RED hair!

Tis the season. Now it is the season for resolutions and I hereby resolve to never, ever, color my hair again.
I made that same resolution in 1968 and on several New Year celebrations after that. We all make mistakes; we try to learn from those mishaps and then go on to make new mistakes. Certainly, there is something wrong with one's thinking when the same behavior is repeated and a different outcome is expected. When I purchased the same over-the-counter hair color, went through the exact application process, the result the second time was the same embarrassing color, RED. Not the light, golden blond color promised on the box.
This last time, when I showed the red hair to my beautician, she suggested that I frost the red to tone the color down. The frosting, white wisps of hair scattered here and there in the bright red color, made me look like a Rhode Island hen. At my insistence, she cut off some of the mess but that left me looking more like a Rhode Island rooster, or an elderly marine.
The first time I tried to color my hair a light, golden-blond my attempts to get rid of the red hair with a hair cut left me with a worse mess, so I purchased a wig. my husband and I were going to a homecoming game in North Dakota where our son played on the football team. Our son's roommate was traveling with us and every time I turned to talk to him in the back seat, the wig remained in a forward position. The young man politely ignored my distress all the long way across eastern Montana. Once there, I put a stocking cap over the wig, and went to the football game and homecoming celebrations. My son didn't seem to notice.
That evening, at the motel, I closed my eyes and ran a hair clipper I had purchased right down the middle of my hair. My husband declined my offer to cut his hair so we would look the same.
The next morning when we met the boys for breakfast I didn't wear the wig. My son asked me if I had a chemo cut. I told him that I hadn't wanted to embarrass him and so I tried to wear a wig but it was just too uncomfortable. He asked me not to wear that ugly wig around the campus, so I wore the stocking cap until we left for home. Because I actually did have therapy for cancer that year, he assumed my hair loss was due to the therapy. I am only a little bit ashamed to admit that during the months my hair was growing back in, I let others think my hairdo was because of chemotherapy.
When I was quite young, my mother took me to a beauty parlor in search of Shirley Temple ringlets. The permanent machine looked like an upside-down chrome egg with the guts hanging out of the bottom. The guts were actually electric cords with curlers on the ends. The beautician wrapped my hair around those curlers and pulled the chrome egg down over my head and plugged it in. I could smell my hair cooking. The results were more like "chore girl" curls. Mother marched me to another beautician who cut the curls into little SOS-pad bunches.
After my hair grew out Mother purchased her own curling iron and each morning she curled my hair and sometimes burned my neck. Then Grandmother showed her how to use rags to create ringlets. Sections of my hair were wrapped around strips of rags and left that way overnight. In the morning, when the rags were removed I had little "slinkys" dangling around my collar. The boys at school loved to pull the coils and watch them bounce back into place.
By the time I entered high school I discovered that I actually had naturally wavy hair. The auburn color was nice and my hair hung past my waist.
Nevertheless, when I landed the leading role, a Shepard boy in the all-girl-school's Christmas pageant, I cut my hair and dyed it black.

My resolution for 2010 is to embrace my naturally gray hair and not obsess over the thinning spot on my crown....but....I wonder? If I got a hair extension, could it be dyed? Red, maybe?

Family rituals

This time of the yer it seems there just are not enough hour in the day or enough days in the month to do all that we want to do, or all that we "should" do.
The tribes will be gathering soon and, like the wind in our part of the country, some will blow in unannounced. We will welcome the newest babe, the matriarchs and patriarchs, and those in between, with the familiar rituals that our family has called "our way." And if we don't, the cry will go up,"But we've always done it that way!"
Rituals do lend to the uniqueness of a family and they help define their connectedness. Holidays provide opportunities for members of the family to participate in those rituals in ways that reaffirm their commitments.
Mothers often measure the passage of time with holiday memory markers. 1955? "Oh that was the year our oldest learned to walk. We had to put the tree in the playpen to keep him away from it."
"Remember how hard the winter of 1979 was? That was the year the kids told us we were going to be grandparents. The snowman they built during their Thanksgiving visit was still standing in the yard when the baby was born in the spring."
"Our next door neighbors, now close friends, moved here the year the kids painted the sugar cookies with undiluted food coloring. The carolers who stopped at our house for cocoa and cookies trooped next door to sing with multi-colored teeth."
Baby's first Christmas. The cradle-shaped ornament dated 1961, triggers memories of a little blond boy, all dressed up in a french-blue Eton suit, peacefully sleeping through midnight Mass.
The loss of a family member sometimes necessitates restructuring of familiar rituals. While our son was bedridden, the last year of his young life, he painted some stained glass Christmas ornaments. He thought he was my favorite child (they all thought that)and when he died I thought so too. A numbness surrounded our hearts and Christmas came that year with uncontrolled tears like the carelessly hung tinsel on the unwanted tree. Christmas afternoon we removed the wreath from the front door and our family drove to the barren cemetery to put it on the grave.
We have kept that ritual. The wreath, a symbol of the circle of life, has provided our family with a way to define a connectedness that cannot be broken by death.
Over the last two decades I have tucked one of those stained glass ornaments in the Christmas boxes so that all the siblings and their children, and soon the great-grandchildren will have one.
Sure holidays are a lot of work, but the memory markers, and the memory makers are what defines the particulars of the group of people called family.

