Sunday, June 19, 2011

For All The Aqua Velva Men

Once upon a tantrum, I decided to take a parenting class.
            The leader of our class, a local minister, started the session by asking us to describe our happiest memory with our parents. After listening to several stories about camping, and one peculiar retelling of a family chore day that involved beheading chickens, it was my turn. Although it is hard these days to remember where I put my coffee cup, it is always easy to remember my best family memory – dancing with my dad in our living room to the music of Lawrence Welk.  Every Sunday night, we would push the furniture out of the way and dance to accordion classics while my mom gave dancing instructions from the couch.  One dance routine that involved a dip sent my dad to the chiropractor.
            On Father’s Day great memories about Lyle Brown are easily sparked and rekindled. When I was little, while my father would sit at the kitchen table behind the omnipresent open newspaper, I would slide behind his chair, slip his glasses off and say, “You’re my Aqua Velva Man.
            He had nick-names for me – Dolly, Little Dolly and Dolly-O. Our song was “Hello Dolly.”  Always loyal to the kids on our block, he became the permanent pitcher in our backyard baseball games. When my friends said they were quitting the Fairy Club because they didn’t believe in fairies, he marched across the street – at my urging -- and told seven-year-old Patti Jo Cordes that fairies do exist.  Soon afterward the Cordes’s garage door fell off its hinges with a slam heard round the block. I took that as a sign from above that people should not question the Fairy Club.
            A materials inspector for the Michigan Highway Department, my dad really did know our state like the back of his hand.  Our trips criss-crossed the state like a shoelace from The Bridge to Battle Creek and from Copemish to Flint. My dad would stop and read every historical marker and show us lakes and landscapes that few people have seen. In fact,  I have climbed on top of the rock that gave Big Rock, Michigan its name.
            I told my mom once that I thought I was getting whiplash from Dad’s sudden stops on the side of the road. He would brake suddenly, usually on M-32, scattering gravel in all directions. Without a word of explanation, Dad would stride into the weeds and cattails. While my mom and I sat in the Chevy, wondering if he had lost his mind, my dad would raise his prize over his head, like an Olympic trophy.
            “What is it?” I asked my mom.
            “The lid of a Styrofoam cooler.”
            My dad could make a pack rat look like it had OCD. He collected newspapers, campaign buttons, Petoskey stones, driftwood, arrowheads, old bottles and interesting pieces of Styrofoam.
            My father was the only person who was sad when the Great Depression ended. Not only was he happy with simple things, he seemed downright disappointed that the vacuum cleaner was ever invented.
            In the mid-60s my dad reported corruption in the highway department before whistle blower protection laws were even a glimmer in Sen. Carl Levin’s eyes. At an early age I learned that honesty and integrity are more important than job security.  My dad taught me that not voting in elections was still a vote. In addition to his words of wisdom,  he remembered and told hilarious jokes at the dinner table.
            He loved the suspense and excitement of finding something new – like the Styrofoam in the ditch. Once at our cottage in Copemish, near the Betsie River, he told me to come outside and see what he had found. I thought it might have been snake skin or the skull of a deer. We crossed a creek, stepped over pine knots, and there it was, hanging on a tree.
            “What is it?”
            “It’s a weather balloon,” he said.
            The balloon and its weather gear had floated from Green Bay, Wisc., over Lake Michigan and dropped into our woods – snagged on a cedar tree. My dad and I had a great time reading the enclosed directions for finders, wrapping it up, and addressing the package to the weather service in my dad’s neat handwriting. For my dad, everything was an adventure.
            So go forth. Don’t just cherish the memories – make the memories. And to all the Aqua Velva men out there – have a wonderful Father’s Day.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

