Hey, I've Got An Idea!

The e-mail I received that caused me to look into my blog archive and remember a place of long ago and fairly far away is still having an effect on me. Oh, yes, I'm fairly prone to reverie these days. A predilection for preoccupation, one might say. You see, I am not a graceful pathfinder. I require a good deal of angst to be thrown in with finding my way through things. I smack and flop along the road like a square wheel, gnashing my teeth . . . and then the way is usually revealed to me. I'm waiting for that augury now. In the meantime, I'll fiddle around until I don't any longer.

So, back to that summer of 1958. I have such strong sensory memories of the heat, muggy in the afternoons when there would generally come a thunderstorm to mix things up a little. We wore colorful, short cotton midriff tops with shorts, sometimes cutoffs, and went barefooted until the scorching blacktop and concrete required thongs at least. I was the kid with sunburn blisters on my nose and shoulders, the long, thick, dark braid snaking down my back and bangs always cut at just a slight slant not intended. There was typically a tooth or two missing during that time, and I sported a cast on my right arm that summer. It weighed approximately what I weighed and rubbed a blister on the web between my thumb and forefinger. It did not hamper hopscotch, swinging or managing my bike. That cast brought me the closest I ever came to being spanked when I was busted behind the garage using a stick to scratch my horribly itchy arm. It nearly scared my parents to death and they proved that they knew some strong language. When the doctor removed the cast just before school started in September, it proved to contain more dirt and grime than the average vacuum cleaner bag. Small pebbles, sand, dog hair, shredding skin, broken bits of stick (ahem).

I greeted other kids rarely with "Hi!" and frequently with "I've got an idea!" I did, too. Lots of ideas. About anything and everything one would care to name. I read voraciously, including under the blankets and in my bedroom closet after bedtime. I watched a little TV - likely 90% less than any other kid of the era, but I saw enough to feed my idea machine. It was an active little idea machine, producer of big old dreams in technicolor and detail. I was a kid who spawned notions that required some action and some sweat and lots of fun in the execution. I've never known whether other kids thought "Yay!" or "Run!" when I came along with my latest dream. Perhaps I wouldn't want to know. Rarely, however, did I have any difficulty recruiting others to my fancies. And I've grown up not very different from that young child.

Perhaps that show-offy thing existed in embryonic form in the day, because - often - my ideas focused on the performing arts. In later years, this tendency was honed to near perfection. Give me a microphone and an audience of hundreds and I become utterly, breathtakingly brilliant. But that is another story for another day. I once spent some considerable amount of saved allowance to buy a booklet setting forth a child's production of The Emperor's New Clothes. This required someone's dad to apply a saw to plywood and a neighborhood mom to sew costumes. And they did that! My mother made brownies. People came to watch us. It sired a monster in me. Theme parties a specialty. Extravagant whoop-dee-doos are my middle name.

I tend to do better in life when I have a project bubbling. It keeps me focused and gives me a sense of purpose. I need a little of that about now. And it's been a long time since we did anything collaborative on this blog like a drop in poem. I guess I ran out of conquering heroes to celebrate or something, because I got away from that really fun activity. Let's put that to bed! Reader, beware: I've got an idea.

I have a project in mind, for presentation on this blog. The gala will be presented on August 24th for good reason. It will feature video and all manner of things to delight one's sense of humor, particularly if yours is as twisted as my own. I need help! I need words. I am looking for a jingle, if not an outright song (which I'd prefer) to laud the hoppy taw, perhaps a poem or two, even an essay. The themes should be hoppy taws and hopscotch, days of summer, nostalgia, easier times. To get a feel for it, just read this and my last post or if one wants to refer to the original hoppy taw post, there you have it. Please send some words to the e-mail address in My Profile and let's have some fun. Two lines or two pages - everything helps! I'll provide updates and maybe a sneak peek or two as we get some stuff on video. Oh, yeah! I have both a film crew and an editor. It will be epic, even if only in my own mind.

Right before my eyes just now: It makes me snicker! Poor Frank, with his delicate sensibilities.

The most fun my eyes and ears have had in days:

And That's What Made Me Run

I'm an adult now (at least if you count my years) and I hope I react to things from a plane of some slight balance vs. torturous highs and lows. But it wasn't always so. Once I was 8 years old and I didn't have the same powers of reasoning, the same collection of life experience, the willingness to speak out, the suspicion of authority that I do now. I didn't have many coping skills. I wouldn't have challenged something an adult stated for anything. I'd learned not to bother anyone with anything that was bothering me. Life's little kicks in the ass sometimes crushed me, and I simply accepted them, soldiering on. I know that my own childhood traumas likely weren't any more difficult than anyone else's, and in many ways I was a fortunate little girl. But everyone has struggled with something.

My mother's large Irish family were Catholics through and through. Active in the parish. My father's family were decidedly not. The Morgan family, my grandfather in particular, could get going about Catholics and the Pope. I was not baptized as an infant, as my father objected. Mom finally convinced him to allow the baptism when I was 2 - just old enough to raise the roof when the priest applied those few drops of holy water to my forehead. By the time Gary came along, my dad had already given in once, so Gary was baptized as an infant, more typically Catholic. In very young childhood, I was not served up a lot of religion. Weddings and funerals, Mass at Easter. We were rather casual Catholics, my mother and I. Sometimes when very young, I was allowed to go to other churches of other faiths with friends. Casual. It may have been restful, convenient, to have me away from home in a wholesome environment, someone else's temporary responsibility. I don't know.By second grade, it appeared that I had a decent brain. There had been some discussion of my skipping a grade, but it had been determined my intellect could easily do that while my soul probably could not. I was delicate and sensitive. It could harm me. I now know myself better than anyone else knows me. It would have harmed me. My mother and her family began to work my dad. Putting me in Catholic school would not only offer me more challenging lessons and a good foundation for my lifetime education, there were all the wonderful extra-curricular activities and, and . . . he finally agreed, reluctantly. We'd try it for my 3rd grade year.

During the summer, my mother, a person who is not of the same species as I, had to teach me to write perfect Palmer Method cursive writing with a cartridge pen as the Catholic kids had all learned that in 2nd grade. They hadn't taught us that at public school. I was not grand at catching on to perfect Palmer Method. My mother and I should never have been allowed to occupy a room alone together. Certainly no one should have thought it was a good idea to have her try to teach me anything. Not good for her, not good for me. And I was a messy child, for the first time ever. That cartridge pen was a challenge to me. I remember it as the summer of permanently blue-stained fingertips and incredible stress. Ah ~ and in the fall, when I went to Catholic school, my uniform blouse would be white and there had better not be any blue ink on it. A stray lazy thought in my head today: Grandpa lived about 2 miles away, wrote in perfect Palmer Method, was soft and gentle with me, had even taught me how to handle a pocket knife . . . . . hmmm.

