IslandRoar

One Man and His Flashlight

God, I hate sharing bad news. My dad died Monday morning and I'm down in Florida with my mom. So I won't be posting or around visiting and commenting on all your lovely sites for a bit.

I know many of you have lost a parent and, let's face it, we've all lost someone, so I know you know how I'm feeling. And I thank you in advance for your kind thoughts and well-wishes. You are all wonderful, loyal bloggy buds.

I ran this post last year on my father, and I hope you'll indulge me for repeating it now as a small homage to a man who meant the world to me.

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This is a story about a man and his flashlight.

When I was growing up, my father's flashlight was legendary. Every night he put the house to bed, turning out the lights and locking the doors. Then he would switch on his flashlight to check on me and my sister.

Mostly we were asleep, but I have memories of lying there, with my eyes squinted shut in the darkness, as the beam of his flashlight played across the room. It made us feel secure and loved; nothing could go wrong while my father was on duty.

For a time, my sister and I shared a room with bunk beds. One night I tossed my prized stuffed doll up at her on the top bunk. As she dangled it back down the side at me, we both pulled on it and an arm tore off.

I was devastated. I lay there, forcing my eyes to stay open, waiting for my father to make his rounds and check on us before he went to bed. Finally the door knob turned and the light hit me, awake in my bunk. In tears, I held out the doll and its amputated limb.

My mother had that arm reattached by the time I woke up the next morning.

One of our holiday traditions, and one that I've continued with my own kids, was for my father to read us The Night Before Christmas every Christmas Eve. Except that he did it by flashlight, while we lay in bed in the dark. He did the same thing the night before Easter, with our big book Here Comes Peter Cottontail.

He was the parent in charge of bad dreams. When I awoke, trembling, and called out, my father would appear, his flashlight lighting the way. He never seemed tired or impatient as he sat on the bed, talking to me in the flickering darkness until I felt safe enough to go back to sleep. It was a side of him I seldom saw during daylight hours.

Me, I don't use flashlights very often. I have a couple around for blackouts, yet I'm more of a feel-my-way-around-in-the-dark-kind of girl.

But when Daughter #2 and I were down in Florida staying with my parents last year, and I saw my father still using one every night as he closed up the house, the memories came flooding back. My daughter did not understand how I could be sentimental over a flashlight.

But I knew, without a doubt, that I would sleep safe and sound the whole time I was there.

 

Heat Wave

The past couple of weeks here on Martha's Vineyard have been some of the hottest I can remember.

I'm not complaining; I like a little heat. Growing up in NJ I was used to steamy summers. And when the kids were small our little house was often sealed up for days against the heat, air conditioning running day and night.

This is our 10th summer living on the Vineyard. There's not a lot of air conditioning out here. We just open all the doors and windows and let in that amazing sea breeze. Maybe turn on a fan or two when the temps crawl over 80.

But the thermometer in my back window has hit well over 90 several days recently, and over 100 at least twice. And suddenly my children (and I use the term loosely as they're 16, 19, and 22) morph from rather reasonably articulate beings into whining spoiled toddlers.

"It's sooo HOT. I'm dying," my youngest moans yet again, sprawling across the family room couch with about 10 (okay, four) fans blowing directly upon her. "Can you please put in an air conditioner?"

She is referring to the small window air conditioner we have stored in the garage that once spent its summers in a NJ attic bedroom.

But for some reason I dig in my heels. It's not that uncomfortable with all the fans going. I mean, you don't really need to hear yourself think over the whirring of the fan blades, right? And if I put in the air conditioner I'd have to hang up sheets in doorways to trap the cool air in the family room and keep it from drifting off into the rest of my sauna-like house.

"Why don't you hang out in the basement?" I offer one more time. This is actually a great idea. The basement is finished and has a wonderful cozy room complete with couches and TV and a game system. Most importantly, it's nice and cool.

"I don't want to be in the basement. I want to be up here," she wails. "But it's too hot."

Kids today.

When I was growing up we didn't have any AC. Just a pitiful attic fan that my parents pretended actually made our nights a little less unbearable when all it really did was blow hot air around.

My mother would command my sister and I to strip to our underwear and go play in our unfinished concrete basement to keep cool. Sure it was dark down there, but it was at least 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house.

If we were really lucky she'd turn the hose on us or set up the sprinkler. Or maybe even send us over to call on the trashy neighbors she didn't approve of, but who had a swimming pool.

Do my children realize how fortunate they are to live on an island off the coast of New England? Are they aware how much hotter it is in-land? And how lucky they are to have a pool, a cool finished basement, and the promise of cooler nights, courtesy of the ocean mist that rolls in like clockwork each evening?

