NEANDERTHAL

'Neanderthal' implies primitiveness and brutality. As I reflect on the tragedy at Penn State, I've been thinking about this subspecies of modern humans-whose halcyon days took place long before humans were truly human.

Consider the opinions of truly human, 21st Century Man, regarding Penn State.

Some are dismissive: “It’s like discussing religion or politics at a party. Let's change the topic.”  

Others recite each atrocity in the 23 page Grand Jury Report: “I'm obsessed. I’ll never trust a coach with my child again.”

Many defend the actions of a 28 year old man who witnessed horror and fled, and a working man (or two) who witnessed horror and never called the authorities: “How can you witness something like that and not turn and run?” Or “If the guy opens his mouth, he loses his job. How will he support his family?”

A few applaud the students who riot: “They rightfully want to see the legal system work before a beloved institution or coach suffers the loss of a stellar reputation.”

A church understands and prays for the victims.

Individuals wonder: how might I react in a similar situation? Would anyone believe my word against a big, powerful, protective machine? If the perpetrator is a friend or a colleague, could I really call the police?  

I listen. I read reports, thinking, “Neanderthal.” But I am wrong.

Neanderthal was simple. He wanted to stay warm and alive.

21st Century Man is complicated. He wants to be liked and he doesn't want to be bothered. He listens to experts, or waits to hear what John Stewart or Rush Limbaugh has to say before choosing his words or beliefs. He analyzes all the moving parts of a very big picture. Immersed in gray, he dismisses black or white. He finds fault with victims or their parents. He protects his fiefdom. Employing helicopter parenting, he forgets that ‘It takes a Village.’

21st Century Man considers many angles of the Penn State tragedy: reputation, employment, safety, livelihood. But within the complicated, he misses the simple. 

This tragedy is not about coaches or universities, students or janitors, reputation or legacy, money or employment, you or me or us. It is about eight boys; children lacking a support structure, children as young as ten years old who were assaulted in unimaginable ways for years- by an adult they trusted.

Consider this, 21st Century Man. Mull over being a ten year old boy and having to suffer through the pain, fear, loathing, humiliation, shame, and alienation associated with Crimes against Humanity. Contemplate reliving these acts of violence and degradation committed against you-every day for the rest of your life-beginning when you are ten years old. Ponder the emotional scars you will carry, and the struggle you will have avoiding the same path of destructive behavior that is the norm for untold numbers of abuse victims. Reflect on losing your soul when you are ten years old.  http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45283472/ns/sports-college_football/page/2/

Now imagine walking into a locker room at your school gym, and seeing a grown man assaulting your ten year old son. Or your ten year old brother. Or your ten year old cousin.  

21st Century Man, while we consider varying viewpoints, children lacking support structures wait for heroes; adults who will stand up for them and save other young victims from losing their soul. Turns out, an abused ten year old boy had to grow up, speak out, and become the long-awaited champion that all those abused children in Pennsylvania deserved, and expected the adults around them to be.   

I thus apologize to a whole subspecies of modern humans. Neanderthal, I misjudged you. I now imagine you walking into that locker room and investigating a strange sound.  Witness to an unspeakable crime, you lock eyes with the perpetrator and the child victim, then quickly leave the shower to find a baseball bat, considering only one thing: is it more traumatic for that ten year old boy to continue being assaulted, or to have to watch a Neanderthal introduce the abuser to an unflinching baseball bat. 
 
Simple.  No gray matter for Neanderthal.  

Finally, a hero.

QUING Hereby Decrees:  In distress, your child is my child.  Period.   




 

QUING Parties at the Palace with PIZZELLES

“My girls have just had their first pizzelle and it’s not even close to tasting as amazing as yours. But it has made me miss u all so much more.”  

