It's Too Scary

He’s just barely 24 months, still trying to make sense of the life into which he’s been thrust. To date, he’s experienced few problems. He is a much wanted, only-child, born to mature parents. He’s enjoyed an abundance of the basics necessary for thriving, e.g., sufficient nourishing food, love and affection, he’s been kept warm, dry and safe, proper stimuli is continually introduced to spark his curiosity and increase his knowledge, when upset by unease or pain he has been comforted, routines have been established in order to provide a sense of predictable calm and safety, it has been emphasized to him that people who love or are otherwise concerned for his wellbeing will be nearby...

***

When he was 20 months old, he and I took a neighborhood walk on a still-warm autumn day. He noticed the halloween decorations on a home two doors down. Although he’d been three steps ahead of me he turned back, arms extended crying, “Up! Up! Up!” I picked him up asking, “What’s going on? Did you see something?” He pointed to a display featuring a realistic-looking fluttering bat strung from a bush to hover just above a partial skeleton clawing its way out of the lawn. I chuckled, “It’s okay. They are just halloween decorations. Halloween is coming soon.” I edged slowly closer to the display, telling him the names of the items, bones, skeleton, bat. I laughed and did a feigned, soft “Eek.” Then I turned and started back toward his house. “More,” he said, “More eek.” I walked back and he took a better look, from the safety of my arms, which were beginning to tire, so again I turned away. More urgently he said, “More eek!” “Okay,” I said, “But, you’ll have to stand. You’re heavy and my arms are tired.” I put him down and he stood next to me, holding my hand and staring at the display.  “Look,” I said, bending down, “I can touch it. It’s just plastic,” as I put my hand on the skeleton’s bony finger. He reached out and touched it. “See it can’t bother us. It’s just a piece of plastic.” He looked some more, touched it again. “Let’s go home. It’s time for lunch.” “No! More eek,” he wailed. “Okay, one last look, then lunch. The ‘eeks’ will still be here tomorrow."

Thus began a month-long obsession with halloween decorations. Each day I was with him, he begged to go “outside,” and “see ‘eeks’," which were multiplying rapidly as October 31 neared. The scarier the display the longer he’d stare, transfixed. His parents reported the same. “People must think I’m crazy for taking my baby to look at these frightful sights,” sighed his mother, "but he begs to see them." Somehow the process of facing "IT" and staring it down, inured him to his initial fear.

Reliable Husband and I took him this week to Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. He knew from books about the fish and mammals we’d view. “What will we see?” I asked on the commute. “Dolphins and fish.” “What else?” “Sharks and turtles.” “What else?” “Seahorses and eeky stingrays.” Eeky had become his adjective for anything strange or scary.

The first display we saw featured stingrays. He stood staring, then said, “Up! Pick me up!” then, “No more aquarium!” Picking him up I assured him, “It’s okay, let's go to the toddler’s play area. You’ll like that.” Along the way I talked about the fish, sharks, turtles and seahorses. I demonstrated that they were all safely housed behind thick glass. He tapped the glass to test it. "They can’t come out of the water where they live. They can’t survive in our atmosphere,” I explained waving at the air around us.

He enjoyed the play area. On the way out, we noticed the trainers were feeding the beluga whales. The mammals slid up on the faux rocks to receive their fish treats, but their sheer size, as well as their snorts and vocalizations frightened him. “Too scary!” he whimpered, burying his head in my neck. We headed to the dining room for a snack. Relaxed, hunger and thirst abated, I told him we were going home. “No! Please more ‘eeky’ stingrays!" "More dolphins. More sharks!” He was ready again to face his demons.

That night he had his first nightmare. His parents reported that in the wee hours they woke to his wailing from his crib. He cried over and over, “Nooo! Nooo!” As they comforted him, his wail lessened to a soft mourn, “nooo” as he fell back asleep in their arms.

Later that day he woke from his nap. I heard him talking, as he often does, upon waking in his crib. Usually it’s happy banter. But he was repeating a phrase, almost like a mantra: “B**** likes whales. B**** likes whales...” Referring to himself, B****, in the third person. Okay, you might not quite have overcome your fear yet, I thought.