No, of course they don't. Because lord knows, each of them has at least one friend with AC so why can't we have it too? Maybe if they were over 65 and had heart conditions I'd consider it. But I'll choose to be stubborn on this one.

"You'll live," I tell my daughter, channeling my mother.

And perhaps, in the meantime, I'll take her out for some ice cream. Ice cream, I believe, makes everyone happy.

And... the store has air conditioning.

How are you surviving the weather where you live this summer?

 

Friendships Made of Steel

I had an email from an old friend from New Jersey last week. One of my best friends.

Her middle son will be going to college in Boston next fall, a stone's throw away from Martha's Vineyard. And her oldest just graduated from Rutgers.

She sent photos of her three boys at the graduation. The pictures made me cry.

I still remember the day I saw her pull into the driveway of the house across the street, the house she was moving into.

I grabbed First-Born Son, who was four at the time, and ran across the road to say hello. She had one son balanced on her hip, another at her side. It turned out they were were locked out of the house and her five year-old needed to pee. Now.

So they came back across the street with us, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It is always this time of year, right around the time I moved away, that I miss her most. Miss her, miss New Jersey.

 Don't get me wrong, I love Martha's Vineyard, and moving here is the best thing I ever did. But I see the photos she sent and I am transported back in time.

 A time filled with sweet baby faces and small sticky hands. Backyard barbecues and wading pools. Christmas cookies and birthday parties.

But also, there was my crumbling marriage. And the fifty-odd parenting crises each week. The angst over careers and writing, and what was it we wanted to do with the rest of our lives.

She was there for all of it. Even when she had no idea what I was going through, it helped to know she was just across the street. And all I had to do was look out my windows and see the lights on in hers.

How is it possible that both of our oldest children are young men in their early 20's when it seems like only last month they were conducting scientific experiments with kitchen products in my bathtub?

We have navigated this last almost-decade of our lives without the benefit of daily sightings and weekly check-ins. But some bonds, because of where we're at and who we are at the time they're formed, remain steady for life.

Bullet-proof, like Superman. If he was lucky enough, and strong enough, to be a woman.

 

A Better Beach Blanket

First-Born Son recently went with his GF's family on their annual vacation to the Outer Banks. He was gone for almost two weeks and he barely called the whole time.

I know, I know; he's 22, I'm expecting too much. Damn straight!

Apparently cell phone service was difficult to come by. "Have you ever heard of a pay phone?" I asked. "I don't suppose you looked for one of those?"

"A pay phone?" Even through the phone I could hear him shaking his head, albeit with great affection. "You're funny Mom."

Well, I thought, anything to entertain.

He went on to tell me what a great time they were having. How wonderfully he was getting along with the family. Everyone was taking turns cooking dinner and it was his turn that night. He had to get off the phone so he and the GF could go food shopping.

I was happy for him, really I was. Yet at the same time microscopic pinpricks of jealousy jabbed at my heart.

He liked their family better than ours. He wanted to be with them more than us.

I envisioned us, years down the road, me begging him to come visit. So I could see him, see my grandchildren. Him patiently explaining that they had "other plans."

You don't have to tell me I'm a big fat irrational baby; I've got it. But I can't help it.

"It's the potato-chips-on-the-beach-blanket all over again," The Ex said, when I confessed my petty complaint.

He was right.

It's always been like this with First-Born Son. When we brought him to the beach as a baby, we couldn't keep him on our beach blanket. He'd crawl off across the sand to someone else's. Someone with a better blanket, one offering oreos or potato chips.

"Oh, you can leave him here. Please, " people would say when we tried to retrieve him. "We love having him."

That's always been the problem. Everyone loves having him. He's everyone's friend. The life of the party.

So it's not as though I haven't had lots of practice sharing him with the world over the years. Whether I wanted to or not.

But he's so seldom home these days. And even when he's here, he's not really here. His heart is in NYC. With his friends, his work in film school, his beloved GF.

As it should be.

There will always be another beach blanket to crawl off to. One with better chips than we could possibly ever have. I know that.

But it doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

Making My Mark

Recently I had to get most of my rather large backyard dug up to accommodate a new septic system, and with the ensuing mess and chaos, I couldn't help but think of my mother.

I have written before on my mother's fastidious neatness . It can only be described as over the top, if not slightly cuckoo.

My every instinct was to respond to the septic mess much like she would, angsting over the heavy machinery left in our yard for days, every breath terse with anxiety for the two months, from the time the yard was first dug up till finally the landscapers seeded the new lawn and replanted my beloved red maple tree.

