Fashion, part one

The upscale mall in town, The Summit, sponsored a camp for girls, ages 6 to 16, this summer. The whole concept -- a day-camp destination for children interested in shopping, accessorizing, make-up, decorating and entertaining -- has been sitting like a tiny pebble in my Birkenstocks since I first spotted the advertisement. I finally figured out how to write about it:

The mall's calling all girls to camp
to teach them to twitter and vamp.
Gloss lips.
Swish hips.
Individuality replaced with a stamp.

***

A summer camp of fashion and glitter.
Send my daughter? Naw, I'd rather hit 'er.
The hairs on my head
stand up in dread,
as feminism goes to the shitter.

Feel free to add your own limerick!

A penny for your thoughts

Photo courtesy of Daniel Y. Go

"The memory manages to be found, like a dollar bill crinkled up in the pocket of old clothes. She fondles this memory a moment, a few seconds' worth, no more."

I love the above sentence written by Laura Valeri in "Furniture," published in Glimmer Train's, Summer 2008 edition, and was compelled to document a memory-in-the-making involving my children and money:

For every year my children have lived, they receive a quarter in allowance. This means my oldest, at age 9, gets $2.25 a week -- the value of a day's hot lunch at school, a pittance in a world where her classmates own cell phones, but (and I shrug here) it's all a large family can afford on one income. My daughter would be quick to point out that the "week" part of the above sentence is "weak," and I have to agree. Her father and I have been lax in filling their small hands with their even smaller allowances, and this may have contributed to their different attitudes toward money. I have a:

1. Hunter -- Eyes peeled for pennies on the floor and dollars behind the couch. Regularly checks the insides of washing machine for wayward change.
   
2. Hoarder -- Stashes money not only in the piggy bank, but also the bottom of the underwear drawer or the spare book. (When asked how this money would be retrieved, I was given an elaborate answer involving monetary amount equating to page number and letters in the title of the book.)
   
3. Habitual Forgetter -- Money rarely makes it to the bank. Usually relies on the goodwill of others for any spending.

The wails and shrieks that occasionally ricochet off the walls often have to do with money: Who stole it? Where is it? And why isn't it here on the floor where it was left six days ago? The yells are followed by heavy, angry footsteps thumping down stairs to report the infraction and demand that I do something. For awhile I tried, but their memories are tangled balls of string and the more I pulled, the more frustrated and tense we all became. So, now I hold out my hand, they turn over the disputed dollar (which is placed high upon a kitchen shelf for safety), and I tell them to come back when they've worked it out. Within a half-hour they usually return to report their resolution and ask for the money. Or the dollar sits on the shelf, forgotten, until I put it in my pocket and recycle it a week later as allowance.

A chance encounter and a yummy rum recipe

Painting courtesy of freeparking

I don't remember the old woman's name or her appearance or even the house I was in when I met her almost 20 years ago. These trivialities, the mundane facts that we put into a story because we think it will make it real, don't exist anymore. In fact, she probably doesn't exist anymore, either.

After all, she was maybe 80 and I 20 when we met. We were both drinking hot buttered rum at the same holiday party. She was there because she was relative of someone. I was there out of politeness to my boyfriend's parents. Maybe she was glad to be there, but I sure as hell wasn't. I don't like small talk and dislike the upper middle-class even more, and this was a party filled with both.

So I probably approached her because (one) she was old and therefore not intimidating, and (two) because she was old, she might be more interesting than the rest of this crowd decked out in bell-jingling holiday sweaters. Again, the niceties can be ignored because what I'm trying to get at is a feeling, an "Ooh!" that's never dulled.

I had thought I was going to be entertained with tales from long ago, but instead found myself swapping experiences about growing up in Nevada without running water, without electricity. Old woman and young, we leaped across the generation gap and embraced as girls.

In response to Sunday Scribblings writing prompt: Chance encounter.

***

Aside from the lingering memory, the other thing I took from that party is a love of hot buttered rum. Now, I know it isn't something that comes to mind on a smoky day in July, but save this recipe for when Old Man Winter arrives.

Pour 8 to 10 cups of cider into a pot and bring to simmer. Meanwhile, melt 2 TB. butter in a pan. Add 3/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1/4 tsp. cloves and allspice and stir. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar, stir and remove from heat. Combine butter mixture with cider. Pour cider into mugs, add 2 to 3 TB. rum and stir with a cinnamon stick.

My oldest friend

Photo courtesy of Seb Przd

It was fifth grade and we weren't friends.

She was part of a group of girls who developed a music number for the school talent contest that involved dancing to the thumping rhythm of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." I performed a solo -- singing Pinocchio's song "I Got No Strings."

She had curves and feathered hair and boyfriends who were too old and too fast. My body was a series of angles and plains, glasses and braids. The thought of ever having a boy's penis inside my vagina was disgusting.

She lived in a trailer with her father, a morbidly obese man who used the CB moniker "Big Mac" and rarely moved from his seat in front of the TV. I lived one bus stop away, across the railroad tracks and down a stretch of dirt road in another trailer, crowded with kids.

But inside both of us was a black hole, a giant, empty thing that echoed with loneliness, and somehow -- despite our differences -- we recognized that and became friends. She pulled me out of books and invited me for sleep-overs and afternoons listening to her record collection of Styx and Michael Jackson. In return, I shared my innocence. Between classes in junior high we passed notes filled with loopy handwriting and signed BFF -- Best Friends Forever. In high school, together we struggled through chemistry and pre-calculus, and sewed our own dresses for senior prom.

We were two planets circling a shared sun, but after graduation our orbits swung wildly apart. She moved to Los Angeles and, within two years, was married and had a son; I was in college. She had her second child and I was a budding journalist, intent on my career. When her third arrived, I was newly wed and planning a move to Europe.

Now, her youngest son is entering seventh grade, mine is 7-months-old. While I'm tied to young children, she is experiencing the freedom and choices I tasted in college. Although the time between our phone calls and letters has stretched to years, the elliptical paths of our lives continue to cross and recross as we share, albeit delayed, experiences.

So she remains my friend, forever.

The funniest thing I've watched in a while

"Business Time" by The Flight of the Conchords

Jemaine Clement also stars in "Eagle Vs. Shark," which is a fabulous and weird film. Watch it.

