Starring In My Own Movie (Magic Number TWO)

If you are just tuning in, I am going to suggest you read "I Believe In Magic Again" before you read this. It will give you the back up story as to WHY I went on this trip.

So, when last we left the battle over my soul, The Universe had sent this salvo out: "I don't like to make predictions, but the way things are going, Rodeo, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this year you have a ball, go to a ball... and put the pics up on Facebook.
You are so poised for the time of your life -
The Universe"

It was like I had just read a horoscope that said, Rodeo, Taurus that you are, you will back your grey Ford Five Hundred out of the driveway and run over your hot water kettle. So obscure but actually something that would happen in my world. And Has.

So with the power of the Universe solidly behind me, the actual details of the trip were easy to plan and execute. My faithful travel companion Carol called me the next morning about something else entirely and ended up committing to going with me. My Son and Ripper and the boys even started getting excited and pledged their support on the home front. Lisa and Gordon on the other end in New Orleans smoothed all needs out cheerfully and generously and Alan sent me bulletins every few days with tantalizing details about surprises and costumes and events.

Gradually, I started to believe I was going. And it was going to be magic! I vowed I would not buy any clothes, so of course I stopped at Talbots and they had some perfect colorful t shirts on sale, and the perfect velour sweatsuit equivalent on sale, so it wasn't like I really bought clothes. They were on sale. You know, like food eaten over the kitchen sink has no calories, clothes bought on sale at Talbots don't really cost anything. AND, I have found that packing new clothes folded by ladies at Talbots is ever so much easier than doing laundry. Ripper found me the perfect green hat at the Goodwill which went with everything, I gathered all my electronics together, then my makeup and my toothbrush and tucked it all away in the fabulous luggage I bought two years ago (Steel Magnolias: Olympia Dukakis as Clairee Belcher to Shirley MacLaine as Ouiser Boudreaux: I love ya like I love my luggage.")

I'm ready.

I drive to Carol's and then her sig other Andrew drives us to the Airport and then there is security and lines and shoes off and jewelry off and then plane boarding and lift off. The wind beneath my wings.

I never pay much attention to where I am sitting on a plane, but this time I am in the middle seat of three. On either side of me are two huge pieces of Man Beef in flannel and denim. I am like a little sliver of cheese between two huge slabs of rye bread. Conscious of this, the large men have their arms folded up and their mammoth thighs pressed together and are thinking slim thoughts. I feel so bad for them - they are trying so hard not to touch me or intrude in my space. I go for the joke.

Aloud I say, "Well, I am feeling pretty safe right now. I've got my own crash cage!" Tensions ease considerably. The big guys start chatting amicably about the price of carry on luggage and I fall asleep.

I wake long enough to change planes in Charlotte, NC. and immediately fall back asleep on the last leg to New Orleans.

On the ground, we call our host Gordon and he is there in minutes with smiles and hugs and lifting our luggage into the trunk of his comfortable car. A word about Gordon, the father of my friends Lynda and Lisa: I am going to be telling you many many things that Gordon did with us and for us, and how he drove us hither and yon, took us to dinner, got us up, made us breakfast every morning, etc etc. went for walks with Carol, how his house was decorated for Mardi Gras with masks and beads, how we all stayed up til all hours, and got really tired. All of us, except Gordon. He never gets tired, lost or out of sorts. He never complains about standing in a parking garage waiting for the car for an hour and a half. In the cold. and the Rain. He always has the perfect clothing, the perfect demeanor and the perfect attitude. He always knows perfectly where he is, how to get home. He always knows the right thing to say and the right thing to do. He always has cash when I can't get to the bank, he always accepts a check. He always remembers what you drink and how to mix it. He is the consumate host, the perfect escort. Gordon is 87 and setting the bar a little high for the rest of us.

Gordon tells us that before we even get to his house, we are going to a party and a parade! This is a great way to start our Mardi Gras! Our friend Jan, (a half and hulf like me - Australian mother and American Father) is hosting a party in her beauti-gorgeous home in the Sanctuary across Lake Ponchatrrain. The Sanctuary is where a lot of the Saints Football team live. Also, where Brangelina have a home, I have heard. There is gumbo and red beans and rice and beer and wine and happy talk and great accents. After dinner we drive a short distance and park and walk to where hundreds of people are already waiting.

Watching this parade with this crowd reminds me of a herd of Elk I rode through in Yellowstone Park once.The young ones are all together, playing reindeer games - galloping to each other and leaping in the air, squealing. There is young girl hair tossing and young boy posturing. There is shoving and little pockets of hysteria (did you see him? is he here? where? NO NO don't look!)

The parade was great, the beads flew through the air and later we drove home across Lake Pontchartrain, world class phenomenon, on the world's longest bridge (like 30 miles!). Carol and I settled down for the night in Gordon's wonderful home, and I set the alarm on my phone for BIG DAY.

Alan called me in the morning and asked that I meet him, the director Pasquale and the camera man Richard at the Hotel Intercontinental at six o'clock that evening for a meet n'greet, a viewing of the Endymion Parade and to film some footage of my Bead Catching Technique. I know, PINCH ME! Gordon volunteers to drive us back across the bridge - and I am flattered that I know he also wants to eyeball these guys. You know, guys I have only met on the internet who are "photographers" are filming a TV show, staying at a hotel.....I mean, would you let your daughter do this?


Lisa and Carol also say they would not miss it for the world! I am more worried about abusing the friendship of these three wonderful people than I am about the strange men thing. The schedule that Alan has outlined for me requires that I travel in and out of the city at odd hours, by myself - up before they wake up (well, not Gordon, who seems to never sleep at all) . I will not be with them even for meals, most days. I feel like the most selfish person in the world. Especially regarding Carol, because she came all the way down here to travel with me. Over and over when I try to talk to them about this, when I say I am sorry, that I will make it up to them, they look at me like I am crazy. They say HAVE A GOOD TIME! They will have a good time!

Back across the bridge to New Orleans the city, we realize the hotel is on the parade route and completely surrounded by barricades. For a minute I am panicky, but I forget I am with two women who could break and enter the Vatican. It is just a lucky break for the rest of us that Lisa and Carol only use their powers for good. While I am calling Alan to tell him I have arrived, they have scoped the place out, found us a place to walk through and blinded the hotel security with their charms. I have no idea if this last thing was necessary or they just did it because they can.

We meet my CREW in the lobby of the hotel Alan is cerebral, sensitive and creative. He has very unusual deeply colored, dark eyes but is otherwise fair. Pasquale looks EXACTLY like Mr. Tumnus from the Chronicles of Narnia. Well, maybe his ears are not so big. Richard will join us tomorrow later - he's the videographer. Carol, Lisa, Gordon, Alan, Pasquale and I settle into an easy conversation, fueled by appetizers and drinks. They are telling me that this is about ME. I do not need to try to be anything, just myself. That it will be fun! That there will be surprises. That there will be a camera, almost always on. oh. my. gosh. After a few minutes of conversation, Alan says, I think you over sold the part about you being an ordinary girl! Carol, Lisa and Gordon start rolling their eyes and laughing and snorting. I don't know what that was about. I am pretty ordinary.

Alan says the first surprise is tonight, and we should get going. Unfortunately, Carol and Lisa and Gordon can't come with us. He only has 'passes' for a certain number of people. I'm not to worry, my good friends tell me. They will amuse themselves, and we will catch up by phone later.