But I refused to go there, to that place of eternal control where we are doomed to failure. Every time. Instead of lamenting my lack of a picture-perfect yard on Easter Sunday, we posed for photos on the heavy equipment and newly installed, but still exposed, septic tank itself.

When the sidewalk from the deck to the pool was accidentally broken to pieces I shrugged. Oh well, it can be fixed.

I recalled how determined my mother had been, some 35 years ago, that there were not to be any marks spoiling the freshly cemented sidewalk in front of our house when we were kids. We were off visiting my grandma the day the concrete was poured, so my mother made my father surround it with saw horses and caution tape. Then she paid two neighborhood boys five dollars each to guard it with their lives until we returned home late that night.

I know, nobody wants their sidewalk spoiled. Yet there's something awfully tempting about that smooth ivory surface, just begging for someone to leave a permanent engraving for the ages. Or at least until the next time a new sidewalk is laid.

With this in mind, I gulped and bit my tongue when Daughter #2 begged to make her mark on our freshly repaired back walkway.

Come on," she pleaded. "It'll be there even when we don't live here anymore. I can show my kids."

I took a deep breath and exhaled. My mother would so not approve. But I am not my mother.

"Okay," I told her. "But be neat. How about just your initials, and maybe the date?"

We walked outside together and surveyed the pristine, freshly laid cement rectangle. And then, feeling rather proud of myself, I handed her the stick.

 

On The Precipice

The 2009 holiday season was the first since my three kids were small that there was no holiday concert for me to attend.

First-Born Son was always in band, and he and Daughter #1 both took chorus all through high school. Daughter #2 wound up dropping chorus this year to accommodate other classes, other interests.

Thus no holiday concert, and no spring concert this month.

This is also the first year I have no one in dance class. Both of my daughters started dance in kindergarten. Daughter #1 went all the way through high school, but Daughter #2 was always on again/off again. And this year she's off.

So, no new dance shoes with their fresh leathery smell. No tap-tapping around the kitchen while the table's being cleared. No year-end dance recital next month.

It's kind of sad.

I felt the same way about basketball when First-Born Son was no longer on the Vineyard high school team. I missed everything about it. The smell of the gym. The squeak of their sneakers on the polished wooden floors as they ran up and down the court. The horn that blares out to end the half.

Of course, there is another side to all this nostalgia.

I don't have to fork out the cash for those very expensive dance or basketball shoes. I don't have to drive kids to and fro to endless practices and classes, go to parent's booster meetings, or write monthly tuition checks to dance schools.

I've enjoyed a good run at this parenting thing being a main focus in my life. But now I'm down to one kid living at home full time, and for only two more years at that.

I try and remember this when I sit shivering through her field hockey games or drive her to weekend play rehearsals.

Things that seemed destined to go on forever were, in fact, fleeting.

It's bittersweet. I need a moment or two to take it all in. Digest. Look back with longing.

Then ahead with anticipation.

 

Peter Pan

When First-Born Son was four, the director of his nursery school accused me of not pushing him enough. I'd always considered her a fairly even-keeled, decent person, which made her attack on me and my son all the more appalling.

To be fair, she was upset because she wanted to move him into a class for kids that turned five before the winter but weren't attending kindergarten. It involved more sitting and work on pre-reading and writing skills, and I definitely did not want my very antsy, active little boy in this class. The whole reason I'd chosen the school had to do with their emphasis on play.

But when I refused to let her move him she went off on me.

"He doesn't even know how to ride a tricycle." This woman was practically yelling at me in the hall outside of her office.

"Yes, he does," I insisted.

"Well, he doesn't do it here."

They had a huge basement with bikes and play equipment for rainy days, and  apparently First-Born Son had not availed himself of the tricycles.

"Maybe because he can do that at home." I tried to be reasonable, always a mistake with irrational people.

"All he does is run around and rile the other kids up, getting them all to play Peter Pan or some other elaborate game," she went on.

Seriously?

This educator of pre-school children was upset because my son chose imaginary play and had the power to get the other kids involved?

I was so surprised that I actually sort of laughed in her face.

He wound up staying in his original class, and had a wonderful teacher and a great year.

But I think of that director from time to time. Especially now that First-Born Son, at 22, is attending film school and directing actors in his own movies, that are based on the stories from his imagination.

I'll have to let her know when he does his own re-make of Peter Pan.

 

The Ring

I told you about my high school boyfriend, the one I made out with in the rectory?

He went to a private all boys Catholic prep school. Everything at this school was just that tiniest bit grander. Including his high school ring, a colossal ornate affair with engraving on every side and a gold cross affixed under the stone.

Of course the ring was barely in his possession for one day before it was passed along to moi.

