Shorts Subjects

A couple of weekends ago, spring was seriously flirting and I got pretty adventuresome. Poking into the bottom-most dresser drawer, I fished them out, and they still looked and felt grand, though I'd not seen them in a year. I do not golf, but I could, because I have the shorts. It pleases me that women's golf shorts are not unimaginatively pastel like men's golf togs of old. No, these are bright and exciting and they weigh less than zero, being fashioned from a miracle fabric that wicks my (golfing, supposedly) perspiration away from my body. I own 5 pairs of the same brand. They are hideously expensive, but not to me, because I buy them on eBay at a tiny fraction of retail. I scrunched the fabric in my hands for the sensory thrill I knew would result. The magic goods feel slightly suede-like, perhaps like suede in its infancy. I looked over the 5 choices, remembering which tops and which shoes or sandals to pair with each for best effect. Feeling that I deserved to go all the way and squeeze every moment of pleasure out of this reacquaintance-making, I decided to slide on the pair I like best. Shite. Houston, we have a problem. I'd pulled those shorts up and over myself, buttoned them, zipped them, looked into the mirror and watched them slither right down to the floor, unfettered by buttons and zipper. My legs stuck out of them like two white sticks and it was clear. If I am to wear these shorts, I'm going to need a rope to hold them on.

I enjoy playing with clothing, displaying of it on my body. I'm not a fashion plate. I may not even have good taste. But I know what I like and I know what I don't like. I don't dress to seduce. I don't dress to impress. I dress for fun. For my own amusement and pleasure. I love to noodle around online finding bargains and I find - really - that if something about a piece of clothing makes me laugh, or even just grin, it's going to work for me. I have not always taken such pleasure in adorning myself. It is a newer game to me. I did not have the pleasure of "dressing up Barbie" for decades, and I'm enjoying it now. Not that my body resembles Barbie's in any way. Yes, even at eBay and other bargain spots, I've likely spent a shameful amount of money. At times I have owned too much, though I donated a mountain of really serviceable items and felt good for that. I've not replaced that mountain with new, unnecessary items.

I had no sister with whom to trade clothing. I would have enjoyed that, I think. For a very brief spell when I was 11, I could (and was invited to) wear some of my mother's things. They fit properly. But they smelled of cigarette smoke, even when recently laundered. And she was "old" and dressed that way. By the way, "old" is a relative concept. When I was 11, she was 28, but she didn't dress like Mod dollybirds in swinging London, and that's how I wanted to look. I rejected her kind offers very quickly. There was also a small window of opportunity during which Amber and I shared clothes, but it was not an ideal situation. I am virtually colorless and Amber is beautifully mocha - we have no business wearing the same colors. She was 12 and I was 50. Enough said? Oh, yes, and then there was the summer that she shot up to 5' 8", needing size 11 shoes, trumping everything.

I am also fascinated by the bodies that dwell beneath the veils. No, this post is not about to go south of PG-13. I am intrigued by the things our bodies can achieve and withstand. Perhaps the most heart-rending story of a body that I know is about Ex's and what he did to that body with years of drinking. When his body screamed "Enough! No more!", we had a 2-year-old child and were told he would not survive 6 months. Every bit of news was bad and then worse. It took him 18 years to die. That body worked hard to sustain the life force. It is something I admired about him, for with him, I saw physical atrocities that shouldn't be visited on any good human. And speaking of Ex's body, how 'bout the fact that we had a child! We tried, literally, for 20 years. It was important to us both. We accessed every scientific approach known at the time at great financial cost and cost to the soul when no pregnancy ever occurred. Not once. Same two people, same general health conditions. And then it did occur, just the once. Although I know how to do the "kootchy-kootchy, baby, baby" thing well and I love my daughter just because she is my child, I am also awed by the simple, unadorned fact that Ex and I made another human being together. Bits of him, bits of me, all of herself. It is a great gift and responsibility.

My father nears 80 and plays tennis every day of life. Despite his very small stature, he was an ace boxer in the Air Force. He suffered terribly from rheumatoid arthritis for many years, spending one entire year in a wheelchair. During one episode, he could not stand the weight of the blankets on his feet in the bed. He had my mother bring a cardboard box, slide it between the sheets, and he placed his feet in the box. That is burned in my memory. He'd learned it while in the VA hospital enduring an earlier attack at age 18. And yet he has not suffered now for 30 years or more. It doesn't just "go away". Where is it? What happened? I am brilliant in no way, but it occurs to me that my father's greatest periods of stability and happiness have also occurred during those same 30 years. Hmm . . . the body as the barometer of the heart and soul? He never harmed himself with food, alcohol or any other addictions. His body serves him well now.