Husband always teases, "Food is love!" He's right. It's transcendent. Like a song or scent that takes us back to a moment frozen in time, a favorite meal, dessert or beverage makes us smile, laugh, yearn, remember. My love affair with pizzelles began when I was a child. The moment I smelled the unmistakable scent of anise, I knew there were powder-sugar dusted cookies nearby, and hoped I was going to get one. I still remember when my mom bought her first pizzelle pan. She and I worked our way through at least forty batches of dough- attempting to drop the batter on the iron at just the right spot- before we hatched the perfect pizzelle. Twenty-something, I bought a pan of my own and baked pizzelles for parties, festivals, meetings, showers and holidays. But it wasn’t until I visited my dear friend Cathy during the holidays years ago that I realized the pizzelles I had been baking were good, but not even close to divine. Cathy's mom, Kay made the most delicious pizzelles I have ever tasted. A charming, delightful, devoted mom and grandma, Kay treated everyone she met like a favorite child. Within ten seconds of biting into one of her pizzelles-and wiping the powdered sugar off my chin-I asked Kay to share her recipe. I still have the index card she sent me, the recipe so simple and neatly typed. It is the pizzelle recipe that transforms delicious to divine.

    

All this adoration may seem excessive for a cookie-so light and fragile-that breaks into a million pieces if you bend, drop or fold it after it cools. But, as you read in the quote above, there is something truly unique about pizzelles. Something transcendent. Gustare!

KAY'S PIZZELLES

3 1/2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons Anise or Vanilla flavoring
Powdered sugar for dusting each cookie

Sift flour and baking powder. Set aside. Beat eggs. Gradually add sugar to eggs, beating until smooth. Add cooled butter and anise or vanilla.  Stir until blended. Add dry mixture into egg mixture, stirring until smooth and shiny. Dough will be sticky enough to be dropped by a spoon.

NOTES:  Working with two spoons, drop a heaping teaspoon of dough on the iron, just above the center of the flower.  Bake for 20-30 seconds or until cookie begins to brown. Remove with a fork and transfer to a cooling rack. Once cooled, dust with powdered sugar. This recipe makes three to four dozen cookies, so I often cut it in half.   

If a pizzelle pan is on your holiday wish list, I suggest the Villaware Pizzelle Uno Baker. It bakes two thin, crispy cookies at a time. It may take a few batches (years) till you drop the dough just right on the iron, hatching a perfectly round pizzelle. Not to worry, the non-perfect designs taste just as good!  

ROOM 209

The sun was shining and the November afternoon was balmy. I hoped that she could feel the breeze and sunlight, breathe the scent of fallen leaves and fresh air one last time before she entered the facility. Through a maze of wheelchairs holding slumped, white-haired regulars, I walked behind her, noting the number of the room she was wheeled into at the end of the hall.

Room 209.  It has a bed, a chair and a window; a simple room for a simple woman.

Room 209.  It is the room where my aunt will live her final days.

Her final months have been a blur of hospital gurneys and rehab, MRIs and  CT Scans, intravenous drips and drugs. My aunt is 89 years old. She has dementia.  Her decline has been fast, and my sweet, simple aunt is sometimes furious. Why do we keep asking her the same questions: "Who are you? Where are you?" Why don't we listen when she pleads, "I want to go home!" 

Does she know she is dying? Alert one moment, catatonic the next, my aunt exists at her own pace: refusing to eat or drink, then laboring to swallow a teaspoon of pureed pork chop, or sip water from a straw. My mom, my sisters and I hover: talk, sing, pray with her. Nurses and aides, gifted with the patience, kindness, and gentle touch reserved for saints, treat her like a treasured family member. Still, my aunt mouths these words from parched, swollen lips: "I am so lonely."

Widowed long ago and never a parent, my aunt spent years living alone. In Room 209, caregivers hover day and night. I don't understand. How can she feel lonely?

Mom understands. "We all die alone," she says. 

Few words can describe what it's like to watch a person's descent into death. I have seen babies die, watched children and adults suffer through the final stages of tragic illness, held the hands of people I never met as they died waiting for the jaws-of-life to arrive and cut through their mangled car. 

In these final days of my aunt's life, I don't feel the same sense of hopelessness, outrage, injustice or grief that I previously experienced as a witness to death. I wish that our elderly loved ones didn't have to suffer through a multitude of medical procedures that only prolong the inevitable. I am in awe of caregivers in skilled nursing facilities who see their work as a calling, rather than a job. I am humbled that a woman I remember as being once my age is nearing the end of her life.