In 1960 America, there were good girls and boys and bad girls and boys. I had some cousins who were bad, and very fun. They were free enough to be bad, take their lumps and move on. I was a good child. Adults liked me. I was quiet and helpful, clean and tidy except for cartridge pens, industrious and bright. I think I would have liked the child who was me. The exterior was a cute little package, smiling, always reading, always trying to please. Trying so hard to please. And when I failed to please, I suffered agonies. I will write from time to time about ways I've punished myself in life for failing to please. But at 8, the punishment was just silent self-excoriation. My family's poisons had made me, by age 8, a very grand secret-keeper. I had seen, heard and experienced things to which no child should ever be exposed. I never spilled about the worst of it until I was 50 years old. I'd learned to get up every morning, study my mother and determine what she needed me to be on this day and that's the girl I'd be. And quiet! No, it didn't make for good mother-daughter relations. Does it surprise anyone that I sought out adult females? Granny and my aunts, friends of my mother, neighbor women. Because I was pretty smart, it didn't take long for me to figure out that all of them were pretty regular, pretty normal, pretty right.

In southern California, the Santa Ana winds blow in early September. The conditions become hot and dry. Major wildfires typically occur at this time of year. The Catholic school was a good deal farther from home than the public. That was OK. I was on a new adventure. In September, my new saddle shoes blistered my feet and the gray wool skirt was hot and itchy, but I tried not to complain. The white uniform blouse was adorned at the collar with a maroon clip-on bowtie that pinched the sweating neck, but that was all right, too. At Catholic school, we were assigned far more homework and used many more books than in public school. I lugged the books without griping and always did extra credit. My dad oversaw my homework every night of life and he could see how much I was learning. By first report card, we already knew this "trial" was going very well for all concerned. I was also learning about the Catholic religion in a way I'd never understood it before. We attended Mass, walked the Stations of the Cross, made our first confessions and studied for our First Communions, studied catechism each afternoon, were given rosaries and holy cards as prizes for spelling bees, and were immersed even more than that. Oh, I was a wonderful, true believer. Age 8, tender, gentle.

At least some of the reason for my success at school was the influence of Sister Maren Therese. She was young(ish) and quite tall. Her hands were long and beautiful and I stared at her gorgeous, very fair skin. She had a lovely voice and she was very caring while still remaining firm. Our school lay right in the flight path of the Los Angeles International Airport, already a very busy portal in 1960. When the huge classroom windows were opened because we were not air conditioned, Sister could present a lesson pausing every few moments as a jet passed over and then pick up right where she'd left off, without missing a beat. I remember I loved those windows that latched very close to the ceiling. They were latched by use of a device that was a sort of a hook on a very long broomstick. Only Sister, the janitor and the boys were allowed to use this device. That was OK with me. I am not graced with much grace. I could have put the device right through the window pane. That would not have pleased Sister. Have I mentioned that I absolutely loved her? And I knew she thought I was a very special girl. Yes, the adult me understands that Sister thought all the children were special. But the 8-year-old didn't know that.

It was in the spring, and for some reason, I believe it was April, not that it matters in the least. The windows were open because it was gloriously warm, Sister speaking in her stop-start mode because of the jets. It was Friday and Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays. I'd had peanut butter, cheese and crackers in my lunchbox, in place of - say - a bologna sandwich. We were in the catechism part of our daily lessons. It is interesting to me that I can still recite entire tracts of Catholic ideology and the Mass in Latin. I paid attention, you see. I was a young, budding critical thinker. I weighed facts that were tossed my way. Nearly 4th graders by now, we needed to be learning about the afterlife. Oh, we knew about heaven and all aspired to go there. We knew we'd meet others in heaven who came from different faiths and that was all right. Anyone could go there as long as they'd made a conscious decision to embrace God's ways. And we knew about hellfire. Some Catholic art shown freely and openly to children, at least at that time, was lurid and frightening. We certainly didn't plan to go there. But Catholics had a much wider menu than souls of other faiths. Catholics had a few different forms of afterlife, and one's behavior on earth would dictate where one ended up.

It's been said of me that I experience events with all of my senses and then relate them descriptively in a way that others can almost feel the way I felt at the time. Sitting in the warm classroom, I felt safe and well-fed. I listened attentively. Always. Sister explained the afterlife reward system. When the light came on for me, I shot my hand into the air. When she called on me, I stood up to ask my questions. It couldn't possibly be the way I'd heard it. Could it? My mother and I, card-carrying Catholics, could enter the kingdom of heaven if we remained in a state of grace. My brother was headed for limbo of the infants - not heaven, but a state of maximum happiness reserved for those who hadn't been able to make choices in life. My father's best hope was purgatory - a sort of temporary hell from which he might emerge if he'd been a very fine person. Dad's downfall? He wouldn't be baptized and live a holy (read: Catholic) life. What?? I know I flushed. My ears roared. I smelled something like burning leaves. I don't believe I heard another word spoken to me that day. I ran most of the long way home.I was done with Catholicism, religion and Sister. Finished. Maybe another child would have run home and said,"Hey, Dad, we've got to get you converted while there's still time. And what are we going to do about Gary?" But not I. No. I went into my room for the weekend and soaked in it. Silently. New secrets to keep. The people I loved best weren't going to get into heaven. I began this post saying I'm now an adult. I know that God didn't come down into my classroom and traumatize me. Perhaps it would have been better if he had. Better than Sister doing it. I had lay teachers for the next several years and then we moved to Salt Lake City where there was no Catholic school conveniently located. My mother did not react at all when I said I didn't want to go to church any more. I'd been faking it for a few years and wanted relief from that. A person in better balance than I might have found some other spiritual comfort or joined a different church. I am of the generation that freely explored eastern mysticism. I could have done that, too. I was so shattered, I spent decades running from the entire topic. And keeping those secrets.

When I was pregnant, Ex and I talked almost daily about our life plan for our child. Everything from her education to the color of her nursery walls was discussed in great depth. What would we do about the God/religion thing? Ex was a lapsed Catholic, although not particularly traumatized. But he had no strong need to include religious practice in our child's life. We landed on a plan. When Amber asked, and not before, we would begin the traveling church tour, visiting every kind of congregation we could find, for a few weeks each. We'd spend time in the car on the way home talking about what we thought and felt. She was about 10 when she posed the questions. We executed our plan. We did Protestantism, Mormonism, Buddhism, and - yes - Catholicism. We did it for a long time. After about 2 years, over dinner one evening, Amber said, "OK, thanks. I'm done." Oh. As easy as that.

In my ears right now: The sound of my own voice. I'm repeating phrases in Latin. I could likely conduct a retro Mass.

Something that charmed me: I was attending a 12-step meeting in support of a friend who was to be presented with a cake and a chip for a significant period of sobriety. One AA member wished to share, and that's always preceded by an introduction of oneself. "I'm X. I'm an alcoholic and a recovering Catholic." I laughed out loud. It was probably inappropriate.