As a born and bred goody two-shoes, and a perpetual Honor Roll student with a decade-long career as a Girl Scout of the United States of America, I NEVER asked or needed an adult to buy alcohol for me.
          But as a middle-aged woman I am always on the lookout for an adult who knows how to pick out a good steak. I know my Pick of the Chix and I can spot from three aisles away the green label of the ground beef that is laced with neither fat nor antibiotics. But when I had to host the AAUW gourmet party I needed help because I wouldn’t know a beef tenderloin if it slapped me across the face!
          This happens every time I need a pot roast because I can never remember the kind of meat that makes the best pot roast. So I hang around the meat section until someone comes by who looks like they have been around the block a few times with a side of beef. Once I made the embarrassing mistake of asking the meat man at Wal Mart for advice on finding flank steak. He was wearing a white coat, sunglasses and carried a clip board and pen.
          “Do you have flank steak?” I asked. The guy just stared at me through his aviators. And then I realized. He was the meat man from Village Market! “Oh, I’m sorry! You’re a spy aren’t you?”
          For advice on tenderloin I called tender friends. I ran up to Meijer’s. Now I am one of the few shoppers who has the phone number to the Meijer’s meat department. And then I called my husband’s cousin at Bob’s Processing. YES!! Of course they had beef tenderloin! I ran out there, chatted with my husband’s second cousin while the meat man ducked into the freezer. And there it was -- the beef tenderloin. When he told me the price I acted very nonchalant, like I was not shocked that a piece of meat can cost the same as a computer printer. Plus, like a 21-year-old buying booze for the first time, I wanted to act very savvy in front of my in-laws, so I wrote the check like I was writing it for a Scholastic Book order. I was so cool.
          About 24 hours later, after thawing it and caring for it gently like a three-pound pet that’s been out in the cold for too long, I snapped into PEOPLE ARE COMING OVER action! First that means yelling at my kids to get up off the couch, get off the computer, turn off the TV and FOR GOD’S SAKE HELP ME! (For more information, watch the rerun of 60 Minutes in which Mentally Disabled Parents are Raised by Above Average Children.)
          “PEOPLE! HELP ME OUT!” I yelled, “HOW MANY CUPS ARE IN A QUART?”
          “PUT THE TABLECLOTH ON THE TABLE!”
          “It doesn’t fit.”
          “GO GET THE QUILT OFF OUR BED!”
          “Couldn’t we just use a fitted sheet?”
          “NO!”
          “YOU GUYS, SET THE TABLE AND I WANT IT DONE PROPERLY. FORK ON THE LEFT, KNIFE ON THE RI --- “
          “’Knife on the right, because knife rhymes with right.’ And that is such a LIE mother! Knife and right do NOT rhyme.”

Like Rory Kennedy going to Appalachia to film how the other half lives, the company came. They ate. They laughed. We drank mint juleps made by a husband who brought all the ingredients including the glasses. That meant I did not have to rewash any of my glasses which are all crusted with a film of mysterious sediment from a General Electric dishwasher that needs to be taken out into the backyard and shot. They offered to help with the dishes and I said, “No, I’ll get them next week.” Then they left.
           And after they left I walked to the sink to get rid of the bloody plastic wrap that had lingered in the sink for hours. I picked up a mint leaf, let the pink juice and water drip off the plastic, and there on the label were two words that explain why I need an adult to buy my meat.

Filet Mignon.      