My mother abused her body in many ways, from years of smoking, terrifying alcoholism (Her assessment. I am not qualified to judge her so.), anorexia, addiction to prescribed medication and addiction to working out. [Please note, I'm never going to point a finger at any human being and scream "Addict!" It isn't my right. If I feel the urge, I'll just glance into one of many mirrors available.] My mother, however, is heroic (yes, that one IS my opinion) about working the "rigorous honesty" part of her 12-step program. She tells anyone who will listen. I haven't always credited her so. I do today. Despite all the abuse, my mother is a relatively healthy 75-year-old who walks miles every day, attends her AA meetings and takes other steps to retain her health and well-being. It is amazing to me now to look into a mirror after I shower. Oh, yeah, the face is 100% my father's and 0% anyone else's except my own, I suppose, after all these years. (Ironically, Amber's face, too, is nearly 100% her father's. Oh, that hurt when she was an infant and toddler. I wanted her to carry some physical evidence that she was my child, too. Alas. But her brain and heart are much like mine, and that is a gift, too.) But my body is nearly 100% like my mother's. It wasn't always so. It is now.

My own body and my treatment of it, my acceptance of the ways that some others have treated it, is the biggest mystery to me. Right now it is the most healthy it has been since my youth, and I have maintained general good health for nearly 10 years. I do not get colds or the flu. Though I can trip over lint, I'm rarely injured very seriously. I find that when I push my person, I learn new and gratifying things about myself. Yes, I can walk just 2 more miles. I can swim 5 extra laps. I can and will be stronger at 60 than I was at 40. I seem prone to a few troubling conditions that I call "odd". "Rare" or "uncommon" might be more accurate. It reminds me that no one asks for illness or "conditions", there are probably no good reasons why some of us get this thing, but not that thing, and handling burdens with grace is a difficult task. I find I am frightened of things I can't control easily. This includes alcoholism - the most shocking illness I've ever discovered in me. I am frightened of the collapse of my self.

Some of my most frightening and lonely moments have been spent in an emergency room at a hospital with a very fine address in Las Vegas. I go to this hospital for the occasional blood transfusion, staying overnight to have my tank topped off and to be monitored awhile. Make no mistake, I am damned grateful to get a shot of A- when I need it and a blood transfusion is not physically difficult. Lie back and fill up. Read a book, listen to the iPod, take it easy. Walk to the bathroom if needed, request juice and have it magically appear. However, it eats my head alive. I focus and fret about the reasons I need a blood transfusion and why and what if and oh, my! At this hospital, I have never been housed in any other way than this: on a gurney in the hallway, pushed smack up against a wall, no curtain, brakes applied to my gurney so I don't roll away. I clutch my purse between my knees in case I doze off. My shoes remain on my feet, even while lying down, because there is no place to put them, otherwise. I stress about whether, if I do doze off, I will drool, snore or whimper in my sleep, right out there for god and everybody to notice. It is the most naked, the most vulnerable and exposed way, I have ever felt. I never fail to come away disturbed. But much pinker of cheek.

Most recently I have been working with someone on the junk in my trunk. Again. Still. This time, therapy and medication are assisted by everything AA, so another implement in the tool chest being applied to a pretty disastrous construction. I have become amazed to learn how many of my quirks (very nice word for such flaws) are symptomatic of alcoholism or other addiction, even some stemming from childhood. I have nearly dropped my jaw to hear some theories that say, "The patient may use these words . . . " and they are precisely the words I've used since my first foray into therapy. I wonder why no one, not one professional, ever suggested to me . . . oh, well. I found it anyway, even if quite late.

Preface to paragraph: I can't order up my thoughts for the day like items from a menu. I can't say "only fairy dust today, please". The thoughts just come on their own. This isn't a pretty paragraph. For many reasons, my body, my person, attracted a number of different forms of disrespect and bad acts over the years by more than one person. At a very young age, I knew how to take anger out on my body even when others were not doing so. I was such a good learner, I didn't even need an abuser to further damage myself. This strikes me much like young women who have been sexually violated and then become promiscuous as a reaction. I have sat before a number of therapists who have listened to me talk and then said, "Do you cut, carve or burn yourself?" I don't. Some of them have said, "May I look at your arms and legs?" Sure. I really don't do those things. And right now, today, I don't do many other harmful or questionable things to my person. Mostly, I am doing things to take care of myself. Not reliant upon anyone else to care for me, I am blundering my way along toward learning to take care of myself. Sometimes, I even think I'm worth it. That is progress.

Well, the sky is now hop-scotching from perfectly leaden to short periods of bright sunshine. The wind is incessant, the temperature just not quite warm enough to suit me. What's new? It saddened me to read about the death of Geraldine Ferraro just now. Yes, I liked her politics. But she died from an ailment I know about. Sorrowful. She hoped to survive the disease long enough to attend the inauguration of the first woman U.S. president. She didn't make it.