Georgie Eats Old Gray Rats and Paints Houses Yellow

I was visiting favored blogger Elisabeth and saw that she posted her rendition of a geography meme. I backtracked from her blog to see how/where the meme originated and to see how some other bloggers presented their versions."OK," thought I, "I am a woman who has been around the block a few times. This one is for me." And besides, I cannot look at the word "geography" without giggling. When I was a child in Catholic elementary school, spelling mattered, unlike today. Spelling comes pretty naturally to me, but some words were more difficult than others. "Geography" was such a word. My aunt Pat had always been spelling challenged, and the nuns in her generation were just as insistent upon proper spelling. Pat had made up jingles or reminders or prods to help her with certain words and she shared the one for "geography" with me: Georgie Eats Old Gray Rats and Paints Houses Yellow. But I digress. Here's my meme ~


You must begin your post with a geographical joke - Who is a penguin's favorite aunt? Aunt Arctica!

Then credit the geographical joke to the source - Sorry. I had to Google it. I'm not humorless, but I don't make up jokes and I didn't know any geography jokes.

Then in as few words as possible (that is very difficult for me!) - explain your earliest recollection/ awareness of the following:

Europe - In the same Catholic, elementary school we were joined by a new student, Elizabeth, from Germany. Sister showed us on the globe where Elizabeth was born. Who knew? I was 7.

America - I was born shortly after World War II. I knew at a very early age (preschool) that I lived in America and for that, I should be grateful and proud. Later I would learn to question some of that, but as a small child, that was imparted to me.

Africa - Same Catholic elementary school (yes, I did finally get out of elementary school): we studied about Egypt and the pharoahs. I made a diorama featuring a pyramid and camels, with beach sand representing the Sahara. One day, much later, I would visit Egypt.

Australia - Before I started school I had a book featuring kangaroos and koalas. My Granny always went farther than simply reading to me. She put the subject matter into context.

Asia - Several of my uncles had served in the Pacific in the War. Granny had the beautiful lacquered jewelry boxes and Japanese geisha dolls. Once again, that good woman pulled out the encyclopedia to show a 4-year-old where those gifts were made and purchased.

Then say what is your furthest point travelled - This made me snicker! North and South are pretty straightforward, but my east may be the reader's west, depending on where either of us is located. For the record, I'm in the western U.S. and that has always been my starting point.

North - Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales, from where my ancestors hail.
South - The Panama Canal.
East - Egypt.
West - Hawaii.

Longest time living in one place and where was it? Lemon Grove, California, a four-square-mile city completely surrounded by San Diego. Home of the big lemon! It was incorporated in 1977, the year I was married, and every bit of that charms me. I lived there 22 years, by far the longest period of time I was ever planted in one location.

Shortest time living in one place and where was it? Four weeks in Santa Barbara, California. What a pity! It is lovely and Lemon Grove is not.

Brief list of places lived , in rough order of appearance: Mine cannot be brief. Behold! Cambria, LA, Salt Lake City, LA, Salt Lake City, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, LA, Inglewood, City of Commerce, Pomona, Santa Barbara, Glendale, Burbank, Bell, Las Vegas, Lemon Grove, Las Vegas. And that does not take into account that in some of those places, I lived in several different homes.

How many addresses have you had? I actually got out a pen and pad for this. How about at least 51 for certain!?! No wonder I'm so unstable!

In my ears right now: Well, it should be On the Road Again, as it seems that's where I've spent most of life except for the Lemon Grove idyll!

Something that charmed me: Ex and I had a very tiny house in Lemon Grove. Read t-i-n-y. As our income increased, he occasionally suggested we buy something better. I resisted. I pleaded with him to understand that I'd been moved around all of my life and I just wanted to sink some roots. He was tolerant. We were surprised by the arrival of Amber 20 years into our marriage, and babies require a lot of furniture and equipment. Now the house was inadequate to our needs. "Les, we need to buy something else." I resisted. Finally, it reached the point where we were going to have to nail any incoming furniture or appliances to the ceiling. That was still OK with me. "Mom, I can only have one friend over at a time. There's no place for us to play or sleep. I want to have a slumber party." I acquiesced. I lived in that house 16 years, and my daughter 8. The next home was fairly grand. But there the marriage collapsed and, once again, I moved on.

Spring Fever and Reminiscence

What a difference a couple of days makes! Look at my view from the deck this morning. One will note that the palm fronds are not a blur because they are not snapping like bullwhips in the wind. Oh, to be sure, we are not out of the woods yet. Tomorrow promises to be as schizophrenic as Wednesday. But Sunday we spring forward to Daylight Savings Time and when I stepped out onto the deck to snap that picture, the sun felt warm on my shoulders.

I read the most informative springtime post this morning that truly put some things into perspective for me. It helped curb some angst and unease. The post features lovely photos of calla lilies, and some of the commenters [poetic sorts and flower lovers, all] wrote that they didn't know those blooms could be found in particular colors. Perhaps pushed on by a large dose of spring fever, I drifted into reverie.

My mother went to high school with a friend named Barbara. Barbara was an only child and my mother loved going to her quiet, orderly home. Barbara loved visiting in my mother's home with all the rollicking, frolicking redheaded Irish Americans who are my ancestors. When my parents "ran off" to get married, Barbara went along as my mother's maid of honor. She did not have children until much later in her life than my mother had me, so for much of my early life, I was "Barbara's girl". Her family remained involved with ours for many, many years. The first wedding gift Ex and I received was from Barbara's elderly parents.

Barbara married Jack, a policeman, and began an early married life of leisure. She was more adventuresome and worldly than my mother, driving her own car to meet girlfriends for lunch, joining the garden club, taking classes, decorating her home beautifully. Barbara was big copy in our home! We thought she was wonderful in every way.

Easter was approaching when Barbara called to say, "Let's do a project!" It was arranged that she would drive to our home on a weekday afternoon, bringing all the supplies needed for said project and we'd all participate, even young Leslie. I remember being excited and intrigued, for my mother did not arrange projects. Nor Granny, nor anyone else I knew. I'd probably never heard the word spoken. But my mother smiled and bustled around and made potato salad for our lunch, so I knew this project was a good thing and not a bad one.

Barbara arrived with armloads - literally - of calla lilies of the commonest variety, the white with the yellow tongue. She brought sandpaper and bags of cotton balls and buckets of colored chalk sticks of the sort little girls use to draw hopscotch grids . And although it has been 53 springs since, I have never forgotten the afternoon spent on that project. Barbara had taken a class where she learned how to do this activity. One used the sandpaper to reduce the chalk to powder. A cotton ball was dipped into the powder and then used to sweep color onto the white lily petals. We made pink lilies and red, blue and lavender. On some petals we made a marbled effect, using a bit of color offset by the flower's own white. My father is a bit clever, a bit different. When he arrived home, the rainbow lily was invented, and we all bowed to his creativity.



