Tag Archives: Carlos

R-E-D

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alphabet-150781_1280We have a Sunday morning tradition at our house. Vivi and Carlos pile on to The Big Bed and snuggle up with G and me. (Victoria outgrew this a few years back and opts for a good ole teenaged sleep in until noon.)

Carlos climbs up from the bench at the foot of the bed then folds himself quietly into my side. Vivi pounces onto the bed with her Pengy then settles under G’s arm. They kick and wiggle and make up games about the cave (under the covers) or the waves (over the covers). It’s delightful.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Carlos said, “No, Mommy! Cover up your feet, Mommy! Go to sleep, Mommy!” so that I wouldn’t leave The Big Bed. I promised him that I wasn’t leaving, I just wanted to sit up for a minute. This morning, I was wearing my Heart Month t-shirt–the one that says “Keep Calm and Go Red.” Carlos saw the message on the back of my shirt and started naming letters. He’s been doing that for a year now–no interest in writing them, but he knows all the letters and the sounds they make.

But today, something magical happened, right there on The Big Bed.

I felt his little finger poking the back of my shirt. He chirped, “R-E-D…RED!”

alphabet-150768_1280G and I shared that look, that “Is it OK to freak out a little right now or would we scare him?” look. We kept calm and let him carry on.

“R-E-D spells RED! Exactly right, buddy! You are so smart!”

He read each letter.

“K-E-E-P….” He didn’t know what to make of these, so I said, “Keep!” He echoed, “Keep!”

“C-A-L-M…” I jumped right in with, “Calm!” He repeated it.

“G-O!” He waited for me to tell him the word. I said, “What’s the opposite of stop?”

Vivi shouted, “GO!” before she could stop herself and we all chimed in, “GO!”

Then he stopped. No pressure. But the moment happened and we had been there to see him take letters and pull them together to read a word. RED. R-E-D.

This afternoon, I had crept off to a quiet corner to read a few chapters of a wonderful book that my friends Abby and Rachel recommended: The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. Get it. Read it. Love it. Thank me later.

Anyway, there’s a young girl in the book, Maya, who grows up in a bookstore, surrounded by people who love letters and words and stories. Yes, I cried a couple of joyful tears when I read this passage:

A.J. reads, “. . . on the very top, a bunch of red caps.”

The picture shows a man in many colored caps.

Maya puts her hand over A.J.’s to stop him from turning the page just yet. She scans her eyes from the picture to the page and back again. All at once, she knows that r-e-d is red, knows it like she knows her name is Maya, like she knows A.J. Fikry is her father, like she knows the best place in the world is Island Books.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Red,” she says. She takes his hand and moves it so it is pointing to the word.

alphabet-150767_1280When I made my bucket list all those years ago, one of the items on it was “Teach someone to read.” I didn’t know then that it doesn’t work that way. We don’t set out to learn how to read as something separate from our lives. We just grow up around letters and one day, they click in place and we realize that R-E-D is the way of expressing the idea that is the color RED. So my bucket list item should have been, “Watch while someone makes the leap from letters to words.”

Thanks, Abby and Rachel, for sharing this book with me. Thank you, Carlos, for sharing your world with me. I promise you a life of letters and words and stories.

Do you remember the first time the letters lined up into a word?

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The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

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Carlos rides on my hip across the parking lot and through the car rider line. As soon as we’re inside his school, I set him down and we begin the slooooooow walk to his classroom. We creep along the corridors, playing “I Spy” with the bookbags and jackets that hang neatly outside each door.

“Optimus and Bumble Bee…” he whispers and points with his tiny finger.

“I spy Doc McStuffins.” He searches the row then breaks into a grin when he sees her too.

At each Ninja Turtle backpack, we pause for a moment of reverence. We name each Turtle then move on.

Seriously, this walk would take me about 45 seconds if I were carrying him, but it takes a good three minutes when he’s walking on his own. At each intersection of hallways, I stop and ask him, “Now which way do we go?” He leads me along a path I certainly know by now.

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When we get to his classroom, it’s time to hang his little yellow coat and blue backpack on his hook. Each hook is labeled with the child’s name, written in that perfect schoolteacher script. Carlos finds his then points to each letter with that tiny finger as he recites “C-A-R-L-O-S, Carlos!”