Dark has settled, the gas lights in the street are lit. I follow Alan and Pasquale to the front of the hotel where there are stands erected over the sidewalk. They tell me we are watching the Endymion Parade from UP THERE! This puts us on the same level as the upper tiers of the floats. Have I mentioned I am five feet tall? Do you know what it means to ME to be able to see over heads? Beads start flying, crowds form on either side of the street. Pasquale is lining me up for footage up here. He has a large handheld camera on his shoulder. The parade is unrolling below us, floats, stilt walkers, guys carrying gas lights on their backs! I am up on this astro turf covered deck - people are pointing at us from the stands below us - they want to know who I AM, that I am up there. They don't recognize me, but they sure know what I am doing is special. Out of the dark, down the street, floating on the humidity, I hear the strains of Sweet Home Alabama! Four men join us on the platform - one a middle aged guy in a suit, three in their twenties or early thirties, in beautiful, unusual, expensive clothing. When I start singing the lyrics along with KID ROCK on the float, the three young men start to sing with me and soon we are dancing in a line.....

The three guys go back to talking to the business man guy and I am catching beads and getting my picture taken. Alan says to me, You know Shirley - you just danced and sang with Better Than Ezra.

Cool.

The parade finally winds to a close, and then a typical, wonderful New Orleans thing happens. A couple of police cars, with lights going, sirens blaring, crawl down the street. Behind them a line of policemen on horseback, shoulder to shoulder, crab walks down the street, parade watchers scattering in front of them like leaves before a wind. Last in line, bringing real life back to the street, are the sweepers, big trucks and people with brooms, chasing the magic back into the night.

Allan and Pasquale look tired - well, they worked! Taking footage of me catching and throwing beads, setting up shots, telling the story. Being nice to me. Making it easy to have every living second of my experience filmed. They head off to their rooms and I phone Carol and Lisa and Gordon, who appear as if by magic (not all of it has gone back to where magic sleeps, apparently). We wait for an hour and a half in the rain to get our car out of the parking garage. This is my best advice for anyone who comes to Mardi Gras. Forget your time related expectations. Suspend any feelings that begin with "I should not have to..." You will wait in lines, people will dawdle. But it's all good. In fact, waiting in the line can give you moments you will remember forever. For instance, I watched a young mother with two little kids turn their coats into tents and cuddle in the smelly foyer to the parking garage. Mother was wearing a red and white striped Dr. Seuss hat, the little girl was wearing a pink tutu and a tiara and an over sized Saints t-shirt, and the big brother tried to cover them both with his Transformers blanket. Gordon was unbelieveably gracious to all the drunk cracker youth who could not walk past him without saying LOOK AT THIS GUY! I WANNA BE HIM, How old are you, old man? Party Hardy Grandpa! They meant this as the highest praise.

I fall asleep in the car, listening to Carol and Lisa talk about their night. I have to be back in the city in five hours. For a Surprise.



More Coming....

Rodeo and Ripper Celebrate Dumb As Mud Day

It's early February and occasionally we have unseasonably warm weather which thaws the surface of the ground in the pasture just enough that it is a sea of mud. I know people say "sea of mud" and they think they know what it means, but until you have lived on a farm that is a construction site, and you have four dogs, teenage and tweenage boys, and various trades/craftsmen and others who are making multiple daily trips to and fro from the barn to the house and the parking area and then back to the barn and the house and the field for feeding, shopping, chores, and because you forgot what you went out there for and other errands, you really can't. Know what it means, I mean. The mud.

But it's not just the ground that is muddy. This time of year because of the holidays being over and the seasons teasing you with warm 60 degree weather one day and blasting you with 50 mph winds and subzero temperatures the next, and because it is a sort of wait and see time before good weather kicks in and outside chores become excuses to play, I find that my thinking gets muddy. Not one to point fingers but, so does yours.

Admit it.

So this morning I wake up and idly think, why don't they make snore strips for dogs? I actually design them in my head, imagine the fortune I would make, write the commercials and retire to Aruba. I spend a few minutes thinking about trying a human snore strip on the Big Spotted Dog. You can imagine the reason. Fortunately, my thyroid medication kicks in before this line of thinking becomes an incident that would require explanation and I remember HEY, today is a BIG DAY!

Ripper (Daughter In Law) and I are moving crapdedoodle. I don't think I need to share the WHY and the WHERE of this crapdedoodle: let's just say that the ebb and flow of my life requires endless piles of trinkets and chachka and doodads and geegaws to be packed up, lugged up and down stairs, in and out of trucks and barns and apartments and townhouses and basements and attics - mine and other people's. I can assure anyone who ever felt that they don't have enough THINGS in their life you just have not said YES often enough or looked hard enough. The more room you have, the more you amass. I do go on the occasional shopping spree, but really, I can tell you that if you just keep your ears perked, you will find yourself the happy (or at least willing) recipient of the byproduct of other people's lives - their flotsam and jetsam, their effluent, their excesses and and failings. And sometimes, they even have really good taste! I like other people's stuff just as much as new stuff and I'm not talking about stealing. Actually I wonder how stupid you have to be, to go to all the trouble of being a thief. There is so much stuff out there for free! I mean, why bother to climb through a window in the middle of the night and risk losing your freedom (or in West Cornmeal Township where I live) risk getting shot in the leg when you can just say Yes, drive up the driveway in your truck and most people will help you load it up.

Anyhow, today Ripper and I are off to bring a motherlode of stuff home and in order to earn it, we are also delivering seven large pieces of lovely craftsmen furniture to a woman who has bought it from the owner. When we said yes to this (Ripper will tell you that I said yes and she had a blackout) we weren't also moving My Son's family into my house, Eldest Grandson did not have a broken hand, and everything seemed possible because I was breathing the fumes of an estate sale. Nothing is ever as easy as I think it's going to be or as tragic and difficult as she feels it is.

Because I had a moment of clarity and realized that I was just not big enough to take an oak entertainment center down three flights of stairs, or even help Ripper do this, I have made arrangements for help. We are picking up two guys at a Mission in town and they are going to help us and we are renting a freaking big truck.

Ripper arrives this morning and I tell her we have help. That we are picking up two as yet Unknown Unfortunates at a men's mission who are going to be our legs and muscles. It's not just easier, it's GOOD KARMA.

Over her head forms a cartoon bubble where frame by frame it is revealed she is thinking that we will pick these guys up and later today will be found on the floor of the vacant house with steak knives sticking out of sucking chest wounds by her husband my son who has been calling our stolen cellphones frantically for hours.

She says, Other women don't do this.

I wave this concern away! I tell her I have decided it will be a great day! It will be FUN, we will get so much done! And, it's sort of like the exercise program we both said we would start around the new year, which is just six short weeks behind us - no time like the present! Then I tell her I will buy her breakfast. She gets in the car.

We go through the Burger King drive thru. I order a croissant sandwich, breakfast potatoes and a small diet coke instead of the coffee that comes with the meal. I believe this is a number three. It is 3.49. Ripper orders a bacon, egg and cheese, breakfast potatoes and a medium coke instead of a coffee. Hers is 4.59. I have to repeat this several times for the woman taking the order, shouting into the little box. She says thank you very much that will be 14.99 please pull around to the first window.

No. No it will not be 14.99. I'm not going to do the actual math, but just rounding the numbers up to the next dollar I can tell it won't be 14.99. It's like 7. Ripper says, That's not RIGHT. Even though Ripper is in the passenger side of my car, the woman in the box hears this and declares, I have to charge you extra for the coffee and cokes. I say, No no, they always just swap that out. And even so, two sodas are not seven dollars.