Maturity

This year the season of maturity, or depending on how you look at it, the incipient decline into winter, arrived before the equinox party even got started. An early, record breaking, freeze set the leaves in their place on the apple tree. Because my days begin without my bifocals, the tree, which is full of gray, curled leaves, looks like the back of the perm-haired senior citizens who sit in front of me in church.
On these fall mornings, darker each day now; I pad into the kitchen in my furry for-fall-slippers. I pull up the window blind and with dismay not the minute changes that confirm what I already know. Winter is riding on heavy clouds and muscling her way across the autumn skies. In the yard, that for a short time was brilliant with autumn colors, the trees are bare. Their limbs that stretch skyward in a kind of supplication tremble from the threatening bitter winds.
The children's swing flips wildly in the wind and yet the apples that are black and mushy from the freeze cling to their rightful places. There was a time when the now ghastly appearing tree offered juicy red apples and there was another time, long ago, when voices from the swing cried, "higher, Daddy, higher."
Our weathered birdhouses, once hubs of activity, are now barren, abandoned - true empty nests. My husband ritualistically carries a large pot of bright red geraniums out to the porch each morning and back into the kitchen each evening trying to save the plant, a perhaps himself as well, from the inevitable winter kill.
Webster, that word master guy, defines nostalgia as "a wistful, sentimental yearning for the return of a past period, or an irrecoverable condition." This morning, as I waited for the wafts of fresh brewed coffee, I sighed with despair at my sepia-colored world until I watched a squirrel scurrying here and there searching for something to save for an uncertain future.
Perhaps the irrecoverable condition that fuels my nostalgia is my youth, and yet in the depths of my melancholy there is hope. It is said that hope springs eternal, and while I do not hope to ever be young again, I do tuck hope in with each tulip and each daffodil bulb that I put to rest in seemingly lifeless soil. I will leave the swing in its waiting place and save the birds houses from the ravages of winter so those "empty nests" will be there when spring arrives.
If maturity is defined as "the termination of a period that an obligation has to run," then rumors of my maturity are greatly exaggerated. I have obligations! There are fruitcakes to bake,gifts to wrap, cards to write and seasons of uncertainty to prepare for.

The Piano

The Piano

Marlene had a piano. Marlene had everything. She had a picture in her room that glowed in the dark and a rocking horse with a tail made from real horse hair. Her mother didn't work,and she gave us warm homemade bread after school. However, the thing that Marlene had that I was most envious of was a piano.
When my mother became too sick to work we moved to an apartment building across town. The landlady had a piano. When Mother and I went to visit the landlady I would literally tremble with the desire to play her piano, but I couldn't get up the courage to ask. Then one day, close to Christmas time, the lady asked me if I would like to play the piano while the adults drank their coffee. By the time Mother was ready to leave,I had picked out "O Come All Ye Faithful."
There was a piano in the orphanage where I went to live after Mother died, but the Nuns wouldn't let me play it because I couldn't read music, but at the State School for Girls, where I lived when I was a teenager, I could sign up for one hour a week in the piano room. I discovered that I didn't need to read sheet music. My music was in my head.
There were other pianos in my stops along the way to today, but the first piano I owned was an old upright that had a few missing keys and lots of scratches and dents on its huge frame. It was free for the taking, but the taking wasn't easy and I still have memories of that move in the lower part of my back when the weather changes. That piano and I were together for many "Happy-Birthdays-to-You" and "Jingle-Bells" until the divorce. When the children and I left, we had to leave the old upright behind.
With a new love, came a new piano. My new husband's work took us all over the Northwest and when we stopped at bars and restaurants where there was a piano, I sometimes played for the customers. He gifted me with what I had pined for my entire life, my very own brand new piano.
We moved many times, but no matter the configuration of the steps, porches, and entryways, we moved my piano with us. When the children began leaving home the piano went with them to campus dorms and apartments, and suburbia, but none of them every really learned to play. It sat unused and unappreciated until the next sibling wanted it,but when we learned the piano was in a musty, cob-webbed storage shed, we brought it home again. Although I was unable to stretch my arthritic fingers across an octave, I found a place for it on an inside wall and soon it shouldered the photographs of my growing matriarchy.
Then one day I saw that look of wistful longing on the face of my youngest grandson as he fingered the keyboard.
"Would you like to learn to play the piano?" I asked.
His face lit up from cheek to cheek and he clapped his hands with joy when I told him I would pay for the lessons and that he could come to my house to practice after school each day.
The next spring, at his first recital, he surprised me by playing a duet with his teacher and then he played a small composition that he had written. He was a natural. We moved the piano to his home and now the aged instrument has new purpose. From deep within the old frame comes a new sound. The sound of the future.

On this Side of the Equinox

My mother-in-law used to say when the moon thinned to a sliver and tipped, the rain would fall. That happened just before the equinox, and my farmer friend said the rain was the equinox storm and not to worry, the sun would be back soon.
Some of us in the autumn of our years have been through an equinox storm and are now basking in the return of the sun for awhile longer.
Seasonal signs that fall has arrived come in Crayola colors called: burnt orange, russet, pumpkin and gold. For some of us in gray and silver.
Harvest is in full swing. White tails flag their way through yards and gardens in search of edibles, and bears search for chokecherries and apples. Wild gobblers strut their fan of feathers as they parade for the hens they hope to impress. Territorial squirrels scurry about filling their pantries and scolding trespassers.
Pigskins fly overhead and shouter-padded young men jam into each other fighting for yardage in the mud, much to the delight of old men tending home fires. As evening begin sooner, rakes are laid aside for the evening news and the weather man's predictions. Should the tomatoes be picked tonight? Will thee be frost on the pumpkin in the morning?
As you meander through the twilight of summer, and find your way through the fog that hangs heavy near the river, search for mums,., apple crisps or cinnamon candles and celebrate your days in the sun.