The wait had been almost more than I could endure. When finally he called to tell me to meet him at Cooper's Pond for the hand-off, I fairly flew out of the house.

Ignoring completely my mother's warning that dinner was to be served in 20 minutes whether I was there or not. And that mine would be thrown in the trash if I was late.

Yes, I was late. And yes, my dinner was in the trash. My mother was nothing if not truthful. But who needed food when they had love and a monstrous new ring, wrapped around and around in pink yarn, wedged upon one's finger to prove it?

Being completely unschooled in the sophisticated ways of romantic jewelry-wear, I wore the ring on my right hand that first morning. Till Donna Cirelli informed me, with the wisdom of Yoda, that all jewelry from one's boyfriend must be worn on a left appendage if at all possible.

For her wisdom and kindness I remain grateful to this day.

I faithfully wore the ring for a year and a half. It was big. And heavy. I had skinny fingers, requiring what seemed like yards and yards of yarn to be wrapped through the ring to make it fit. I know it sounds tacky but yarn was the sizing tool of choice at the time. No doubt there is some much more lovely high-tech solution to this problem today but, in suburban New Jersey in 1978, yarn it was.

Yarn gets hot. And dirty. I was too lazy to change it as often as I should have. Instead I took to shedding the ring at night. Then not wearing it for days at a time.

Until. One day. It was gone.

Gone.

Did it fall in the trash? Could I, or my neurotically neat mother, have thrown it away by accident? Did some jealous mean girl break into my bedroom and steal it while I was at the rectory making out?

Alas, I would never know.

It took me months to confess. Finally I couldn't stand him asking me one more time, with those big puppy dog eyes that drooped endearingly like Rocky Balboa's, why I wasn't wearing it.

I got him a new ring. Exactly like the one I'd lost. It cost about a million dollars, forcing me to come clean to my mother because of course I had to ask her to loan me the money.

When the ring arrived I delivered it. STAT. Without so much as slipping it onto my finger.

For my birthday that year he gave me a gold birthstone ring to replace it. But it didn't really matter; our days were numbered.

I never did find that ring. Part of me still hopes, with some sort of wild abstract longing, that one day I'll magically open a box of old trinkets and there it will be.

Pink yarn aged and worn, but still intact.

 

Spin Cycle: Mother's Day

As a kid I dreaded Mother's Day. My own mother, for reasons unknown to me or anyone else as far as I can gather, did not do well with Mother's Day.

Thus, there was this whole elaborate tap dance performed by me, my sister, and my father, our awkward and generally useless attempt at first coaxing her out of the dark abyss the day seemed always to demand from her, and then when that failed, our doomed efforts to avoid getting in the path when the shit inevitably hit the fan.

Clearly the perfect Mother's Day gift would have been some really bitching mood enhancing drugs. Or maybe just shots of bourbon. But, being merely a kid, I was forced to get her the next best thing: plants.

Our town held a Mother's Day plant sale each year at Cooper's Pond. I would be up and out the door on my bike by 9am which was, for me, no easy feat. These days sleeping in means 8:30 tops, but as a kid, getting up before 10 on a weekend was a freakish and unusual event.

My mother loved flowering plants and, if we managed to get through the exquisite and perplexing torture the better part of the day delivered each year, things would generally return to "normal" by dinner time and the plants were sure to bring a smile.

With a history like this I shouldn't have been surprised when I became a mother and felt my own Mother's Day storm cloud attempting to envelop me each year.

There was no good explanation for my orneriness on this particular day. I chalked it up to being a product of my environment, whether I liked it or not. Who knows, maybe this was some centuries old family curse that none of us talked about but simply endured.

Yet I was determined not to succomb, and even more, not to subject my children to the doom and gloom of the Mother's Days of my youth.

With this in mind, when the kids were young, The Ex always took them out somewhere on Mother's Day, giving me the time to garden, write, or just relax and regroup.

He would deliver them home in time for everyone to take me out to dinner. By then I would be over the hump and the day would end on a high note. The apple doesn't fall far I guess.

These days the Mother's Day curse is no more. I'm not sure when it disappeared, I'm only glad it's gone. I'll make a point though, one day, to warn my daughters. Just in case.

Because really, some family cycles were made to be broken.

 

For what must surely be more upbeat Spins on Mother's Day check out Sprite's Keeper. And a most happy Mother's Day to you and yours.

 

"Those People"

The Ex grew up in  New York state.

Being more of a city girl,  I was unused to the, shall we say, eccentricities of country living when he first brought me to his hometown.

"What's with all the yard-cars and porch-couches?" I asked.

He looked around in bewilderment. "Oh, yeah." Like he'd never noticed before.