I careen around the side of the building to the first window where a woman with a Madonna style microphone is holding a bag. I refuse to take it. I say, that total is not right.

She says, yes it is.

I say no, it can not be. Are you gonna charge 15.00 for two sandwiches all day?

She gets unction. Fourteen ninety nine.

As if her unction effects me. I ask for a receipt.

She hands me a receipt that is completely undecipherable. Sure enough the total is 14.99. Ripper is shrieking, seven dollars seven dollars let me see that! and snatches the receipt from me. Since she is convinced she is going to die today, she is upset her last meal is being screwed up in this manner.

There is much arguing back and forth, much tallying up and other BK workers start to cluster in the little tiny window. Everyone has an explanation. They start to argue amongst themselves. No one is making any sense. RIpper and I are forgotten as they turn against each other.

I snatch the receipt back, hand it to the woman holding the bag and stomp on the gas. Just one more restaurant we can never go back to.

We stop for gas and spend fifteen minutes hunting for my wallet in the car. We do find it. Then...

We decide to go pick up the Freaking Big Truck - which is actually just a ten foot cargo van - and THEN get breakfast. I decide we are going to feed the Unknown Unfortunates, too. More good karma (especially since I have found my wallet). We pull into the rental place parking lot and now I can't find my phone. I am looking for my phone because a) Ripper's phone never has a complete charge, b) I do not go anywhere without my phone, c) I have the rental contract stored in my email on my phone. We tear the car apart. I take off my coat. I take off my sweatshirt. I look in the trunk. Ripper starts to call my phone and the vibration is rattling the car like bad dental work but we still can't find it. Finally, Ripper finds it between the seat and the console (in a place I looked over and over) and says, I hate you. Get out of my life. But with affection.

We go in to get the truck paperwork and keys. The people inside have never done this before. It's new to them. They have to call for assistance. The guy who shows up is their son. Dad disappears, Mom and Son get snippy with each other (You aren't logged in. Yes I am. No you are not. You have to be logged in.) Finally son gets the paperwork printed and hands it to me to sign. I hand it back. Mom passively, aggressively, slowly and methodically, folds it into an origami crane and slides it into the envelope. Ripper and I watch this little drama with some understanding - we have sons. But this is not getting us down the road.

I am going to drive the truck. Not many people know this, but I sold little trucks and big trucks for eight years. I can drive anything, any size. I could thread a needle with this truck. It will be a source of shallow pride to me all day. So, I am packing up my stuff from the car which Ripper is going to drive and I can't find my wallet. Or my phone.

I realize if I do this one more time today, I AM going to end up with a steak knife sticking out of a sucking chest wound, but it will be Ripper who did it and no jury will convict her.

We find my wallet and my phone after a few trips back into the truck place, a few more searches of the trunk and under the seats, and a fruitful emptying of the pockets of my coat.

This is when we realize, it is National Dumb as Mud Day.

I peel out of the parking lot with Ripper hot on my bumper and my phone rings. It's Ripper. She says, You are doing great! I think she was checking to see if I still had my phone, but it was sweet of her to notice my skill. Later I realize that she was probably also obsessing that I would drive slowly and over carefully and timidly and then she would be forced into taking the wheel of the truck and that would make HER nervous.

Now because it is NDAMD (see above) and because everything seems to be moving in slow motion, when I call my contact at the Mission to tell him that I am on my way, he tells me I have missed breakfast by half an hour. I don't get why this is important. Was I supposed to eat at the Mission? He says nooooo, but the guys show up, eat and take off about their business (?) and will not be back til 11 to line up for lunch. Okay then. Ripper and I are going to eat breakfast first and kill and hour or two, and then pick up the guys.

We eat at MacDonalds where something very similar to the Burger King Breakfast we order before totals just over 7 dollars. Hmmm. Ripper even has extra potatoes. After a nice, leisurely and reasonably priced breakfast, we moozy (I don't know how to spell that) over to a lighting store and poke around. Then it's time to drive to the mission.

We park and go up to the building, which is an old store front. The door is locked (it's not time to go in for lunch yet) but there is a dapper gentleman standing on the sidewalk, complete with snazzy hat, dress shoes and suit coat. He's very tall and he looks healthy. He asks if he can assist us. I tell him I am here to offer a few hours of work moving furniture. I am paying cash. He hods out his hand and says, Hello, my name is Robert. I will be happy to do it. I say, I really need two guys. We turn in unison and look at an older guy sitting on a bench, clearly not the man beef we are looking for. Now I am worried about offending him, though he doesn't really look all the interested. Robert says, let's go inside and maybe they have someone else for you. He raps on the door, they open up, a cheerful woman named Patty takes in the situation. Robert ducks outside again and reappears with a strong younger man in tow. This is Otis, and he can help! It's that easy. We get in the car, hunt for my wallet and phone again, and head back to Macdonald's where we left the truck. As we pull away from the curb, a young woman waves at the car and mouthes WHERE ARE YOU GOING? This is Otis' significant other. His cellphone rings and it's her. They have a discussion about what he is doing, what he is earning, and how long he will be gone. She's grilling him pretty good. When he hangs up, I ask him if he needs a note from me for the day? We laugh and hi-five each other and basically rejoice in the common themes of people's lives.

We pick up the truck and I pair up with Robert (we are close in age) and Otis climbs into the car with Jaime (the truck won't hold four people). I set the gps - a thing of wonder to Robert, who asks if it works if you are hitching - and off we go.

Robert and I settle into an easy conversation. We are both Hillary democrats who voted for Obama. Robert shares that he studied political science in college and finds this an exciting time to be living. He tells me he is a veteran. He played basketball for the Air force all over Europe and then tried out for the Denver Nuggets. He injured his knee and can't play any more. That his mother died six years ago and she was his best friend. He finds he does not have anyone to call with good news any more. He never had children. His favorite place in the world is Belgium. At New Years.

He asks about me and I give him the encapsulated Rodeo story.

Ripper calls and says she is hungry. So is Otis.

Robert says he has coupons for MacDonald's and pulls them out of his wallet. Ripper says she can't eat at the same fast food restaurant twice in one day. I decide I want Robert to hold on to his coupons, I'm buying so we go to Wendy's. We order everything they want.

Eating and driving, we get to the house and Robert and Otis load up the big, difficult furniture easily and energetically. They think of better ways to do things and Otis is particularily good at the spacial relationships that are required to load the truck.

We drive over to the delivery site and unload the furniture. The woman receiving the furniture gives Otis and Robert forty dollars each which they really appreciate. Then, we go back to the vacant house and in minutes load it up again with the items we are keeping. We all work together at this and it goes really fast. To our endless amusement, Otis' woman calls every fifteen minutes to see where he is. I keep wondering what she thinks is happening. And how does she pay for those calls?

On the way back to the Mission, Robert tells me that he had an apartment till two months ago, when he got laid off. They fired his whole shift. He's not worried. Something else will turn up. Maybe he will go to Florida to see an old girlfriend. He's thinking it might be time to settle down. Or get a camper and drive around the country. He says he's on Singlenet.com, too. He's Robert405. Okay.....he also says that he has a job interview the next day, but he can skip it and come out to the farm to help us unload. I tell him I don't think that will be necessary, we have family to help us unload. He looks out the window and says, I can skip that interview. He tells me that Otis is not really homeless. He doesn't know why he comes to the shelter.