It came time for Barbara to go home and make dinner for Jack. She left us with the lion's share of the colored lilies so we could share with Granny and put some on the altar at Mass for Easter. Our small home was filled with the fragrance of lilies (yes, I know some people find that cloying, but I love it). Even I, a young child, could see that the wool rug was covered with chalk dust and I looked like I had just emerged from a colored chalk mine. But this was an enchanted spring because my mother did not have a nervous breakdown over the mess. My father pitched in to help clean it up. I was pitched into the bathtub, and this remains a memory of a very special time to me. I have continued a lifetime of projects, perhaps stemming from that spring afternoon in 1956.

In my ears right now: Some music from the year I was 15. It was a joyous and devastating year and soon I shall be writing about it. This ditty did not age well, but I've never forgotten it.

Something that charmed me: Bloomsbury and Benson charm me this morning. They converse with the outside birds so loudly, I can barely think.

Storm Trooper

I'm not unique for having had some bad holiday time life events that slightly color everything about the season for me. It happens. Children grow up, divorces happen, people move away . . . . the way we celebrate can become different for many reasons. The things we feel are worth celebrating can turn 180 degrees. I've written before about having a sharp, jagged boundary defining "before" and "after" in my life. This isn't meant to be a dark post, but I wish to show that my holiday twitchiness stems from serious issues, not just from failing to receive the holiday gift I'd asked for. The dark gorge contains my trip to a hospital with paramedics, large blood transfusions, a surgery and the flaming crash of "before" at precisely 8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve that year. It took five days for all of that to happen, after a 32-year build-up. Life before did not quietly fade away. It crashed through the astral plane and was destroyed. Nothing was ever the same again. I am not the same.

There! That's it. There's to be no more nattering about the terrible things humans can do to one another, nor am I carrying a crying hankie throughout December any longer. I am so holiday happy, I have been dubbed the Solstice Fairy of Past, Present and Future. But my overarching theme for a post or two is to be Extremely Exaggerated, Extravagant Excessive Excesses at the Holidays - My Own and Others'. I'll ask the reader's indulgence as I will bob and weave through the 1950s to the 2000s. I'll try to be clear about the "when" of things.

The other day in my office, I was reminded how large my extended family is when I said something about my 40 cousins and one of my co-workers nearly passed out. I guess that is a large number of people. And as I'm gathering steam for writing this post, the words that are colliding in every frame of the holiday film that plays in my head are the "e" words - extreme, excessive, exaggerated. Extreme personalities. Exaggerated merriment. Excessive amounts of food, drink and gifts. Exorbitant amounts of time spent by many people year-around preparing for this one Saturnalian snowglobe festival. Three aunts baking for two solid months. Granny-O and four aunts sewing doll clothes every Sunday afternoon of the year. Five turkeys in the ovens at the actual event. I'm thinking 30 pounds of potatoes would be about right.

Sidebar: I've just had a wave of peace wash over me. This holiday excesses theme is one that makes me hinky. I'm going to tell some things that embarrass me and some that hurt and some that are hugely funny. But I'm never neutral about the excesses - at least my own. And I've landed somewhere really nice for the first time ever. Some readers would have seen me reduce my mother to human size recently on the blog. My mother has always defied description, at least by me, and has been HUGE. I wrote with a little angst, and Kass said something in her comments that made me laugh out loud. "Anxious mother." Oh. OK. She was an anxious mother. No more. No less. That's pretty manageable, even by me. And now, after typing only three paragraphs, something has shown itself to me that makes this "excesses" thing manageable. I was set up for it. It's not some aberrant failing of character I invented. It's what was modeled for me, with modern inventions, money, time and my own fertile imagination thrown in across the years. I was a Christmas Nazi because I was born and bred to be one. And I'm reminded again to quiet down, go inside and pay attention when something overwhelms me. Funny how the answers always lie within. I need to practice that. Allow me to share some of the stories.

By the time my cousins and I were old enough to be the hostesses of the family holiday gatherings, there were some big high heels to fill. Granny-O and the aunts cast a long shadow. My aunt Irene really did make 43 different kinds of Christmas cookies, brought them to the family celebration to be enjoyed, and sent each family home with a clean shoebox full of them. Granny-O and the sewing aunts made Barbie and other doll clothes in sufficient numbers that our dolls got complete wardrobes from "Santa". I recognize that Barbie is rather magnificent in bodily proportion, but I submit that sewing bras, underwear and slips for her from nylon and lace would challenge even a person comfortable with a sewing machine - those were some tiny pieces of lingerie, and never a stitch out of place. By the way, there were 28 of us who owned Barbies to be outfitted at any given Christmas. I'm sure there were some wonderful gifts for the boys, too. I just wasn't very interested in what they got. Gary always got pajamas and clothes, and I imagine the other boys getting Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys. Something like that.

I think I'll close out this first holiday excesses post talking about my Aunt Ruth - the Queen Bee of the womenfolk. Ruth was Granny-O's first child and she was revered by every sibling and every niece and nephew. That's a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Amber's generation of children all revered her, too. Ruthie was a "classy" girl. She shopped at Woolworth's for the things Granny-O didn't make for her and she looked like a million bucks. She ran off at 18 to New York City where she worked first as an au pair girl and later formed an attachment to the actor, Robert Taylor. She returned at about age 30 and proceeded to have two marriages and a good life. I don't remember much about her first husband - I believe they divorced in the 1950s. Andy was her husband we all regarded as our uncle and they were popular at family gatherings. Although they never had children, each of them knew how to interact with children, from babies through teenagers. Aunt Ruth talked to 16-year-old girls about sex and Andy wanted to know what it was like to smoke pot. They talked to us as if we were real people. No wonder we loved them!

Dear Ruthie's excess is one that will make the reader grin, I believe. For Ruthie's obsession was to roll $1 bills all year long. Why? Ruth and Andy didn't give tangible gifts. They gave money. When I was a child, the amount was the princely sum of $10 per person. Every person in every family. When Amber was a child it was $50 per person. Ruthie gave cost-of-living increases! However, the gift of money was always given in some unusual way. Whether one received $10 or $50 or whatever the amounts in between the years, the money was presented in $1 bills, rolled tightly and individually and disguised in the presentation. Ruthie selected her "theme" every New Years Day and spent the year putting the gifts together. The secret of the theme was sacrosanct. I don't believe it was ever once discovered in advance. Various cousins would ply Ruthie with wine and try to niggle it out of her. Uh-uh. We never found out.

Just some of Ruthie's Greatest Hits:

4. Tootsie Roll dollars - she wrapped Tootsie Roll wrappers around each dollar and tucked the dollars in among the actual miniature Tootsie Rolls - not the shortest, stubby ones. The ones that would be just about the same size as a rolled up dollar. Andy liked eating the Tootsie Rolls to free up wrappers for the dollars. On Christmas, each kid and adult got a big basket filled with Tootsie Rolls and dollars. It made a kid damned careful not to swing her basket too hard, thereby ejecting some of the contents.