Really, I wasn't being a snob; I was just curious. Does an upholstered couch on an exterior porch actually serve a purpose? Wouldn't it get all dank and smelly, too gross to sit on?

And what's with having two or three rusted old cars hanging out in the yard, usually looking as though their wheels haven't felt the road in at least the last decade?

These things are not tolerated in the pristine utopia that is suburban New Jersey. There are meddling neighbors and zoning laws in place specifically to prevent such atrocities.

Then I moved to Martha's Vineyard. An island. Down the end of a long winding road. Definitely the country. You can't see my house from our street, and this is a good thing.

The endless gravel drive is pretty rutted after this icy winter. The house is beautifully painted. On one side. Almost completely.

Because of course this is a job The Ex wanted to do with First-Born Son last summer. You know, the whole father-son-bonding while saving-money-in-the-deal thing?

What? Doesn't everybody's ex-husband paint their house? Seriously, we both own it and the man pays the mortgage; this was not a battle I chose to engage in. All I cared about was that the house would get painted.

But of course First-Born Son worked two jobs all summer. And on his days off there was his all important sleeping schedule. Not to mention The Ex is only available on the occasional weekend to begin with.

So the house remains partially painted. And I've learned to take deep breaths each time I pull up the driveway.

Then there are our old cars. Three of them. For when my college kids are home. At any given time at least one is generally having an issue with brakes or alternators or some such crap. So I'm glad to have a spare.

Except.

We've become Those People, haven't we?

My mother, who has always made a point of living in a palace, was quite upbeat about the house when she visited last summer. "Oh, the color looks so nice, Maureen," she crooned. "Just think how great it'll be when it's all done."

I don't think she'll be that positive this year if it's not finished when she arrives.

Maybe I need to move an old couch out onto the deck. You know, to avert her gaze from the house? Think she'll be fooled?

How about you? Are there miscellaneous pieces of furniture on your front porch, or can your house rock the cover of a magazine?

Come on, be honest. Clearly I'm in no position to judge.

 

 

Nothing to Fear

When I'm at work at the library I carry my cell phone in my pocket, set on vibrate. This way, Daughter #2 can text me when she gets home from school or if plans change. Being able to reach me makes her feel secure.

The other day I wore a skirt to work. I had no pockets so I stuck my cell phone down the front of one of my cowboy boots.

Round about mid-morning I felt it vibrate. I took a quick look and saw it was a missed call from Daughter #1. Now that was odd. She's away at college and knows I'm at work. She always waits to call in the evening.

A minute later she followed up with a text. A text that filled me with, as my mother would say, THE FEAR OF GOD. This is what it said:

Mommy, Imperative that you call me!

Mommy? Okay, my kids still do call me that. But they do not write it in their texts. Ever. Add to that her use of the word imperative, and her calling at this time of day, and I was certain something terrible had occurred.

I excused myself and ran outside to call her.

She picked up right away. "Are you at work?"

"Yes, what's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing really." She paused. "I just need to buy these tickets? To this show? And I was hoping you could transfer the money to my account?"

Seriously? I endured THE FEAR OF GOD for this?

"I'll talk to you later," I told her. And went back to work.

Where had I gone wrong? Go ahead, tell me. I can take it.

I would never have called my mother at work. NEVER. Not unless I was lying in a hospital bed dying, and probably then I wouldn't have been able to call her, so I'll just stick to NEVER.

My sister and I wouldn't even go to the school nurse if we felt sick because we couldn't disturb our mother at work unless we were bleeding to death. As for my father, he may as well not have existed between the hours of 7am and 6pm.

Now, I didn't want my kids to feel that way. But obviously I've gone too far in the other direction.

Were you allowed to call your parents when they were at work? And when you're at work, what are your rules for your kids calling you?

Clearly I need to do some laying down of the law. I may not want to instill them with THE FEAR OF GOD, but I wouldn't mind a little tingle.

 

Spin Cycle: Appearance

People judge by appearances. No matter how hard we try not to, we all do it.

Of course it follows then, that we're judged by our own appearance.

There are aspects of this we have some control over. I can carefully decide what to wear to a job interview or a teacher conference, hoping to create a certain impression.

But much of it is clearly open to other people's translation.

I've been accused of being a snob a time or two (secondhand, to be sure) by people who didn't know me but were interpreting the fact that I can be very shy and quiet when I first meet someone.

This bothered me a lot the first time I heard it in college, with the result being I decided I needed to smile more. Not that that's a bad thing, but now I'd be more inclined to think that the snob comment says more about the person making it than it does about me.

People have also been known to parlay my red hair and freckled appearance into the assumption that I am naive and innocent. Of course, that one is entirely true.