Like most humans he trusts - yet he worries. I do as well. Eleanor Roosevelt said, 

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it… every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Currently, I face our whacked-out Republican Party. The other night Reliable Husband listened to the streamed online Republican debate with his headphones, while I read a book. He knows that it upsets me to hear those buffoons pontificate. As I read, I heard Reliable Husband chuckle now and then. Soon his snickering stopped. Humor one might initially find in their quibbling and caviling evolves into shock at their juvenile, bombastic outbursts.

I pulled up a photo of the debaters. I looked squarely at them. They don’t look too “eeky.” They look like regular humans. But, oh they scare me. 

Like B****’s mother, I wonder, Is anyone watching and wondering? But, I know the world is watching us, here in the U.S. as we descend into the depravity that has come to be associated with our presidential elections. 

I know that the Republicans are becoming plasticized and can soon no longer hurt me. Stultified by their own hatred, they will soon no longer be able to survive in our modern atmosphere- yet I worry. I trust my sensible fellow Americans, yet I worry.

Reliable Husband hears me wail, “NOOO!" in the wee hours, and turns to find me curled in a fetal position, moaning, referring to myself in the third person and repeating in monotone, “Rae likes Trump, Rae likes Trump… "

Standing, bravely staring down his fear

Just Too Scary! EEK!

The world is watching.

Keeping My Mouth Closed

The party was in full swing, the table laden with fine food, and scattered about were 14 young adult friends, drinks in hand, heads thrown back in laughter as the group’s resident comedian regaled us with his wit. And he was definitely funny. Everyone, including me, whooping, chuckling, giggling… depending on their laugh style, that is until his jokes took a different tone. Did I mention that the party-goers were caucasian? The funnyman began to tell jokes with a racially denigrating slant and I stopped laughing. I credit the Roman Catholic nuns of my childhood, who taught us that it was just plain wrong, a sin you know, to abhor one of God’s creations based solely on their race, specifically in this case, skin tone. And even if I am no longer a practicing Catholic… well, some things just stick.

Anyway, Mr. Funnyman was an in-law relative of mine, so I had no problem in piping up and telling him that although I usually found him to be quite entertaining, I was “uncomfortable” with this type of humor, (in fact his jokes made me sad, which is kind of the opposite of his supposed intention.)

I noticed the sudden quiet in the room, probably dropping from 60 to 30 decibels, when Funnyman's wife said to me, “Listen, my grandmother is of Polish descent and I don’t take offense at jokes aimed at Poles.” Perhaps, I thought, and you also don’t actually acknowledge your own Polish ancestry. Please note how you did not say ‘I am of Polish descent.’ (I’d only ever heard her say that she was Italian, explaining her blonde hair and blue eyes by adding ‘Northern Italian.’) I looked blankly at her, kept my mouth closed, wishing I hadn’t opined in the first place. There was some nervous clearing of throats, people shifting about as they put their drinks down, and within 30 minutes everyone but the hosts had donned their coats and were saying their good-byes. It was never my intention to put an abrupt end to my friends’ party.

Reliable Husband and I don’t always agree on everything. He feels strongly that by just being quiet, not laughing, but by not reacting to situations like this, one is a giving a sufficient enough response. “By saying nothing, you are making a statement.” But, what if no one ever spoke up to redress social wrongs? “They are adults, dear,” he counters, “If they haven’t formed an opinion one way or another by now, you are certainly not going to change their minds by redressing them.” To this day I vacillate between thinking maybe RH is correct and just maybe I was justified in speaking up that day. But, I now try to keep my such opinions to myself- a bit harder to do after downing a glass of wine.

Which gets me to the present: We attend a meeting/social event once a month or so, where the adult group begins with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Since childhood I’ve had a bit of a problem with “The Pledge.” Again, I credit (or blame) the goods nuns who taught me catechism. Back then the words expressed in it never seemed to jibe, in my young mind, with the “no gods before me” commandment, the “no false idols” aspect of Catholicism. Was I not, with my hand over my heart, pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth? It would conjure up a picture in my head of Nazi children saluting the swastika. It didn’t quite sit right with me, even though I loved my country as much as the next kid. I hadn’t the courage to challenge the priest who came to our class for a monthly question and answer session. I was unlike my classmate, Gary, who always put forth something he thought would stump the priest, like:

     Father, could God make a planet heavier than even God could pick up and then could God pick it up?

Where was my big mouth back then? Being an obedient 7 1/2 year old, I reasoned that I’d just mouth the “allegiance to the flag” part and speak aloud the part from “and to the Republic…” and on. God would probably forgive me, right? Problem solved.