In response to my sister's question

Photo courtesy of moominsean

There once was a woman from the city
Whose dreams of the desert made 'er giddy
Her spouse wouldn't lie
"Dear, sand's in your eye."
So she settled back down and wrote a ditty.

***

Still unclear on Why I Was Wrong About Silver City, check out Maakies comic on Home Improvement Hooch. It's good!

Silver City

Historical picture of the Nevada mining town, sometime after its decline in 1869.
photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society

Her silver tarnished,
this old mistress of the mines
is bedecked in junk.

***

Silver City is a decrepit mining town, pocked with holes, studded with splintered shacks and adorned with rusted cars, glittering in the late afternoon sun. It's a ghost town that's been revived, so why think about living there today?

Because its tiny population -- a smidgen of the 1,200 living there in its heyday -- knows one another. They're raising their children together, which is why kids were camping in the park on a weeknight, and the city's summer program is providing lessons to a teen garage band.

Because it's hills are shades of coffee, its air is perfumed with sweet, pungent sagebrush, and the night sky sparkles with stars. Living there is a conscious choice to be grounded in location, tied to the land, to know a place.

This is what my parents gave me when we moved to Silver Springs in 1980. I wish I could give it to my children.

Two mothers on missions

My children and I experienced a modern version of this classic story on our way to the grocery store today. A mother Mallard and her babies were crossing McCarran Boulevard as cars whizzed past going 50 miles per hour on the four-lane road.

"Mom! A mama duck and babies, Mom!" Max yelled from the rear.

I hung a U-turn and hopped out, trying to get the traffic's attention. Cars slowed, drivers smiled and waved, but no one else stopped to help this little family cross the street and get over the concrete wall to safety. As we held our breath, the ducks made it to the other side but when they discovered the barricade, started to re-cross.

"Mom, what's going to happen? Are they going to get hit?"

Cars swerved and honked their horns, so I hung another U-turn. By the time I hit the hazard button and hopped out, the mother and two babies had crossed, but the other ducklings couldn't hop the curb and were trapped in the gutter. This caught the attention of a worker mowing the shopping center lawn, so he scooped them into the grass while I blocked traffic with my car.

"They're looking for water and there's water here with all the irrigation, so maybe they'll stay," the man said.

We called animal control and left them to finish our errands. As I tossed cans of lemonade into the grocery cart and wove my way through the crowded store, squawking at my own brood tailing me, I couldn't help smiling at the similarities between the Mallard family and my own.

Here's the intersection near the ducks' crossing. If you head east on North McCarran Boulevard, you'll pass a Ross clothing store and the lawn where we last saw the ducks.


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A night with bats

The biologist was a slip of woman with long, dark hair streaked silver the shade of moonlight. She waited on the casino rooftop for the bats to arrive as dusk faded and night's long shadows wrapped around her.

Nearby was a small electronic box waiting to help her with identification by recording the bats' high-pitched clicks and chirps, and circling her was a casino security guard, waiting for her to unexpectedly plunge off the side. But she wasn't going to jump. She was going to count the number of Spotted Bats, rare and solitary creatures found in just one location in all of northern Nevada, and that was here, circling the towers of the Grand Sierra Resort.

The biologist worked for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, documenting animals found living too close to humans, and sometimes this brought her into contact with bats. But she sought out this animal in her spare time, too: Following the growth of a female colony raising pups in her neighborhood, and mimicking the mother bats' chirps so the babies would skim her head in curiosity.

Tonight, as she stood on the roof high above Reno, it was she who was curious. The electronic box was picking up bat sounds, but they were far away, flitting above the casino's putting range and pond. She held her flashlight and waited. The casino's perimeter lights clicked off and the night around the towers grew denser, drawing the bats closer to her.

Her flashlight sliced through the shadows and struck a bat as it tipped its wings and exposed its furry backside. She counted and smiled into the night.

My thanks to Jennifer Jeffers from the Nevada Department of Wildlife, for sharing her stories and love of bats, and to Silver City's summer youth program for sponsoring the talk. If you would like to help count bats, email Jeffers at 423-3171, ext. 234.

Chapter four: What happened next

Photo of Mike Cockrill's art by C-Monster

When she woke the next morning, she looked around for the charred bed springs and singed carpet, but the only sign of the night's combustion of words was the soot beneath her eyes. Warm buttery sunlight melted on the bedroom floor. She breathed, and her relief caused the mobile of paper butterflies to dance and twirl above her head. The days that followed were flights on gossamer wings. She danced and sang and smiled as the sun shone, but at night she plunged into the flames like a moth on a suicide mission, only to rise again in the morning to dance with dark rings under her eyes.

"Something is terribly wrong," she told a friend over tea.

But the friend was blowing on the tea to cool it and didn't hear her.

"I've been cursed," she told her husband over the telephone.

But the babies were crying, and when her husband asked her to repeat herself, she threw the phone instead, shattering it against the door and leaving a hole that resembled a small, hungry mouth. Picking up the tiny voice from among the broken pieces, she fed it to the door, which swallowed it and began reciting long passages from "Moby Dick" until her daughter came along and silenced it by taping its mouth shut with Band-Aids.

Certain book read in a certain place

Field Tested Books, 2008 edition

I've been thinking a lot about books and places, and the bond that can be forged between the two. The idea that there's a connection is the impetus of Field Tested Books by Coudal Partners. From the introduction by Jim Coudal:

"We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it’s possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it.

"We know, without a doubt, that book and place do affect each other, and that they are bound as a single experience in our memories.

"Complicating the quest for a tidy conclusion is the fact that sometimes the place where we read a book is not just a geographical spot but also a psychological one. In fact, the most compelling Field Tests in this collection are the ones in which a book, a physical place, and a significant emotional moment collide."

There are many books I absolutely love, that shaped me as a child and teen, but only one that I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. Here it is:

The 2006 edition, "The Illustrated Jane Eyre."

I scan the school bus for empty seats and spot one in the middle -- a good seat. Location is important: Too close to the front and I'm sitting among the scumbags and dirt-heads -- the kids who smell like B.O., pick their noses or are in special-ed class. A seat too close to the back of the bus and I'm an easy target for the older, bitchy girls who drink cough syrup on the way to school in an effort to get high, and the guys who laugh and make rude gestures at their crotch when I yawn.