Beside its bed, chair and window, Room 209 now houses the presence of death. Futilely attempting to spoon feed and comfort my godmother-like I once did my toddlers-I can't help but think that life is not really a circle. It's more like a cross-country trip. Miles as years, we travel with a few favorite companions from town to city, over mountains and valleys, across prairies and plains that seem to go on forever. Along the way, we stop and meet the locals- making connections that enrich our lives; we take snapshots of the vistas we've seen, and the faces we never want to forget. 

My aunt is nearing the end of her road trip. A simple, devout woman, she has journeyed beneath clouds, through rain, snow, and storms aplenty.  But she always believed that beyond her view, a sunlit sky would fade into a night blazing with stars- and there would be the promise of a new day to come, eternally. 

   

Godspeed, my dear Aunt. 

  

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

My dad owned plenty of Big Boy Toys, but he only shared a few with us.

The lawnmower.

The shovel.

The rake.

Youth, teen, twenty-something- fall after fall, October through November- I raked leaves, collected leaves, bagged leaves, and sent them off to trash land. I still have the blister scars on my thumb to prove it.

Fast forward to forty-something. Our house is a sanctuary for Big Boy Toys of all shapes and sizes. I would list them for you, but no one can find them. Some of them rattle and roar. Others chip and chop. They all serve a dual purpose:

1. Deceiving my husband and children into thinking that work is fun.

2. Deceiving me into thinking that my husband must use them, because they are expensive.

Admission: It is not my husband's or children’s fault that I fell in love with a house that is the focal point for 627 trees. It is not their fault that the trees are 60 feet tall, and loaded with leaves. Nor is it their fault that I insisted on buying the house that is the lowest- lying property on the block, or that the neighbors have paid off the wind to blow only from the southwest between October 21st and November 18th.  

Fall settles in.  I rake, and I rake. I occasionally glance up at the trees, still half full of leaves, and I swear.  Then I get back in my groove: rake, collect, bag, dispose.

Here’s what my kids do: Hold a rake and watch me rake.

Here’s what husband does: Holds a little leaf blower- a way-too-noisy-for- its-size BBT- that allows him to listen to tunes, point & blow while I rake.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. Husband climbs out of the car carrying a very big box. His eyes are shining like a child’s eyes on Christmas eve. He is biting the inside of his cheek, attempting to control a smile that is determined to spread across his face. No doubt about it, my husband has just purchased a brand new BBT.

“What's that?” I ask.

“It's a little something to help you.”

“Help me what?” I ask, thinking: it's not little, and it's not going to help me, because after today no one will know where to find it.

“Help you with all these leaves. You’re going to love it!”

Husband slits open the box and pulls out an enormous mound of Styrofoam. He separates the Styrofoam, and lo and behold, it's cradling a BIG BOY TOY!  A leaf blower-so super blowing powerful- that you can't point it at small animals or deer.

  

“You’re serious?” I ask, reaching for my rake.

Husband cannot contain his glee.  “Yes!” he explodes.  “It's the same back-pack kind of thing that the pros use.  It will kick ass and make me feel like a Ghostbuster!”

Another toy that will soon be lost in our BBT sanctuary.

When I can't find it, at least I know who I’m gonna call.

QUING HEREBY DECREES: Every BBT purchased henceforth must come with an embedded tracking device.

WALK the WALK

Don't judge a book by its cover. 

Judge not lest ye be judged.  

I am quite skilled at talking the talk. 

Walking the walk?  A challenge. 

 

I arrive at my friend's home. Five striking women are chatting beside an SUV. Stylish and perfectly coifed, they have dressed up their jeans by accenting them with scarves, jackets, heels, and, in one case, by choosing not to wear jeans. I am introduced. In our two-minute exchange, I recall a poll I have recently read: the silent majority of women admit to reaching an opinion on another woman in just 20 seconds- purely based on appearance. Nine in ten women are fully aware that other women are judging them, too. "It's obvious from the research that women put a lot of pressure on each other," the polling organization reported. 

