Dr. Pepper vs. Coke

Wow, so many disappointments lately. I really feel like I am falling into some sort of crazy depression. Not being prone to depression, and not actually being allowed to be depressed (depression is one of the illnesses my mother would not allow me to have, along with asthma and allergies), I am not sure if depression is the right diagnosis. I tried to Google a diagnosis I read about in my freshman college psychology class to reference here, but I couldn't find it. The symptoms include being overly affected by negative happenings in the world. Wow - I have that disease, even if I couldn't find it on the Internet. So much negativity lately. I was so happy when Obama was elected, but - sadly, my right-wing-republican brothers and sisters would not let that happiness last for long. So much strife, so much derision, so much finger-pointing and name calling - so much, so much, so much - hatred. So many twisted truths, so many blatant lies, so many hidden agendas, so much bullshit. I am to the point where I want to either move to another country or find a fall-out shelter from the cold war era and hide out there for a while.

For weeks, or months, (or years) I have been thinking about the difference between the left and the right, Democrats and Republicans, (the sane and the insane - just kidding!). For weeks I have had a snippet of a poem I once wrote rolling around in the far, far corners of my brain. A poem I wrote when I was young, very young - probably all of thirteen, when I had my first heartbreak. A poem that referenced the basic differences in people which cause them to not get along. I found the poem amongst the flotsam and jetsam of my early years and the gist of it was: we ultimately didn't get along because - (drum roll, please) - "I liked Dr. Pepper and you liked Coke." Ah, if only life were that simple.

Now, some forty years later, I find myself looking at the differences between myself and my friends and family - the differences between myself and those whom I truly do love dearly. Could it be so simple, can it be so simple. Can't we just accept our differences and go forward without rancor? Can't we accept our differences and go forward to create a nation, a country, a world, a home where we can all be happy, and healthy, and well fed, and prosperous? A world where everyone has a right to a decent life, a life which includes basic inalienable rights?

I like Dr. Pepper, you like Coke. I am a Democrat, you are a Republican. Aren't we all human beings? Don't we all want the same things?

It's a Dog's Life

I feel much better this morning, much more like myself. I don't know why I let the weather affect me so. Well, I do know why, I just don't know why I can't let it go. Things are much better now. The lady and the man have been very good to me. I've all but forgotten my old life. Almost stopped thinking about the boy. Almost - except when I see a bicycle or when it storms.

On our walks I try to follow the other one. The one who was here before me. She's turned into a good friend. She didn't like me much at first. I think she thought I was trying to take her place. Once we got that out of the way, once I let her prove she was in charge, things were good between us. Now I don't know what I'd do without her. She's older and knows more than I. She's good on our walks. I try to be, but there's just so much to see and smell. And, I'm sorry, but if someone goes by on a bicycle, I do go a little berserk. I always think it's the boy. At first I was sure it was the boy coming back for me. I was sure this had all been a mistake and he hadn't really intended to leave me. What did I do to make him give me away? That thought still troubles me.

Now when I see a bicycle I still go nuts, but it's for a different reason. Now I'm afraid he's come back for me. I no longer want to leave. I really like the lady and the man. And the girl, the girl who comes some days, is my favorite. I know she likes me too. They all like me. I just wish I could get over my fear of storms. I tell myself I am safe. The lady and the man speak softly to me and pat me. They've even made me a special place to hide when I know a storm is coming.

I hear the rumble of thunder and it all comes back to me. The cold rain soaking my skin, the hail coming at me from all directions, bruising my body. The flashes of bright light and the roaring noise. Why won't the boy let me in? I'm afraid. I scratch and scratch on the door and bark for a long time. When he finally comes I am numb from the cold and exhausted from my frenzied efforts to get back into our house where it is warm and dry and quiet. But something is not right. The boy is angry. I try to go in, but he won't let me pass. Another flash of light and more booming noise. I've got to get away from it, but the boy won't let me in. He's yelling now. I can barely hear him over my barking and the pouring rain and the pounding hail and the booming sounds. And then, he did the unimaginable. He kicked me, he kicked me hard - hard enough to send me scooting away from the door. I was stunned. He had never done that before. He closed the door and left me. He'd never done that before either. Not knowing what else to do, I found a place to hide. I tried to hide from the cold and the wet and the noise and the hurt I was feeling in my side and the hurt I was feeling in my heart; but I couldn't. I dug a hole in the mud between the bush and the fence and hid there all night.

I must have done something really bad that day to have brought all of this on myself. That was long ago, but I can't help but recall it when I hear the rumbling of loud noise begin in the distance. I know the lady and the man won't make me go outside when the weather is bad. They've been very kind to me. What frightens me now is thinking I might have done something wrong again. Something that will cause them to leave me like the boy did. When I hear a storm coming I'm afraid I'll lose the lady and the man and the girl I love so much. What would become of me then? All I can imagine is living a life in the cold, wet, loud world if they should send me away. I can't help but tremble and retreat to my special hiding place until the feeling passes, along with the storm. I'm sure glad they understand. When the storm has passed and I have regained my composure I find the nice lady and the nice man to make sure they aren't mad. I lick them and wag my tail and hope they know I'm sorry and that I love them. I think they know.