3. Golf pencil dollars - yep, wrapped those $1 bills in yellow paper and tossed them in with the pencils.

2. Pasta dollars - Ruthie rolled the dollars in their original state and presented them in a glass canister filled with green dried pasta.

1. Potpourri dollars - my personal favorite. I love to decorate with decorative hat boxes and I know where to find them. Ruthie began to hit me up about my hat box resources in February. She was 80. She needed more than 100 hat boxes, so the light came on pretty quickly for me. I was 49. I could keep a straight face. I don't need to know everything there is to know. That year, she wrapped the dollars in pastel, filled those hat boxes with loose potpourri, and tossed in the dollars. One was careful transferring the potpourri from the hat box to glass containers!

The tinsel orgy was roaring and the really good Santa my mother had hired was soon to arrive. Ruth asked if I'd go out on the porch with her while she had a cigarette. I don't care for smoking, but I can stand downwind to spend time with Ruthie. We bundled up and I carried her glass of wine. On the porch, she broke it down, "Limes, did you figure it out about the hat boxes?" I struggled, folks. Finally I told her I had and she asked why I didn't say anything. "Didn't want to take it from you, Ruthie. Some things are better not to know in advance." She told me I was the best one of "the bunch". She told me my kid was the best one of "the new bunch".

That was the holiday season before my "before" went away. One year. Ruthie died of lung cancer 18 months ago, after a long, good life. Smoking will do that to a person. This is not a sad ending. This is an ending with a huge measure of gratitude for fine things I have enjoyed in this life and fine, excessive people I've known and loved. They taught me well. "I'm Limes and I'm a recovering Christmas Nazi. It's been 8 holiday seasons since I did anything that would rate a headline."

In my ears right now: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun ~ Cyndi Lauper. I still love it. I watched the original video on Vevo and I danced, too. I wish I'd had on a skirt so I could snap it around like Cyndi does. I sported the pink bumper sticker for years until it rotted off of the car. If I found a new one today, I'd buy it and fly it.

Something that charmed me: When I was 18, my Aunt Ruth loaned me the first volume of Ralph G. Martin's biography of Lady Randolph Churchill. It ignited me. I read it over and over again. I learned about Jennie Churchill and her famous son. I absorbed everything I could about life in Victorian England. I took notes and read biographies of other people in the Churchills' circle. The one book set so many things in motion for me, including a deep hunger to explore England. That would come, and Winston Churchill's country home, Chartwell, is where I would see some of Jennie Churchill's belongings on display. I am sorry to report I touched a leather book cover and a wool jacket. After I'd read the book a number of times I tried to return it to Ruthie. "You keep it honey. I enjoyed it, but I can see it means much more to you."

That Summer, the Arm and How One Handles Things

Summer of 1958. I was still 5 when we moved to Salt Lake City. I'd turn 6 in August, just days before starting first grade at Columbus School. My teacher was to be Miss Ross, who was probably about 24 or 25, just a little older than my parents. Miss Ross appeared to like my father very much, and he seemed to like her right back. My mother didn't seem to care for this mutual liking. Mind you, dad and Miss Ross met exactly once, at Back-to-School Night. But my mother was sufficiently put out by that mutual liking to sign on quickly as Room Mother. I think she wanted to keep an eye on that Miss Ross, even though serving as Room Mother would require her to come to our classroom with cookies, cupcakes and the like, sometimes in inclement weather, pushing Gary in his buggy. She had a fine run as Room Mother, never failing to appear when requested, and always having enough treats for all the kids and Miss Ross. This was not the last time my mother's antennae would come out when my father spoke to another female. He is a gregarious man. She must have been wrapped in knots frequently. And there was all that time he spent traveling on the job . . . .

I was recently commenting on the blog of one of my followers. His post and the commentary had started a couple of trains of thought. One was aging, one was about making poor decisions in life, perhaps having addictions, exhibiting troubled behaviors, simply not knowing how to find one's way. I commented that I, too, was a broken person trying to make good and that I was already at least damaged (if not actually broken) by the time we moved to Salt Lake. By the time I was 6, I was in a complete state of confusion about many things. That's a pretty broad statement. By it, I mean that about many, many things, I simply didn't know how to act or react. I didn't know what one was supposed to do in certain situations. I had no siblings to chew on stuff with. I was not spanked, so I didn't learn in that way that I'd behaved unacceptably. I mostly took my cues by studying adult facial or other physical cues. The trouble with that is that some of the adults I studied were a little skewed. I had a tough time balancing my impressions and landing on conclusions that would hold from one event to the next.

I've already written that, yes, I know hearts, heads and psyches practice selective recall. And this incident will have some of that woven through it. I'll ask the reader's indulgence. It was a traumatic event and I'm just telling it the way it feels to me. I see it in short, vivid scenes, an old black-and-white movie that plays and then breaks from the reel, only to take up again a little later.

It is the only time I can recall that my mother played with me. I'm certain she had to have played with me other times, but I can't bring a specific example to mind. Literally. It was late June and dinner was over, dishes cleaned. My dad watched TV indoors. The Christensens, Lorri, my mother and I were in the back yard, the shadows long, the sun dipping into the west. My mother suggested we play a game in which one person lies on the grass (that was she), bringing her knees to her chest, feet up. It is hard for me to imagine her being willing to lie on the grass - she was prissy - but she did. This once. The other person (Limes and Lorri, alternately) sits on the feet of the one lying down who then snaps the legs forward, sending the sitter flying through the air to land as she might. We did this a few times each and, for a small woman, Mother could really put some English on that snap! But, of course, we were small, too - good projectile girls. It happened on my fourth or fifth snap-and-fly. That time, when I rose from the grass, I was crying. One did not have to be an M.D. to know that something was very wrong with my right arm.

Mother Christensen had been varnishing the redwood picnic table and I have a vivid memory of her scurrying to our back door, varnish can and paint brush in hand, calling for my father. Father Christensen scooped me up and dashed for the garage we shared, to place me in the back seat of our car. His good wife told my father, "Go! Get your wife's purse for her and get going. I'll take care of Gary." My mother rode in the back seat with me, her shrieks drowning out my crying. At some point, I pretty much stopped crying and just felt pain. She continued to wail and apologize, oddly, to my father. But, remember, she'd been routinely criticized for her caretaking of me. She was sensitive. Father repeatedly snapped his volleyball head around on his broomstick neck to ask my mother to calm down and "pay attention to Limes". She was having trouble managing that. The windows were all rolled down - it was summer and hot - but I began to shiver, teeth chattering. "I'm cold!" That broke her meltdown, and I got some good facial expression to study. Today I'd express it as "What's the matter with this child? It's hot!" I was probably shock-y and, since it was summer, there wasn't a sweater in the car to put across me, so we rode on and I shivered.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Dad managed to maneuver Mother and me into the emergency room. Mom was in pretty bad shape, so a nurse took her to a room to be examined while Dad went with me. The reader doesn't want a medical report and I couldn't give a perfectly credible one and that's not what this is about. The arm and wrist were badly broken, although not compound fractured, and we spent a long time in that place while the doctors decided whether to send me to surgery or whether to set the limb and allow it to heal. X-rays were taken several times and hours passed. Nurses came in several times to tell my father that my mother was in very poor condition and she was finally medicated. My father never left my side, though I remember he was terribly distressed. Ultimately, a cast was applied and we were sent home, with advice to get some traction on that arm. It was suggested that they put me in Gary's crib, with the mattress dropped to the lowest level, and tie the arm up to the crossbars with a dish towel. OK, we could do that.