The blue mesh handle of his backpack slides easily over the wooden knob beneath his name. I stand there patiently while he slips out of his yellow coat. Two hooks over, William’s dad is doing the same–waiting. Not doing it for his son, but standing patiently by.

The yellow coat’s loop inside the collar is just about the exact size of the wooden knob, so Carlos has some trouble with it. He makes an attempt and gets it mostly on there, but the weight of the coat pulls it off the knob and onto the floor. My instinct is to swoop over and right this situation, grab the coat and hand it dextrously on the knob, but I wait. I wait for Carlos to try again. William’s dad says, “Good job, buddy. How about your hat now?” then he waits.

Finally, Carlos manages to get his coat hung up and I let my held breath go. The waiting really is the hardest part.

The scene reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with my wise friend, Robin. She was one of the few people who knew the truth–that Fartbuster had had an affair and our marriage was crumbling. One day at lunchtime, I ran into Robin at the salad bar in our cafeteria and as we moved around the circle making our salads, she asked me how things were going. I told her that I wanted to wring his neck. I wanted to make a list of what he should do. I whispered that he was going to a therapist but I really wanted to know what they were talking about and if it was doing any good. I was having a teensy bit of trouble…waiting.

Robin stopped with the salad and looked me straight in the eye. “Here’s what I’ve learned from raising my boys. The worst thing you can do for someone you love is something that they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves. You gotta let them struggle with it.”

Other people stepped around us to get to the dressing and the croutons. I whispered to Robin, “But this is my life, too. I have to sit back and wait to see what was going to happen with MY LIFE?”

“You have to let HIM fix it. Or not fix it. If you keep fixing things every time a man messes up, it just cuts his balls right off him.”

Damn if she wasn’t RIGHT. Man, woman, child, whatever–how can we ever learn if someone else is always swooping in to hang the coat or find the path or claim our mistakes? I think of this conversation so much now that I’m a parent. I have lots of time for thinking, when I’m doing all that waiting.

Sid, the Christmas Kid

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Yesterday, when I picked up Carlos from school, a little boy named Sid came tearing up to me. He leaned in close and whispered, “I bwought a secret present for Carlos. It’s a book.” Then he held his finger to his lips and said, “Don’t tell him!” Sid has twinkling brown eyes, an elfin face, and a brown bowl of a haircut. He seriously could be an elf.

I promised him that I wouldn’t tell.

Their class is doing a Secret Santa book exchange on Friday. As luck has it (or maybe clever teacher planning), Carlos got Sid’s name in the drawing. The only thing I know about Sid, apart from his cuteness and enthusiasm, is that he dressed as Superman for Halloween. How do I remember that? Because Carlos did too and the two of them sat next to each other at the party. Super Duo.

So I bought a couple of Little Golden Books–one about Superman and one about Spiderman. Tonight, after the kids were asleep, I got out the wrapping paper and the tape and the scissors then got to work. The first gift wrapped this year!

10854498_10204502848964267_7232412303449048479_oWhen the red bow was tied, I stepped back and felt my heart crack open with gladness. That feeling of knowing that the gift will be appreciated. That the wrapping paper and the big bow will delight a small person.  I enjoyed the moment when all the bustle and to-do lists of this season turned into joy at the chance to delight one tiny boy who took such delight in having a surprise for my little boy.

I hope Sid likes his books. The instructions for the Secret Santa swap said to label the present for the kid who will receive it. Didn’t say anything about putting the name of the kid who is giving it. Sid won’t know these books are from Carlos and he certainly won’t need to thank me next time I see him. But I wrote this to thank him. Thank you, Sid, for sharing your secret with me. For sharing your excitement. For giving me the chance to give.

And this whole Secret Santa thing? It’s like having a secret identity. Like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne.

By day, the kid knows me as Carlos’ Mom. But by night, I am Baddest Mother Ever!

 

Carlos Ate the Driveway

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934876_1004365842912945_5823730810623982525_nMy mom came over this weekend so G and I could get our shopping done. We snuck off on Sunday morning and left her with Vivi, Carlos…and A Project.

When we returned a few hours later, Vivi met me at the door with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

“Carlos ate the driveway.”

“What?”

“Carlos ATE the DRIVEWAY.”

10372134_1004136566269206_4083028438181455718_nGrandma’s gingerbread village kit had been a huge success–until it turned from art project to “pile of frosting and candy sitting within arm’s reach of a little boy.”