Desk Set

My parents were frugal. We always lived in a nice, well furnished, middle class home. We always had food on the table and a car or two in the driveway. But we didn't have the extras. Apparently my parents considered a desk for a student an extra. Why couldn't I do my homework at the dining room table or the kitchen table with my siblings? No one seemed to understand how badly I wanted my own desk in my own room (well, the room I shared with my sister). One day I discovered a solution. I took the Samsonite card table from the garage, dusted it off, and set it up in my room for my very own work space. I borrowed a chair from the dining room and I had my first "office." Slowly I began making it my own. To say I put my mark on the Samsonite card table is an understatement. I covered it with cut out pictures and words from magazines and plastered it with the neon plastic adhesive flowers so popular in the 1960s. Mother made me promise I wouldn't do the same to the dining room chair, because we still had to haul it back into the dining room for holiday dinners.

Eventually I got a real desk, but by that time homework and studies had been replaced by activities that didn't require office furniture. Somehow the draw of the desk remained with me throughout my life. My husband brought his grandfather's antique office desk into the marriage. We had it professionally refinished and thirty years later it is still in use as a computer desk in my living room. Across the room from it stands another desk, my husband's desk, an antique roll top desk we purchased from an antiques dealer. Years later I inherited my Great Aunt Opal's antique roll top desk from a cousin who had no space for it. This desk has history and personality. My Great Aunt Opal's desk came out of the old-fashioned drug store she and her husband owned in a small Texas town. My aunt was rather fond of frills and the color pink, so it was no surprise that the desk had been painted pink at some point over the years. It has received a new paint job and is in the corner of my bedroom where it serves as a repository for all things necessary - magazines, lip balm, newspaper, books, framed photographs, a tissue box, and hundreds of other essential items.

Based on my childhood trauma of not having my own desk I made sure my daughters had a desk of their own. When they were small I brought home a wooden school desk from a garage sale and put it in the kitchen where they could sit and read or color or talk while I was cooking or doing other kitchen duty. My youngest daughter will inherit this desk some day, because in my heart it belongs to her. Every day of her childhood she ate her breakfast sitting at that desk. I would wake her up, scoop her into my arms, and carry her into the kitchen for breakfast. Family lore insists that I did this until her feet suffered carpet burns as I carried her down the hall.

When my oldest daughter wanted her very own desk in her very own room we searched every antiques store in town until we found the right one for her. It is still in her childhood room, supporting a massive three volume set of The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, copyright 1971, complete with leather case and magnifying glass to enable the reader to see the small print. My youngest daughter's desk came with her bedroom furniture and I am typing this blog at her desk, her room having become my home office when she left home.

What is it about a desk I find so appealing? Is it the scholarly image of a desk? Perhaps it is a paraphrasing of Virginia Woolf's famous remark, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Perhaps a desk of my own was the beginning.

Aroma Therapy II

When I stay in hotels I habitually bring home the complimentary shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, soap, sewing kit, shower cap, and anything else the establishment might offer. Usually I donate these to the food bank to make sure the items go to someone who will need, use, and appreciate them vs. filling up my bathroom cabinets with product which would go unused/untouched until the next bathroom cabinet purge (probably sometime within the next 10 years). But, (there's that famous "but" again) sometimes I take the hotel samples to the lake house for guests to use if they have forgotten toiletry items. Or for me to use if I especially like the brand, or scent, or if I just want to relive the vacation experience.

I am still hoarding a supply of shampoo and soap from the Hotel del Coronado. Every time I use it, the scent reminds me of the wonderful week spent there. I can close my eyes in the shower and almost hear the California surf when I use the little green bottles of hair care products in the fragrance - "the sea."

This morning I used little blue bottles of product from a stay at the Hilton Hotel in Virginia Beach, VA. I don't recall using them there, but I'm sure I brought them home and kept them for me because they were Crabtree & Evelyn brand. Today as I began washing my hair with the LaSource shampoo I was transported to my mother's bathroom of the 1950's. The scent was the same as the bubble bath she used; a scent I haven't smelled or thought of until today. Closing my eyes I could almost visualize the bubble bath bottle perched on the rim of the bathtub and I could almost remember the color of the shower curtain and the towels in that bathroom.

The hair conditioner in the same product line evoked another memory. This scent transported me to my early teen years. It was reminiscent of the Breck cream rinse which was diluted in a plastic tumbler, kept in the bathroom for just this use. Closing my eyes today and smelling the LaSource conditioner made me feel thirteen again and reminded me of how worldly and sophisticated I felt then to be using a product advertised in Seventeen Magazine when I wanted so badly to be a real, grown-up, teen.