My father poured us into the car, the drugged mother, the injured kid. It was late. Maybe near midnight. I remind myself that he was 24 years old, and this had to have been an excruciating experience for him. Kid badly hurt. Wife melted down. As when the uncles had said goodbye a couple of weeks earlier, I could sense my father's concern that his wife could not handle life and her family. Mom's head was lolling in the front seat and Dad talked to me quietly in the dark. An idea struck him. I imagine he simply wanted to do something nice for us all at that moment. "Limes, would you like some A&W Root Beer? There's a stand up ahead that stays open late." Well, sure. Who wouldn't want root beer in the summer? Dad sprung for a full gallon, contained in those huge, heavy glass jugs of the day. Now, my dad's no fool and we'd had a pretty terrible evening already. He knew one didn't stand a gallon jug upright on the floor of the car. It might tip over. He laid the jug carefully on its side on the floor. "Don't let it roll around too much, Limes." I wouldn't. I put one of my feet, in P.F. Flyers, on the round surface of that jug to make sure it didn't go anywhere. The other foot was planted firmly on the floor.

Here the old black and white film goes slow motion and silent. I can only feel confusion, guilt and shame for what happened and for the things I could have done differently, should have done differently. The foot that was planted on the floor got an odd sensation. As we passed under a street light, I bent over to take a look. To my horror, I saw that my beige P.F. Flyer was now brown and wet. A&W Root Beer was slowly and quietly dribbling out of that gallon jug lying on its side and being held so firmly by my other foot. This was not a torrent - no wet swishy noises to be heard. That jug was just silently empyting itself onto carpet, a kid's shoe and sock. Today I think, "OK, the cap wasn't properly tightened and the liquid poured out. No big deal." But I also know that most kids would have let out a whoop over that escaping root beer. "Hey, Dad, stop the car, we've got trouble!" But I cringed in shame - yes, I am using the appropriate word for the feeling that was overwhelming me - and let most of that gallon of sticky stuff silently saturate shoe, sock and carpet. This makes me feel very sad, still today. I don't feel guilt or shame any more. I feel sad that by this time, I was already silent. A secret keeper. One unwilling to deliver any type of bad news, even if I knew it would be discovered anyway, even if it meant no root beer to enjoy, even if further disaster could be averted by my ringing the bell - maybe only a pint of that root beer would have been lost. Arrival at home and the night's activities were not pleasant. Gary was dislodged from his crib and I was put into it, lashed to the bar with a dish towel.

The next morning, I was sick. I know I was sick, because I would not have sat in a child's chair in my bathrobe on the porch you see if I had not been sick. And that is what I did. The parents felt I needed sun and fresh air. I probably did. They felt I needed quiet. Lorri was only allowed to visit long enough to be the first to sign the cast and ask why I was outside in my bathrobe. As I sat on the porch, nauseous, the parental voices droned quietly. The Chevy was parked in the driveway near the porch, both doors open, one parent bending through each door, going after that root beer. My mother worried out loud about Gary having to lie on the floor on a makeshift bed. My father worried out loud about the damage to the car's carpet. I worried silently about all of it.

I'll end this post attempting to be as good and balanced as my friend who said about her trauma,"There were many good things that happened to counter-balance the bad." I remind myself that these young parents had a lot on their plates and had no special attributes that made them better prepared to handle problems than anyone else. I ask myself how I might have handled their troubles differently. I think I know at least some of the answers.

In my ears right now: Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It came out in April, 1968. It was presented to me as a memento of that time shared. I love it. Gram Parsons is on it. Jim/Roger McGuinn [far too into his numerology]. A couple of really poor tunes. And some wonderful ones.

Something that charmed me: It's * * *cold* * * in Las Vegas. I walked in temperatures lower than 30 degrees this morning. Although I had layered up tremendously, my clothes didn't keep me warm enough, so I mixed in a little running. Arriving at home, I turned up the heat, turned on the oven and popped into bed to read awhile. Quite soon, I had two warm cat heaters pressed against varoius parts of my body. They hung around awhile, too!

Photo credit, with gratitude: Kathryn Feigal

R.I.P. ~ Remembering Tiny Tears

I have repeatedly revisited the photos Kass took of my old neighborhood, seemingly taking in something new each time. I've zoomed in for a closer look and mentally organized the placement of the houses on either side of my duplex, piecing together which way was north, which south, and which direction I would have walked to the mom-and-pop store with Lorri to buy my hoppy taws. Someone else pointed out to me there is crusty snow on the ground on the parking strip. I'd missed that! I'm simply trying to take in too much information and imagery at one time.

And so, it was only today that I saw it in the photo above. Although I have erroneously referred to it as a telephone pole in a previous post, it appears that the huge spike at the end of the driveway is actually an old wooden light standard. However, there can be no question about it. Pedaling along the driveway on the bike, it is surely that very pole I needed to avoid when I executed my right hand turn onto the sidewalk. Of course, I didn't make it. I whacked into that post with my front tire, thereby ejecting Tiny Tears into the street and cracking her head.

I have a certain fondness for the memory of Tiny Tears. It seems she was an important member of our small family. Granny-O had made her a doll quilt to match my quilt, and dresses to match some of my dresses. She'd traveled with us from L.A. to Salt Lake City in the backseat of the car with me, not in the moving van with other toys. I wonder if my carsickness bothered her as much as it bothered everyone else. She never said anything.

My daughter will turn 20 in January. I remember the toys she played with ~ how carefully we selected them and what learning we hoped each toy would foster. For Amber's toys had purpose. At age 3, the child pushed a wheeled cart filled with clunky, toddler-hands-friendly plastic Fisher Price food around the house for 6 months. She carried a crayon and a waitress' order pad (I bought those pads frequently~ this child had a lot of customers who looked only like Ex and me or Grandma or Grandpa) and served us plastic meals of chicken legs, grapes and corn on the cob. She wore an ancient apron made by my Granny who had died 3 years before Amber was born. She sported a name tag Ex found. Her waitress name was Esther. I liked her name and her game. I felt it taught her about diet and nutrition and what people did for a living. She had a crude working knowledge of customer service, because she called her dad "Sir" and always made sure to wipe the table and fold a napkin. We gave her play currency and she returned play coins that we left on the table for a tip. Fun and games with purpose in grown-up Limes' home. That's how we approached parenting. Provide toys and activities as realistic as possible, considering her age, safety and what we hoped she would learn.