 

G and I never saw the little house looking like this. See the colorful little candies that line the path to the front door. Carlos ate the driveway, like she said.

Each red gumdrop–“volcanos” as he had called them–that dotted the top of the roof? Gone.

I assured Vivi that she had done the same thing with our first gingerbread house, five years ago. I protected that thing from her as best I could and it still ended up with a looooot of white space. Every night after lights out, I would hear little feet sneaking into the dark dining room and nibbling the shingles off the roof. 10846030_1004365269579669_3488541587998234951_n

Who WOULDN’T eat a pile of frosting and candy that was right there in front of you?

We’ve put the gingerbread village on the table, on the mantle, next to the Elf who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on things…no luck. Carlos doesn’t wait until lights out. He saunters through the den with a shed in hand, gnawing around the brittle snow on the roof to get to the one last green jawbreaker that’s wedged in there. And I don’t even bat an eye anymore. Even Vivi has given up complaining about it.

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Making gingerbread houses–or traditions or homes or families. It’s not so much about the end product as it is about the joyful work we do together.

Learning to hold the walls together with a little sweetness and patience, just like Grandma taught you.

Letting kids get messy, even if it means cleaning sugar frosting off the windowsill, the bunkbed, a couple of rugs and somebody’s bangs.

Accepting that what we create isn’t going to look like the picture on the box.

Being kind to the brother who eats your driveway. Because you used to chew the roof yourself.

 

No Milk, Two Sugars

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coffee-239716_1280The other day, I came back from lunch and I stopped into Nicole’s office to tell her that I had run into one of the Big Bosses on the stairs and had asked him about a situation that needed clearing up.

She stared at my boobs. Well, boob. The right one, to be exact.

“You talked to him just now?”

“Yeah!”

Then she burst out laughing and pointed to my chest. I looked down to discover that my sweaty drink cup, which I had brought back from lunch, had brushed up against my red shirt and left a giant nipple-sized wet spot right on the bullseye. Nice.

No wonder that dude was so agreeable. I should have asked about the capital budget.

I laughed it off, but it did remind me of the days when I was nursing my babies or pumping at work and those kinds of mishaps were a real thing to think about.

And today, my friend Janelle from Renegade Mothering shared a picture of her cute new haircut and had to add, “Don’t mind the naked breastfeeding picture. I was stuck.” The curve of her sweet baby’s head in the corner of the picture took me back to those days of being stuck. The very best kind of stuck, when I spent hours in a rocking chair with my baby and a book. Lying curled together on the bed in the small hours of the night. A time when my #1 responsibility was sitting still and helping someone else grow. Those were the good old days.

I’m not trying to start a debate about breast feeding over formula. Or next to formula or after or behind or whatever. Vivi nursed until the week before her second birthday and it was a wonderful time in my life. Carlos weaned himself after 15 months. I was sad then because I knew it would be the last time that I would sit so still while helping someone grow.

Today, I was thinking about all this as Carlos and I walked in the house after school. My hand brushed the top of his head as he sailed past me and I said, “My sugar.”

That’s how I’ll take this next part of mothering–no milk, two sugars.

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Sweet Cheeks

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November 8, 2014

November 8, 2014

He was born at 6:25 a.m., the morning after Christmas.

The whole world lay quiet under a snowy blanket, glowing in the lavender light before sunrise.

Eight pounds, five ounces.

Twenty inches long.

His first word was Da-da.

I’ve seen him eat three bananas in a row.

I have video of his laugh, how he laughs until he has to gasp for breath.

I have his first curls from his first haircut.

There’s a picture of him pulling up for the first time, on the corner of his great-grandparents’ traveling trunk.

He’s finally getting the hang of talking. He’s even learned how to complain “Aw, MAN.” I write down the funny things that he says in his journal.

I try to remember, to hold on.

But how will I ever remember the feel of his cheek?

One day, if he is lucky enough to live a long and ordinary life, his cheek will grow rough and prickly. How will I remember the silky curve of his cheek beneath my fingertips?

Touch is a sense we can’t hold on to. What our fingers have known, we have to let go.

 

Happy Birfday, Mommy

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balloon-406208_1280Today was my birthday. It was happy.

Eventually.

The alarm went off. The kids had to be fed. The socks are never where they’re supposed to be. The dog wants out. The dog wants in. I wasn’t expecting much, but dang. G was the only one who had acknowledged my birthday in any way.