In this virtual world we make all kinds of assumptions about our bloggy buds, and very little of this is based on actual appearance. Which is kind of cool.

Many moons ago when I was about eight months pregnant with First-Born Son, I had a run-in with a first-year resident on the night shift. He called from the ER wanting us to do a workup on a baby (spinal tap, blood work, etc) up on the pediatric unit instead of down in the ER where it was supposed to be done.

I was the charge nurse and I had to tell him no way. It was a crazy night and we didn't have the staff to sacrifice a nurse for the hour or more such a workup would take.

I'd never met this guy, but we argued back and forth in a way that typically does not occur. He obviously had not yet accepted the fact that nurses rule the hospital world. But, having policy and protocol behind me, I won this round.

Later, after the workup when the baby was finally admitted to the floor, he came bellowing down the hall.

"Who's Maureen?" he demanded. "I want to see Maureen."

I stood up and held out my hand, smiling sweetly. "Right here."

He fumbled for words, clearly taken aback. If he hadn't have been such a super-idiot on the phone previously I might even have felt sorry for him.

Here he was expecting to see a crazy bitch on wheels, and instead who does he meet but some pregnant Pollyanna in her very adorable maternity top complete with Peter Pan collar. I may have been 26, but I probably looked about 18.

"Ummm, yes." He shook my hand, very wisely deciding to eat his words. "Nice to meet you."

I never had any problem with him again.

To read other Spins on appearance, go visit Sprite's Keeper. You can be pretty sure that with Jen, what you read is what you get. 

 

Where's My Horse??

"Did you ride your horse to work?" One of my favorite wise-ass patrons directed this comment to me a couple weeks ago, glancing at my cowboy boots.

"Of course." I went along with the joke. "Didn't you see it tied up outside?"

I love my cowboy boots. They're the real deal. I've had some boots over the years that came close, but they had a zipper or were otherwise not up to snuff.

Daughter #1 goes to school in western Pennsylvania which, for the purpose of this post, could just as well be Wyoming. Seriously, I've been there. I kid you not.

After we dropped her off at college last August for the very first time, and as The Ex and I were starting the long, emotionally wrought trek back to Massachusetts, we passed by a big sign on the highway that read something like:

Western Wear! The Most Awesomest Boots in the Whole Wide World! Stop and assuage your broken grieving heart!!

Eureka!

"Pull off here. Quick!" I shrieked to The Ex, who was driving. And miraculously, he did just that.

Back in the day, when we were married, if I asked him to pull off the highway suddenly, for anything, he'd say ever so slowly, Oooh, soorrry, you tooold me tooo late, as he drove right on by. It was nice to see he was evolving.

Inside this amazing store was a real-life cowboy. Don't ask me to prove it to you; some things you just know. He had a western drawl and a very cool cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt and a cowboy belt.

I picked out three pairs of boots to try on. But no, he brought me an entirely different pair without even measuring my feet. And, you guessed it, they fit perfectly. Like butter.

Clearly he had cowboy magic. I've never had such comfortable boots in my life.

When we went back down there for Daughter #1's Family Weekend in October we stopped in again. Daughter #2 got a pair of tall red cowboy boots from that same cowboy. To. Die. For.

Daughter #1 claims she's not interested, but we'll see how long that lasts. As for me, I'm thinking she'll be at this college for three more years...

Roughly, that translates into three more pairs of cowboy boots, wouldn't you say?

 

 

Maureen D.

 

My younger daughter's being Confirmed recently got me thinking about my own Confirmation.

My parents did not give me a middle name. I always felt terribly cheated, which shows you what a miserable childhood I must've had, if this is all it took to piss me off.

My parents both have middle names. They gave my older sister a middle name.

Why would they give her one and not me? Were they tired? Had it been so exhausting coming up with Maureen that they just couldn't go on?

"You can pick a Confirmation name one day," my mother would tell me if I complained. "Use that."

Yes, that's right. When Catholic kids go through the sacrament of Confirmation, they get to pick a Confirmation name, generally the name of a saint.

I wasn't stupid. I knew most adult Catholics can barely even remember their Confirmation names, let alone employ them in any useful way. But then again, most of those people had parents that loved them enough to give them a middle name to start out with, so why would they need to?

I vowed that I would be different. I would not only use my Confirmation name as my middle name, I would make it part of my regular signature.

I chose Denise because in kindergarten Denise was my best friend, and I couldn't go to her birthday party since my family was visiting my grandparents in Queens that day. Apparently I was so traumatized by this whole non-event that I decided then and there I would take the name Denise as my Confirmation name.