Ripper and I decide telepathically to pay these men twice what we had originally said we would, because they made the day so easy. They are very happy, wave to us enthusiastically when we drop them back at the Mission. Call us ANY OLD TIME!

We drive the truck home, glad we have it for another day and don't have to unload it tonight. We are bushed. We sit and talk and Ripper tells me that Otis is thinking about going back to college, that his mother is a stock broker. Ripper says she talked to his mother when she called - Otis wanted her to say hello. She said that Mom was very articulate. She says Otis told her he voted for McCain because he thought McCain would do what was important, and wouldn't care about being popular. She says he told her he isn't homeless, that he and his significant other and her two kids live with another family in an apartment. He comes down to the mission because all his friends are there. His Sig Other likes the social life. Neither of them have jobs right now.

Ripper and I are sitting in my lovely home, bought with so much hard work. She says, I felt sort of guilty. We have so much.

I said, I know.

Ripper says, How do they get to be homeless, with no jobs, Rodeo?

I know she means she has met incompetent idiots just today who were not as efficient or thoughtful or as hard working. It is a puzzle, but I think about the job interview that can be missed, the injury, the death of a beloved parent. I think about relationships with insecure, needy people. About bad luck and bad decisions and bad habits. I think about National Dumb as Mud day. I tell Ripper that what keeps us from being in their situation is luck and things that can turn in a second and that we are but the width of a human hair away from going down that road most days of our lives. We just don't know it. it's the difference between saying Yes and No to the right and wrong things at the right and wrong times. It's the intervention of Angels and Shadows. I guess the answer might lay in our prayers. Robert told me that every night he thanks the Lord for another day. I told him that every night I thank the Lord that I am not cold or hungry.

I believe in Magic, Again

It is 1958. I am standing on the lawn of my home in Springfield, PA. It's late winter - one of those mornings where the grass feels brittle under your feet, but the air has a different, fresher feel and smell. The signs of spring are there, but you have to look really closely, listen really well, close to the ground. It's a morning that is not just about what it is, but what it will become. Poised. About. Ready.

A noise from a tree distracts me from inspecting ice crystals on the grass. I lay down on the earth, face up, feeling the miles of soil and stone and rock and lava and whatever else I can imagine is the center holding me up. Above me is an equal amount of sky and clouds and planets and stars. And for a moment, the last one I remember, I am the center of the universe.

Life happens after that. A series of events and admonishments and personalities and work that are designed to chip away at that feeling. Love and passion and need and all the elements of responsibilities and leading a productive life of service and maturity conspire to make sure I understand what my place is in the scheme of things. I am a knife on a whetstone, run by the ceaseless pounding of things going forward, goals being reached, agendas fleshing out. But always, always there is the memory of that morning, of that knowing what it is like at the center.

Good news. Good things happen. Happy times. Comfort, surprises, Wonderful tastes and warm blankets on cold nights. Hot showers. Babies. Kisses. Smiles and gifts. Just in the nick of time sometimes, sometimes greeted with gratitude, sometimes overlooked in the crush of bad things.

Bad news. Bad things happen. Hopes that are dashed, regardless of the amount of effort put in. Unfair things. Cruel things. Accidents. Loss. Long faces talk in whispers. Closed doors. Stones in shoes. Broken plumbing. Debts. Sometimes the phone rings, sometimes the certified letter arrives, sometimes Young Policemen show up at the door with news that is so unfathomable it is like they are speaking a language I don't understand. Bad things always leave their mark.

I am not unaware of the balance. Every year at New Years, I take stock. This involves cleaning out of my head, heart and house of things I do not want to take into the New Year and going to Beliefnet.com and taking the spirituality quiz. It's like taking my spiritual temperature. A series of questions designed to gauge your fit with hundreds of world religions, spiritual beliefs or theories, when you finish answering them it tallies up your answers and matches you up with some body of faith that most closely resembles your mindset.

I never even get close to Catholicism, Judaism or Muslim. Never. I remember the shock of not even registering within fifty points of Protestant although I attended Presbyterian Church much of my childhood. I was sort of relieved at not having to say "I am a Presbyterian" any more when asked, because it never seemed quite right, given my belief that there were ghosts and spirits in trees and that dreams had meaning, and tarot cards could help you figure out tough situations,that animals talk and showed up to help you, and that you did what you could but at some point there was just a force or entity beyond the understanding of a human brain or experience that sort of controlled things but chaotically, and that had no explanation. A mishmosh of goobledygook that can only be described as magic.

I took the test in the quiet moments of midnight, the New Years after Charles died. Something changed in my score.
Something imperceptible to me, but showing up in my answers.
I scored an organized religion.
I no longer believed in magic.

I entered the darkest period of my life. I no longer cared about the balance of good things to bad things. Everything was a bad thing. My sunny personality was just something I put on, not something I believed. I said the same things, I offered the same encouragement, I don't think I am fooling myself when I tell you that I think I pretty much fooled everyone else - I think they believed I was just a little depressed, a little overwhelmed, a little beaten down. I would get over it.

Only I knew that I had stopped the struggle to stay in the center, to see the balance and was just accepting that it was all bad. That it had always been bad. That I was a fool who had never seen the whole picture. The memory of being the beloved center of the universe was just a childhood fantasy like the other ones of being Annie Oakley or Cinderella.

A friend at work noticed a chink in my happy armour one day and sent me a link to a fluffy, whimsical email newsletter that she said helped her through some bad times. I thought, what the hell. So I signed up. They started coming and I would read them first thing in the morning. Honestly, the happy, affectionate notes from the Universe initally got on my nerves. The depth of my sadness and loss of faith was so deep, they were like throwing snowballs at a bonfire.

Seriously. You can't stop crying when you are alone in the car, but you get "Baby steps spark miracles, Shirley.

Miracles do not spark baby steps.
Ungawa,
The Universe"

Or:

"When in doubt, Shirley, show up early. Think less. Feel more. Ask once. Give thanks often. Expect the best. Appreciate everything. Never give up. Make it fun. Lead. Invent. Regroup. Wink. Chill. Smile. And live as if your success was inevitable, and so it shall be.
Happy global domination,
The Universe"

Yeah, I needed that crap.

But I kept reading them, every morning.

I also kept doing things. Mechanically, but doing things. I like to respond to Haro Queries - if you haven't signed up, go do it now, it's over there in the sidebar under Help A Reporter - everyone is an expert at something, and it is fun to actually get some acknowledgement. I had extraordinary success at this, having every pitch I wrote accepted, getting quoted in The New York Times, USA today, Grands, Grandparents.com, Inflight Magazine, the list goes on and on. Just google me. Reporters were showing up at my house, photographers in tow, for articles in Ladies Home Journal and First For Women magazine. My son kept saying "What the hell, Mom?" I know - it's freaky! Especially considering that I didn't believe I was the darling daughter of the All Knowing any longer. God didn't have a plan for me, he was busy elsewhere. I was on my own.

Apparently, though I did not know it at the time, the battle over my soul was heating up.

A couple of weeks ago, a query shows up on Haro that goes like this:



33) Summary: Need Celebs/Ordinary People For TV Pilot

Category: Travel

Name: YYYYYY YYYYYYYY

Email: XXXXXXXXX@XXXXXXX

Title: Publisher

Media Outlet/Publication: XTRORD.com

Anonymous? No

Have you ever wanted to fly a jet or ride in a Float on Mardi Gras? Write us a paragraph and tell us why we should pick you.