Mellow Septembers

The apples, plucked from the tree and from the squirrels and rabbits, are in a dark room in the basement. We call that room "purgatory" because the items in there have served us well and in time we hope to pass them along to another life with another family. The apples will indeed become heavenly mouthfuls of apple crisps and pies this fall.
The have but one pumpkin on the vine which, in spite of being a potted plant, grew huge leaves that took up too much space on our patio. We are carefully tending to that pumpkin in hopes it might become jack-o-lantern size for our smallest grandchild.
For some of us, the beginning of school means the return to routines. For others it is more poignant. I watch the young mother across the street who peeks from her hiding place behind the drapes to make sure her little boy (the I-can-do-it-myself kid)catches the bus. It is his first year and he leans forward a little seeking the center of gravity for the backpack he proudly carries. I don't see a lunch pail. No Roy Rogers or Lone Ranger metal container to carry the peanut butter and strawberry jam smeared on the smashed slices of Wonder Bread. No air-filled Twinkies to trade for a homemade cupcake. I hear the schools serve breakfast these days so my little neighbor probably takes what I used to pine for - "hot lunch."
It is for sure that September foreshadows changes and even some endings. The sun rises a little later, and a little lower, each morning now. Soon there will be no reason to lift up the shades each morning. Twilight begins to separate families as children are called in from their play sooner and adults have almost completed their seasonal yard work. In my childhood neighborhood the adults devised clever ways to let their children know it was time to come in. Some blew a whistle or rang a bell but my mother turned on the porch light to let me know it was time to come in from the hide-and-go-seek or kick-the-can games. Of course, as I had tried to tell her, if I was hiding I couldn't see the porch light.
On weekends, we stayed out until the last rays of the absent sun filtered light across the prairie and shadows flitting through bare cottonwood trees became monsters waiting for October's Halloween. It was then that we began our search for the biggest pumpkin to snatch from the neighbors garden.
Used to be folks could burn leaves they raked from their yards and that autumn aroma cannot be found in the best of candles. Used to be those same folks lingered at the fire and watch the tiny tendrils of smoke drift into the night sky before they retreated to their winter homes where they began addressing holiday cards that would substitute for the handshakes of September.

Fair Time

"Our state fair is a great state fair, don't miss it don't even be late!"
For me, in the 1940s, the Montana State Fair was the single most exciting event of summer. That excitement lasted until the gates of the fairgrounds closed and the back-to-school advertisements proclaimed the end was near.
Mother loved the fair, and the two of us went every day from the time the gates opened until the fireworks display each night. One year, Gene Autry, on his horse named Champion, led the parade in town which ended at the gates of the fairgrounds. With dozens of other kids, I ran the same route, getting as close to the famous singing cowboy as possible.
There were, according to Mother, rules about going to the fair. First I had to suffer through all the exhibits. We looked at pumpkins and tomatoes, lambs and pigs, jams and quilts, and demonstrations of new vacuum cleaners and slicers and dicers. One year my cousins got a job demonstrating a new bathtub. At the end of the day they looked like prunes, but they were happy prunes as they ran toward the midway with money to spend.
After the exhibits, we went to the cottonwood park and spread out a blanket for our lunch. Mother took out bologna and tuna sandwiches and milk and I dreamed of pronto pups, soda pop and cotton candy that would come later. Mother napped and I fidgeted until it was time for the rodeo and horse racing.
While mother studied the racing program with words like quinella and parimutuals, I climbed under the grandstand to collect empty beer bottles. At two cents each, a sack full would pay for several rides on the midway. The rodeo began with dazzling cowgirls in sequins and white fringes racing around the track on horseback with flags flying above them. Cowboys roped cows, rode broncs and bulls and comical clowns jumped in and out of barrels.
When we left the grandstand area we always stopped at the bingo tent. I had to play too because it increased Mother's chance of completing her set of goblets.
Dinner time! Burgers, and hot dogs, chicken and corn-on-the-cob, choc late covered ice cream bars and cotton candy! The food concessions were on the edge of the midway and I could hear the merry-go-round kaleidoscope and the hawkers in the game booths. Teenagers screamed in terror from high up in a ride called the Hammer. My anticipation couldn't be contained any longer, but Mother had one more rule.
First, I had to ride the Ferris Wheel with her. It was the only ride mother went on and the only one I did not want to go on. I climbed into the rocking wooden bench and watched the attendant lock the bar across our lap. The single bar that was supposed to hold us in. I sat stiffly at the back of the bench as we began our climb into the sky. Each time the wheel stopped to let others on we were a little higher and Mother leaned over the safety bar to enjoy the sights below. She pointed with excitement at the tall buildings in our town while I held my breath while we went around and around. The sweet promises of cotton candy, live pony rides and bumper cars kept me from dying of fear.
Finally! The fair, which is what children call the carnival. Two hours later, after, what mother labeled a "sheer waste of money," we left the midway and scrambled up the grandstand to find the best seat for the night show and the fireworks.
After neck bending aerial displays the fireworks show ended with a ground display of the American Flag and everyone stood up to sing the National Anthem. Then it was all over. BUT not for me! We would be back the next day.
Many years later, I coerced my husband into taking our brood to the fair. Observing Mother's rules we drug our babies through all the exhibits, horse racing, rodeos and homemade lunches before hitting the midway. Then my parental good sense was wafted away with smells of my childhood. After the fireworks,we carried stuffed animals, bowls of gold fish and cotton-candy sticky babes to the car. The next day we went to our bank to borrow enough money to see us through August and the back-to-school sales.
While our state fair is no longer the state fair, and may not be a great fair, I won't miss it. I won't even be late - on senior citizen day.