By the time Confirmation rolled around, when I was 13, I wasn't exactly crazy about the name. And I hadn't seen Denise since we were six. But a deal's a deal. Maureen Denise it was.

That first Monday after Confirmation, I proudly wrote my new signature in the upper right hand corner of every paper: Maureen D. Hall. I thought the D was classier than writing out the whole name. More mysterious.

My social studies teacher, Mr. Bauman, circled it in red and put a big question mark beside it.

"What's with the initial?" he asked when he passed back our papers.

"That's the way I write my name now," I told him. He was so not my favorite teacher. No way was he getting anything more.

He stared at me, bewildered.

I raised my eyebrows, leaned back in my chair, and stared right back at him.

That was the end of that.

And Maureen D. Hall it's been, ever since.

What's your middle name, or were you, like me, a poor, neglected child without one?

 

"Wicked Good Post"

My kids and I swore when we moved from New Jersey to New England almost a decade ago that we wouldn't fall prey to the colloquial term wicked.

It isn't just the weather that New Englanders like to preface with this word. A person can be "wicked pissed off" as easily as a day is "wicked cold."

The kids caved first.

What did I expect? They were young, impressionable. They wanted to fit in.

"Excuse me," I interrupted Daughter #1 one night at the dinner table. "But did you just say you had a wicked long essay to write?"

She hung her 10 year-old head in shame.

Soon her siblings were saying it too.

The unusual colloquialism in my Northern New Jersey hometown was the word "spare."

I'm not sure exactly what part of speech it qualified as. We'd say things like,  "This whole day has been spare excellent," or "What's your problem? Spare bitchy?"

Sometimes we'd even just shake our heads and say, "Spare?"

As far as I know it was only my hometown that had this spare affliction. Over 10 years after I graduated and moved away, my friend dated a guy that had spent two years living there in high school.

"What's the deal with the word spare?" he demanded of me.

I could offer no reasonable explanation, but I was kind of glad to know the term was still floating around town.

On Martha's Vineyard the word dank has a unique meaning among the young. Rather than referring to something damp or dark, as the term suggests, dank here implies something is really good.

A new video game? Dank.

A new car? So dank.

The surrounding sea seems to have confined the expression to the Vineyard so far. But feel free to steal it if you'd like.

Any crazy local or regional words bantered about where you live or in your past? Please share them.

Because that would be, like, Spare Wicked fun?

 

Island Cowgirl?

I don't post on weekends as a general rule, but when one of my favorite bloggy buds, The South Dakota Cowgirl, asked me to do a guest-post while she was away this weekend, I said of course.

So come on over and leave me a comment. It'd make me really happy!

And thanks, Jen!

 

Let There Be Light

Sunrise? Sunset?

What is it with humans and light? We joke about bugs being drawn to any light source, but really, we're not that different.

I'm old enough to remember when Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) was first recognized as an actual condition, and I've known several people in my life who use a lamp in the winter to fight it.

There are whose who mock the whole thing, as though people who succumb to SAD are just a pansy-assed group of wimps.

But if we think about it honestly, I believe each of us find ourself seeking out light in our own life. And I'm not being metaphorical here. I mean actual light.

Light is a huge factor in painting, photography, all of the arts.

And scientifically speaking, we humans were not engineered to function very well in the dark. Sunlight brought clarity, warmth, and safety.

Night? Well, night is dark. And scary. Cold and long.

Even though I'm a night owl, I've been drawn to light my whole life. I can never stop myself from glancing in the windows of houses I drive by at night; they always seem so warm and inviting.

I'm infatuated with candles, and twinkling lights of any sort. I love driving toward a city at night, its skyline lit up with the possibility of what might be going on behind each one of those glowing windows.

As a child, my favorite part of driving home from my grandma's was the approach to the George Washington Bridge at night, its spectacularly shining arches spanning the Hudson as we headed back to New Jersey from the Bronx.

But I'm picky with my light. It can't be flashing like a strobe light, or too bright as in fluorescent. When energy-saving bulbs first appeared I balked at their abrasiveness and wouldn't use them in the parts of my house where I spent the most time. Fortunately, they've gotten better.

I need my light to be soft and inviting, to wrap itself gently about me, not knock me around the room with its harshness.

What I liked most about camping was always the campfire. And here on the Vineyard, my favorite part of a great beach party is, without a doubt, the bonfire at the end of the night.

Flames are mesmerizing. Light come to life.

Perhaps this is on my mind because the days are slowly getting longer. A little more light, a little more hope, each day.

How about you? Do you find yourself affected by light, or lack of it? Are you a moth, like me, or do you run for cover, a true creature of the night?

 

 

Spin Cycle: Sixth Sense

The sixth sense.