Climbing into the car, I consider my wild hair and low-heeled boots. "Should have stayed home," I think. "I put enough pressure on myself."

An hour of car conversation confirms that my dinner dates have been friends for years. I listen, and reflect on my close friends; women I've known since childhood whose faces still reveal teenage beauty; colleagues-turned-family who celebrated promotions, weddings and childbirth; friends-turned-sisters who met on the Pre-K patio and supported each other through child-raising, 911, and a myriad of highs and heartbreaks; women-turned comrades who invited me into their homes for wine and girl-talk after I relocated to their town. 

An outsider, I cannot help but miss my friends, and the comfort and ease I feel in their presence.

I follow this clan of women I have just met into a country store that is overflowing with bushels of fruit, baskets, hanging herbs, and shelves lined with preserves. It dawns on me that I felt this very same trepidation in the early stages of most of my friendships. 

Someone touches my elbow. "Come see these linens. They're gorgeous!" Another shows me an antique platter she must buy. We cross a well-traveled path into the barn, and our table of six talks and gawks at the arrangements of fresh flowers, fruit, gourds and cornstalks that fill the room.

Someone whispers in my ear, "Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" I follow her gaze to a pine-bough wreath suspended from a wooden ceiling beam by thick velvet ribbons. Adorned with apples and hydrangeas, it looks like it's waiting to impress King Henry the 8th as he arrives for a feast. 

We pour wine and toast the friend who is absent. The proprietor of the farm- a doppelganger of Barbara Stanwyck in The Thorn Birds-stands before us in a brilliant red suit, sharing the tale of three generations of women embroidering "heritage and literature, flavor, agriculture and celebration," to make beautiful creations of food and flower for their guests. 

 

Freshly harvested and prepared food samplings are waiting to be tasted throughout the barn and store. A tablemate hands me a fork and a plate."We'll get to the good stuff much faster if we stick together," she says, and off the six of us rush like shoppers stalking a HD TV sale on Black Friday. 

For an hour, six women (and seventy others) travel and taste, occasionally returning to the table to sip wine and discuss our favorite foods. Beef stew wins by a landslide, and it is decided that we will-someday soon-use our new recipes to recreate a feast of our favorites. I glance around the table and imagine what fun it would be to share this place with my close friends. I glance around the table and think how blessed I am to share this evening with women I hardly know. 

The harvest moon is our nightlight. We head back to the car, carrying bags of apples and talking about the week ahead. 

"I think you should write about women and food, wine and friendship, " someone says.

Instead, I am writing about women. We may judge each other, put too much pressure on each other, and believe that as we get older our established friendships will sustain us.  We may think that investing the work, time and energy necessary to nurture a new friendship is simply too much effort.  But the truth is, in extending -or accepting- an invitation to other women, we continue to embroider the vibrant tapestry of each others' lives, making beautiful creations.  

We'll get to the good stuff much faster if we stick together.

QUING HEREBY DECREES:  Henceforth, walk the walk.

FEARLESS

A last-minute cancellation leads to a last-minute dinner invitation from a lovely lady friend.

Dinner with adults on a Sunday night? Hmmm. Who all is going?

Four women I have never met. Two hours of travel and two hours at dinner. Back by 9:30. Would I like to come along? It will be fun!

Considering myself a fun, last-minute kinda gal, I  immediately think, "No way. Not going."

"Let me call you right back," I stall. "I need to make sure someone can get the kids from guitar."

Good one. I am setting up a gracious, "May I take a rain check?" with my standard, "Too busy with kids." 

Why can't I just admit that I lean slightly left of 'recluse'?  Why can't I confess that the thought of going to dinner and driving two hours in a car with four women I have never met concerns me more than jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet?  I will be the stand-in. An outsider inserted into a clan of best friends. Accepting this invitation means dropping everything, finding something (clean) to wear, putting on mascara, and making interesting conversation with people I do not know. For five hours.

Not going. 

"Who called?" Husband wants to know.

I tell him. 

"You should go," he says.