This is how I responded:


Name: Shirley Landis Van Scoyk
Age: 55
Hometown: Honey Brook, PA
How To Reach You:XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX
Your Story: (a paragraph about yourself and why you've always
wanted to have this experience)

First of all, let me just say that if you are looking for ordinary, I am your girl. I am a short round outgoing cheerful grandmother/widow who lives on a farm in PA and works as a Realtor. But I have this one... little.... weakness..... Mardi Gras!

I have been to Mardi Gras four times. I have a dog named NOLA. I have a coconut from Zulu, but not a spear. I have thirty five pounds of beads in my bedroom closet, and three boas. I have a shoe from Endymion. I have dressed in my pajamas and screamed when the Rex King went by. I have begged, Throw me something, Mister! I have taken tons of pictures from the ground but I have always secretly wanted to throw beads to the crowd.
I have always wanted to know what it is like to see the crowd from UP THERE - to decide who to throw beads to, what method works the best - there is a science to the begging, and I want to know it, see it, live it, from behind the masks. I wanted to send you some pictures, but I don't know if you would accept attachments.

I have friends who live in NOLA who can put me up and I will fly there myself. I can be ready to go at the end of Feb.

PICK ME< PICK ME< PICK ME, Life - throw me something Mister!!!!!!!!!!"

And they answered. Yes.

And then, I renigged.

Yes. Read this:

"Alan: I am so sorry, but I have to withdraw my pitch for Mardi Gras. After I sent you the email saying I have a place to stay, yady yady yady, I realized I do have a work conflict with the dates. I thought I better write you as soon as possible, and I hope that whomever gets this opportunity really appreciates it and that it works out for you. Shucks, I am bummed but it can't be helped.

Shirley VanScoyk"

Liar, liar pants on fire.

I told everyone - Lisa and her Dad who would put me up and put up with me graciously and actually like they were excited, my Daughter In Law and my friends, that yes, I wanted to go, but really I had to be an adult, I had things to do, dogs to feed, money to save, it was time I just started saying no to myself and these crazy, impractical notions of fun and different and cherry on the top experiences. The dark side won.

But the bright side was not ready to give up.

The guy called, we talked, I said NO NO, he said please please. He emailed. He upped the ante.

His email:

"Hi Shirley --

So I've been sick as a dog for the last week and consequently haven't gotten around to replacing you in our TV show's Mardi Gras segment. We've switched to the star-studded Orpheus (Harry Connick Jr.s krewe) parade on Monday night and we'll be attending the ball afterwards, which should make it just that much more fun!

Before I move to the next name on my list, I thought I'd check in with you one more time. For our purposes, you'd only need to be there by Saturday night, we'll shoot Sunday and Monday, and you could fly home Fat Tuesday to minimize the time you'd be away from work...

So, whatd'ya say? Lemme know ASAP!

Thanks!"

Okay, I'm shallow. The name Harry Connick Jr. turned it all around for me.

Also I am also a complete sucker for a man who is begging - just ask my two husbands, my son, my grandsons and my old boyfriends.


On Friday I made a few phone calls about my animal care concerns, worked it out in minutes and guess what, called the guy and said yes. Happy Happy Happy. Mostly. And I also got a positive response from another query I wrote - I sent this wonderful woman Pam The Cremains Tour when she requested funeral/celebrant stories and she was so receptive and kind and appreciative that I was overwhelmed, but in a good way this time. A remarkable turn of events - later to be seen as a metaphor of historic proportions, sort of like.....The Battle of Midway or Gettysburg. I start looking at Ball Gowns on the internet, checking out the Orpheus site. You know - Orpheus, one of the handful of Greek heroes to visit the Underworld and return; even in Hades his song and lyre did not lose their power.

But the Universe does not like it when you minimize its work to a human scale. Once it gets started, you have got to stand there and wait for it to swallow you up and show you once again that you are the chocolate-y, chewy center of the Universal Tootsie Roll.

Monday morning. This am. First thing I do is roll over, grab my blackberry and read what emails have come in over night. There it is - the Universe Calling.

And this morning it says:

"I don't like to make predictions, but the way things are going, Shirley, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this year you have a ball, go to a ball... and put the pics up on Facebook.
You are so poised for the time of your life -
The Universe"

Okay, Universe, you win.

Oh Sleepless Night

(To The Tune of Oh Holy Night)

Oh, Sleepless Night
The VanScoyks they are barfing
It is the night when they all got the flu

Long lay the bug even with the hand washing
Til it appeared and our tummies felt it's wrath

A thrill of hope, at 4am Jeremy is rejoicing
For yonder breaks a new and spew-less mourn!

FALL ON YOUR KNEES
O hear our anquished voices

Oh night of slime!
Oh, night the washer ran
Oh, night of slime
Ooooooooh, night of slime

Led by the nightlight, down the hall careening
With growling bellies, by the toliet we stand
O'er the laundry, a bulb is softly glowing
As Nana washes chunks out of a blanket by hand
The mother of the brood lay thus in lowly danger
Of throwing up in her queen size bed.
Brad knows her need, her weakness is no stranger
Behold the pot, before it lowly bend!
Hold her hair, down the drain please send!

Truly we must love one another
To clean up this mess and do it in peace
The fever will break, but now we are sick all together
In the morning this oppression will cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
When the cramping passes and sips of water we retain
Cola is the cure! Then, ever, ever praise we,
In our bellies it will remain!
In our bellies it will remain!


Merry Christmas, Everybody! I cherish each and every one of you for the way you brighten my life. Thank you- The heart is mine, the fingerprints are yours.

Shirley

The Blue Sky Farm Christmas Letter

It's that time of year when people I haven't seen for a long time (and with good reason) feel the need to connect and send me Christmas Letters. Always folded in quarters in lavish Christmas cards, opening them sends shivers down my spine. They seem to come in categories: TMI and Full Out Bragging.

TMI (Too Much Information) is usually a list of funerals, surgeries and divorces. Full Out Bragging is a recitation of graduations, awards, births, and trips. There is a hybrid (TMI/FOB) which is bordering on emotional abuse.

I've never sent a Christmas letter not just because I don't like getting them, but also because Rodeo's Christmas Letter would go something like this:


Hey, everybody, sorry this is late.

It's been a busy year here at Blue Sky Farm. No, the addition is not done. No, we don't know when it will be done. No, the kid's house has not sold. No, we don't know when it will be sold. Yes, that is our bucket truck, no it's not rented, we bought it.

The boys have each grown five inches and keep their school work secret from their parents and me, so we don't know what grades they are in or if they have won any awards. They get on a school bus everyday, but they could be part of a secret gov't program.

I have only been to the emergency room three times this year: vertigo, teeth through my lip and a truly near death prescription mix up. We do have two weeks to go til the New Year.



Trips: Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Lost and Found in New York City, TWO trips back to New York with Anita for "the View", Road Trip with Gail to Arizona (pictured, with our candy necklaces), each wonderful and fabulous in it's own way!

However, who could forget the Summer Stay-Cations - one for me, one for the dogs. And for Nola, Petey and Daisy, winter stay-cation looks pretty similar to summer stay-cation.


Sadly missed: Earl and Josh W.

Things Acquired: Lucille (pictured), Nellie, Rita, Nathan, Two Yet to be Named Chicks, Fencing, Manure Spreader, Gas Fire Place.


Things Lost: FIVE HUGE DUMPSTERS FULL OF CRAPDEDOODLE, thousands of dollars in commissions due to the market, three chickens to either the bobcat or the red tail hawk.

