Month: January 2021

Deferred, Now Fulfilled

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It’s a photo of me. 

I was about three years old and standing on my bed.  How about the matching curtains and bedspread?  Seeing it now, it looks kinda creepy.

My bed is a trundle bed—so cool for sleepovers.  When I was in junior high my dad stripped off the white paint and refinished it.  It got passed down to The Kid.  We did get new mattresses for it, though.

Some other badass women I admire…

I keep that photo of little debbie on the corkboard on my desk for inspiration. She expected me to be a badass woman, and I try to live up to her expectations.

I was very lucky because when I was a child, my parents always told me that I could be whatever I wanted.

Look at that photo; she’s a pirate in a flannel nightgown.  Hands balled up, tucked, and ready.

That fierce little thing knew she could do anything.

She was the best bee and firefly catcher in the neighborhood, with a mayo jar and lid always close by.  There may have been a measure of sugar and spice, but she was not afraid to mix it up, little boys did not mess with this little girl.

This little girl taught herself to swim by watching a kid at the pool.  She never had any fear of water and often thought she might be part mermaid.

She had a freakish ability to catch.  Footballs thrown from any distance and any speed were plucked out of the air into her little hands. 

Every.single.one.              

This gift turned her into her big brother’s cash cow as he placed bets with kids who hadn’t seen this unexpected, preternatural ability firsthand.

The little girl had tons of plans for the future.  Why not, when her parents frequently told her there were no limits to her possibilities?

This little girl wanted to be a go-go dancer because she loved the boots and liked to dance.

This little girl wanted to be a performer and had plans to be in the Elvis Presley movies her mom loved so much and tour as a singer with the Partridge Family on their Mondrian-painted school bus.    

This little girl loved horses and puppies and wanted to become a veterinarian to make sick animals all better.

This little girl wanted to have a job driving huge construction vehicles because they looked like “giant Tonka trucks”.

As the years passed, the little girl grew up.  The fierceness remained, but the girl began to have small, quick feathers of experiences and lessons that came from all around.  Feathers that by themselves weren’t weighty but multiplied by tens of thousands they acquire the ability to choke the spirit.   

In high school, she learned that there were limits.  Girls couldn’t try out for football, no matter how amazing their reception skills were.  And some colleges were off-limits.

As an adult, the woman learned that many think women weren’t quite a fully formed human and needed to know their place.

Years passed; girls could play football, most colleges admitted women, and all occupations had trailblazing women working in them.

All except for one job.

And although over the years, women got tantalizingly close, there were just too many people who, unlike the woman’s parents, didn’t think that women belonged in that ultimate position, or adjacent to it.

The same year our little girl was born, another little girl was born.  And this little girl remained convinced that she really could do anything.

That little girl grew up to be the very first female Vice President of the United States.  And the other woman, this woman, is so proud and excited that we can tell girls that they can accomplish anything.

And really mean it.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.

Snuggle Up With A Good Book

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Last week I made another visit to the Scrap Exchange, Durham’s Disneyland for crafters and thrift shop junkies.

I struck gold.

In their huge book section, I picked up a green hardcover book that had the telltale color, texture, size, and aroma of an old school library book.  It still had the little pocket pasted onto the inside of the back cover.  And, tucked into that pocket was the original card.

The book originally came from Tom’s River High School.  Coincidentally, Tom’s River is very close to where my mom grew up.  The first time it was checked out, it was due November 20, 1962.  The last time it was returned to the high school library was January 8, 1979.   

The book is Betsy and the Great World, by Maud Hart Lovelace.  Her Betsy series was one of the written joys of my life.  I read and reread these books whenever I felt lonely; and for a kid in a military family, it was more often than you might think.

The books go from early readers to Betsy’s marriage and the beginnings of WWI.  Betsy, Tacy, and Tib were my closest friends, and B’s family was my second family, always there for a singalong and an onion sandwich at Sunday night lunch. 

To honor the books that I loved so much, I thought that I’d tell you about my all-time favorite books; the ones that I stayed up late reading and the ones, like Betsy, that I’d pull off the shelf when I needed its comfort.

Seventeenth Summer, by Maureen Daly.  Written in 1942, it’s the story of Angie Morrow, a sixteen-year-old girl living in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.  I read it in the sixth grade, and it set me up for all kinds of disappointment when I was going through my own 17th summer.

Hey, not all of us can be willowy, self-possessed, blond cheerleaders.  I adore the book and whole mood and energy I get when I read it.

Chesapeake, by James Michener.  I read this in the 9th grade on a two-week class trip to Mexico.  It was my first Michener. I love all of his books, but this multi-generational novel about families on the Eastern shore of Virginia is my flannel pajamas, cozy Michener.

This is my own copy.

The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Son of the Circus, and Hotel New Hampshire, all by John Irving.  In one page of this author’s work, he can make you cry, laugh, and want to throw the book across the room in a fit of rage.

His work is easy to read, but hard to digest.  All of his characters seem like real people, full of quirks, nobility, and faults.  I have never read a book with odder, yet more believable characters. 

John Irving

John Irving will challenge you and your whole world.

Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.  This is the nonfiction account of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and the serial killer, HH Holmes, who used it as his personal hunting ground.  Larson writes history that reads like fiction.  I read everything he writes, and not only because reading nonfiction makes me feel smart.

During this apocalypse that is our lives, I’ve been reading lots of thrillers; it makes me appreciate that at least I’m not being stalked by a crazed killer, and I love a good twist.  Recently I read, Behind Closed Doors, by B.A. Paris.

It’s astonishing.

So, if I may suggest, Gentle Reader, put down the remote and pick up a book.  You can take a trip without a mask that will change you forever.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.