The Squatters

What seems like a long, long time ago, in a faraway land, my parents and I left the city, pulling a very archaic wooden trailer behind our Desoto. We were in search of the perfect summer getaway.
We drove across dusty dirt roads, always pointing our dreams in the direction of the Rocky Mountains that loomed ahead on the Western horizon. Eventually we arrived in the Sun River canyon. We crept along a narrow roadway that snaked in the same pattern as the Sun River below. We parked our rolling home in a grove of trees at the base of the newly constructed Gibson Dam. Behind that dam was a wilderness that would come to be known as "The Bob."
My father carried boulders from the riverbed and mixed up some cement to create our fire pit. I made a print of my hand in the wet cement and my parents wrote our names. We were squatters and that was our land. We rarely saw any other campers. Mother and I picked wild flowers and Daddy cut fire wood and no one told us not to. We went uphill, away from the river, to relieve ourselves and I learned to carry a shovel to bury my waste. I remember starry nights and blackened marshmallows with creamy centers. After I was tucked into the top bunk I could hear my parents murmuring between music strummed on Daddy's guitar.
This past Memorial Day weekend my husband and I drove out of the city in our motor home searching for our own idyllic getaway. The traffic was heavy with recreational vehicles of various sizes and shapes all apparently headed in the same direction. We left the freeway and continued on paved roads to the campsite we had reserved. We registered at the little hut near the entrance. Name, address, vehicle license, dog licenses numbers and picked up the policy and procedure booklet. Thirteen dollars a night, one week only, gates locked at 10 p.m.
The paved, level spot we decided on had a long distance view of the lake, our own picnic table, a designated fire pit and we were in walking distance to the shower house. We hooked up the water, sewer, electricity, cable and secured our dogs to the post provided for that purpose. At the coin-operated wood dispenser we secured an arm load of wood for our evening fire for only $3.
Our immediate neighbors, in their behemoth motor home, had all of the window shades pulled so we left our blinds up on that side of our motor home. We toured one of those Greyhound bus sized motor homes one time and I wondered if our neighbors had a washer and dryer and spinet piano in theirs.
We burned a few marshmallows and watched the neighbors on the other side tap their keg before we went to bed. The camp host made frequent rounds, even after the front gate was locked, and our weekend was peaceful and quiet behind our window shades.
My dad made up a song for me on one of the nights he strummed his guitar under the stars. To the tune of Clementine:
In Augusta, in Augusta, in the days of '46
lived a couple and their daughter
and they lived out in the sticks.
Had a trailer house, yes a trailer house
and they liked it very much, etc.
A few years ago my husband and I made the trek to the Sun River canyon in search of my childhood. We found a small bit of the fire pit my dad had built and written in the cement was the date, July 5, 1946.
Across a newly built bridge was the campground city. RV squatters had happily paid the rent on a bit of 21st century wilderness.

Keepers of the Memories

Oscar Wilde said, "Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us." Events that shape and change our lives this time of the year are rich with nostalgia. There seems to be a lot of beginnings and endings in the ceremonies and rituals.
On Memorial Day, I made my annual trek to the cemetery to decorate the graves of my family and friends who have died. I walked the grass aisle separating the rows of granite markers dated 1949 until I found my mother's name. She was 48 when she died. I thought she was 48 "years old." I was grateful that she lived until I could take care of myself. I was ten and I could comb my own hair.
Across the field, in the special section for paupers, I found a brass plate with my father's name spelled wrong. I wondered if he knows I graduated from college.
I wonder if any of the young generation will observe Decoration Day. I have to admit that one of the reasons that I spend the money and take the time to make sure all of my relatives have a plastic flower on that day, is so strangers walking past the grave will know that person is remembered. For me the ritual makes me stop for a day in my too busy life to turn the pages of my mental diary.
Weddings and graduations, Flag a=Day and Father's Day tend to ruffle our emotional feathers. Mothers, the keepers of emotions, stuff their purses and sleeves with extra hankies in anticipation of bittersweet tears. They have known, since making the first entry in the baby book, this day would come. Fathers, on the other hand, somehow thought they could put it all off for yet another year. Only when the mortar boards fly through the gymnasium will Dad begin to look at the world through misty eyes. He'll concentrate hard on the cadence of the wedding march song to keep the proper pace as he escorts his little girl and when the minister asks, "Who gives this woman?" he'll answer with a firm voice, "her mother and I." Nevertheless, when he steps onto the dance floor at the reception, and the music begins, "you're the end of the rainbow, my pot of gold. Your Daddy's little girl to have and to hold", she will slip into his arms, but will not stand on his shoes. Then he will know. Then he will know.
When I was Daddy's little girl, I perched high on his shoulders to watch the summer parades or to watch Santa arrive in town. From there I could see all I ever needed to see. No doubt, my dad knew our days were numbered, but I, only seven, thought the golden summers would go on forever. When i look now, in that place behind my eyes where memories live, I can feel his tight grip on my ankle and wrist as he flies me through the air.
"Do it again, Daddy!"
And he did. Over and over, and then, the giggles ended except the memory.
I put the American flag out on Flag Day and I remember the little flags we waved at the soldiers who marched in our parades. I put small American flags on my brother's graves even though they lived long past World War II. I may be the only one left of our generation that is a memory keeper, but I am still a memory maker for those who will carry the plastic flowers into the next generation.