Finally, from the kitchen, he asked the kids if they had wished me a happy birthday. From the dining room, Victoria spoke in that perfectly flat teenage voice, “happy. birthday.” Vivi didn’t even look over from the couch as she echoed the sentiment with the same enthusiasm.

OK, it’s early. But dang.

Then Carlos, sitting beside me on the couch, looked me straight in the eye. “Hap-py Birfday, Mommy!” The kid who gets speech therapy. The kid who wasn’t connecting with people.

What color pony do you want, little boy? Because right now? Mommy wants to give you anything you want. I made such a fuss over him and he giggled and wiggled.

Three little words. The gift of those three tiny words carried me on through the business of the morning.

A while later, I met a man who looked familiar on the sidewalk outside my office. His son and Carlos are in class together. We introduced ourselves and started talking about our kids. We got deeper into the Spectrum Talk, about how our ideas of who our kids will be have to shift as we learn more about how they live in this world. This dad said, “I used to hope for throwing the football with my son. That’s OK if that doesn’t happen. But I would like to hear him call me ‘Dad,’ just once.” This beautiful son, who holds his father’s hand as they walk into school, has never called either of his parents “Mom” or “Dad.” Those words aren’t gifts that he can give just yet.

My boy’s birthday gift to me grew even more precious after that chance meeting on the sidewalk.

It was a lovely day, filled with kind messages, lunch with friends, sweet gifts and so much laughter. G had offered to fetch all three kids after school so I could take my time. I drove home with the windows down and the sun patting the top of my head. Simply happy and feeling loved.

Then the strangest thing happened.

I turned onto a little street where Richard and I once looked at a house that was for sale. It belonged to an older couple who were eager to sell so they could move closer to their daughter. The father had become ill and the mother needed her daughter’s help. The small, tired woman had told us this as we stood under a kiwi vine in the backyard. I remember it so vividly because I knew already that we didn’t want this house, but neither Richard or I was going to leave while she still had things to show us. She was enjoying having someone to talk to. We admired her yard and promised that we would call the realtor for more information. Then we left and went on with our lives.

So today, as I was driving past that same house, I caught a glimpse into that yard through the patchy hedge. Tables and folding chairs sat scattered across the grass. Pink tablecloths and bunches of balloons shifted in the breeze. Paper plates and ketchup bottles, bright bags and wrapped boxes. A birthday party.

I got this odd feeling, it being my birthday and all, and me having once thought of living in that house with the person I loved then–I got the strange idea in my head that it WAS a birthday party for me, for the me in a parallel life who bought that house and made a life there.

I drove right by that other me, having a party, and it was strange but OK. Maybe I don’t know how to explain this, but my life has taken such drastic turns that I sometimes cross paths with a ghost or a memory or a maybe of what might have been my life. Like that time I got the letter from the retirement company that listed Richard’s age as 46. He died when he was 38. But for a second, looking at that letter, I had the feeling that he was off somewhere on one of those parallel tracks. Maybe throwing a football with his son. Even that was strange but OK.

Every one of us who has made any choice or survived any kind of change or gotten any surprises along the way has felt that shadow of the other life that might have been. We’re going about our day, but out of the corner of the eye, just a glimpse through a gap in the hedge.

My car kept going and it wound up at home, in this life with the three kids and G and the house that Richard gave to us.

When I walked in the door, Carlos pointed to the fruit snacks G had given him and said, “I ate red AND blue!” (Mean old Mommy makes him choose one or the other, but Daddy…Daddy has his own ways.)

Then that son–the one I got and not the ones that I imagined–my son looked at me and said, “Happy Birfday, Mommy.” Unprompted.

What a gift. May I always treasure it.

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Kids In the Hall

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After we got the kids to bed tonight, I came into the den to discover that the carpet was covered in a colorful blanket of tiny paper slivers that Carlos had cut from a junk mail circular.  No big deal–I had given him the safety scissors and the flyer before I walked out to take a call from my friend, Rachel.  It’s just that in the 30 minutes I was occupied….yeah, those of you with kids are laughing right now, right?  What could go wrong??  

He hadn’t cut his hair or the sofa or the dog’s tail.  But he had sliced up the program from Vivi’s theater camp performance, a stack of yellow Post It notes, a bag that had held some leftover chips from Willy’s, a few other pieces of mail, and one very special list that he unearthed from the back of my desk drawer.  