Can't do it.  I have to finish putting the gardens to bed, and get to the laundry, and I haven't started dinner, and the kids haven't started their homework, and I need to work tonight and.."

Husband knows.  He gives me the look that is his rendition of Spock's Vulcan mind-meld. 

"You're on Skype this morning telling our kid how proud you are that she keeps putting herself out there- meeting new people and trying new things at college. You never go out with new people. Go have some fun. Get out of your routine."

"I did all that in college!" I counter. Translation: I have misplaced my personality. Pretty sure I lost it in our children and piles of laundry.

"GO!"

I am going to dinner.

It will be served in a barn, at a family fruit and flower farm.  

Dress code? Jeans.

A fun, last minute, jeans kinda gal: I can do this. 

I pull on jeans and a white blouse. Cowboy boots and a shearling vest. Mascara, blush and lip gloss- I am going all out. I am bringing along lots of deep breaths. 

I will be fearless. Like my kid. Like I used to be.

Word-count-interruptus (quing-speak for word count interrupts us:) "You promised your readers you'd keep this blog under 400 words every day. Stick to it, gabby girl!"

Apologies to you, dear reader. Tomorrow, I'll share what I discovered as I reverted to fearless.

QUING HEREBY DECREES: Henceforth fear less, live more.

QUING Parties at the Palace with CHARLIE BOYS

Mary had 'flapper-flair'. Beauty. Talent. She loved to dance, laugh, and fill her home with friends and family. Mary could bake. Younger brother Joe left work early to secure loaves of freshly baked bread- before anyone else could take them. Almost fifty years after her passing, my Dad still longs for his mom’s famous Banana Cream Pie. Soon after my parents married, Dad jotted down the recipe for his favorite cookie; one of Mary’s specialties. I never met my grandmother, but I have baked countless batches of 'Dad’s Cookies.' As a student, I brought them to every international bake-fest I attended, varying their origin from French to Italian to Spanish, depending on the language I was learning at the time. Strangers and friends who tasted one cookie always grabbed another. Women I had never met called our house, requesting the recipe. We didn’t share my grandmother's recipe, but we sure shared a lot of her cookies. As time passed, and my Dad’s title changed, we renamed the cookie ‘Chief’s Cookies’ or ‘Papa’s Cookies.’ My sisters and I bake a batch whenever we entertain, because these cookies are as easy to make as they are delicious to eat. It doesn’t matter what we call them, or where this recipe originated. It matters that they are original. Just like my Grandma Mary.  

With Dad's permission, I have renamed the cookies for a final time. Henceforth they will be called “Charlie Boys”- in honor of Mary, and the beautiful blue-eyed boy she adored, her Charlie Boy.  Gustare!

CHARLIE BOYS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Baking time: 20-25 minutes

1 cup of softened butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg, separated
2 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
A pinch of salt

½ cup of nuts

Grease/butter a 15x10x1” jelly roll pan.  Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add egg yolk and beat until smooth. Sift flour, cinnamon and salt, and incorporate into butter mixture. Add nuts and mix into a dough ball.  Press dough into jelly roll pan, making sure it is level.  Pour egg white on dough, and use a pastry brush to coat it completely (...or just tip the pan back and forth, like I do.)  Empty all excess egg white from pan, making certain that none is left pooling on the dough. Bake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for ten minutes before cutting into squares.

VARIATIONS: mine, not Grandma’s!

1. My grandmother used a wooden spoon when baking. I use my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.  Beat the egg/sugar mixture with paddle attachment at medium speed for three minutes, till fluffy.  Add egg yolk, mixing on low speed till blended. Add dry ingredients, mixing on low till the dough forms a ball. Then add the nuts, stirring them in by hand.

2. Grandma's recipe calls for salted butter.  I use unsalted butter and add ½ teaspoon of kosher salt to the dry ingredients.

3. Grandma used chopped walnuts in her cookies. I bake the walnuts to enhance their flavor-  8 minutes at 350 degrees- before I chop them and add them to the dough. Sometimes I substitute pecans for walnuts. 

4.  You can also use a 11x16x1" pan.  Bake 18-20 minutes till golden brown.   

BE AFRAID.