Hey, wait. This has been sort of cathartic. Maybe that's why they send those letters.

Out my window, the snow is falling, the wind is howling but I am toasty and warm, as are all my friends and family and animals. Merry Christmas to all and may this coming year bring you the blessings of creature comfort.

Spirit of Christmas

This year, I am trying to reclaim Christmas.

The last three Christmases I took a pass - 2006 it was just three weeks after Charles died and I was pretty much in a fog. One of the last things he did on this earth was put up Christmas lights. I remember watching him teetering on a ladder, tweaking the weather beaten strings in the crabapple tree and wondering if he was ever going to come in for dinner. I'm looking out the same window now and I can see those strings of lights blowing in the wind, nobody in the family having the heart to cut them down. Obsessed with Christmas lights, we are still finding boxes of vintage bulbs he hid in the attic and bags of brand new strings he forgot in the barn.

2007 we were still adjusting and making it good for the kids, but feeling our way, and making a lot of jokes about getting to pick out trees WE liked. An oft quoted Charles anecdote was of Christmas tree hunting in the snow, on a bitterly cold day in a local tree farm. Daughter-In-Law and I found ourselves standing in a cold, bleak field with darkness sifting down around us, not knowing where Charles and the kids were. The lights went out in the vendor's shack, only a few cars left in the parking lot. After about two hours, an ancient school bus lurched into the lot and Charles and the two boys fall out the door, laughing hysterically. They had taken a BUS to a distant field in search of the perfect tree and ....didn't find one. This was funny to them at the time, but not funny to DIL and I for another five years.

The up shot of this is that I have a PINK fake tree covered with girly ornaments. The lights are already on it, and you just plug it in.

However, to keep the Ghosts of Christmas past from casting a pallor on all future Christmases, I am trying to do new things, start new traditions, and feel Christmasy. So I have to act Christmasy. I decided to make Christmas gifts for friends.

(My family does not want home made gifts. We do enough of the touchy feely Walton's Mountain kind of crap every day, they want the hard goods like appliances and bling)

I didn't want to bake cookies. It seemed toooo hard. I've been making soup like a fiend but I don't want to give anyone food poisoning by mistake. It's just what would happen.

So, I decide on something that LOOKS Christmasy, suits the majority of my friends, and would be fun. This is how I arrive at Homemade Cranberry Liqour.

It's a beautiful red - so it's Christmasy. It's alcohol so it suits my friends - sort of a liquid one size fits all. And It looks more like 'compiling' than cooking, so it would be fun.

I've had my eye on these huge Ball jars with bales and rubber gaskets at the local Hardware store, so when the Liqour is done, I use them for something else so it also fits the 'gift for me' category that I was ashamed to list above.

First step: research. I read about fifty recipes on line, all of which seem to be cut and pasted from an original one.

Second step: buy the ingredients and amass the tools. (I even buy a new vegetable peeler because I realize that the one I have is not very sharp, and I bought it in 1978). I have to go to the Liquor Store to buy the vodka. In Pennsylvania, you have to buy wine and liquor (except rubbing) at a special state owned store, with state employees, during restricted hours. If you want beer or malt beverages, that's another store. But not on Sundays, at all. I think that this is a holdover from our Quaker heritage, not that I know many Quakers who don't bend an elbow. I googled the subject but got more complaints about the system than information on its history. However, Pennsylvania was also the location of the Whiskey Rebellion - moonshiners fighting government regulation of home stills. However, here I am at the liquor store, buying three huge bottles of vodka. I can read minds, so I know that everyone in the store has noticed what is in my cart and has decided I am an alcoholic. I fight the urge to explain the purchase to the clerk, because A.) I know he thinks I am an alcoholic B.) I know he doesn't care. I trip going out the door and feel that everyone has confirmed their suspicions. I have been to the Liquor Store about four times in my life and felt this way each time. More pointless self loathing.

Third Step: Mulching the cranberries and pouring the vodka in the big jars. You also have to make a sugar syrup which IS cooking, but I didn't notice at first, but really easily accomplished, until I have to pour the hot syrup in the jars and find that they are too tall for me to reach easily when on the table, too heavy for me to move to the floor or the chair. So I climb on a chair with a pot of boiling sugar syrup and risk my life. Well, it is christmas time and I haven't been to the emergency room yet.

It's gorgeous! In a couple of days I will decant this into smaller jars and wow my friends with my thoughtfulness and creativity. If you are one of my friends and reading this, feel free to thank me now. I will also be 'cricutting' a label - that should be another episode.

I hope this is good enough to repeat next year. It's sort of a decoration for the kitchen in addition to a gift so it's really a win/win. I hope it gives my friends a warm glow on a cold night, sometime in the next month or so. Because really, that's the best we can expect in this life.

Threads of Memory

I have forgotten birthdays, anniversaries, and tax bills. I have forgotten my phone, shoes, and hair appointments. I've forgotten to unplug the iron and I've forgotten where I've parked. I've completely forgotten people's names, where I met them and why I've disliked them. Don't even get me started on hours spent hunting car keys, lost earrings or important papers. I've picked up an exquisite Limoges milk pitcher from the sideboard in my own dining room and wondered where it came from. Thank goodness my old horse Bonnie had a real barn lust or there would have been many afternoons out trail riding that might have ended in hysterical phone calls because I forgot how the trail went. I accumulated almost fifteen pounds of brown sugar over time, because I could never remember - while at the grocery store - whether I had it in the pantry. I've walked into rooms, forgetting why I went in. I've forgotten to close gates in the pasture and doors on the barn, leading to many many domestic episodes. I've forgotten how to spell "predicament" and how much 35 minus 17 is.

In fact, while I was writing this, several times I have forgotten what I was doing and wandered off to do something else.

My point is....Dear Daughter-In-Law brought an ancient Singer Sewing Machine in from the barn (don't remember where we got it, how long it's been there or why I brought it home in the first place) and said, plaintively and with much rolling of her doe like eyes, "I wish I knew how to use this."

I have not touched a sewing machine in many many years. My mother was and is a Seamstress Supreme and sewing was an activity, much like reading or playing an instrument, that was a huge part of my childhood. She made all of our clothes, and going to the Fabric District in Philadelphia to pick out fabric for dancing school costumes or prom dresses was a very special occasion to be shared just between us. We would stand together in front of the pattern books, turning the large pages, and she would say - I can take that sleeve, and put it on that top, and we can match it with that skirt and make it out of this fabric- and outfits and evenings and girlish dreams would form, and out of the scraps, my Barbie and Chatty Cathy would have the best, most fashionable doll clothes In our neighborhood - sorry Gail, but I still think so!

She had a Necchi Sewing Machine that did zig zag stitches and scalloped and serged and ruffled. The arrival of this machine when I was little meant that my sisters and I got her old machine just for us to use. It went into the basement on its own table, next to the "toy' iron which heated up enough to really iron clothes and the 'toy' oven which got hot enough to bake cookies. We had real scissors, boxes of straight pins and needles, and all these appliances used electricity. All the little girls in the neighborhood had similar little kitchens and laundries in their basements, which we played in when we weren't sledding down hills without helmets and riding our bikes in traffic. Or walking over a mile to the candy store with our quarter allowance. It was a different world. It's not that we didn't burn ourselves or cut ourselves or sew our fingers into the hems of little doll pants - it's just that unless you were REALLY hurt - requiring treatment by a doctor - it was just child's play.