When G came in and found me standing there in the middle of the paper flurry, transfixed by the piece of white paper that I held in my hand, he asked, “Did he cut up something important?”  I considered his question.  “Not important.  Just…old.”  

Here’s what remains:

hall

 

I wrote this list in 2004, when Richard and I bought this house together.  I lived here by myself for a couple of months before he moved back to Georgia, so while I was getting the place habitable, I jotted down ideas for every room.  I found the notepad a few years ago and stuck it in the back of the desk drawer.  There are still some good ideas on there but they don’t exactly fit my current living situation.  I like the note about getting pictures from Helen–I wanted to surprise Richard with some family snapshots from his childhood in our first home.  But a gray and white paint scheme with window pane checks and black and white picture frame collage?  These were the ramblings of a woman who had:

A.  HGTV Poisoning

B.  An irrational belief in the power of painter’s tape

C.  No children

D.  No idea what a Magic Eraser was, much less why a homeowner might need one

Here’s how that hallway turned out.  It’s still yellow, still dark, still got the scratches on the doors.  There’s one door covered in butterfly stickers.  One door with a warning sign Vivi drew of all the things that aren’t allowed in a baby nursery (sharp things, chokies, balloons, gum, etc).  There’s the bathroom door with a big hook lock on the outside that G installed after Carlos plugged up the toilet so bad that we had to replace the whole thing (it was a kid’s vitamin bottle).  There’s the door to the room with the big bed where we all piled up together on Sunday morning.  Where Carlos bounces then puts his hands on his hips and declares, “Dis not a trampoline.  Dis a BED!”  There’s the traveling trunk that belonged to my great-grandparents. That’s what Carlos leaned against when he was first learning to stand.  Above the trunk hangs a Matisse poster that I bought in London on my first big adventure.  Vivi used it to learn her colors.  

So I never got to the ideas on that list.  Maybe the hall didn’t need that much work; maybe it will get some real attention one day.  We have made one “improvement.”  I called in a muralist who expressed his own vision on the wall beside the bathroom door.  I think he really captured the cacophony of modern life rendered against the clean lines of the mid-century modern aesthetic.  He’s a real up and comer.  

hall2

 

Even Magic Eraser couldn’t clean it off, so I guess it will be there for a while.

Ouch.

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Carlos has been sick this week in that special confounding way that small children do.  He spiked a fever on Monday afternoon and had to leave school early, but after one squirt of Motrin he was chasing the cat around and giggling madly.  I stayed home with him all day Tuesday and felt like a real dummy because he was FINE.  We jumped on the trampoline, played in the sandbox, ate black grapes and dried apple chips in the sunshine, and we didn’t take a nap.

teddy-242868_640Then five minutes after the urgent care place closed, he reached up and touched his right ear gently and said, “Mommy, hurt.  Ouch.”  After a couple of hours of misery, his ear drum burst and the fever came raging back.  Ear infections are such assholes.  He spent the whole night suffering and I did too, right beside him.  Little ones get sick in the blink of an eye.  But they get better just as quickly.  Hopefully they do.

This is the first time that Carlos has been sick since he really started talking. “Ouch.” “Carlos hurts, Mommy.” “Carlos not want medicine.”  It’s always hard to see your child suffering, but it’s really difficult when they are old enough to communicate to you how bad they feel, but not old enough to understand how swallowing that yucky medicine is going to make their ear feel better.  Or why the kindly doctor needs to ram a swab in that pitiful ear to take a culture specimen.  Three-year-olds inhabit a very immediate world.  The hurt is right here, right now, but the healing is some other place, days away, down a strange path of jabs and glop and ointments.  He must think we are crazy to do these things to him.  

 

"Carlos water the flowlers."

“Carlos water the flowlers.”

And today?  He’s back to being his old self.  After dinner, when he told me that he didn’t want to take his medicine, I said, “I hear you.  I understand you don’t like it.  But Dr. Setia said that’s the best way to get your ear to feel better.  It won’t be for much longer.”  And dang if the little man didn’t sit there and take his glop and jabs and ointment like a champ.  We only had to chase him down the hall once and there was no hog-tying involved whatsoever.  

These moments of parenting remind me of what my sister said about doing a med school rotation in the Emergency Department:  “It’s hour after hour of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer chaos and panic.”  Yep.  

Little Old WHAT?