Kooky weather? Global Warming? Frauds! (Don’t really mean that. Just trying to make a point.)

Seven billion people packed on Mother Earth, forced to share resources?  No Big Deal.  (Ditto.)

Wars overseas, banks run amok, Greek debt, an economy tanked, unemployment sky-high, and not a leader in sight to guide us out of this mess?  Child’s play! (Double ditto.)

Citizens, we have a much more pressing crisis; one that threatens not only our national security, but the very existence of planet earth. 

Laundry.

Yes.  You read that correctly.  L-A-U-N-D-R-Y.

Filthy, foul smelling, and propagator of mold, laundry is replicating at an alarming rate. In just one home in WNY, it has occupied an entire downstairs room, and is invading whole sections of closets, stairwells and floors upstairs.  

A cunning foe. Stain-stuck, washed, softened, dried, then tossed in a basket, laundry can remain sedentary for months; resisting all attempts at being folded or tucked in drawers.

Refuses negotiation. Clinging to its basket like aliens to a home ship, laundry has shunned the always-willing-to-help hands of children and husbands- allowing contact only with mom or wife.

Unresponsive to torture. Laundry has been ignored on carpets and floors- stepped on, kicked, dragged, then hauled back to its special room, where it is flung onto another proliferating pile of laundry.  

It simply cannot be terminated.

Wreaking havoc on America’s overburdened  health-care system, laundry causes an untold number of work related injuries-from back pain to pruny fingers. Mental health care costs have increased a thousand-fold, with reports of domestic disturbances including uncontrollable weeping, exorcist-like shouts of ‘separate the colors!' and hallucinations depicting piles of laundry growing to beanstalk height. In families where children play outdoor sports year-round, laundry’s amoeba-like replication rates have led to a 558%  increase in the use of Xanax. A 47 year old woman, missing for months, was recently discovered beneath three hampers and a mound of whites and colors. Suffocated, her rigor-mortisized fingers were still clutching a near-empty bottle of Zout.

Hilary and Leon, forget about Terrorists and the Middle East. Focus on the War on Laundry.

NASA, you have time on your hands. Build a stink-resistant vessel that can transport all laundry to Pluto: that poor, tiny X-planet could use some attention.  

Do-Nothing Congress, do some laundry. Perhaps then we’ll get a Congressional Inquiry into this national nightmare.

President Obama, give us back our homes. Our sanity. Issue a Presidential Directive ordering that Laundry-Care become our top National Priority.

Surely, it's the cause of kooky weather, global warming, and all things evil.  

On a daily basis, laundry threatens to destroy the existence of one sane, healthy and happy individual.  

Imagine what it might do to seven billion people.

QUING HEREBY DECREES:   Laundry, be GONE!

DEAR PRECIOUS

I ought not to be writing this, because I hardly know you.  In fact, I had no idea who you were until your face- perfect, reverent, dazed in that I-just-married-the-man-of-my-dreams sort of way stared out at me from every grocery check-out line 72+ days ago. I assumed you were a princess from some foreign land or the twenty-something third wife of a bailed-out US Bank executive.

My kids knew your name.
“She makes money for being famous, Mom.”
“Famous for what?”
“Famous for being famous.”
“But what does she do?”
“Nothing.”
“Where did she come from?”
“Her Dad saved OJ.”
“Wrong,” little brother argued. “Her dad ran the Olympics.”

My kids know about you.  And now that I cannot drive my car, turn on my computer, or listen to the news without hearing your name, I need to know about you, too. Your website says you get 40 million hits a month, which means a whole lot of people listen to you, emulate you, and are influenced by you. That makes your thoughts, words, and actions significant.  

But who are you?

Your bio says you “grew up with an almost fairy-tale childhood.”

News reports say that you sold the rights to your wedding for $17.9 million dollars. Did you really make $10,358.80 pmh- per marriage hour?  Who sells the rights to their wedding? Who gets paid for being married?

Fans say they are devastated that your marriage is over, and they can no longer watch you and your handsome athlete play house, argue, make-up, make dinner, pay the bills- or invest your astonishing pmh earnings.