Something that charmed me: I don't feel so charmed or charming today. I feel pensive and restless. Tomorrow will be another day, and I'm sure I'll roll out feeling perky. I used to feel obligated to force a smile, put on a happy face that no one bought anyway. No more. If it's the shits, it's the shits. OK, here it is. A couple of days ago I developed a (new) resentment. Resentments are the keys for alcoholics to start the engine again. No, I didn't drink. I didn't really even think about drinking. But everything else was present when a resentment starts to take up the room. Let me see, shame and a feeling that one will never quite get it right, complete loss of self-respect, and little dangerous sounds tinkling in the back of the mind. Now, Tag has put up some Linda Ronstadt and I have 2 biographies to write.

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.

Time to Tidy Up

I broke out the DustBuster on Sunday. Oh, it's literally true that there was some crumbly debris in the crevice between the carpet and the baseboard. I got it up and then tried to locate some coffee grounds or cat hair or anything, really, to pull up into my DustBuster. It took me a moment to notice the symptoms. For when I start obsessively vacuuming, it is metaphorical. It means I need to tidy things up. Ex used to joke that when I was "chewing on things", trying to restore some order to myself, he would run out to tell the neighbors to throw open their doors because I was on the way down the street with the vacuum cleaner.

I am not "troubled", exactly. It's more like my head is filled to maximum capacity and some of the voices are speaking too loudly. Some of it is about my writing and some about other aspects of life. I'm unsettled and dissatisfied with myself and it's time to regroup and become tidy again. I want to write and I also want to read the writing of other bloggers. I want to do something with the closet that almost contains all the crafting materials and - oh, yes - I'd really like to make something with said crafting materials. I want to make a huge crockpot of red sauce and feed people, but I can't focus to buy the thoroughly well memorized ingredients.

I have an unruly queue of posts waiting in the wings. I want to finish Chapter 2 of The Field Trip and I've still not told the best Sugarhouse story of them all, despite having written Chapters I, II, and III and about the Secret Order of the Sugarhouse Hoppy Taw Society. The holidays came and I got distracted writing about them. I need to get us out of Sugarhouse and on with the ensuing 50 years! I still have a mountain of photos to share from the last camping trip and the one before that, and there are three embryonic posts about the things I see and experience "out there".

The race weekend unsettled me as they always do if I cannot be present. One wants to be at the race, given some meaningful occupation. One wants to drive ahead, get out, wait for the peloton to appear, check out his position and form, assess his well-being, and repeat the process. One wants to hand up water at the designated place on the course, and if one fails to plant the water in his hand, she cobbles a plan to drive forward, get out where she can easily be seen and keep trying to give that water until she succeeds. Only the first race of the season has been completed. Knowing the hellish conditions he rode in, I found it particularly difficult to watch the clock, watch the radar, watch the hour-by-hour weather and hope not to receive a phone call too early for him to have finished. It's going to be a busy spring, with races near and far.

This morning, at the intersection of Desert Inn Road and Durango Drive, my (almost) four-year-old car turned 20,000 miles. At the moment the digital display flipped from 19999 to 20000, it hit me that I had an empty BlackBerry holster in my purse. I did the 360, went home, collected the device from the exact spot where I knew it would be, and made it to work on time. It is not like me to be so forgetful, and particularly about the BlackBerry that is always at my fingertips.

For Tag and for Kirk (and anyone else, of course), I saw a news article that revisits an old topic once presented on this blog. It seems the Neon Boneyard is undergoing some changes and perhaps some day soon, I won't have to contemplate jumping the fence to commune with those venerable things.

Friend Tag had something cool on his blog this morning and I'm going to snag it from him, as Kass has already done. Its theme is what happened in my birth year. I like trivia games and round robin games. I've been known to start one or two and participate in more. I'm going to process mine a little differently, however, leaving out the boilerplate stuff that applies to everyone's birth year and commenting on the things that strike me. I have a few entries of my own to add, as well.

What happened the year I was born.

In 1952, the world was a different place. There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. I seem to remember that.

In 1952, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was This Is Cinerama. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazed eyes when looking at the poster. They were still showing it widely 8 years later when I was taken to see it. I remember the trip over the Grand Canyon and the virtual roller coaster ride.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. Heck, even before there was VHS. People were indeed looking at movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty. And mostly all of that without 3D computer effects. It was also before colored TV and transistor radios.

In the year 1952, the time when you arrived on this planet, books were still popularly read on paper, not on digital devices. Trees were felled to get the word out. The number one US bestseller of the time was The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it? It resided on my parents' bookcase and I have read it.

In 1952, West Germany has 8 million refugees inside its borders. I was born not so very long after World War II.