A motherless child

I officially became an orphan in 1949. That is, I was a motherless child, and by definition, back then, if you were without a mother you were an orphan. The next spring I wore a white carnation to church. a red or pink carnation was only worn by those who still had a mother. I became " the poor little thing" to the elderly ladies in our congregation.
Without the mentoring that naturally takes place between mother and daughter, that poor little thing grew into an inept young woman. In my quest to find out just what it meant to be a young wife and mother, I watched the tiny television we brought into our home. I studied the mothers in the sitcoms of the 50's and 60's. Jane Wyatt never argued the point that indeed father always knows best, and sweet June Lockhart and her adorable little boy, along with the famous non-shedding Lassie, resolved all their issues by the end of each show. Barbara Billingsly, or better known as Mrs. Cleaver,kept her house and her family in shipshape while wearing her ever present apron. None of these women, including Aunt Bea, had any identity confusion.
But I did. I lived like Lucille Ball's I love Lucy character, rushing from one comical disaster to the next. To this day my culinary creations are fodder for family reunion stories. The grandchildren love hearing about the creamed carrots I made. Sliced raw carrots with cream poured on them. They also like the story about the Thanksgiving bird that was served on his knees instead of breast up.
I did find my niche though. Some family members call it my grand obsession and others labeled me the purex queen. I approached housekeeping with a vengeance. My short reign as the bleach queen caused the death of the kids fish and the guinea pig succumbed to the kitchen sink bath. So did the parakeet when I tried to give him a shower with the spray attachment. However,my children survived their bleach baths on the last day of summer vacation each year. A little bleach in the tub faded the grey knees and elbows before their first day of school.
I rented my first apartment from an Italian landlady who washed down the woodwork, stairs and bathrooms of the apartment building with Lysol each week. In her apartment she did not allow her husband or her children to sit on the couch with the plastic doilies and nothing was ever returned to her closets until it was laundered, dry cleaned and pressed. What an act to follow!
I tried. After the long Montana winters, most housewives of yesterday participated in some kind of spring cleaning. Anything that was not nailed down was put out for an airing in the changing winds and windows were washed with a vinegar solution and wiped squeaky dry with newspapers.
There was no such thing as frost-free refrigerators so pans of boiling water were placed in the icebox and the door was closed. Massive chunks of ice could be heard hitting the bottom after awhile. That mess was mopped up with towels, and so was the kitchen floor. Self-cleaning ovens? Myself cleaned the oven with a gel that I painted on the walls of the oven and then opened windows and waited a while for the toxic substance to melt the baked on grease. When I wiped the gel from the walls I always came away with a few burns on my arms, but with a very clean oven.
By far my grandest attempt at housekeeping perfection was the time I varnished the linoleum floors. I had read that by applying a thin coat of varnish or polyurethane on the linoleum I would have a no-polish shine for over a year. So I carefully varnished my family into their bedrooms one night, thinking the varnish would be dry by morning. It wasn't. The children needed to use the bathroom. I tried to make them wait a little longer, but father knew best and in his anger he stomped across the tacky linoleum in his black wool socks and opened the door to the bathroom and marched into the kitchen to make his morning coffee.
What I now know about mothering, on this Mother's Day of 2009, is that bleach is not always a good thing and sometimes colors fade unexpectedly, like mothers. I am happy that my children will be able to wear a red carnation this year.

Easter- With every season comes change and the promise of spring is coming.

I welcome the brown, matted grass that is emerging around the edges of my sidewalk as the snow slowly shrinks under a drizzle of rain.
Today, I waited for a front loader and a dump truck to pass before I jaywalked across the now dry pavement, and then I watched as the duo performed their do-see-do.
Dipping into a roof-high snow bank the giant shovel backed and turned and dipped again as the load was released into the truck that would haul away the winter of 2009.
Daylight saving time began and St. Patrick's day leans into the Easter season and yet, I have not seen a red-breasted robin and if my crocuses have pushed through the frozen tundra they were stopped dead in their ascent by the iced snow that hovers nears the house.
I'm at a loss with what to do with the extra hour of daylight because, although at times the evening light now flutters through sporadic cloud cover and illuminates our dinner hour, we are housebound by mud and it really is too early to begin our spring supplications.
Don't get me wrong. This has not been my winter of discontent. Quite the contrary, I have savored the evening cups of coffee, with just a bit of creamer please, while I harvested political tidbits from Katy and Brian on the evening news.
Long snowy weekends conspired with my wanton desire to snuggle under a quilt near the Blaze King and read a book cover to cover.
Other days my decadence involved so many hours hunched over a jigsaw puzzle I had to get into bed with Mr. Ben Gay.
I am embarrassed to say how many pairs of pajamas I own, but in the depth of winter, when visitors and family aren't likely to pop in unannounced, I stay in my flannel-elastic-waisted favorites all day.
But alas, days of simmering chili or stew, and hot chocolate evenings are coming to a close. I embraced winter because I believed in the promise of spring.
My personal leap of faith spans snowdrifts and dormant flower beds and although this year Easter will come before daffodils and tulips, I know they too will rise again.