You say: “I’m a hopeless romantic! I love with all of my heart and soul. I want a family and babies and a real life so badly that maybe I rushed in to something too soon…It just didn’t turn out to be the fairy tale I had so badly hoped for…”

So, that’s who you are! A Disney Princess caricature! It’s obvious that at the tender age of 31, you need guidance. So brace yourself, Precious (my fairy tale name for you.) Allow me to tell you the most important thing about life.

Life isn’t a fairy tale.

You can’t ‘play’ life for film crews, cameras and fans, and hope it becomes authentic. If you truly ‘want a family and babies and a real life so badly,’ pack up your millions, turn off the cameras and join the rest of us in reality. That’s the place where we live. We worry about paying our bills, yell at our kids, and don’t have time to put on mascara. We fight, say terrible things to the people we love, then work like hell to make it better. Sometimes, we lose our jobs. Our homes. Our self-respect. We even lose our loved ones- to illness, old age, tragic accidents, neglect- and it breaks our hearts and spirit.

You say “….I hope you respect my courage because this isn’t easy to go through.”

Rather than seeking sympathy or respect, Precious, I think you should consult a dictionary. Look up the definition of ‘courage’, and you’ll discover that divorcing a guy you chose to marry- after 72 days- won’t be listed. Courage is working at marriage and enduring heartache, loneliness, stress, fatigue, anger, resentment, boredom, illness, infidelity and a whole lot of  un-fairy tale like hardships; understanding that when two people commit to living together year after year, life is grand or it’s life. Courage is staying the course when caring for your kids, a debilitated spouse, or a child with special-needs robs your energy, passion, and ability to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Courage is getting up every morning and looking for a job so you can support your family, even though every interview ends with “Thanks, and good luck.” Courage is being your kids’ parent instead of their friend; paying attention and engaging in yet another battle when the simpler response is to acquiesce. Courage is holding a hand when the diagnosis is ‘cancer’, and holding a head in your hands when the curls you loved so much are gone. Courage is juggling way too many balls in the air: giving your best effort day after day, learning from ups and downs, and cherishing those precious, fleeting moments where joy and laughter grace reality.                   

You say “…my dad always told me to follow my heart and I believe now that I really am.”

Well, now you have my sympathy, Precious.  

Someone should have told you to grow up.

QUING HEREBY DECREES:  Henceforth, rather than celebrating fame, we will celebrate COURAGE.

ICY WAND

Winter awaits.

Chili simmers.  Marshmallows- purchased for summertime s’mores- float in steamy hot chocolate. Harnessed fire hisses and pops in the hearth, demanding supervision. The scents of smoky wood and pine, and sturdy storm windows dismiss the fragrance of fresh breeze from our home.

Soon snowflakes, poured in bulk, will hush our town. Trailblazing tots will crunch, climb, and slide across glittering hills. A lone, tardy goose will contrail the enormous, blue-ice sky, imploring: “Wait!” Honk. “Wait for me!”

I love winter.

But I dread the first frost.

Morning of mourning. I awaken and discover the shellacking of my gorgeous gardens. Herbs, flowers, shrubs stoop to earth- stunned, shriveled, stricken by nature’s Icy Wand.

“Avada Kedavra!”

My treasured friends have disappeared overnight. Joy, color, fragrance, cheer- snatched by Icy Wand. Surely he snickered in the darkness as he crisscrossed my earth, leaving life blackened and stilled.

Begonias, cosmos, dahlias, daisies. I greeted them each morning- sipped coffee, guarded swimmers, read and wrote by their side. Petunias, pansies, geraniums, marigolds.  I tended to their needs- watered, fertilized, and pruned.  Hydrangeas, zinnias, roses, lilies.  I gathered them into my home, shared them with neighbors, featured them at every celebration. Clematis, fern, snapdragons, mums. Treasured friends, all.  

I loved them. They listened to my stories. Swayed at my jokes. Pricked at prowlers. Convinced bee and butterfly to hum harmony to my melody.

Rain, sun, cloud, fog.  My friends never failed to support and delight.