I compare this to toys when I was a child. Little 1950s girls were expected to be future mothers and housewives. We needed babies and tea sets and plastic high heels and pop beads to play with and dysfunctional families to emulate when we played house. Tiny Tears was a study as a faux baby. I'm sliding a whole lot of slack to the American Doll Company for the lack of technology during the period of time they produced Tiny Tears. Lots of points for "Hey, it was the 1950s." But Tiny Tears could well have been the cause of many serious future parenting disasters. For Tiny Tears' operation and configuration was, um, odd.

Her head was hard plastic with a molded wave of baby hair thought attractive in the day. Her eyes were revolutionary! Instead of snapping shut like other dolls' eyes when one tipped her baby back into a reclining position, Tiny Tears' eyes fluttered shut in a more natural way. The American Doll Company's tagline was "rock-a-bye eyes". The long, bristly black nylon lashes were attractive, too. On her face, between her eyes and the bridge of her nose were two tiny holes that make me think of a reptilian face. These were not her nostrils - they'd be in the wrong location. These were the holes from which her tears would flow. Her nostrils were in the usual location and had no opening. Hard, solid pink plastic. Her pink rosebud lips appeared to have a perfectly symmetrical hole drilled between them - this to accommodate her baby bottle and other accessories. Tiny Tears was a girl who could do many things! Of course, she wet her diaper - lots of dolls could do that.

But Tiny Tears' coup - oh, the poetry of it! - was something that no other doll could do. Her body was made from soft, pliable plastic. It needed to be soft and pliable for a girl to cause Tiny Tears to execute the coup. Any of the waterworks tricks began with filling Tiny Tears with water. One did this by means of the baby bottle. So after a feeding, Tiny Tears could be expected to expel the liquid by wetting her diaper if one simply fed her and let her be. If a girl wanted to create tears, however, she would feed her baby and then squeeze the doll's abdomen hard to make her cry. I would likely cry, too, if loaded with water and then squeezed hard. But the coup ~ ~ Tiny Tears came complete with her layette and a bubble pipe! And, yes, the girl could blow bubbles. After a young lady convinced her parents to allow her a drop of diswashing liquid for the pipe, she then had to bottle feed Tiny Tears, remove the bottle from her mouth, pop the pipe into her mouth and squeeze the abdomen again - hard. While the squeezing to produce tears could be less extreme, I squeezed so hard to produce bubbles, I could feel my fingertips touch through Tiny's middle - I'd squeeze her to about 1/2 inch thickness. The reader can imagine that a girl's playroom could get pretty wet and sudsy as she worked through her busy day learning to be a mother. That didn't sit well with the real parents, either.

I'm going to credit my own and other 1950s parents with wanting to achieve similar goals to those of Ex and me: Provide toys and activities as realistic as possible, considering her age, safety and what we hoped she would learn. I must state that imagining Tiny Tears' insides conjures up images of very bad plumbing schemes and the rituals of "feed her, let her wet", "feed her, squeeze out some tears", "feed her, squeeze her extra hard for bubbles" gave me some very strange ideas about babies and mothering. But I sure-as-shootin' got the message that parenting was hard work and required one to be able to juggle a lot of balls at one time. That lesson was good and true.

I didn't enoy getting the sharp side of my parents' tongues for whacking my bike and my doll in one fell swoop. I wanted a little sympathy for having whacked myself, too. I was pretty banged up. I think I'll close this post with the three Nows standing on the sidewalk you see. Young parents a little tightly twisted and echoing much of the tender upbringing (yes, that is sarcastic) they'd suffered. Scraped up and bewildered kid who had some damned funny ideas about taking care of babies, who knew she needed a few more practice rounds turning out of the driveway, who knew her Tiny Tears was toast, and who knew she had experienced a small trauma and felt - oddly - guilt and shame for it. On another blog over the past days, I've participated in some commentary about feeling guilt and shame in situations where those emotions don't seem appropriate. This was one of the first times I remember feeling misplaced guilt and shame. It wouldn't be the last. And I am not ending the post on a downward tone. I'm telling what happened and how it was for me. That's the purpose of the exercise, remember?

Photo credit with gratitude for the shot of my childhood home: Kathryn Feigal

In my ears right now: I wanted to end this post with a giggle and some noise. I knew just what to go find. There is so much wrong with this, I couldn't possibly complete the list. And - yes - I really love it! It started my birds chirping loudly and it made me jump up to dance. Too bad I'm not nearly as narrow as either Mick or Bowie!


Something that charmed me: Writing about one's family can be difficult. One doesn't want to have her stories stamped "whiner". In the blog I mentioned, where there was discussion of parental behavior and its effects children, the blogger was so level and balanced in her refusal to be critical of her parents. She said, "I'm just telling what happened. There was plenty to counter-balance anything bad that happened." I hope I can come across in just exactly that way as I write about my life and my family. I have to tell it the way I feel it. I try not to judge harshly. I still don't have the means to understand some of it. One might want to look at that blog. The post would be The Chalk Line, December 2, 2009.

The Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society

The first morning in our new home, we spotted Lorri Christensen in the back yard as we ate breakfast. I asked why a girl was in our yard and the finer points of duplex living were shared with me. OK, I didn't mind sharing. "Limes, she looks near your age. Why don't you go out and make friends?" I was a child who wouldn't look a parent in the eye and say "no", but I did all right at simply remaining seated, saying nothing. My father knew I could use a little help in the ice breaking department and took me outside. Dad started a conversation I joined within moments. Lorri and Limes became fast friends very quickly.

She showed me around the back yard where her father had installed a swing set complete with slide and seesaw, a sandbox, a spot for a wading pool and a painted-onto-the-black-asphalt-driveway hopscotch course. We talked about the things we liked to do. She had a little pee wee bike upon which she was a hellion in the neighborhood. I said that I was getting a bike this summer. She had Mr. Potato Head and I had Cootie. She owned a ViewMaster, while I claimed a record player and all the Mickey Mouse Club records, including the Davy Crockett theme. She loved a toy accordion and I was proud of the piano Uncle Ralph and Aunt Martha had given me. We liked jumping rope and we loved to Hula Hoop, but the activity that could eat up entire afternoons in the sun was hopscotch.