Maybe eight is enough

Well, it's true that eight ain't enough for a baseball team, but I had eight kids one time, one at a time that is, and not every team needs a short stop anyway.
Even after all these years, I still mumble when someone asks me how many kids I had. Those kids multiplied and now there are 25 and that's not counting their spouses. People can be downright rude about big families. Some people even asked me if I knew what was causing me to have all those kids. Well of course I did, by then anyway. There was a time when I didn't. I searched the cabbage patch on my uncle's farm every summer until I was in junior high school. That year our gym teacher showed us "that" movie. In those day when I was having my children a woman couldn't do much about birth control and our family was Catholic so I was working toward the star on my crown. I think I actually only needed seven children to secure my heavenly tiara, but the extra kid was loved too.
I'm not saying my kids were accidents, and of course they didn't come from a cabbage patch, but none of them were started in a petri dish either.
A large family presents all kinds of challenges and solutions are often "out of the box." For instance, we put the Christmas tree and the gifts in the playpen and let the toddlers run free and Tootsie Pops were only allowed during church on Sunday morning and the kids could have as many as it took to keep them quiet for that long hour each Sunday. One time I forgot one of the kids. We were on our way to church and I had all the Toostie Pops packed but I had a feeling something was missing. When I realized it was our youngest we sped through the neighborhood in panic and were very relieved to find her still on the bed where we had put her. She was immobilized in her bunting like a stranded turtle and sleeping like the proverbial baby.
Let the economists and journalists worry about the dynamics of raising those octuplets. I have been thinking about socks. Without factoring in the other six children, the young woman in California can expect to wash an excess of 190,456 socks in the next 18 years. That's two socks per octuplet and hey!, what about Christmas socks. Some poor grandmother is going to be pretty busy sewing all those sequins on eight felt creations and if Santa puts a limit of $10 per sock each year it will still cost him $144,000. And pity the poor tooth fairy!
Now if those silly thoughts don't give you the willies, think about birthday celebrations. Even if each child is limited to three guests the McDonald's across the nation will stop answering their phones and Ronald McDonald will hang onto those stripped socks as he hides in the playgrounds.
What do you think! Should there be eight cakes or one cake with eight candles? One cake would need 80 candles when the kids turn ten.
A trip to the store presents logistical problems that are mind bending. Remember when you got your two toddlers snugged up in their snow suits and the boots finally pulled over those hard high top shoes and the last hand finally mittened and then the first kids said, "I have to pee."
And I don't know about you but I still haven't mastered hooking up car seats and where would you connect eight of them anyway.
Just think. Eight! Halloween costumes, kindergartners who announce the night before the day that you are the homeroom mother who needs to bring treats, scout meetings and badges to sew on uniforms, soccer games, dance recitals, Little League, report cards, in-school detentions, dentists, immunizations, first communions, proms and weddings.
My daughter-in-law is planning to breed her purebred dog. She hopes to make enough money to put her TWO children through college. I don't know, the cost of college is skyrocketing, but then... maybe she should consider in vitro fertilization. I hear there is a doctor in California that can help. Just imagine eight times the usual number of newborn puppies!
Merriam Webster said enough was plenty and plenty is sufficient. I say I wouldn't want eight babies at one time even if I found them in a cabbage patch.

Waiting on Love

The puppy love spawned by Valentine Day festivities in my fifth-grade classrooms was still alive when spring, that time of the year when young men's hearts are said to turn to fancy, arrived in 1949. In the fifth grade at Largent school, where they served real food for lunch, there was a young, blond, Adonis, also in the fifth grade.
As was the custom back then, each of us decorated a box for Valentine Day and placed it in the back of the classroom. The boxes had slots so we could drop a valentine in the box for the owner. Of course, it was expected that everyone would give a valentine to everyone, but if we didn't sign our name to the paper missals, who would know if we didn't give one to the class nerd, or if we gave the most beautiful one to the boy every girl swooned over.
Some valentines were handmade with lace and paper doilies or with velvet cutouts glued all over them. Some cards had a sucker stuck through the commercial love note, which made it hard to put through the slot, and some were cut out of ready-made books.
The cards had different messages but they all were about love. A kitty-shaped cutout might say, "I think you are purr..fect." A card with a picture of the earth on it said, "I'd go to the end of the world for you."
I decorated my shoe box with red and white crepe paper, stretching the ribbon of paper to make the edges curl and then I taped the white strip around the box that I covered with red. I glued white heart-shaped doilies around the top of the box and made a good-sized slit, so any card would fit, and I printed my name on one small doily.
Lonnie's box was covered with cloth. His mother gave him some cotton scraps that she had left from a quilt she was making. He glued the scraps to the box and it looked like his cat had used it for a scratching post. He printed his name on the box with red paint so everyone would know it was his.
I bought a real commercial card for Lonnie. It was pink, but it had a boy and a girl riding in a white car with heart shaped puffs of smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. Inside the card said, "Lover's Lane, here we come."
On Valentine Day our teacher passed out cupcakces decorated with candy hearts and cups of red punch. Then we opened our valentine boxers. Lonnie had more valentines than anyone in the room, boys or girls.
Lonnie never said anything about the card I sent him, but in the spring he called me up and asked me to meet him in the balcony of the Liberty Theater on Saturday. My mother wouldn't let me go.
On Monday, I learned that Lonnie had called every girl in the class, with the same invitation, and then he invited all the boys to come to the balcony to watch the girls arrive. There were only a few girls who showed up at the theater, but I was so happy I wasn't one of them.
Whatever Lonnie's heart was turning to that spring of 1949, it wasn't anything fancy. I was so glad my mother made me wait for another spring and another young man.