Remember back in the day when we used to call it ESP (extrasensory perception)? Does anyone ever say that anymore?

My last post dealt with trusting my gut, which surely has a lot to do with a sixth sense.

I believe we all have this ability, to a greater or lesser degree. It's probably what helped our cave-people ancestors realize they might be in danger.

As in: Hey, why is the hair on the back of my neck standing up? I think I better get the hell out of here. And then the next day they notice the saber-toothed tiger tracks that weren't there the day before.

Today, it seems our sixth sense is either on its way out on the evolutionary scale, or we just don't pay as much attention.

I do think these things can be hereditary, like long legs and a short temper. I've always encouraged my kids to stop, listen to their gut feelings, and then try to follow them.

When they were younger and guessed something I was about to say, I told them "You must be psychic."

One time, the UPS guy came and Daughter #2, barely five, predicted what was in the package.

"You're so smart, "I told her. "How did you know?"

I'll never forget the look of pride on her little face. "That's because I'm psycho," she declared. "Right, Mommy?"

I tried not to laugh, I swear.

It turned out Angelica on Rugrats had called herself psycho when she thought she knew what people were thinking. Daughter #2 took it from there.

It wasn't such a big leap, really.

I mean, this is a child who ran screaming down the hall at 19 months old to lock herself in the bathroom because she didn't get her way.

Psychic? Psycho?

Maybe a little of both?

(Love you to pieces, Daughter #2. But you know it's true...)

 

For more Psychic Spins, I've got a very strong feeling you should go visit Sprite's Keeper.

March 5th

Today is Daughter #1's 19th birthday. The beginning of the end of her teens.

And we all know what comes after that, right?

Adulthood. Whatever that means.

Young adulthood's kind of like March, an illusion.

March wants us to believe that winter might actually come to an end. That spring is truly on its way. There may even be daffodils and crocuses to prove it, depending on where you live.

But here in the northeast, March is only an illusion. Spring never arrives for real before April or even May. No matter how much we want it to.

In fact, every year since Daughter #1 was born, it has snowed after her birthday. First in New Jersey, now here on Martha's Vineyard. Every year.

Who knows, maybe it snowed after March 5th every year even before she was born, and I didn't realize it because I wasn't keeping track. But I've kept track now for 19 years.

Since I stood at the end of the hospital hallway at the window, and watched the flakes drift down. I remember lifting Daughter #1 out of her bassinet beside me and holding her up to see the snow.

It was a moment of perfection, a still shot in my mind.

Standing there, cradling that tiny little girl, born six weeks early. I was so grateful she was healthy, there in my arms, a witness to this snowfall that by all rights she should not have yet been born to see.

And so, every year after March 5th, I take note of the snow.

Spring may not actually arrive for a while, though it might tease us with a day here or there.

Sort of the way adulthood arrives. After years of faking it, with little teases of reality now and again.

Happy birthday Daughter #1.

Enjoy 19. Every last second of it.

 

A Bag By Any Other Name

I grew up calling my handbag a pocketbook. This is what my mother called it. And her mother...

Purse or bag might be the trendy terms for this today, but in our house, a bag came from the grocery store, and a purse was something you put change in. Women carried pocketbooks.

My daughters have apparently inherited the term, and for this they give me major grief.

"Do you know how weird it is to call it a pocketbook!" they say accusingly. "People laugh at us. They think we're old ladies."

"Just tell them you're unique," I advise.

I know they're right. And I'm trying to amend my ways, so that the words bag or purse will flow easily and elegantly from my mouth.

But old family habits die hard.

We grew up not eating fish unless we were at home. Family Mythology held that my mother's father, who'd died when my mom was only 13, had eaten fish from a restaurant and died that same night from food poisoning.

One of my mother's little brothers grew up to be a doctor, and he now disputes the accuracy of this, but he was merely six years old at the time, so what does he know?

All I can tell you is we were raised that to order fish in a restaurant was akin to drinking year-old milk, or swimming with your boots on; it just wasn't done.

Naturally I thought the entire world was in on this secret.

So imagine my shock and horror when, one week into college, my roommate told the cafeteria lady she'd take the fish.

"But they made that here," I insisted, tempted to fling it from her tray. "You can't eat that."

"Why not?" She stared at me like I was insane.

"Because it might kill you." For the first time, as I said the words out loud, I realized how ridiculous they sounded.

I watched her eat the fish. And live.

I might not have eaten it that night. Or for many nights to come. But I live on Martha's Vineyard, for goodness sakes. Of course I eat fish.

Now, if I could just keep reminding myself there is no such thing as a pocketbook, I might actually be getting somewhere.

How about you? Are there any old family legacies in your life better left behind?