Years later I heard of William Tyler Page’s “American Creed” which I always thought was a much better statement. It was one I could have been proud to say aloud. Here it is:

I believe in the United States of America, as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

It probably could be edited in some form to make it less verbose and thus memorizable by little kids, don’t you think? Maybe like:

I respect the flag of the United States, and acknowledge it as a symbol of freedom and justice to all.

Or easier still:

     I pledge allegiance and obedience to all the laws of the United States.

Anyway, at our meeting, this recitation of allegiance seems to have little bearing. Once, not even a minute after expressing our allegiance, the guy at the table next says in a stentorian voice, “Who says I’m not patriotic? I brought watermelon in honor of Obama and his wife.” He then guffaws at his own joke. A lightning flash look from Reliable Husband was enough to make me sigh, turn away and take a sip of my beverage, wishing the liquid could somehow stem the tiny bitter pit, seed or kernel now beginning to form in my stomach. My vengeful self wondering if the guffawer would have the gonads to say that in a room full of tall, strong black men, like, oh I don't know, maybe one headed by Kevin Vickerson from the Denver Broncos? Probably not. 

But, again my civic lessons from the nuns come back to me, as they had taught us to respect our country, our elected officials, especially our President. Maybe on a much lesser scale than the beloved Pope, who was endowed with a special infallibility -something that also did not sit quite right with this, then, 7-1/2 year old, but I'll take that subject up at another date. Anyway, I always try to respect our Presidents, like even when we had Mr. George W. for 8 long, solid years. Respect. Despite disagreeing with most of his political views, I’d have never dreamed of mocking him publicly, especially two seconds after putting my hand to my heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

There is an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where the local teacher, Miss Crump, challenges the children, “Do you actually listen to the words you are saying when you recite the Pledge of Allegiance?” I wonder the same thing about this guy at the next table.

Despite my problems with the semantics of The Pledge, I completely respect our flag and acknowledge its representation of (at least as well as we, as humans, can ever sustain) freedom, liberty and justice for all.

Happy Black History Month! And let us give consideration to someday having a Native American History Month in this country, for those poor suckers really got a shabby deal and historically we, as a country, have a tendency to simply sweep them under the carpet.

I've found a way to keep my mouth closed and still get it off my chest by writing it down.

On to happier, more upbeat blogging next time. Although that may be a challenge in an election year ;) ;)

(As a side note: When I saw the movie, “The Bells of St. Mary” I was confused when the children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance didn’t say the words “under God.” I later researched to find that it was because when it was filmed in 1945 and those two words were not part of the original "Pledge.” They  were added in 1954.)

A Misfit in Privatopia (and pretty much everywhere else)

I’d just attended her May graduation, where she received her M.Ed. Before the crumbs from her celebratory cake were dry she was telling me that she’d applied for an MBA program at the school where I worked. She's quick-witted, but when I raised an eyebrow instead of a snappy retort she shrugged and sighed, “I guess I’m just a nerd, huh?” “No, Sylvia," I replied, “I’m rather proud of you. You’ve always been your own person,"

***
I love being retired, don’t miss the workplace -no, not nary a bit. But I do realize now that the university environment where I worked for 21 years was definitely a misfit’s heaven. Just like the theTV special Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys, I'd need only glance around the campus back then to know I was comfortably ensconced with other misfits, nerds, different drummers...

According to Merriam Webster a misfit is a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others, often in an way that may be deemed uncomfortable. Now, this is where I would take umbrage, as in my case I am quite comfortable being set apart. I picture an image of the square peg being pushed into the round hole, and by now I’m frankly weary from being pressed or shoved into the wrong spot. Like Sylvia, I’m quite content doing my own thing, never mind the naysayers. I'm happy having virtually no FaceBook or Instagram envy. I am not plagued by thoughts of “missing out,” No, “Great, good for you!” is my mantra, I’d rather not, but I thank you for asking.