Waiting Patiently for Spring

This morning as I pulled my comforter closer to my chin I heard a child crying. I peeked under my window shad and watched the young mother across the street as she put her two little ones into their cold car seats and began scraping her windshield. They complained, with the language of babes, of being drug out of a warm bed in the middle of the winter.
My heart went out to all three of them and I thought of other working mothers who had to go through that process every morning.
When my children were little I was wealthy enough to stay at home with them. Wealthy enough to serve red beans and macaroni the last two days before payday, but we got by.
Winter drug on in Eastern Montana for months and by the time the children could be put in the fenced yard for an hour or two I was looking for employment in the classified sections.
Fifty years from now my grandchildren, who dash from their mother's warm car into the cozy school building for a warm breakfast before classes start will probably talk about the winter of "ought nine" when it was almost 20 below but there won't be any exaggerations of distances trekked across the frozen tundra in their twenty-first century stories.
I walked ten blocks to my school, not the legendary ten miles, but girls weren't allowed to wear jeans and we thought we were too old to wear long cotton stockings or snow suits so we dashed from one car dealer to the next, braving the wind chills that were not factored into the temperatures back then.
The elders say winters aren't what they used to be. They talk about the winter of 1954 when record breaking minus 70 was recorded on Roger's Pass as though it was typical. I do recall my transmission froze when the temperature dropped to minus 52 in 1957.
The milk, in glass bottles back then, was left on our porch each morning and as it froze it lifted the cardboard lids and the ice crystals of cream rose into the air. That was before clothes dryers and the sheets on the line froze stiff and then they were brought in to thaw by the stove. Kids who stuck their tongues on sleds knew better then to pull away from the metal and carried the sled home so someone could release them from their bondage with some warm water.
The winter of '78, 1978 that is, was brutal and my young son had an early morning paper route. I wish now that I had given him a ride around his route, but back then parents tried to raise their kids to be tough. I made hot chocolate to thaw him out before he walked to meet the school bus five blocks away.
Winter hangs heavy on the horizon these mornings. Ice crystals shimmer in the pink rays filtered through clouds tinted blue with sub-zero temperatures. These days I retreat behind the berms left by the faithful snowplow that terrorizes my cat. The squirrels that my husband feeds gather around the feeder and look toward the kitchen window where we sip our morning coffee.
We peer out into the world of white searching for the slightest signs of change. On clear days it is still daylight when the evening news begins. Valentine cards share space with St. Patrick's day in the greeting card section and some stores are even sporting pastel colors for kitchens and mothers.
The playground swings and slides are idle now, but will come to life with jump ropes and marbles in less than 60 days.

Excuse me, but your sitting in my Chair

We human beings are territorial creatures as evidenced by our preoccupation with where we sit.
Last week, the instructor of the Senior Strength class told us she had been reading about how senior citizens (the man at my house calls us senile citizens) can exercise their brains by challenging the "other" side of the brain. Try brushing your teeth with the "other hand" or putting the "other" leg into your pants first or sitting in "other" places. So she instructed us to sit in a different chair during the next class.
Seems like a simple brain exercise, doesn't it? Wrong! You haven't heard such grumbling and fussing since first grade when seats were assigned. Remember when you were told "get back to YOUR seat", or "Do not get out of YOUR seats", or asked, "What are you doing in Mary's chair"?
One of the oldsters in our class moved back only one chair and when the tattle tales in the class reported a woman in the front row who hadn't moved at all, the woman firmly announced she didn't plan to move.
Unlike a study that showed that mental patients were much less likely to shout out when sitting in a different chair, the senior exercisers grumbled or giggled about their discomfort and a few who were used to hiding behind a larger participant complained of being exposed.
A study at the University of Georgia revealed that individuals who usually sat at the end of a row of seats were more likely to claim the spot as theirs while students in the middle rows didn't display that territorial behavior. On the other hand, female students were more likely to claim a place as their own.
One wonders if those results would be the same if the study were done in a church. Pastors, priest and busybodies, need only scan the sanctuary to discover who is not in their church on a given day. Sometimes family's claim an entire pew through continual use over the years. I wouldn't dream of sitting in someone place at church and the parishioners know that the Son does not sit on the left hand of their Father in heaven.
Even in our homes we have assigned seating. Everyone in the family knows where to sit at the table, even those who haven't been home since the last holiday. Although Archie Bunker doesn't live there, any man of the house can claim his recliner with a certain look.
From car seat to booster seat to selected head phones, kids sit in the same place in the family car until the enter driver's ed.
There seems to be all kinds of chairs and some are coveted like thrones and endowed chairs at universities. Others are dreaded like dentist chairs, or "the" chair in death row.
Maybe we shouldn't mess around with seating arrangements. After all even a bear could tell when "somebody has been sitting in my chair" even if the chair was just right for Goldie Locks.