But today I find one in the middle. I slide in and sit near the window, dumping my backpack next to me as a sign that I don't want to share the space. I rummage around inside the backpack, searching with my hands for the felty soft pages of "Jane Eyre." The cover had been lost long ago and the rest of the book was held together by tape. It first was my mom's -- a required text from her days in Catholic high school -- and in the back it held the notes she had written to herself: "Helen Burns -- friend (died, Jane 10 yrs.), Lowood -- school, Miss Temple -- nice woman, Mr. Rochester -- owner of Thornfield."

I huddle down in the bus seat, creating a wall of vinyl green around me, making me, for all practical purposes, invisible, just like Jane. I wiggle and breathe a happy sigh knowing exactly how the heroine felt as she huddled in her own window seat, reading in secret and safety. I love Jane Eyre. As a marginalized teen struggling to define myself, I grok this "poor, obscure, plain, and little" orphan who challenges the bullies and the brutes, shapes her own fate and commands her own destiny. Jane speaks directly to me, she acts for me.

The emotional connection I have with this worn and musty smelling paperback edition doesn't make sense. It just is. The book is my guide through adolescence, because Jane's efforts to define herself mirror my own. It's comforting to know that when life is particularly lonely and difficult, Jane is there too, insisting on finding her own set of values and enduring punishing exiles because of it.

For an hour I sit hidden between the bus seats, miles away inside the book. I don't check the time or glance up to see where I am on the route. After years of riding back and forth, I can feel when my stop is coming up: a lurch at the railroad tracks, a right turn onto a washboard road, and I pull myself away from Jane and the English moor. Stumbling off the bus, I stand on the side of an empty dirt road, dazed and squinting under a hot desert sun. Alone.

My thanks to Write Now is Good for sharing information about Field Tested Books, and issuing the challenge to write about book and place. More essays on the subject can be found there.

Chapter three: Her very own hell

Photo courtesy of Smileykt

Because her luck died in the bedroom, it was here she felt the first lick of fire and sizzled skin. The bad luck curled through the room like smoke, choking and strangling her until she woke, smothered by the blankets and babies and man. (There were too many penises!) She clawed her way out of her claustrophobia and went in search of her daughter. The tiny girl was sleeping nearby on the floor, and, sighing in relief at the familiar shape and smell of the girl's small body, she lay down and slept again.

But under the dark cover of sleep, her breasts were discovered by her daughter, who nuzzled and greedily drank the milk, as sunny and sweet as ripe strawberries. Waking to the gulps and tugs, she slapped the girl away and ended up waking her cherubs too. First one and then the other sent up sharp cries of protest when they discovered their milk missing. The husband woke and cursed. The children wailed. She yelled. And the balls of words smoldered and exploded in flame.

Throw some spice in that sentence

Photo courtesy of another sergio

I can set my clock by the curses and obscenities heard along Fourth Street every school day. The trickle begins at 2:05 p.m. and quickly turns into a churning river of spicy language and sluggish teens that dries up by 2:40 p.m.

I love it.

There is something wonderful in spying on these young teens migrating home in packs. They hold hands, block foot traffic for awkward kisses, and try on and throw off language like they do clothes. It reminds me of a story about my littlest sister, who, when she was 12 or 13, was caught standing with a friend at the busiest corner of our small town yelling "Fuck you!" to cars passing by. She was just trying the words on for size.

"If you're using the word in a way to heighten the impact of a sentence or season the stew -- they are after all great seasonings ... they have a proper place in language," said comedian George Carlin in a 2004 interview on Fresh Air. "And in my case, I just like them because they are real and they do have impact and they do make a difference in the sentence."

Another who knew how to pepper her sentences was my grandma. This rotund little woman loved fine meals, gay men, and Cadillacs with the air-conditioning so cold it froze her grand-babies. But nothing brought her more joy than knowing she shocked people because she was a blue-haired woman cussing a blue streak.

So today I honor the many foul-mouthed people in my life, and comedian George Carlin, who loved the English language and its seven dirty words. He died Sunday at 71.

A haiku for my husband

Photo courtesy of Shira Golding

The short-order doc
at the In-N-Out snips and
then shouts, "Order up!"

Chapter two: The blame

Photo courtesy of ichangedmyname.

Wherever she went she was told how blessed she was, how lucky to have a beautiful little girl and twins (twins!). Women envied her, wished for sets of their own, their covetous fingers lingering too long on her cherubs' rosy cheeks and full tummies. But by then she knew her luck had turned, and she'd smile politely and mutter "idiot" under her breath.

When had life turned wretched? Why, after so many years, was she cursing and spitting like a wet cat? She played back the time leading up to the birth of her babies and gave herself a migraine trying to remember the hazy days that followed in the hospital. And though she knew luck had flown away with her cherubs' arrival, she dared not point a sharp, blaming finger at her babies.

In truth, blame (if any could be found) lay between her toes. It happened one night in the sooty darkness of sleep. A cockroach had spied her luck curled up in its soft nest of dust under her bed, fallen in love with it, and, weaving tales of an exotic nightlife, convinced the luck to run away. At that same instant that her luck was wrapping its thighs around the roach's hard brown shell, one of her cherubs woke her with a round, empty belly wail, and as she stumbled out of bed and went groping for the crib she squashed the cockroach and her luck.

Chapter one: The fall

Photo courtesy of fturmog

Her luck had turned sour and curdled even as the abundant supply of sweet, nourishing milk sprayed from her breasts and was gulped down by the two little cherubs in her arms. Really, it didn't surprise her, because for years her wishes bore fruit. She liked to believe her luck involved a bit of magic from the gnarled pomegranate tree that she and her husband had made love under one desert night. They fucked each other so hard the fruit fell from the tree and onto their heads, but they kept going, their sweaty bodies rolling over and squashing pomegranates, staining them red. And when they were done and lay staring up through the tree's branches at the ocean of stars, she licked the juice from her arms and nibbled on the jeweled seeds.