***

From the first time I was peeled, weeping and wailing, from my mother’s leg and forced to attend kindergarten, I recognized that groups of more than 6 were not for me. It turned out the classroom was just fine, as the teacher did the talking and teachers were pretty informative. My discord became more apparent to me in the playground, where I found myself with 74 other 1st graders. I formed one friendship that year, Gregory, who invited me to his house after school. Gregory was a bespectacled, blond-haired, blue-eyed only-child, whose mother pronounced to my mom when she dropped me off at his row house, that “Gregory is a genius, you know.” My mom chuckled over this for weeks, “Say, how’s Gregory, the genius, doing?" she'd ask me, then mutter, shaking her head, "Honestly, these parents who think their kids are really geniuses!” Gregory and I were both “double-promoted” to the 2nd grade a couple of months later.

I switched from public school to a Catholic school the following year, where my only third grade friend was Roxanne. She also invited me to her house, where she lived with her parents and just one quiet younger sister. Later it was a Kathy S., another only child, who invited me over to watch “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” with her. (Kathy S., who at the ripe old age of 10 told me what a great disappointment her birth had been for her father, as she was the only child her mother could bear and being a girl she would not be able to carry on her father's name - a distinctive Germanic name. And being Catholic, thus not able to divorce and all, why the poor guy was stuck. What kind of parents put this on a little kid?

Anyway, it turns out I had a knack for befriending kids who were either single children or had only one other sibling, not an easy task in the late ‘50s, early 60s in a Roman Catholic school system where most families, like mine, had several children. I grew to relish the quiet and peace of these homes that seemed to offset the chaos and noise of my own household.

I lived nearly one mile from my new grammar school. This school had a 55 minute lunch break. Children were allowed to eat in the lunchroom, leave the school grounds and lunch at home, or as some of the older kids did, walk to a local diner and have a burger and fries. I opted to walk home, eat a quick 15 minute lunch with mom and my younger siblings, not yet in school, and then walk back. It took just under 15 minutes each way so after eating, I had only ten minutes to spare. For me, that was sufficient time to socialize before class resumed, as the break had provided sufficient time for me to ruminate on my morning, process my thoughts, watch the world whiz by...

***
One of my favorite recent films (from 2003) is The Station Agent, a perfect little movie about how misfits find and comfort one another (you know, provide a buffer from the nuttiness of life.) It features Finn, a train-enthusiast dwarf, who inherits and moves into an abandoned, isolated railway station, only to discover that the solitude he relishes, and was certain he'd find in a rural area, is more elusive than he’d anticipated. He first acquiesces into a neighborly-only relationship, which grows into a friendship, with Joe, a talkative young man filling in as a hot-dog vendor for his ailing “Poppa” and, Olivia, who is reclusively dealing with a recent loss. (There are 2 other notable "misfits" Emily and Cleo, woven into the script.) If you haven’t seen it, I heartily recommend it. The film won a few awards, but wasn’t much of a commercial success. But I just bet Gregory, Roxanne and Kathy S., would have liked it.

I have Reliable Husband here in Privatopia and wouldn’t trade him for all the tea in China, India, Sri Lanka and Kenya combined. Although our reading and movie interests are disparate, he always listens patiently to my enthusiastic recounts of my latest passion. But still, I have this notion that there is a Finn, Joe, Olivia, Gregory, Roxanne or Kathy S., somewhere out here in Privatopia, but that I have not yet met her, him or them. People who don’t feel a need to be in groups of 12 or more to be happy, -and I just need one of them, okay- maybe two, just a person who shares my reading interests, a person who enjoys foreign films, a person who embraces diversity in humans, a person who shares the notion that the new series on Netflix, “The Story of Maths” featuring Professor du Sautoy is just about the most interesting thing on television today…

***

I told an acquaintance at Privatopia’s Ladies’ bowling league that I’m going to start a new club at Privatopia, one only for introverts, one that will cap its membership at three members. She laughed, so at least she got my joke... I think.

even my little grandson knows enough not to stuff a clover shape into a star opening

I saw these misfit toys at the local antique shop

How I Spent My Morning in a "Way Back Machine"

“What’s wrong with playing video games?” he asked, not me specifically, as he was just thinking aloud, you know, kind of surmising. Someone had posed the question to him. He had given it some thought and apparently couldn’t think of anything particularly harmful in spending his time in such a manner.

“…spending his time…” those are my words and it makes me think of a huge bank that each of us has, except that we’ve no way of knowing the total amount that is in our “time bank,” so in that sense, wasting this valued commodity might be, at the very least, a darn shame if not actually harmful per se. But, who is to judge what is “wasteful” about how one uses their time? Certainly not me.