Solutions in Resolutions

The universal feast of consumptions over now we collectively, like lemmings, rush into the new year with plans to alter the shape of our bodies. My girl friend and I were talking about our crazy years and shared some laughs about what used to be, to us, serious business. She had marvelous boobs back then, but years and gravity have made her my bosom buddy. We had abs and quads instead of bellys and butts. Now we have degenerative arthritis and tummys and our waists are "girths". What an ugly word. Reminds me of another friend who hated the word obese because it sounded oooooooooobeeeeeeeese! Now firm butts have become satchels and triceps are wings that flap when we do jumping jacks.
We've, my friend and I, have been through a lot together; Weight Watchers, TOPS, CURVES, aerobics, yoga, kickboxing, water aerobics, jogging, running, walking and now strolling. We have enough equipment between us to start our own fitness center if we weren't using it for clothes hangers.
We tried South Beach, Atkins, Cabbage soup, Fit for Life, Jane Fonda, Jack LaLane and Richard Simmons. We recently sold the videos, books and CDs in a garage sale and used the funds to go to bingo at the senior center.
We used to get on the scale and write those incriminating numbers on our calendars so our families could chide us for failing to keep the dietary promises we made each January and renewed after Valentine Day, and Easter and Mother's Day and the Fourth of July and many birthday bashes and onward to Halloween and Thanksgiving and finally into the valley of eggnog.
Now we eat what we want and stay pretty much the same weight. "Let's meet for lunch" is the rallying cry. Do breakfast, not slimfast, is our motto!
What is the point of getting to the golden years if you can't eat with enjoyment. The elderly have very little left they can do for fun. Can't afford a movie and if they did they couldn't afford the $10 medium-sized popcorn, and why go to a movie if you can't have popcorn. You know they say our taste buds will die but the last one to go is the sweet one, so maybe we should toast our existence while we can still taste the toast.
No more closet dividers separating the sizes, everything fits now. We have discovered elastic waists and sweats. Queen size? Why not. Sounds like royalty to me. Junior sizes are for junior girls or little old ladies with crepe paper necks.
So I tell my bosom friend, "Hey, relax and enjoy the rest of the trip." We may have lost our baby fat like the proverbial kittens who found what they lost and were rewarded with pie.
Besides, I heard they cut the back of your dress down the middle before they put you in the coffin.

This too shall pass

I think I have the Januaries. Cold, bored, cranky and tired of winter. Here we are in the depths of a Montana winter and our only hope is a groundhog who lives in New England. Talk about audacity! The icicles hanging from the eaves of my house are so long that I'm not sure if their are stalactites or the other kind that grow from the ground up and when I turn on the lamps in my cave I notice that humans I hven't seen since last summer are living behind their own icicle prison across the street.
The thermometer was reading minus 37 degrees the day my husband decided to talk to me about the utility bills.
"Utility bills! You mean the comforts of home!" I snarled.
I knew the mantra. If we just cut back a little on the lights and heat we could afford a trip to Hawaii next year. I figure if we turn the thermostat any further down we won't live to see another year. The cold is hard on senior citizens I remind him. He tell me we are spending one fifth of our fixed income on utility bills. I tell him my grandmother would have sold her soul for electricity and natural gas.
Her day began before the sun. she was the first one up. She put kindling in the range to start the fire to warm the home, heat some water and cook breakfast. Sometimes she had to melt water to take to the cow which is where the milk for breakfast would come from.
Me, I like luxurys such as plumbing. He complains of the water bill in the summer when the automatic underground sprinklers water the lawn before I get up in the morning. I like faucets that bring warm and cold water with the turn of a wrist. And a flush toilet? When I think of grandma making that cold trip through the bare cottonwoods to the outhouse I can only imagine the cold wind sweeping through those two hole necessary houses.
Heck, I even like the garbage truck that clangs and bangs when the one-armed bandit takes away the evidence of my decadent life style before the neighbors are awake.
One person's luxury is another's necessities. I think we could probably do without television, but I wouldn't want to give up the computer that allows me to leave my igloo each day with online visits. He thinks the telphone is an annoyance. Although he doesn't complain about electric frying pans, coffee pots, crock pots and the microwave, he is certain the washer and dryer will send us to the poorhouse.
I try to ride out his complaints and wait until he is in bed or out of the house to turn the furnace up, because I know he too has the Januaries. There isn 't much a body can do for that disease. I try to keep a pot of soup on the stove and the ever-ready tea kettle filled. He puts on long underwear and extra socks to ride his recoiner from "Good Morning America" to David Letterman's goodnight.
We will both feel better this month. Groundhogs and valentines hint of hope and love, and the electric bill will be much lower. Each year, caught up in the magic of the holidays he builds a forest of electric Christmas trees in our yard and lives in denial until January when the bill for all that extra power comes arrives.
Funny thing, no matter how old we get, we forget the Januaries of our life as soon as they pass and we celebrate the good times with renewed faith. Hope you do too.