Saturday, May 7, 2011

The True Story of the Day My Fallopian Tube Fell Out

When my kids were colicky babies, I would sometimes hear the faint sound of a baby crying when I was all alone in a quiet place. But, like the sound of the jingle bell in the Polar Express, I can’t hear it any more.
          The baby cries have been replaced by raucous arguments and occasional swearing in Anglo-Saxon. I try not to complain about anything my kids do, because years of fertility treatment have made me appreciate my kids even in their darkest hours.
          For about eight years I ran a marathon obstacle course that involved mood-altering hormones, something called the dead hamster test, and daily injections of hormones extracted from the urine of post-menopausal nuns from Italy.
          One of the more interesting tests, is the hysterosalpingogram, an X-ray test in which a doctor injects die in the fallopian tubes to make sure there are no kinks or blocks in the tubes. This is the gynecological equivalent to sticking your garden hose down a mole hole in the backyard and trying to wash them buggers out. I was sent home with a promise of no aches, pains, runs, drips or errors.
          But the next morning, just before I flushed the toilet, I saw it. Small and shriveled. With the gray of some creature that had stayed in the cave too long. It looked like a small tube with a blossom at one end. I plucked it out of the toilet and placed it on a gentle bed of folded Kleenex. A quick check with my husband’s college anatomy textbook told me everything I needed to know.
          I held the leathery flower next to the picture on page 288 and there it was. A shriveled up fallopian tube that matched the scientific drawing perfectly. No wonder I was a barren woman in her 30s. My plumbing was inept, incompetent, dead, and now lying in state on a bed of Kleenex. With tearful eyes I called Kalamazoo Radiology and told them, “I had a hysterosalpingogram yesterday, I’m feeling fine, but….but…I think my fallopian tube fell out.” They sounded like they questioned me. ME, someone who actually knew how to spell hysterosalpingogram. But in their professional wisdom, they told me not to worry, just take it easy and call if any bleeding occurred.
          I walked over to my husband’s office and told him the sad news.
          “I know why we can’t get pregnant,” I said, biting my lip.
          “Why’s that?” he answered.
          “I went to the bathroom and my fallopian tube fell out,” I said.
          “What?” he asked incredulously. “Wait. Was this in the downstairs bathroom?”
          “Yes.” I whispered.
          “Oh. That was part of a banana that I threw out.”
          “Part of a banana?” I asked.
          “Yeah. You know. The stem of the banana had a little dried up flower thingy on it and I threw it in the toilet.”
          “And you didn’t FLUSH?” I raised my voice.
          “No.”
          “I JUST CALLED KALAMAZOO RADIOLOGY AND TOLD THEM THAT MY FALLOPIAN TUBE FELL OUT,.” I yelled.

          “Next time I’ll flush.”

          So the dye job worked, as you know. But 16 years later, when I’m all by myself in a quiet house and the kids are at baseball practice, piano lessons and student council meetings, I can still hear the laughter at Kalamazoo Radiology.

          Happy Mother’s Day.

          

Friday, April 22, 2011

The Lynn Street Beauty Pageant

To many of you I am a stranger. So let me introduce myself. I am a so-so wife and a pretty good mother of three children. In my spare time I am Our Lady of Perpetual Laundry.  I have strong views on politics, public education, the Catholic Church and breast-feeding.
            Although my husband will strongly object to this claim, I really am low-maintenance. I like cold chicken, cold pizza, luke-warm coffee and stale popcorn. But the love of my life is that magical decade from about 1966 to 1976, give or take a few years.
            For my 40th birthday, I received a picture that my friend saved of the contestants of the Lynn Street Beauty Pageant, circa 1969. The winner, Miss Spain, is standing next to Miss USA who is wearing white go-go boots and a mini-skirt crumpled from tinfoil. And there am I, Miss Japan, a far cry from a geisha girl, dressed in a terry-cloth cover-up with my hair rolled up in pinecones, skinny legs ending in flip flops from Kresge’s. My mascara is smudged and I look disgusted because I have lost the competition, despite having memorized long paragraphs about Japan from the World Book Encyclopedia. The crown made with the Seagram’s medallion off the pretty gold metallic box from my parents’ liquor cabinet is now resting on the pixie hair cut of Miss Spain.
            But summer heals all wounds and we would cool down by exploring the woods on the banks of the Thunder Bay River. We moseyed down an old Indian trail that was carpeted with cedar until we came to an abandoned dump filled with dirty antique bottles, disintegrating enamel pans, and Coke bottles that had the names of cities on the bottom of the bottles.  At the end of the afternoon we cradled the bottles in our uplifted t-shirts and went home so we could line our shelves with artifacts.
            We were gone for hours and when we came home we wrapped ourselves in bedspreads and sheets hanging on the clothesline and called ourselves Gypsies. Our goals were not to have the highest score on a computer game, but to ride our bikes with no hands from the dead end all the way to the bridge, or to roll on top of an empty oil drum the length of the neighbor’s vegetable garden.
            Our parents did not hover, seldom intervened, but instead read newspapers on the front stoop while we bicycled.  Then they had martinis at 6. Back then parents had a life.
            Recently, I received an email from a former college professor who ended his letter by wishing me magical days with my kids. As guardians of the gate of our children’s young lives, we need to be more court jester and less pitbull protector.
            After all, I’m living proof that there is life after a miserably failed beauty pageant.