She liked to believe that for years afterward she carried her husband's seeds and the pomegranate seeds inside of her, and that this was why two times her belly grew round and full, skin taut and crisscrossed with pale red stretch marks. That it was the pomegranate tree that gave her three children, and two of them twins (twins!), when doctor after doctor said there would be none. But if, she figured, there was no magic, if luck were as predictable as the economy's rise and fall, then she knew her time to plummet had come. And so she fell, tumbling and crashing into the depths of her own hell, the fires burning so hot inside of her that it surprised her that her milk spray wasn't a hiss of steam that scalded her babies.

Prompted by [Fiction] Friday's challenge to sketch out a character with wildly bad luck. Make it a character you like, as we will use her again.

When punch, puking and a poem occur in 5 minutes

Photo courtesy of Jared Zimmerman

A foot slams, the car stops and punch spills.
Grabbing napkins, mopping
spilled drink, spilled minutes.
Back on the road, turning, stopping, eating
greasy tacos. Vomit spills.
More napkins, more minutes.
Back on the road, windows opening, air carrying,
my laughter away.

Candy land

Comic courtesy of exepotes

When life gets loopy, I load up on chocolate pretzels, and right now my life is one roller coaster ride.

I discovered the pretzels while shopping at Trader Joe's last month, and have been back twice for more. The pretzels come in either milk or dark chocolate, but I've grabbed bittersweet each time, and have yet to make it home without busting open the bag.

I readily admit that I'm an emotional eater -- my stress level climbs and I reach for chocolate -- a habit I've picked up from my mother. I can't blame her. Weekly she'd shove five kids and a week's worth of dirty clothes into the blue Oldsmobile and make the long trip to Reno. After hours at the laundromat, we'd carry out a mountain of clean, folded clothes, pile back into the car and drive home. A stop to get gas permitted her a minute out of the car without kids, and an excuse to reward herself with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which she'd sneakily eat once back on the road.

Of course, this couldn't stay a secret for long. Even if the fighting amongst ourselves deadened our ears to the crinkling of a candy bar getting unwrapped, my younger sister's nose could sniff out chocolate a mile away. Then we'd all pounce on my mother.

"What are you eating?"

"Nuthing," she'd mumble back, a cheek filled with candy bar.

"Yes, you are. You're eating something!"

Then we'd complain loudly about how unfair it was that she got a treat and we didn't. She thwarted future coups by buying us a single bag of M&M's to share. For you see, we couldn't keep an eye on her and make sure the candies were equally divided, nor could we argue with M&M's in our mouths. Thus she was left unobserved and in peace to secretly savor her peanut butter cups.

My own stealthy trips to my chocolate stash have increased since my mother-in-law's arrival from Amsterdam nearly two weeks ago. Add to this stress my husband patching a hole above the stove at dinnertime, my kids running inside every 5 minutes to tattle on one another, and my baby cutting two teeth. Can you blame me for slipping into the kitchen to savor these knotted little life savers and ponder how their chaotic combination of salty, sweet and bitter is the same stuff found in tears?

For Christ sake have a cuppa tea

Courtesy of the 19th century children's periodical "St. Nicholas Magazine."

There was a house, an angry house, where everyone was fighting.

And in that house there was a kettle, a screaming kettle, in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And near the kettle were two bickering children. Two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And tangled up in the children was a howling dog. A howling dog tangled in two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And standing over the dog was a seething mama. A seething mama over a howling dog tangled in two bickering children in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And from the garage was a cursing papa. A cursing papa listening to a seething mama standing over a howling dog tangled in two bickering children near a screaming kettle in an angry house where everyone was fighting.

And on the papa's back was a happy baby.

A happy baby who kissed the papa, who danced with the mama, who pet the dog, who licked the children, who turned off the kettle.

There is a house, an angry house, where no one now is fighting.

Inspired by "The Napping House" by Don and Audrey Woods, and "Have a Cuppa Tea" by The Kinks.

Red water pump

Photo courtesy of Darwin70, Creative Commons

Pulling water from the depths of the Earth is no small achievement, especially for a 10-year-old, but this was my chore during the first summer in Silver Springs when we lived without running water.

My dad planned to erect a windmill to pump water to the trailer, but in the beginning we had nothing but a red hand pump standing amid rice grass and tumbleweed. If I stretched my arms and stood on tip-toe, I could reach the handle, pull it down, and after 50 strokes, be rewarded with icy cold water that splashed my feet and left a metallic taste on my tongue.

It was a pump with personality: Only my strongest, most exuberant strokes yielded a gush of water, and if I stopped for more than a few minutes to rest my arms, the pump demanded to be primed again. My little brother was 5 and could only hang from the red handle. So, while I pumped, he filled the empty milk jugs with water, then together we'd haul the gallons back to the trailer.

There was satisfaction in the growing row of jugs in the hallway, warmer water at the front, each jug cooler than the last, as we added to the line stretching toward the back bedroom. But in a trailer made of tin, everything warmed up quickly. Within a few hours, the last jug was as warm as the first, and like a fortune teller with her ball, I'd run my hands over the milky plastic containers to determine which jug promised the coolest drink.

I loathed pumping water and filling jugs when I was sent outside in the middle of the day, the air heavy and silent with heat. Only the grasshoppers clicked and whirled as I darted out of the house and over the baked sand in bare feet. I pumped, and from inside the well, came the clanking of pipes and the gurgle of water being carried to the surface. I'd reach out a cupped hand, while still pumping with the other, to capture that first drink.

I preferred to bring in water at the end of the day, when the air was easier to breathe, the sand cool between my toes and the sun melting into a sky of ice-cream sherbet. My dad would be home from work by then, and he'd command the pump while my brother and I filled jugs. His strong arms pulled the handle quickly, efficiently, and the pump obeyed, pouring out the water in one long, steady stream. When finished, he'd loop fingers through the handles of four or five jugs so I was burden free, and together we'd walk the narrow, sandy path created between well and home.

When life throws you a curve ball

Photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin, Madison

I'm three weeks into a blogging habit and my tender new routine is in danger. What threat is hurtling toward me and my computer? Summer. Specifically, summer with kids.

I'm trying to figure how to replace the regularly scheduled program with a new routine, one that will still permit me the space and time to think and write. Now, my thinking happens as I walk them to school in the morning: The straight shot from house to school, right foot in front of left, baby lulled to sleep by the motion, so that when I return, my mind is quiet and ready to pour thoughts on to page. But on Thursday it all ends, and I'm lobbed a curve ball of warm, round summer days that melt into one another.

