Childhood

Stepping Out on My Blog


So when I wasn’t here, I was here and there and there.

First piece I am lamenting my ability to hold the line with the daughter on proper school footwear. As I wrote this for the mommy blog, it reminded me of a middle school friend whose mother made her wear winter boots until May every year.

While the rest of us were splashing about in the April showers in our Adidas (the height of cool in 1977) runners and track jackets, she was shod in grandma boots with the zipper up the front and a mid-calf ringed with fake furry fabric that pilled and her winter jacket from Sears.

“Was she scarred for life?” Rob asked as I related the woeful tale of my old buddy.

“Well,” I said, “the last I heard of her she was a teacher at a community college somewhere in Florida and working on her third husband.”

True. By the time we were thirty, she’d run through two husbands and her potential third was about eight years younger than we were. I don’t know for sure  he was a student, but the evidence was damning.

However, in case you missed Rob’s point – I didn’t – the boots were not the likely cause. She had the misfortune of being the catalyst behind her parents marriage, and her mother felt that her great potential had been cut down before it could bloom by my friend’s untimely arrival. Seriously. Even though we were all very young, it was evident to us that she was flogging her daughter with her thwarted ambitions rather than asking herself why she simply hadn’t used a more reliable method of birth control – like abstinence perhaps? Jae was the family go-to in a Cinderella way while her younger brother, an obnoxious cry baby, was the second coming.

“You are going to cave on the shoes,” Rob told me.

“I told her only as treat,” I conceded.

“You totally caved,” he confirmed.

I have not. Dee only gets to wear the flip flops on the last day of school, which is still months off.

The other posts are about racism in Mississippi schools (hardly worthy of a stop the presses but reprehensible never the less) and bribing kids (in some instances it works beautifully).

Also ran cross this awesome link on Jezebel* that led to a blog post by Paulina Porizkova – the former super model – on the shame not allowing women to age is. Excellent read.

Forgive my lazy blogging. Allergies are kicking me hard.

* A must click. There is a current pic of Paulina that leaves me in awe.

Christmas TV Memories


Right before Christmas, back in the days when Americans didn’t believe that the holiday could be cleansed of its religious roots, the week or so leading up to the big day was awash in thematic fare. Every drama and sitcom acknowledged Christmas in a very special episode and variety shows had glittery specials.

And there were movies. Lots of old movies. Jimmy Stewart and Alistair Sims.

When I was in kindergarten, Jonny Whitaker of the sitcom Family Affair, was the little “it” boy as far as movies and specials went. He did Disney and he starred in an adaptation of a children’s Christmas book called The Littlest Angel.

It was horrific really when I recall it. A little shepherd boy named Michael falls to his death chasing a butterfly along a steep mountain path. His parents have no idea he is dead when he travels back from heaven to retrieve a box of treasures to give to the newborn baby Jesus though his mother “feels” him hug her and clutches her heart in fear.

The point of the story was that even the smallest of us can be important in the grand scheme and that God loves all of us regardless, but I remember even today watching that little boy fall and knowing that his parents would be heartbroken when they discovered what had happened.

Consequently, it shouldn’t surprise me that so much of what Rob and I watch with Dee is littered with dead parents and dead or dying children. That is the stuff that makes our tummies tighten and is an easy dramatic reach for most writers. Why mess with success.

On a whim, I searched for a clip from the original show and, of course, I found it. When I was five and six and seven, I really liked this movie. I watched it every year along with Rudolph and Charlie Brown and J.T. and that scraggly cat. I wonder at myself these days because I can’t believe I associated such sadness with the joy of Christmas in a positive way.

The Adventures of St. Nick*


Just about everyone we knew as kids celebrated St. Nicolas day but us. The leaving of small toys or treats in children’s shoes was not a tradition my dad had any interest in. If he or Mom were St. Nick recipients as wee ones, I can’t recall a single tale. Mom came from a fairly well-off background by comparison, but her father was a skinflint, who I highly doubt participated in the consuming side of Christmas any more than he was forced to. Dad’s family was dirt poor. Great-Grandaddy Christie lost the family farm in the bank crash after the first world war and Grandaddy and Gran were essentially the poor relations, who tenant farmed for years before winding up farming Gran’s family farm for first her father and then her sister. One Christmas, Dad and his four siblings got a single pair of skis which they took turns with until Uncle Leo ran into a pig and broke them. More than once I can recall Dad and his second oldest sister discussing how they each got an orange apiece in their stocking and that this was a rare treat. So, St. Nick? Not so much.

I may have put something in Dee’s shoe when she was two or three, but keeping track of holidays I didn’t grow up celebrating was not long on my list of necessities, so that good intention died before it had chance to take root. My sister, DNOS, however, has managed to instill the specialness of the day into N2 (Nephew2).

“But he slept over at Mom’s Saturday night and I forgot about it completely, ” she confided to me on the phone. “I hoped he would just forget about it, but nope, we were in the car on our way home from school and he wonders why St. Nick forgot him.”

“So what did you tell him?” I asked. DNOS is a great one for covering up parental faux-pas with stories that only an 8 year old could possibly believe. I admire that.

“I told him that St. Nick visits houses alphabetically and that he probably hadn’t gotten to the O’s yet.”

And N2 bought this as reasonable as any third grader would because “alphabetical” is how the world works.

After they got home from hockey practice later that evening, DNOS hustled N2 downstairs to strip him of his gear and pop him in the shower. According to my husband, hockey gear takes on an odor of its own and so, I imagine, does the child wearing the gear. As N2 showered, his father snuck upstairs and began stomping loudly about the living room. It’s a little house and BIL is a big guy, so let’s imagine timbers rattling.

“Mom,” N2 pops out of the shower, “There’s someone in the house!”

Eyes as big as saucers and shivering with chill and fear in his birthday suit, he began yelling for BIL.

“Dad! DAD! There’s an intruder upstairs.”

BIL has stealthily slipped back downstairs without notice and asks, “Are you sure, N2?”

“There’s an intruder!! Dad, get the gun!”

BIL hunts. He keeps his arsenal in a locked cabinet in the basement and he dutifully went for a shotgun and went upstairs to “look around”.

“Oh my god, Mom. There’s an intruder! And I’m naked!” N2 was literally beside himself with horror at this point and how DNOS and BIL live with the guilt is beyond me. They are great actors though and neither one cracked so much as a smile, let alone snickered.

“I didn’t see anything N2,” BIL reported when he returned.

“Get the soap out of my hair, Mom! I need to get dressed!”

A few minutes later, sans soap and pj’d, N2 charges ahead of his parents to the upstairs.

“Hey Buzz, nice of you to go first,” BIL calls after him and N2 freezes in mid-step.

“Mom, you go ahead of me and Dad you go ahead of Mom,” he said.

They crept through the kitchen and into the living room to find, not an intruder, but three St. Nick’d shoes. N2 took the contents out and distributed them and sat heavily on the rocker, clutching his small toy.

“Mom. Dad. I have to say this how I have to say this,” he said.

And they waited with bated breath.

“Dad, you almost frickin’ shot St. Nick! He’s Santa’s brother, and I wouldn’t have got anything this year if you’d killed him.”

And no, they didn’t laugh. They are that good.

*This tale is told with the permission of DNOS, who I am sure recognizes that I didn’t get it word for word as she told it because I am not the story-teller that she is.