadnesses behind closed doors.

lairFriday was her last day of kindergarten.  When I asked her what she thinks is her biggest accomplishment this year, she chirped, “READING!”  This weekend, G bought her a big stack of Junie B Jones books about kindergarten and first grade.  I think we both assumed that we would be reading them to her, but Vivi has other ideas, grand ideas.  She built herself a hidey hole under my desk on Saturday morning.  She filled it with two warm blankets, a pack of gum, a box for treasures, a couple of stuffed animals and her stack of books.  She calls it her “lair.”  She’s already tearing up the books and I am online ordering more, like feeding coal into a roaring furnace.  The Magic School Bus is in the mail.

Our town has sirens.  Our brick house has a basement.  There is a small room down there with cinder block walls and no windows.  She knows that when storms get dangerous, we all sit in there.  She needs to know that, but she doesn’t need to know…this.

I see her reading in her lair, cozy in her Sonic pajamas, with Pengy tucked under her arm and a bountiful lunch in the fridge, all waiting on tomorrow.  One phrase comes to mind:  “Shield the joyous.”

I haven’t participated in any kind of religion for 20 years, but after Richard died, my friend Robin gave me a red leather Book of Common Prayer from the Episcopal church.  She knows how I love words and poetry.  She wanted me to have the words that were said at our wedding and at his memorial.  What a gift Robin has been to my life.  There is one prayer in particular that she gifted to me, as I had spent so many sad nights alone in my house.

“Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, sooth the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

Many times (even if I edited it some to match my beliefs), I have read this prayer for Compline before bedtime and choked upon the words “weep,” “sick,” “dying,” depending on the time of my life.  Now I read it and choke back tears on “shield the joyous.”  This night, I am a mother and one of the few things I can do in this life is shield the joy of my children from the weary truths of this suffering world.

It can’t last forever.  There will be a time when Vivi and Carlos are old enough to know.  There will be times when we turn the TV on and set them in front of it so that they can KNOW.  I remember a time like that when I was 10 years old–1978 and the Jonestown Massacre.  My parents watching the news, as cameras panned over silent fields of corpses, bloating in the jungle heat.  Poisoned by their own hands because their leader told them to.  My mother thought that they should turn the TV off, that we were too young to watch.  I vividly remember my father saying firmly, “No.  You kids need to know this can happen.  You need to know about this kind of bullshit so you don’t get caught up in it.  Sit down and watch.”  He was right.  I’ve never forgotten it.

As Vivi was dancing off to bed last night, a thought hit me:  “She won’t remember any of this.”  She is turning six in a couple of weeks.  When I think back to six, I don’t remember much, just a general idea about life and how it was.  A couple of school memories.  A few friends.  There are a few pictures, somewhere at my mom’s house.  So Vivi won’t remember this day, those banana muffins, the songs we sang.  She won’t remember the tornadoes in Oklahoma because I shielded her from that.  I hope that she remembers that she was loved every second of her life by people who put a lot of effort into keeping her safe and healthy and happy.  I hope she knows that we kept watch over her while she slept, all for love’s sake.

The Reverend Lauren McDonald has written a lovely meditation on “Shield the Joyous” on her blog, Leaping Greenly Spirits.  She’s another one of those super awesome kids from the Governor’s Honors 1985!

My Dream Lunch

waltons lunchbox

In second grade, my classmate–K–brought the perfect lunch every day.   She set her “The Waltons” lunchbox down on the white formica table in the cafeteria then unsnapped the yellow plastic clasp to unveil her masterpiece of a lunch.  First, a flowered paper napkin, set to the side.  A spoon placed atop the napkin.  Then a matching yellow Thermos with a lid that doubled as a cup for the colorful splash of Kool-Aid.  A perfectly compact Snack Pack pudding, chocolate or butterscotch or vanilla.  A miniature bag of potato chips.  And finally a sandwich, on snowy white bread with the crusts cut off and sliced on the diagonal.

Perfection.

I had a Peanuts lunch box that I loved.  I had had it since first grade because I remember getting sent to the principal’s office that year after conking Scott Greene over the head with it for breaking in front of me in line.  He got sent to the principal’s office too because he HAD broken in line and my job that week was being line leader.  Lo, the swift hand of justice wields a Peanuts lunch box.

My Peanuts lunch box carried a perfectly serviceable lunch, with a sandwich and maybe a piece of fruit.  A slice of homemade cake if it was near someone’s birthday.  The sandwiches were made with that Carl Budding lunch meat that was so thin that you could see through it–now they call it “deli-sliced” and charge extra for it.  My sandwich sported Sunbeam bread or–god forbid–Roman Meal.  My mom believed in whole grains before anyone else.  Sometimes, if Daddy had a client up near Riverdale, he would swing by the day-old bread store and buy an entire toilet paper box filled with Twinkies, SnoBalls, Ding Dongs, fruit pies and jelly rolls.  One toilet paper box of treats could fill up the entire upright freezer in the laundry room.  Each morning, during lunch packing time, we were allowed to pick out one snack cake and add it to our lunch.  The first to disappear were the SnoBalls–a chocolate cake filled with cream, then covered in marshmallow and pink coconut.  HEAVEN.  If they were hard frozen before I got on the bus, they would be just thawed enough to eat by lunchtime, but the cream-filled center remained an icy sweet core to the whole confection.

Anyway.

What I admired about K’s lunch was the amount of time and attention put into it.  Every little scrap of it was thought out and intentional.  It took TIME to make.  K’s mother didn’t have to worry about getting to work on time AND making a lovely lunch.  My mother had three lunches to make and a desk to get to at her office.

I started thinking about K’s Waltons lunch box today while I was in line at Kroger.  The kids start summer camp this week and I get to pack lunches.  So I found myself filling the conveyor belt with tiny bags of chips, cups of applesauce, boxes of organic strawberry milk, popcorn, popcorn chicken bites, petite carrots, hummus, peanut butter crackers, Snack Pack pudding, sliced ham, string cheese, mandarin oranges, and pouches of Capri Sun water.  Holy HELL.

Am I driving myself mad trying to make the PERFECT LUNCH?  Yes.  Yes, I am.

What was your perfect lunch?  What kind of lunch box did you carry?