I don't want to strike out.

In response to Sunday Scribbling's prompt: Curve.

To all the young dudes*

[Fiction] Friday writing prompt: Drunk on _________. Fill in the blank, then write a quick description of your character in that state.

A boy with freckled skin and brown hair wrapped his belt around his neck and cinched it tight, squashing arteries and veins so blood backed up, his brain screamed for oxygen, his heart crashed against his chest, and his body crumpled. He was 14 years old, playing the choking game and drunk on death.

*Mott the Hoople

In which I drop the hot coal I'm holding

Photo courtesy of themillersweb

My children bicker and I smolder. The door slams and I grit my teeth. The baby wakes up a half-hour into his nap and I curse. I'm annoyed with the weeds growing among the flowers. I'm irritated with the cat for meowing. I'm frustrated with yesterday's blog post. If I could yell "I'm angry!" right in your face, I would.

I've struggled with anger since I've become a mother. I'd cork up the feelings until I exploded and mean, sarcastic lava-filled words oozed out all over my husband and children. "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned," the Buddha said. So I try to direct it at the yard, knocking over splintered fences and moving thorny old rose bushes. I fill journals with pages of scrawled thoughts. I run.

The snarly codes of DNA that make me difficult to live with have been passed down to one of my sons. When he was small, his face would turn red and crumple up like a washcloth. At 7, his temper sends his siblings running for cover. Today, they were trying to hide from both of us, so I sent them on ahead to school so the angry son and angry mother could stomp down the street together. About half way there, he cooled off, his complaining stopped and he dropped the Buddha's hot coal. When I returned home, I sat down at the computer and dropped mine.

Quitting

Photo courtesy of Stephen Mcleod, Creative Commons

Steve felt tense and jittery, like he did after drinking the sludge at the bottom of the communal coffee pot. It looked like everyone was feeling the same way when they came into work, heads tucked into their shoulders, as if it'd keep their necks off the chopping block.

He looked around to see if anyone was missing, but apparently no one had lost a job -- yet. The tweakers were still in shipping; Steve couldn't figure out how they were passing their pee tests. And there was the Mexican always trying to sell tamales at lunch. And the two old ladies in the front office who fussed over him like his mother. And then there was the driver -- the big, bald guy who always wore overalls. What was his name? Bob? Steve wished he could ask one of them what was going on, but he'd never bothered to get to know them, hadn't wanted to, and now, after working there a year, it was too late.

He'd taken the job because it was the first one offered after he'd graduated and moved, and because it left him time for his music. But his mom and dad were always bugging him about when he was going to use his degree, and how he was going to pay off the college loans. Fuck 'em, he thought as he shoved car parts into the assigned slots. Fuck 'em and fuck the job, and he pocketed one of the parts, not knowing or caring what it was for. Maybe it'd fetch something on Craigslist.

One of the guys from receiving walked past, biting his lip, shaking his head, not making eye contact. Steve was next. In the conference room were his boss and two men in suits -- from headquarters, the boss said. Papers were stacked on the table. A briefcase lay open. Shit, Steve thought.

"I don't know how to say this," the boss said. "Don't want to say this. But ... well... There's nothing I can do about it, it's the law and all."

The boss coughed, moved some papers and looked at the suits. They nodded back.

"It's about Bob. He's been with us forever, and well, he's quitting. Well, not technically. He's returning on Monday. He wants to be called Tiffany."

"Bob. Tiffany," Steve shrugged and stood. "I'm cool with it."

And as he walked out, the car part lay heavy in his pocket.

Written in response to Sunday Scribbling's prompt: Quitting.

Skin deep

Photo courtesy of Mary Harrsch

My belly is as squishy and warm as bread dough, as round and dimpled as the Venus of Willendorf, and it's been an irresistible draw for my twin sons since they were toddlers. With the chubby hands of 2-year-olds, they'd pinch a tiny piece between their fingers and roll it back and forth while they cuddled on either side and nursed. Five years later they still love my tummy, reaching out quietly to stroke the old skin when I'm distracted.

I'm glad they like it, because they're teaching me to love a part of my body I find embarrassing. The role my children are playing in my internal battle over motherhood, sexuality and feminism is interesting. As my daughter nears 10, her internal compass swings radically, first toward issues like weight, clothes and friends, and then back to pirate princesses and treasure hunts.
And as she advances toward adolescence, she aims a critical eye on my body and compares it to hers, all angles and flat planes.

"Will I look like you after I have a baby?" she asks, wrinkling her nose and pointing at my tummy from where I lay in the bathtub.

"You mean will you have a jelly belly?" I ask and grab a handful of skin.

We giggle and I admit that I don't know what will happen to her body. Then I lie and tell her that I love the hundreds of stretch marks that crisscross the puckered surface, and am honored to wear this belly badge, proof I carried her brothers to 38 1/2 weeks.

Why tell the lie? Because I hope it will ferment like yeast, releasing tiny gas bubbles that will expand both our minds. Consciousness rising, er, raising. I'd like to be a warrior, but it's hard to do battle in a culture that objectifies women as Marthas and MILFs, and debates Vanity Fair's sexy pictures of tween idol Mylie Cyrus aka Hannah Montana.

So when I discovered The Shape of a Mother, a blog devoted to pictures of real women's bodies, it felt like reinforcements had arrived. I was no longer alone, but surrounded by other women who shared saggy boobs dripping milk, smiling red cesarean scars and wrinkles round the middle. In these images there is a beauty that runs deep, and at least one of my twin sons has tapped it. His eyes register amazement when he looks at my stretched skin and imagines sharing the space inside. And when he strokes my doughy belly, his wiry small body melts, his breath slows, and I think, yes, here is a boy who will grow into a man who will love a woman as she really is.

Another twisted tale

One of the Little Golden Book's covers for this tale.

In a house on a hill lived a little red-headed woman and her family. One day, the little red-headed woman got out of bed, walked into the kitchen and surveyed stacks of dirty dishes, cereal all over the counter and a bursting trash can.

"Arrg!" she yelled. "Who's going to help me clean the kitchen?"