Lorri asked me that first morning how many hoppy taws I owned. I didn't understand the words. I looked at my dad and he didn't seem to understand, either. Lorri got a little heated, saying, "Hoppy taws - for hopscotch!" We were still drawing a blank. "Wait here!" She huffed off into her side of the duplex. She reappeared, carrying a small flannel bag with a drawstring. From it, she pulled some articles that resembled hockey pucks. These were round, real rubber (not plastic) disks about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They were rather flat and they were wildly patterned with swirls and whorls of many colors. Dad and I still didn't understand. I managed to squeak out, "I don't have any of those." She gaped at me. "Well you're going to need some." She stepped up to the hopscotch course with one hoppy taw in her hand. With a small flick of her wrist, she landed it in the square marked "1". She hopped scotch exactly the way that I did, but she used her hoppy taw in place of the rock or crumpled paper or small plastic toy I'd always employed. She moved the hoppy taw along with her hand, by tossing it, or scooted it ahead with her toe, just like the rules of hopscotch required. My father and I caught on pretty quickly to how the hoppy taw was used, but we still didn't understand that it was a requirement where we now lived.

Lorri seated us on the back porch and proceeded to teach us the ropes of hopscotch culture in Sugarhouse, circa 1958. If a girl had no hoppy taw, no other girl would want to play hopscotch with her. If a girl owned one hoppy taw, she was barely alive. Lorri seemed certain that three hoppy taws were the best number to have, and I noticed that she had three. A girl was highly regarded if she had a drawstring bag in which to carry her hoppy taws, but was regarded as a dabbler if she carried them loose in her hands or her lunch box. Dad asked why a girl needed more than one hoppy taw, and Lorri replied that maybe she would switch them each day or use one hoppy taw for "evens" and one for "odds". Maybe one favored hoppy taw would be a girl's good luck charm, or certain ones might be used only for school or only for after school. Then Lorri let us know that girls who carried five or more hoppy taws were just show-offs and usually delayed the games with little rituals of using all their disks in every game. Excessive hoppy taw use was not considered good form. A few minutes with 5-year-old Lorri had put us in the know!

My dad is a practical man. Where did one buy hoppy taws and was Lorri certain three was the correct number and were the drawstring bags purchased along with the hoppy taws? The hoppy taws could be purchased at the mom-and-pop store down a very long block of 6th East. No street crossing was involved in getting there. The hoppy taws cost 10-cents each and no two were alike. One's mother had to make the drawstring bag and that gave Dad and me a little pause, because my mother didn't . . . well, let's get the hoppy taws first. I was given the princely sum of $1. Lorri and I walked that long block to the store with wooden floors and spent a proper amount of time and consideration selecting three hoppy taws sufficiently different from one another to give me legitimacy. There was enough money left in change to buy two bottles of YooHoo which we enjoyed on the long walk back home. Mrs. Christensen had quickly sewed me a drawstring bag while we were on our shopping expedition, and I was in business!

There followed many, many months of hopscotch. We played it at school, we played it at other girls' homes, we hosted tournaments in our own backyard at which we sold lemonade and cookies. I became good at hopscotch because I played it incessantly. I tore chunks out of my bloodied knees from falling on burning asphalt and frozen asphalt alike. I got good at more things than simply navigating a simple course by hopping on one foot. Hopscotch is the first activity I can remember that called upon me to strategize, to size up an opponent, to predict what another player would do (after observing her through many, many games), to learn the strengths and weaknesses of other players. It was the first arena in which I spotted cheaters with my own eyes and I concluded that some people had to win - it was all that mattered to them. My father is a man who believes a person should pursue any activity he or she takes on with total spirit, total commitment. He believes we learn from every single thing we do and, therefore, every single thing we do is important. He talked to me about hopscotch. He coached me at hopscotch. He encouraged me to chase after something I loved, and to be good at it, drawing every lesson I could from it.

These are the things I learned about myself on the hopscotch court, something I recognized decades later: I am fair and honest and big enough to lose if someone else beats me. I am not aggressive, needing to win and also crush my opponent. I am a keen observer of people and situations. If I am quiet and absorb what is happening, I can draw on that information later. I can be cautious and aware that others in a situation are bigger or more experienced than I, but that doesn't give them the win. I can look the dragon in the eye and roar back. And I learned that a kid with Father Now's DNA was never, ever to fold. For any reason. Bad weather, nasty tumble on the asphalt, too tired, bored. Uh-uh. You don't walk away or stop trying about anything that's important.

In my 30s and 40s, I was a kickin' labor union rep, a position I landed upon by defying seemingly all odds. I was not educated or experienced to do this work. I had to work hard to win the privilege. The employers of our members always, but always, hired attorneys to meet with the union for contract negotiations, disciplinary hearings before the school boards and other matters of labor relations. I have seen grown men blanch at the thought of going up against this shyster from that law firm or a fabled hired gun. Trust me, reader, I have qualms about many things, but meeting a giant in the board room never terrified me. Because I'm fair and honest and big enough to lose if someone else beats me. I'm not aggressive, but I'm unfailingly assertive and I'm still a keen observer of people and situations. I still absorb information and draw on it later. I'm cautious and keenly aware of an opponent's strong points, but that still doesn't give them the win. I can look the dragon in the eye and roar back. And I never, ever fold. I won far more hearings than I lost. I settled contracts that people said would never be settled. I'm not a braggart, or even particularly remarkable. I'm simply saying that what I learned on the hopscotch court helped me to be successful in life. You see, The Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society really did prepare young girls for future life.

True story: I lived in Salt Lake City in two separate residencies with some L.A. in between, and never after age 13. For decades, in California and Nevada, when adult women friends talked about their childhoods, the subject of hopscotch would come up. I never failed to ask about other womens' hoppy taws. I never failed to get blank stares. Not one friend had ever heard of such a thing. What, did that old man of the mom-and-pop store whip hoppy taws up in a laboratory behind the house and only sell them out of their tiny store? Were Sugarhouse girls the only kids in the world to have known about such things? I began to think I was delusional and eventually stopped bringing it up. One doesn't like to feel others think she's just a bit odd. I've not asked anyone about hoppy taws since before the age of the internet. I decided to try one time in the privacy of my own office to research online about hoppy taws before writing this post. No one would know. I didn't have to be embarrassed.

The information highway is a wonderful thing! Guess what I learned? Hoppy Taws, LLC, is a Salt Lake City business, operating for many, many years. No wonder I didn't connect with others who knew about them. I wasn't mingling with Salt Lake City women. It pleases me that hoppy taws can be purchased online everywhere now. Maybe the word will spread and before I am doddering, I can say "hoppy taw" to another woman whose eyes will light up at the memories. By the way, hoppy taws cost upward of $4 each online. I'm no John Maynard Keynes, but I'd say that's quite a lesson in economics from a 50 year perspective.

In my ears right now: Still the Rolling Stones, "Waiting on a Friend". I posted the lyrics on my blog sidebar. I'm planning a short post to tell why something I found on YouTube charms me, as related to this song. When Justin came in from his route yesterday, he said, "Limes, that same song was playing when I left here this morning!" "And all day long, Justin."

Something that charmed me: I have a new Salt Lake City friend. More specifically, she is a Sugarhouse friend. I have $1 that says she knows about hoppy taws, and her daughter(s) and her granddaughters.