Elizabeth II is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom at St. James's Palace, London, England. This pleases me as I am an Anglophile and I think she is a practical, likable woman who knows how to do things we might not expect of her. She did active military service in World War II and when an intruder entered her bedroom in Buckingham Palace, she talked him down while she rang for assistance. She shoots and is outdoorsy. Ex was fascinated by the pastel purse that always hangs from her forearm. He was convinced she kept a gun in there in case she had to take care of herself in a dust-up. She certainly wouldn't need to carry a wallet and ID and money. She has other people to do that for her.

The Diary of Anne Frank is published. I first read it very young. It was my first awareness of Jews and what they suffered. At the time I read it, I didn't know there were bad things one's father couldn't prevent from happening. It terrified me.

The United States Army Special Forces is created. A British passenger jet flies twice over the Atlantic Ocean in the same day. Martial law is declared in Kenya due to the Mau Mau uprising. The first successful surgical separation of Siamese twins is conducted in Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to François Mauriac. The Nobel Peace prize went to Albert Schweitzer. The Nobel prize for physics went to Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell from the United States for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith.

The 1950s were indeed a special decade. The American economy is on the upswing. The cold war betwen the US and the Soviet Union is playing out throughout the whole decade. Anti-communism prevails in the United States and leads to the Red Scare and accompanying Congressional hearings. Africa begins to become decolonized. The Korean war takes place. The Vietnam War starts. The Suez Crisis war is fought on Egyptian territory. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others overthrow authorities to create a communist government on Cuba. Funded by the US, reconstructions in Japan continue. In Japan, film maker Akira Kurosawa creates the movies Rashomon and Seven Samurai. The FIFA World Cups are won by Urugay, then West Germany, then Brazil. I think of the 1950s as cold and steely gray. No color. The cold war, men with gray hair in gray suits driving big gray Dodges, sterile scientific progress being made everywhere.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president in November, 1952. For me, he epitomizes the men with no color, the men with gray hair in gray suits driving big gray Dodges. And yet . . . Stepfather was an aficionado of Norman Rockwell paintings and the art on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. He was generally Rockwell's age and he appreciated the images that reflected life in his era. I am not particularly a Rockwell fan, but when Stepfather organized a group he took to lunch and then to a Rockwell exhibit, I went along. I am not a Rockwell fan, but I was a Stepfather fan. The museum was packed with patrons ogling the magazine cover images. I roamed around, not impatiently, and landed before Rockwell's portrait of Eisenhower. Although painted mainly in white and neutral tones, this image utterly screams color. It is warm and exudes light. This must have been what the man was like in real life. Colorful and engaging. It was painted in 1952, the year of my birth.

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15? In the Heat of the Night. I do, but Bonnie & Clyde rings my bell more clearly. My father took a girlfriend and me to see it at a drive-in. It was a grand outing until a bedroom scene showed itself and Clyde's lack of sex drive was discussed. One of the most uncomfortable moments I've ever spent in my father's presence. Today we'd just cackle about it. Then it was excruciating.

Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was Ode to Billy Joe by Bobbie Gentry. I remember. I didn't Google this, I have that thing for lyrics, remember? "It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty delta day, I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay . . . ."

Were you in love? Certainly.

Who were you in love with, do you remember? I've never forgotten for a moment.

When you were 8, there was Pollyanna. I wanted to be as adorable as Hayley Mills. I still want to be as adorable as Hayley Mills.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1952. There's TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Kukla, Fran and Ollie. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There's The Ed Sullivan Show on now. That's the world you were born in. I was introduced to my Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show at age 11 in 1964.

"Progress", year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading? The quotation marks are my addition. I'm not sure we are making "progress". I'm a bit jaded, a little cynical. I am terrified about where the world is heading.

The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1952. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? The Floppy Disk. Optical Fiber. The Fusion Bomb. Anything would have blown my mind in 1952. I was a newborn that August.

Christopher Reeve was born. And Dan Aykroyd. Douglas Adams, too. And you, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone special. Everyone taking a different path through life. Angela Cartwright (Ha, Kirk!), Annie Potts, Carol Kane, Cathy Rigby, Harry Anderson, John Goodman, Juice Newton, Leslie Morgan, Marilyn Chambers, Mr. T, Patrick Swayze, Roseanne Barr. I'm in some pretty good company here!

It's 2010.
The world is a different place.
What path have you taken? I'd say that differently. I haven't "taken" it. I'm still "taking" it. I'm not complete yet. I'm still standing.

In my ears right now: The Beatles. The End. Kass wrote about love being the great equalizer and I'll take one of those to go. Because I know that in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Something that charmed me: The Badger dropped in his sincere thank you comment this afternoon. He was touched by the kindness of so many.

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.