"Not I," said the daughter, reading her book.

"Not I," said the son, getting up from the table and leaving his cereal bowl behind.

"Not I," said the husband from behind the newspaper.

"Then I'll do it myself," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she strapped the baby to her back, filled a sink with soapy water and scrubbed all the dishes, wiped the counter and emptied the trash.

The next day, the little red-headed woman was poked awake by her daughter, who complained she had no clean underwear. The baby was down to the last diaper, her son was wearing a shirt with yesterday's spaghetti dinner on it and her husband scowled because his slacks weren't ironed.

The little red-headed woman stumbled out of bed and went to the washing machine.

"Who's going to help me do the laundry?" she asked.

"Not I," said the daughter, discovering a pair of clean underwear in the back of her drawer.

"Not I," said the son, turning his shirt inside out.

"Not I," said the husband, pulling on his jeans.

"Then I will," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she put the dirty diapers in the washing machine. But when she began folding the clean clothes on the couch the baby knocked them over so she gave up.

The next day the beep and rumble of the garbage truck woke the little red-headed woman, who rushed outside in her pajamas to pull the can to the curb. She glanced over at the lawn dotted with buttery dandelions, and she asked, "Who's going to help me weed the lawn?"

"Not I," said the son, strapping on his bike helmet and pedaling away.

"Not I," said the daughter, reading her book.

"Not I," said the husband, buttering a piece of toast.

"Then I'll do it myself," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she picked the dandelions, braided them into a crown and placed them on the baby's head. Then she mowed the lawn.

That evening, the little red-headed woman opened the refrigerator and found one egg, some slimy beets and a pound of hamburger just starting to thaw.

"Who's going to help me make dinner?" she asked.

No one answered. So instead, she mixed up a box of brownies. Then she filled the bathtub with hot water, squirted in some dish soap and took the brownies out of the oven. The warm, chocolate smell filled the house and wafted out the window.

The son sniffed, dropped his soccer ball and ran into the kitchen. The daughter sniffed and walked into the kitchen while reading her book. The husband sniffed, turned off the T.V. and walked into the kitchen, just as the little red-headed woman cut a large brownie out of the center of the pan and poured a glass of red wine.

"Can I have some?" asked the son.

"Can I have some?" asked the daughter.

"Can I have some?" asked the husband.

"I've cleaned the kitchen, I've washed the laundry and I've mowed the lawn," said the little red-headed woman. "And now I'm going to take a bath, all by myself."

Then she sank into the hot water and clouds of bubbles, ate the brownie and drank the wine. And when she was done, she slipped inside a bubble and floated away.

This story is dedicated to my son Samuel William, one hard-working little chick and fellow lover of Ghirardelli's Double Chocolate Brownies. Together, we can polish off an entire pan.

Bento binge

One of my more successful lunches:
Egg salad sandwich, oranges and kiwi,
black olives, tomatoes and baby pickle.

The Japanese lunch box is my latest obsession. It satisfies my desire for organization. It rewards my love of tasty food. And it eases my conscience, pricked by the number of plastic sandwich baggies I was using.

My bentos aren't works of food art. I can't be the mother turning rice balls into cute panda faces when I've got four lunches to pack every morning, but I can aim to provide a diverse, healthy lunch in a box. During my learning curve, I spent oodles of time scouring the Internet for teeny tiny sauce bottles and leak-proof plastic boxes while my family suffered soggy sandwiches, spilled sauces and jumbled messes.

As lunch menus expanded, my frustrations with the endless chores and clutter that accompany a big family were shrinking. As silly as it sounds, achieving order over the lunch box allowed me to let other things go. And with time my bentos are becoming diverse, healthy lunches. It's evident each day I achieve this goal -- boxes come home empty, and my family is happy because, my husband confides, a beautifully packed bento is a work of love.

Many thanks to Lunch in a Box for its wealth of knowledge and inspiration.

A tale, twisted

Photo of book cover courtesy of
HoldThatTiger, Creative Commons

Once upon a time there was a smart, strong girl named Cindy, who was the new kid at school. Being new, she was lonely, and spent most of her time reading or hanging out on the edge of a circle of girls, listening and trying to fit in.

One day two girls made space for Cindy in their circle. She spent less time reading and more time giggling with her new friends. But as time passed, Cindy became bored with talking and walking around the playground.

She looked at the soccer game the boys played at recess, and wished she could join. Then one day the ball landed at her feet. An invitation! She kicked it back and asked to play. The boys nodded and tossed her the ball.

Recesses became glorious fun! Everyday, Cindy wore her sneakers so she could dance up and down the school yard, racing after the ball and cheering when her team scored a goal. But her two friends scowled and teetered up to her in their high-heeled shoes. "You have no fashion-sense," one told her.

So Cindy set aside the ball and went to a party where everyone painted their nails and curled their hair. When fumes from the polish and hairspray clouded the air, she went outside, climbed a tree and smudged her nails. At school, her friends stopped sitting next to her at lunch. They whispered loudly that she was a geek because she got straight A's.

Their words hurt, and Cindy was lonely once again. The school counselor and teacher tried to quell the squabbling, but the mean words continued. Cindy grew tired of being alone. She grew tired of the fighting. She joined a game of tag and made new friends.

"You're a stupid brat," her old friends told her. Cindy turned and walked away, and the game moved with her.

This riff on "Cinderella" is in response to the [Fiction] Friday challenge to pick a favorite fairy tale or legend and briefly describe how you could update it to the modern day, and it's dedicated to my 9-year-old daughter, Chaja Maureen, who is learning to be a brave, independent young woman.

Soar

Photo courtesy of Jerry I. Downs, Creative Commons

The vultures have moved into the trees behind our house, giant evergreens with boughs thick enough to hold these heavy, ugly birds. I can see them outside the bathroom window, spreading their stiff, cold wings to catch the warm eastern sunlight. And I search the sky for them as my kids and I walk to school because the vultures comfort me in a way I never thought possible.

Perhaps it's their mixture of the sacred and profane, for they remind me of awkward angels, cast-offs from heaven. The vulture's body is repulsive with its small head, bald and red, featherless so it's easier to shove a beak into rotting refuse. But their flight is divine -- a heavy flapping of wings, the tree shuddering as it loses the extra weight, and then soaring into the clean morning air.