But, where was I? Oh, yes. DIL, with a dusty, chicken poo encrusted ancient Singer Sewing Machine.

I'm staring at the machine which she is wiping down with a cloth. It's so pretty - shiny black, with gold scroll work. She's holding an equally old spool of thread. Apparently, in the same pile of junk in the barn that held the machine, there was a sewing box full of balls of lace, little papers of needles and pins, LA MODE buttons, and that is also now on my kitchen table.

"I could make stuff with this." DIL is now unrolling lace across the table. "Why would someone have so much lace?" (I'm assuming she means the original owners of the box and the machine, not us - because I still can't actually remember bringing this stuff home)

I say, "Well, women used to sew the lace on the hems of their skirts, to make it pretty, or longer, if there wasn't enough fabric."

"I could make something on this machine, if I knew how to put this thread on it." She's trying the spool out on various places.

I know how to thread it.

Of all the things I have forgotten in my life - important things, unimportant things, objects and thoughts and occasions and feelings - I remember how to thread this machine.

I remember my sister sitting next to me and saying,"I'll show you - just ONCE, though." I remember where to put the thread spool, I remember the way you hook it through the arm (I remember it's called 'the arm') I remember looping it around the tension knob. I remember that you have to be careful not to screw with THIS too much. I hand her the thread and tell her to thread the needle - because my eyes just can not do that.

Once the needle is threaded, there is the matter of the bobbin. I show DIL how to use the wheel to move the needle down down into the sole to loop around the bobbin thread and pull it up. I remember all of this. I remember that the bobbin is a pain in the ass.

We start sewing all the junk mail. About every three inches, the bobbin thread breaks. Apparently the long deceased owner of this bobbin kept adding different colored thread to the already filled bobbin and it is a hot mess. DIL gets tired of sewing the junk mail and rushes off to the fabric store to buy fabric to 'make something.' I insist she take a picture of the machine with her camera, so she can show the people at the fabric store what she is using. I don't really know why I think this is a good idea, but there is just something about US buying fabric that seems to require some kind of validation.

In about an hour, she's back with batting and fabric and a BIG IDEA. She's going to make pillows. Now, in addition to making all my clothes and my doll clothes, my mother made slip covers and curtains and I remember that it was a major activity that involved piping and fabric on rolls and moving furniture to get areas big enough to cut the fabric and rows and rows of straight pins and zippers longer and more problematic than the Mexican American border. The whole family talked of nothing else for weeks, and even my father the engineer used to get in on the cutting and pattern making. DIL is unfettered by any need other than to get that Singer chewing up yards of fabric, so she cuts two squares, sews them together and stuffs them. Every once in a while the bobbin thread breaks, or the machine comes unthreaded, or I offer technical advice like - "reverse at the end of each row, to secure your stitches." Voila, pillows! Less than three hours after she dug that little machine out of a pile of hay in the barn she has a stack of pillows and a whole bunch of creative pride.

Then she says it: "You are like a real mom. You taught me to sew."

With affection.

Along with threading a machine, I will never ever forget how I felt when she said that.

I make her promise that at my funeral she will tell my sisters and my mother (assuming I go first) and anyone else that will listen, that I taught her to sew. On a machine. That I remembered how to thread.

Putting Up The Star For Charles

So, not every family has a forty foot bucket truck to hang their Christmas decorations - just THINK what the world would look like if they did!

However, We Do. And My Son the Genius built a star out of plastic coat hangers and a string of lights, and decided to hang it as far up the spruce tree in the front yard as possible. He used a pole to hang it. We did get it lit, but he's not satisfied, so will make modifications tomorrow. Charles would have loved this.

Dream River

Of the many things that Charles brought to my life was music. He loved it, needed it, surrounded himself with it. We used to sing together in the car - all the songs we grew up with - and make the grandkids crazy. "Dream River" is one of my favorite songs by one of Charles' favorite groups. I didn't know it would take on such meaning for me.

Dream River, The Mavericks

Floating down the dream river,
With the moon and stars above,
Maybe they can help me find a way
To have your whole love

Sleeping in the darkest room
Dreaming you are in my arms
Oh how I wish my dream comes true
With all my heart

Don't want this night to end
Don't want to live without you

Floating down the dream river
With you by my side
I know it's make-believe
But please don't wake me
I don't mind

Don't want this night to end
Don't want to live without you

Floating down the dream river
With you by my side
I know it's make-believe
But please don't wake me
I don't mind
I know it's make-believe
But please don't wake me
I don't mind.

For Charles - Two Years Later

American Tune
Lyrics and Music by Paul Simon

Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
but it's all right, it's all right
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

BABY CHICKS!

To My Dear Friends Paula and Daphne

I was a poll watcher for the Obama campaign yesterday. I need to tell you that I was dearly hoping that Hillary would get the nomination, because I felt she most closely matched what was important to me. When she didn't, I brought my political head to the task of choosing a candidate and I treated this like any other election- I felt both candidates were fine men with well thought out platforms, but the choice of Sarah Palin as vp I felt lacked research and smacked of lazy thinking. That solidified my resolve to vote for Obama.

Sooooo, yesterday I got my ass out of bed at 530am, got all the animals taken care of and got to the township building at 715am. The line was already around the building.

I saw people I had never seen before. I saw a little boy choose an American Flag over a tootsie pop in a bowl of candy. We had more than 3/4s of our township voting before 2pm. I saw no fights, no political discussions - heated or otherwise - The only topic I heard discussed over and over was the question of funding for water resource clean up. I sat two feet from a Republican Committee woman I have known for twenty years - and she behaved for the first time as a professional and decent, fair minded, considerate human being. In fact, she admitted to several voters that I knew more about the water issue than she did, and she would go with my opinion.

Again, I am relating this to you in the hopes that you will understand the context of what I am trying to say. Not that this was about me. That's what I am saying. As the numbers of voters grew beyond anyone's expectations, the cloud in the air over our heads - the one with our different views and backgrounds, prejudices and affiliations, the elephant in the room no one was talking about, disappeared and the overwhelming energy was about HOW MANY people were voting. I moved into the actual polling place and counted heads for my party next to the Republican woman doing the same thing. We didn't know how people were voting, but each time someone came in, said their name, we would cross them off a many paged list and look at each other, stunned at how pages were filling up with orange highlighter lines. We counted off the names remaining - Look, Sue ONLY THREE PEOPLE on the B page have not voted!

We were doing this, because it provides the parties with an independent record, and also, in the past, if the turn out was really low, volunteers would start calling the lists, to see who needed a ride, who couldn't decide. At 3pm, both party committee people decided that there was no one to call! Sue had done this job for many years, in fact, as township secretary she knew most of our 1300 plus or minus voting citizens by sight. She would look down the line of waiting voters and say, Now, Shirley, those are the Tregos. The Hannums. The Shireys. The Paladinos. The Fuscos. Our highlighters would flick through the names on our lists, pages and pages. We laughed at each other trying to keep the alphabet straight, the pages from becoming messed up. I put my glasses aside, rolled up my sleeves and found myself muttering s,t,u, v, VAN HORN. When the registrar announced that one skinny white guy in work clothes, about twenty five years old, dirt on his boots, rushing in after work, was the 1000th person to vote, the room erupted into spontaneous applause. We had never ever had a thousand people vote in our district in any election. Sue told me she used to get excited when the number would hit 250. Carol, the Republican Committee woman, kept saying THIS is the way it should be! Every Election! Come back In April!