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THIS is a "granny."

THIS is a “granny.”

My writer friend Chris taught me a lesson this week and I appreciated her opening my eyes.  Because, like most lessons, it came right back to bite me in the butt within 48 hours.

On Monday, I wrote that story “Shine Through” about my return to Wesleyan for Alumnae Weekend.  In it, I made an offhand reference to “eavesdropping on a couple of little old ladies.”  Chris emailed me later that day and said,

“Hey, I think we’re good enough friends for me to say this.  (We are.)  ‘Little old ladies?’  Think about removing that from your vocabulary.  It’s talking in stereotypes.  Would you call me that?”

Now, for the record, Chris IS somewhat of an authority on this because she is an actual five-foot-tall woman who has been celebrating birthdays since 1932.  So technically, someone could look at her and think little + old + lady.  But that someone would be seeing an idea of her, not her.

Huh.

I replied, “Of course I wouldn’t call YOU that!  You’re a badass.”  This woman is funny and smart and iron-jawed and gentle and fierce and kind.  She’s had her heart broken beyond measure.  She was a computer programmer when that was a man’s game.  She’s a grandmother to two of the coolest kids in the world.  She’s facing a tough Mother’s Day this year because her daughter died in the fall.  She knits.  She doesn’t cook.  She writes stories.  She’s a breast cancer survivor.  She’s my friend.

If you saw her toodling down the street in her big ole Buick, white curls blowing in the breeze and a sensible sweater over her shoulders, you wouldn’t know all those things about her.

Sure, “little old lady” isn’t the worst thing you can call someone, but it’s dismissive in a thoughtless way.  It doesn’t see the real person, just the stereotype.  That’s why I thanked Chris for saying something.

And then came the aforementioned biting of the butt.  Two moments happened to me this week that had me thinking about age and the assumptions we make based on it.

The first moment happened at that same Wesleyan reunion.  After the big meeting, my classmate Tara and I were standing on the front porch talking in the sunshine.  As people came and went, I spoke to just about everyone.  Gave some directions.  Answered questions about events.  Near us, an alumna sat in one of the rocking chairs.  At one point, she reached out for my arm and asked, “Are you a student?”

Oh, how Tara and I laughed!  My first thought was that I was just so darn cute and charming that she thought I was still a teenager. Easy mistake to make!  I leaned closer to her so she could see my gray hair and said, “Good grief, no!  I’m 45 years old!”  I giggled a girlish little giggle.

She flapped her hand at me and said, “Oh, well…I’m blind.”

Ah.

That explains it.  I owe my youthful charm to macular degeneration.

The second thing that got me thinking about age happened yesterday.  We had that awful windstorm in the early morning so trees were down all over town.  Carlos’ day care had to close because they had no power.  He and I had an impromptu adventure day together.  We came home from our trip to the library to discover that two fire trucks were parked on our street, just a couple of doors down.  We wandered over to see what was going on.  A tree had fallen onto a power line and caused some sparking, so the fire fighters were babysitting it (their words!) until the power company could get there.  We had one 3-year-old boy who likes fire trucks right there with six bored fire fighters, a fire truck that still smelled like smoke from an earlier call, and a gigantic hook and ladder truck.  Carlos was in heaven!

Those men were so sweet to my boy.  Carlos doesn’t like loud noises, so he stood there the whole time with his hands over his ears, worried that the siren was going to surprise him.  One man opened the doors of the truck, showed Carlos the hatch on the front that holds the nozzle, even offered to let him sit in the driver’s seat.  Carlos just said, “No!” and “Wow!”  It was precious.  One of the older fire fighters and I were talking about the whole fear of loud sounds thing.  He said his granddaughter doesn’t even like it when his cows get to mooing.

Anywho…after a while they got the word that one truck could leave.  So the nice fire fighter looks at Carlos and says, “Ask Granny to take you back in the yard now!”

Um.

Excuse me?

GRANNY???  It’s not the first time someone has mistaken me for Carlos’ grandmother.  I do have silver hair and an imperious bosom.  But DANG.  Do I look like a GRANNY?  Maybe a “Mimi” or a “Nana” or something sassy like “Gigi” or “GaGa” but GRANNY???

Damn.

Who does he think I am, some little old lady?

Ouch.

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Get to know Chris better through this wonderful blog post:  “Child of the Thirties.”  It even has pictures!