I stop my children and silence their chatter. "Look." And they search in front of them and finally lift their eyes upward. Some days, their response is a shrug and "oh, yeah," but today we kept watching, and the sounds of a suburb waking up faded as we concentrated on the 20-odd vultures above us, circling higher and higher like bubbles rising in a giant blue kettle of sky.

Continually reconnecting my kids to nature is one of my jobs as a parent, because it reminds them that they don't belong at the center of the world, that hidden in front of our eyes is a parallel universe. People worry that today's children are alienated from the natural world and suffer from "nature-deficit disorder" because as parents we're too busy and too paranoid to let them run wild in the woods. So, what do we do?

Helping children discover this sense of wonder means tearing up to-do lists and eliminating activities. It means letting go of fear so they can take their first solo flight around the block, and it means holding them close as they cry and bury the baby bird found in the back yard, a bird who will now nourish the tree that houses the vultures.

This isn't the first time the turkey vulture has inspired my writing. I first wrote about this bird for Mamazine; this post was in response to Sunday Scribbling's writing prompt "soar/sore."

Morsels are my manna

Photo courtesy of ayelie, Creative Commons

Chocolate is my salvation, saving me from the sins of motherhood -- irritation, boredom and sarcasm. I can gauge the day by the amount of chocolate I eat. A good day is a small, exquisite piece of chocolate with a cup of tea. A bad day is fistfuls of chocolate chips shoved into my mouth.

When life is motoring along, maybe I hit a few bumps, but I can keep afloat, keep laughing, then it's definitely a chocolate chip cookie day. The chocolate chip cookie has defined my life since I was a little girl. My first memory of this perfect treat is of the softball-sized cookies, loaded with tiny chips that my grandma would offer me from Stickney's Hickory House in Santa Clara, California where she was the bakery manager. The cookie was half the size of my face, and I would nibble it slowly, trying to eat just one chip at a time.

At home, my mom always had a bag of chocolate chips on hand, and so when any of the kids hankered for a warm cookie, it was just a mixing bowl away. There were two rules when it came to chocolate chip cookies. First, we had to use just half a bag of chips for a full batch of cookies. (A money-saving trick, my mother admitted later.) Secondly, and most importantly, was ownership of the cookies.

The dozens of cookies cooling on brown paper bags in the kitchen belonged to the baker, and how the smaller siblings would delight in their power over the older ones! Being baker was like playing God, people prayed for your cookies, promised things for one, so you doled or denied on whim.

One couldn't blame the baker. In a family of eight, a batch of cookies was as ephemeral as the sweet smell that emanated from the oven -- as soon as the baking stopped, the cookies were gone. In an effort to prevent this, the baker counted and stacked her sweets, but a slow walk around the cooling cookies, a nonchalant leaning against the table, and the surreptitious hand depleted her stash quickly. Then the baker would demand a showing of hands, and sometimes even a whiff of the accused's breath, in search of telltale chocolate and a determination of guilt or innocence.

So I was surprised on a recent raid of my mom's cupboard to find bags of old chocolate chips, stale chips, white and chalky tasting. These bags must have been years old. Can there be a time in life when cookies aren't required, when chocolate isn't needed to save yourself? I can't believe that. A cupboard without chocolate chips demands an emergency trip to the grocery store. I'm talking necessity, because a week without a cookie is a sad, sad thing.

My tried-and-true recipe is baked into my brain, and comes from Nothing To It's kitchen coach Jennifer Bushman. Throw it all together and within minutes, you've got a hot cookie in hand. Cream: 2 cubes of butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup white sugar. Add 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and cream some more. Mix in: 3 cups flour -- white, wheat or whole wheat pastry, depending on whether you want to offset your guilt with high fiber -- 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda. When combined add: 2 cups chocolate chips. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Absolute bliss: Alone in the bathtub

Photo courtesy of Henning Lind, Creative Commons

Inspired by Six-Word Momoirs, a challenge to define your motherhood experience in just six words.

Here's another -- Mama porn: Asleep in bed, alone -- a riff on a great essay by Bridget Quinn at MomsRising. Or what about My commute: Coffee, couch, baby, boob. And when I cheat a little ... Two practices, two games, one car: Soccer sadist.

Can you think of one?

Rules to weed by

Photo courtesy of stonebird, Creative Commons

Standing at my door was the neighbor kid, a skinny girl with her purse weighing down her shoulder, pulling her T-shirt tight enough for me to see the outline of her changing chest.

"I'm trying to earn $20 so I can go roller skating with my class," she said. "I can babysit. I've done jobs round the house, mainly inside, you know. But I've mowed lawns and pulled weeds, too."

Her family's new to our street, moving into the rental across from us a few months earlier. She's the youngest in this extended family, who live life loudly, whether hanging out on the stoop or pacing the sidewalk while talking on cell phones. More people keep moving in and the mountain of shoes grows next to their front door, which is rarely closed.

I learn her name, that she's in sixth grade, and invite her and her mother to take a look at our back yard. I've seen the two walking down the street, the girl a block ahead of the mom, who is hollering her name and commanding her to "Wait up!"

"I'm Old School," the mother tells me, while I point out what's a weed and what's a flower. "I want my children to earn their own money." And so we agree that her daughter can return tomorrow to tackle the foot-high weeds. If she can get the whole yard cleared, I'd gladly pay her the 20 bucks.

This was my first mistake.

Day two brings another knock, and there she stands in jelly shoes, purse at her side. I hand her gloves and tools, and she weeds and talks while I hang laundry and listen.

"I asked to go the bathroom during class and the teacher said no, so I went anyway. And then she said I had to apologize, so I said 'I apologize' and she said, 'You have to say you're sorry,' and I said, 'I apologize. That's the same as saying I'm sorry.' And when I tried to walk away she grabbed hold of my arm and left a bruise and red marks."

"Hmm," I respond.

"We went to the office and the principal gave me a citation and called my parents, and they're going to have a meeting. I could sue her."

She weeds. Asks for water. Asks me to check her work. An hour and a half role by, and I explain that I have to run an errand and she'll have to return later. She says she's almost done, and I say O.K.