Dancing around, in and out of my ability to pay attention to him, was a young white man, in a suit jacket and jeans. Great hair. Great skin. Tall. A sparkling kid. the kind of kid that has a quality to him that you can't forget. He was wearing an Obama sticker on his jacket. Occasionally teasing the parents of his friends as they stood in line about their lack of lapel buttons. When he finally sat by me I said, Run for Congress. It's your world now. He said, maybe I will.

At 8pm, no one was in line. We shut the door. Our peak period was the forty minute line at 7am. There was a problem with one of our machines and the Republican Attorney and the Democratic Attorney bullied Voter's services into coming to our township building to count the vote manually, in front of the women who had collected them, rather than transport the votes down. No one wanted the slightest wiff of a taint on the ballot's credibility. Serious business. But all day long, no way of knowing just how this was all going to turn out.

I packed up my crock pot and headed home, exhausted, around 830pm. Let the dogs out. Took a shower. Got into my pjs. Sat on the sofa. Turned on the tv. That is when I had the shocking self realization that I had missed the whole point of the election.

My township has 1338 registered voters. Less than 2 percent of those voters are African American. Republicans outnumber Democrats three to one.

Numbers for West Nantmeal:
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS
(VOTE FOR NOT MORE THAN ) 1
BARACK OBAMA (DEM) . . . . . . . . 444 40.92
JOHN MCCAIN (REP). . . . . . . . . 628 57.88
RALPH NADER (IND). . . . . . . . . 5 .46
BOB BARR (LIB). . . . . . . . . . 4 .37
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . . 4 .37



Again: 1338 voters, give or take. 98 percent white. 75% Republican.

It is NOT about who won in this small township. It's about these numbers and the choices that they represent.

Eighteen months ago, I missed the fact that it was extremely important for my son to build a house for his family. I wanted to make things easy for everyone and pay a contractor and it was a painful and expensive lesson to learn that his need to provide was greater than his need for easy solutions. In a very similar fashion, I thought this election was about my issues with George Bush, and my simple vote.

I missed how important it was to you.

Please accept my apologies and know that my eyelids are pealed back. I am thrilled by your happiness and sense of pride. I feel blessed that in my small way, by voting and being a witness, I was able to contribute to your feeling of inclusion. I can not take any credit for starting out with this in mind, but I hope you know that my intentions were never to do harm.

As I watched the celebrations, I missed three people very much: One, my father from whom I learned that you judge people by what they do, not what they look like. He met his first person of color in the army, a long way from home in a situation where he was the minority and in charge. Nothing in his childhood growing up in Wernersville prepared him for this. He also taught me that minding your own business was more important than minding others. The other was my husband Charles, who didn't see color, he saw music and friends and memories of picking up the white girlfriend of his black friend - to help them bypass disapproving families.

The third person I missed was Gertrude. She was part of my household when I was growing up, part of a parade of black women who did domestic work in my neighborhood. I remember her as ageless and beautiful, wearing the first spectator pumps I ever saw, and enormous black plastic hoop earrings. She would come to our house to clean our bathrooms and windows because my mother was sick a lot, and she always gave me five minutes to clean up before she hit my room and ratted my messiness out to my mother. When she worked she wore a housedress and scuffies. She and my mother would sit for hours at the dining room table, eating the lunch of tuna sandwiches and cokes that my mother made, and I would eavesdrop while they talked about babies and men and life in general. I remember when Gertrude told my mother she was pregnant and my mother asked her when the baby was due. Gertrude said she would "jess git a feelin', I guess." and my mother and she counted back and giggled. Once, Gertrude was appalled that a neighbor lady had purchased a 'sexual sofa' and expected her to clean it. My mother cleared that misunderstanding up for her, too. Before getting on the bus to go home, or before my mother in later years drove her back to Chester, she would go in the powder room and put on her beautiful black and white dress, take the rag off her head and put in her big plastic earrings. She would touch up her red polish and blow on her nails. I know she did this because she would let me sit on the bathroom floor (scrubbed by her on hands and knees) and watch her. The appreciation I got for clothing and fashion is directly related to these bathroom moments.

Until we moved to West Chester when I was twelve, and I was enrolled in a school with a more diverse population, she was the only person of color I knew.

I was in high school when it occurred to me that someone must be taking care of Gertrude's house while she was taking care of us and I asked her about it. She said she had a Puerto Rican woman named Spic and Span at her house. I was a lot older when I realized that this was probably a joke. Although my mother kept paying her long after she could not work, and she came to my wedding, we lost track of her family after she died of complications of diabetes. Last night I hoped that among the crowds of happy celebrating people, her children and grandchildren were dancing in front of cameras.

So, Daphne and Paula, I want to give you both hugs. I am glad I was a witness to this fulfillment of a promise democracy made to you and your families. I am sorry this is just another situation where your guy has to come in and clean up some white guy's mess.

I love you madly!

Shirley

International Cyber Tag

I have been tagged by The Winds of Change!

the rules..
1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up

Six things about myself:
I was married at 20.
I was a mother at 21.
I was divorced at 23.
I was remarried at 24.
I was a grandmother at 39.
And again, at 45.
I was widowed at 54.

I think that reveals way tooo much!

Who I tagged!
Firefly Cottage

In Search of A Simple Life

My year in photographs

Ragged Roses

The Winds of Change

Waterlogged: life on a wooden ship

A Papaya Like Memory

The last time I saw a papaya, I was in my grandmother's garden, on my first day in Australia. I was looking over the Brisbane River, watching pelicans land. I was five and a half years old, had just spent three days on planes (this was prior to jet engines), I had crossed the international date line and I was missing my father and my cat - who were home in the states. So many strange, fragrant colorful things I was seeing for the first time: frangipani, poinsettas in a hedge as tall as the house, kookaburras, funny cars, palm trees, houses without heaters or frig's.

So when I was in Wegman's fruit section last Sunday (fighting off the usual anxiety attack that grocery stores evoke since Charles died) and in front of me was a huge green blob labeled PAPAYA, I had to buy it. I seemed to remember that they were a color other than green in that garden, and I don't remember them being so big, and it seemed unusually firm for a melony fruit. The grocery store anxiety attack usually takes on mindless flinging of crapedoodle into a cart, rushed careening down the aisles trying to remember what I need (toothpaste? dishwashing liquid?) and decisions involving food that won't look lonely when cooked in pans too big for dinner for one. So, I was pretty sure I didn't need a papaya, but it was big enough to not look silly, and of course, I could corner my grandchildren in the kitchen and tell them why the papaya was important to me while DIL and Son rolled their eyes. A family moment, in a fruit! What more could you ask for?

At home, I decided it needed a few days to ripen, and then got distracted by...well, going to New York, etc. So this morning, I gave it a feel-up, it was noticeably softer and had turned a spottled orange. I was going to slice that thing open and eat a MEMORY!

And take photos.

And blog it. Cause that is who I am now - a blogging, exotic fruit eating Sunday lounger!

Well, either I let this sucker ripen much too much OR when I was a kid my tastebuds were so bored by red delicious apples and the occasional strawberry, but it was a little disappointing.

Sort of like sweet, soft pumpkin. Not inspiring. Which left me with the feeling that memories, of fruit or otherwise, are probably best savored fresh and in your mind, rather than physically recreated on a cold kitchen counter thousands of miles and decades from the original moment. I think I will go scramble some eggs. I wonder if goats will eat papaya?