Trippin’ With The Kid

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Gentle Reader, my child is a human pratfall whose very existence is chock full of frequent, unintentional slapstick.  Every day is a new, embarrassing installment of “looking back, years from now, this’ll be hilarious”.

It’s like I gave birth to both Lucy and Ethel.

And it’s never more on display than when The Kid is on a road trip.

In college, our little scholar snagged an internship at the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay, California, about thirty miles south of San Francisco.  The child decided to drive.

Across the country. 

Alone.

So, in the days it took to make the trip, I barely moved away from the phone (still only have a landline).

And, one day, THAT phone call came.

The car had blown a tire, in the middle of Texas, in a desert, miles from anything or anybody.  The force of it had also cracked a rear fender.  Luckily, The Kid had the presence of mind to call AAA for assistance before calling home.

My heart broke for The Kid.  And at the sound of my voice, my child, all alone with a damaged car, broke down.  I promised I would stay on the phone until help arrived.  We were only on the phone for a few minutes until the call ended abruptly.

It seems the spot where the poor thing was standing happened to be a fire ant hill.

Eventually, tire was replaced, duct tape was procured for fender, ants were washed off, cortisone applied, and road trip resumed.

Later in the trip, a bungee cord replaced the failing tape.

And until the day the car was sold, the fender was held together with an industrial-strength bungee cord.   

We decided it was time to pony up for a GPS when late one night on another trip, The Kid got so totally turned around in West Virginia that a mountain tunnel was traversed five times in one very confused hour.

After the last trip through, my little Marco Polo got directions—from the very serious Homeland Security agent that stopped the car.

Red flags had been raised when cameras picked up the multiple tunnel trips in the middle of the night.  Travel was resumed after The Kid promised to never use the tunnel again.

Then there was that time when the recent college graduate decided to travel to Ireland—in January.  Why you ask, Gentle Reader would any human travel to Ireland in the chill of January?

Because plane tickets to the Emerald Isle in January are about fourteen dollars apiece; because nobody, even Hibernophiles and native Irishmen want to be there then.

The Ireland portion of the trip went well.  But to get the slashed airfare, one had to fly out of Boston.  So, The Kid had to make the drive home, from Boston, In January. 

Petey was very ill in Duke hospital at the time, each day a new life or death struggle.  And fittingly, a nor’easter was approaching the northern US Atlantic coast bringing feet of snow in its wake. 

So yeah, I was in a very Zen state of mind.

The Kid’s plane touched down with the storm bearing down on Boston.  My child jumped in the car and headed South.

With a storm in the rearview.

Literally, on the drive home it was like an Indiana Jones movie where a lava flow is following close behind our hero.  Only instead of lava, it was a wall of snow chasing my child down I-95.  The Kid pulled in the driveway, along with a snowstorm that dumped a foot of snow on the Triangle.  

The storm had made the trip hanging off that darn bungee cord.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.       

My Massive Motherhood Fails

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First, a few things.

I was in labor for 39 ½ hours.

The Kid graduated from a private college without student loans.

And, our child is a kind, compassionate, creative, productive member of society.

I tell you these things, Gentle Reader, not to brag, but so that you may look kindly upon me when I reveal to you what a hash I’ve made of mothering, time and again.

When The Kid was in elementary school, the Matthews Family Band made a day trip to Wrightsville Beach.  At one point, we decided it was time for something cold and refreshing.

Petey and I got sodas, and The Kid chose a snow cone.

That snow cone.

That damned snow cone.

Snow cones have never appealed to me, so I wasn’t familiar with their mechanics and practices.  Which partly, possibly, explains what happened next.

When I saw that it was melting and pooling in the bottom of the paper cone, I took it and ripped a hole in it so the fluid gathered at the bottom would dribble out.

The look on that child’s face would break a heart of stone.  Petey looked shocked and appalled, as well.

The Kid wailed, “Why did you do that?  You ruined it!”

It was at this point that I realized I had made a huge frozen faux pas.

It’s been twenty years, but Petey and The Kid love to talk about it to watch me squirm.  The episode is known as, “The Snow Cone.”

A couple of years earlier, The Kid had a cold with an earache.  My mother, who has multiple gold medals in the worrywart Olympics, kept urging me to take the patient to the doctor.  The Kid didn’t seem to be getting worse, wasn’t running a fever, so I demurred.

Turns out, it was such a bad infection, they at first thought it was flesh-eating bacteria that was working its way toward the brain. 

After a night in the hospital, the docs determined it was only a particularly nasty middle ear infection.  The earache lasted for months.

The last still stings the worst.

The Kid was driving down from college in Vermont for winter break.  We expected the arrival early afternoon.  I’d made plans for us to go out to lunch and do some Christmas shopping.

You should also know, I’m a light sleeper and Petey snores like a malfunctioning freight train, so I sleep with earplugs.

That morning, I was snug in my bed, and half asleep, I heard the dog bark downstairs.  I groggily figured Petey had come in from work, gone into the bathroom, and the dog was trying to hurry him along. 

I rolled over and went back to sleep.

It wasn’t Petey.

Petey woke me later.

“The Kid’s downstairs.”

I assumed he was joking, but our little scholar was home early, to surprise us, but without a house key.  The Kid had actually been home for a couple of hours.  So long, in fact, a trip to the local gas station had been necessary for coffee and the loo. 

My child had been trying and trying to get into the house and I’d slept through it.

As soon as I came downstairs, we went and had multiple keys made.

To this day, just thinking about it makes me feel like the absolute worst mother that ever mothered.

But again, The Kid is a marvelous human who only brings up these horrible, cringe-worthy, guilt-inducing episodes on the occasion of major screw-ups, the desire to tease, or a big favor is being sought.

But I have a trump card.  I just mumble, “Thirty-nine and a half hours.”

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.