That was mistake number two.

It's now 7 p.m. My husband's doing dinner dishes and the kids are getting ready for bed, when her mother and father cross the street and come up to our door. They explain that their daughter hasn't returned home yet so they'll finish the weeding for her.

Our mouths drop, and before we know it, we've made the third mistake, and led them to the backyard and handed them shovels. Two adults pulling my weeds.Ugh! A half-hour later, I'm $20 poorer and yard's still not weed-free.

Hiring a neighbor kid is just like weeding a garden -- hard work. I hire not only to avoid an unpleasant chore, but because I hope the kid learns a little responsibility. But my mistakes made it impossible for this girl to learn the value of job done well. Instead, I contributed to her entitlement, the flip side of responsibility. So, I've come up with some guidelines when it comes to hiring kids:

Rule1Keep the job small (weed this flower bed) and specific (pull the weeds by the root). Never outline the whole job and agree to pay the full amount because the kid might get overwhelmed by the task and begin to do quick, shoddy workRule2Hire for a half-hour and then judge the work. If pleased, have the kid continue. If not, say it's not working out, pay them for the time, and ask them to leaveRule3Never, ever let the parents finish the job.

The neighbor girl learned the wrong lesson, but I didn't. A half-hour later, her older brother knocked on my door and offered to mow the lawn for $15. Which brings me to the final rule: Don't make the same mistake twice. I told him no.

Telephone: Reach out and touch someone

Sunday Scribblings challenge of the week: Write about a particularly memorable phone call you made or received, or about your first telephone, or maybe a time you needed one but didn't have one. Or, remember way back a few years ago when everyone didn't have cell phones? Write about phones.

Photo courtesy of magandafille, Creative Commons

The family phone hung on the kitchen wall, an arm's reach from the sink and table, its cord hung to the floor, stretched and twisted by our efforts to have a private conversation in a home crammed with people.

Getting the phone wasn't easy, but then nothing was after my parents moved us to Silver Springs, a patch of scrub brush pocked and brittle from the hot, dry wind. We were the first to move onto Badger Street, and our tin trailer was an island in this ocean of tumbleweed and alkali. For you see, we moved in without electricity, running water, nor telephone. Why? I shrug. Can any child explain their parents' actions? Maybe they were too tired or too poor, it doesn't really matter, because the end result was the same: A lonely family, marooned in the desert.

The telephone became my mother's mission. She couldn't afford to bring the power line down our street, and the task of building a water tank and windmill was my father's. But she could dig the ditch and lay the phone line to connect our trailer to the rest of humanity. There I picture her, a strong, determined woman in waffle-stomping hiking boots and shorts, tank top exposing breast and unshaved armpit, digging to keep herself sane.

That first ring was beautiful, the trilling of the metal bells shattering the air, so heavy with solitude. Can something be filled with emptiness? I argue that it can. Those days of our first summer there were filled with nothing. I'd walk outside the trailer and be swallowed up in the vastness of desert, the expanse of sky, the brightness of the sun. My hair tangling in the wind, my eyes squinting against the glare, I'd join my brother in a hunt for the largest scorpion, or a game of hide-and-seek among the sagebrush. But the best game of all was the race for the phone. It's musical ring sent us dashing for the receiver, knocking over chairs, pushing each other out of the way. The winner answering it with a breathless, desperate, "Hello?"

One beautiful sentence

Swallow Print by Sarah Parrott, Little Paper Planes

I'm reading "Madame Bovary" and vacillate between identifying with Emma because her life isn't her own, and despising her for being so passive-aggressive. Regardless, Madame Bovary is a wreck, and had she lived today, she'd be popping handfuls of anti-depressants to deal with her life.

The book is filled with images that are beautiful and concise. Unlike many books that wander into paragraphs of description for no sake other than the author is in love with words, Gustave Flaubert is relentless in his demand that every sentence carry forward the story of Emma Bovary's revolt against the ordinariness of her life. Here's one superb example:

"... What deplorable mania had driven (Emma) to ruin her life with constant self-sacrifice? She recalled all her yearnings for luxury, all the privations of her soul, the degradations of marriage and housekeeping, her dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows, everything she had desired, everything she had denied herself, everything she might have had! And why? Why?"

Challenged by the blog Write Now is Good to find a sentence that moves me, I settle on the words above, on the simile, "dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows" because the picture, the words, struggle inside my head: birds fighting, wings caked in dirt, too heavy to lift. One such swallow carries my dream to write.

Evolution of a game

Photo courtesy of Chris Darling at Ctd 2005.

There's a game of pickup soccer every morning at the elementary school that has a life of its own. And like any life form, the game is hungry, gobbling up children like raw energy, moving from sandy field into the crooked lines of backpacks and lunch bags, through the jungle gym, and then back out onto the field.

On any given morning, a big game gobbles smaller ones, feisty little games develop inside the middle of a bigger one. In the 10 or 15 minutes before the school bell rings and classes begin, the game has split apart maybe a dozen times, breathing in and exhaling children as it rolls across the playground.

As a bystander, it's hard to figure out the rules, but they do exist. Like cells sharing invisible chains of DNA, the game passes along its knowledge to its players as they brush against one another. This universal code that governs playground pickup soccer, making it organic and alive, is the same code that allows a referee to ignore the 17 Laws of the Game in the "spirit of fair play," according to National Geographic magazine's ode to the sport.

In pickup, there are no time-outs, no choosing teams nor defining boundaries, as the game shifts and snaps up new recruits. The game may begin with a clump of children against a single goalie, his back against the wall, blocking not just one, but two, sometimes three balls hurling toward him. But a wayward kick will shift the game into the clusters of girls, giggling and sharing secrets. Reluctantly, they become teammates, standing solidly in a group until the ball comes their direction and then bam! A kick sends the ball bouncing to a different corner of the playground, and the game releases the girls from its grasp.

The girls have been slow to join, but when their noses turned cold and pink, and conversations turned catty, soccer was eyed with greater interest. The first request to play, made by a single girl, was met by silence, then a quick counsel among the boys, and finally a mumbled acquiescence. She joined the game and changed it. With time one girl became two, sometimes three, and by spring, players no longer defined and divided themselves by gender, but had fused into something entirely new.