Until this morning of mourning. I awaken and find I have been robbed by Icy Wand. 

Not fair.  Not right. Don’t remind me of the cycle of the seasons, spring, and rebirth. 

Left alone, I will look after my orchids, philodendron, and poinsettias. And when Spring Awaits, I’ll look forward to the return of my treasured friends.

I wish they never had to leave.  

 


QUING HEREBY DECREES:  Flowers on the table.  Fresh herbs in the kitchen.  Buds and blossoms in our presence, all year long. 

HALLOWEEN CANDY

I know that I am supposed to buy it on Halloween morning.

It will be on store shelves, waiting to be purchased.

It will not be in my cupboard.  Waiting to be eaten. 

Fie!  A pox on you, gods of retail!  Needing space for jingle bells and candy canes, you put it on sale. Two weeks before Halloween.

I brought it home and tucked it as far back as my cupboard would allow. Stuffed it behind the Wholesome Health Quartet: Wheat Germ, Flax Seeds, Cream of Wheat and Mother’s Oats- just to be safe. 

The WHQ, a fixture of that cupboard, has never called out to me.

But Halloween Candy did. It sweet-talked, sang, cried, cajoled. “I am here! I am delicious! You love me! GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

I waited. One whole day. Then I opened the cupboard and moved the WHQ aside.

“I’ll only eat one piece,” I promised. “One tiny, little bar.”  Bite size.

And four red foreign fish. They are smaller than our goldfish, after all.    

And one Reese’s Cup. Protein in peanut butter balances carbs in chocolate and sugar. That  combo from heaven is good for me, after all.  

I paused before tearing open packages. “Eat one of those fresh picked apples in the fruit bowl. Much better idea,” I told myself.  “Nonsense!” I countered. “That shiny apple is the reason I stand here staring down this candy-orchard cupboard!”

Desperate, I handed the goods to my ‘chocolate-has-no-control-over-me’ husband- asking him to hide it for (from?) me. I waited. One whole day. Then I wanted it back.

Husband refused to say where I could find the stash. I begged, pleaded, dreamt of his hiding place, searched for his hiding place, baked pan after pan of brownies- to pack with school lunches. Brownie batter is not Halloween Candy, after all.

Today, I will fill a jack o’lantern bowl with treats, from candy bags that I will not have to tear open. I will worry that I don’t have enough for trick-or-treaters, and I will vow to do better next year. Then moments after bedtime, all by myself, I will sort through four pillowcases bulging with Halloween candy.  

Each pack of chewy fish, and every bite size bar of chocolate must be deemed  ‘safe to eat’, after all! 

QUING HEREBY DECREES:  The consumption of candy on Halloween is henceforth guilt free!   

QUING of the WORLD

At least twice a day I read, hear or see something that makes me think, “If I was King of the World, I’d…”

“But you can’t be King of the world,” I scold me. “No testosterone. No receding hairline (well, no obvious receding hairline.) You are XX, baby. That makes you Queen of the World.”

“Oh yeah?” I challenge. “If XYs can be queens, why can’t XXs be kings? I want ultimate power. No arguing or usurping allowed.”

“If you were King of the World, you’d never have time to ponder such insanity,” I insist.

“I wouldn’t be cleaning or cooking, shopping or chauffeuring,” I counter.  “No working. Mending. Hobnobbing. Tending. I’d have all the time in the world to contemplate.”

“Contemplate what?” I ask me.

OUTRAGEOUSNESS.  HILARITY. RIDICULOCITY (Sarah Palin makes up words, why can’t I?) SIMPLICITY. INSANITY.  JOY. FRUSTRATION. PARENTHOOD (see Joy and Frustration.) LIFE and LOVE and…

 “There’s a whole lot going on in that head of yours, girl,” I tell me. “Get a grip. A planet of laundry awaits.  There’s dinner to make, and a baseball/basketball/volleyball team that needs to hear your obnoxious cheering!”

Can’t ever be King. 

Will never be Queen. 

So I hereby declare myself ‘QUING of the WORLD’! 

My first decree? 

I make all the rules.

This is gonna be fun.