***

In Werner Herzog's “Into the Abyss” (a documentary on the death penalty) I was moved by ex-executioner Fred Allen’s explanation of living “your dash.” Your dash life, he explains, is the little line on your headstone, the one between your date of birth and the date that you die, that’s your “dash,” that’s your whole life. “How you gonna live your dash?” Mr. Allen asks?

I know how exactly how I want to live my dash.

***

I will be baking a birthday cake today. It will, hopefully, be a perfect knock off of Portillo’s famous and much loved chocolate cake, only I will make mine from scratch and not use the cake mix or Betty Crocker’s pre-made frosting recommended by online Portillo-cake-experts. After I make the cake and frosting, and after Reliable Husband and I make a quick trip to  buy some last minute birthday gift wrap, I will begin work on a “spaghetti sauce” recipe that belonged to the birthday person’s dear departed mother. Spaghetti, along with this treasured meat sauce, some garlic bread and salad, followed by the cake and tall glasses of cold milk with be the celebratory meal of Reliable Husband, me, the birthday person and his immediate family. We will sing “Happy Birthday.” Our birthday person will blow out the candles and open his gifts. And the event will become part of my “dash."

***

The New Yorker periodical did some kind of mathematical measurement of how long readers spent reading the magazine’s top stories. The most popular story in 2015 occupied its readers for 3.6 billions seconds, or “roughly a hundred and fifteen years.” A portion of that was part of my dash.

***

My morning was pleasantly interrupted by a FaceTime call from my just-turned-two-years grandson. He wanted to show me his new Thomas the Train mini tracks. He and I will play with them this Sunday when we travel to his home for Super Bowl Sunday festivities. This will be yet another sweet portion of my dash.

***

I try to keep my physical body in a good state of health, not just my heart and muscles, but also my gray matter, and no, I don't mean my hair, but my brain. Each morning I do the NYTimes crossword puzzle or sudoku or such. Lately a couple of times per week, when I’m not too terribly busy, I will do the online jigsaw puzzle from the New Yorker Magazine. The puzzle is a randomly generated copy of one of the covers from their magazine archives, anywhere from 1925 to present. After I complete the puzzle, which takes me anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, they invite me to take a look at the actual magazine. And it is as though I have entered a time machine to the past.

Today I visited New York in March of 1958. I would have been just shy of 6 years old back then. I first look at each page, pausing only to read the editorial cartoons and glance at the advertising, you know trying to get a feel for the era. Then I go back and read the fiction. March 1, 1958's excellent pieces were “Tebic” by Sylvia Townsend Warner and “The Bella Lingua” by John Cheever. I make a note to look up more by Townsend Warner, who is new to me.

While I view the magazine I think of my mother and Reliable Husband’s mother. What was is like to be a young woman, parent in 1958? "West Side Story" was a major play on Broadway, along with the Elia Kazan directed, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.” The current cinema was “Around the World in 80 Days” and “Bridge Over River Kwai."

The “From Paris” column featured an interesting story on the Roman Catholic "miracle" of Bernadette’s vision at Lourdes. The column contained the humorous quote, “Doctors today say that in a way it is miraculous that… the water… in which hundreds of sick pilgrims are immersed… has never given rise to an epidemic."

This issue features ads for airlines, automobiles, liquor, furniture, at least four different raincoat ads (must rain a lot in March in NY), and a Germine Monteil “Super Royal” lipstick that contains royal jelly and features a “click-in, click-out” cartridge for replacing lipstick sticks. Everything seems so disposable now, throw-away. And so many of these companies have gone out of business.

Just before I finish reading this issue I spot an ad from "White Flower Farm." I, now, often order plants for my Privatopia garden from a place by the same name. I take note of their address which is in Litchfield, Connecticut. I look at a recent email from my White Flower Farm and I’ll be darned, they are located in Litchfield, CT and have been “Plantsmen Since 1950.” Good for them! This will be filed in my brain for the next time I’m shopping for plants, if they have what I want I’ll go to them even if I find it is not the most economical price. That’s me, that’s my dash. (More on this topic soon? Perhaps. Tune in again to see what develops.)

my "way-back machine"

tiny White Flower Farm ad right next to the full-page, four-color Canadian whisky ad

his mother's handwriting is nearly identical to my mother's
and the recipe eerily resembles a recipe
 belonging to the mother of a boyfriend-before-Reliable-Husband