I am always amazed at the power a fragrance can have over the memory. My sister and I have been know to phone each other just to ask if a certain scent summons any memory. The orange aroma of Goo Gone reminds me of something - I just haven't remembered exactly what. I am still trying to pin that memory down. The smell of canned asparagus conjures long ago holiday dinners at my Aunt Opal's. Fresh cucumbers, my Aunt Dee's house. New-mown grass will bring forth memories of my dad in his sweat-stained, faded red golf shirt with the little penguin over the left breast. Nina Ricci L'air Du Temps perfume brings forth memories of my mother so vivid I tear up missing her so. Once I even followed a woman through a cosmetics department because she smelled like my mother.

The little bottles of shampoo and conditioner took me on a pleasant trip down memory lane this morning and it was a trip that didn't even require a hotel stay.

Too Much Nature, Dear (Deer)

Sometimes getting back to nature is a little more than I bargained for. My husband and I are away for Labor Day Weekend at our little slice of heaven lake cabin. We got up early this morning to drive to a small town 15 miles away to have breakfast at a cafe named one of the 40 best cafes in our state.

When I went out to the car with visions of biscuits and gravy in my head I was distracted by a noise from across the road. Curiosity got the best of me, so I ventured over to the pick up truck bed that had been transformed into a trailer which our neighbor filled with hundreds of pounds of Milo to feed birds, deer, and to throw into the lake to lure catfish to the fishing area he frequents. As I crossed the sandy dirt road I heard the noise once more - a thudding and shuffling sound I couldn't place. Then I saw animal legs on the far side of the Milo trailer. Thinking it might be the cougar rumored to be in these parts, I approached slowly and with caution. To my horror, the noise was not a cougar rolling on its back and thumping the sides of the trailer with its paws. It was a deer, a large deer was somehow caught in the trailer by one leg. A deer was thrashing on the ground while one leg - one hoof was stuck in an opening on the top of the trailer. No contortionist could have achieved this position. Calmly, I called my husband, not wanting to disturb, or further alarm the injured deer. He quickly appeared by my side and determined the deer's leg must be broken. We had to somehow deal with this. The deer was obviously suffering - the deer should be relieved of its pain.

Perhaps we have both seen too many old western movies, but both of us had the idea that the humane thing would be for the deer to be shot, to be put out of its misery. We wouldn't own a gun. We don't hunt or shoot animals. But this poor deer had probably been suffering most of the night, trying to free itself. We roused a neighbor with a request for help. While waiting for him to dress, I had a moment of good sense and called the local Sheriff, asking him to shoot the injured deer; to put it out of its misery. Our neighbor arrived on the scene, assessed the situation, went to his pick up truck, got a crow-bar and pried the deer's hoof loose from the hole in the trailer where it was stuck. The deer, stunned and exhausted, ran about four feet from the trailer and collapsed. We surmised that the Sheriff would still need to shoot the deer to humanely put the animal out of its misery. As we discussed the fate of the deer and awaited the arrival of the Sheriff the deer suddenly bolted and ran for the cover of the brush. The three of us all agreed the deer would survive, perhaps with only a leg injury. We notified the Sheriff that he was no longer needed and went on with our plans - thankful our neighbor showed up with a crow-bar rather than a shotgun.

At the cafe, for breakfast, my husband asked me if I had an aspirin, he didn't feel much like eating. The prospect of killing the beautiful wounded creature had sickened him, as it had me. Neither of us enjoyed our breakfast, though no fault of the cafe.

On our fifteen mile return trip we couldn't help but notice the deer blinds in place for this year's hunting season. I'm sure we were both considering the fate of the poor deer we saw rescued this morning.

Would it get another chance?

Venus Envy

My sister has always been beautiful. Even as a baby with her white feather hair and her enormous blue eyes and her nickname, Tweetybird, she was beautiful. Her white feather hair grew into straight, thick, long, blond tresses and her big blue eyes, though no longer the sapphire blue of her infancy, remained sparkling. Five years my junior, she caught up with me in height in our teenage years. Our facial features were similar enough for her boyfriend to comment, "creepy" when he first met me when I was home from college one weekend. But, all physical similarities end there.

My sister is fair, I am dark. She is blond, I am brunette, her eyes blue, mine brown. Her hair is straight and thick, mine wavy and thin. She is tall and thin (willowy, even), I am tall and, well - let's just say I could stand to lose a few pounds.

I like to think my sister looked up to me when we were growing up. As the oldest I had to "blaze the trail." She learned by observing as I survived junior high, convinced our parents it was okay to date, cruised through high school, and left for college. She raided my closet for clothes and borrowed makeup and record albums. She attended my college and joined my sorority; maybe I did have some influence. However, she surpassed me in everything - prettier, thinner, smarter, more popular. In college she had her own car and her own apartment. In college I bummed rides and lived in campus housing.

Was I jealous of my sister? No. I didn't begrudge her any of her accomplishments and successes, rather, I was proud of her. Even if I wished I were thinner or had possessed a car or my very own apartment while away at college, I cheered her every victory.

As adults we are on more even ground, both happily married, with beautiful children and full, satisfying lives. Yet there is one thing I do envy about my sister. (No, it's not her lithe figure.) I envy my sister's hair! What began as white feathers and grew into long, thick, straight, flaxen hair is now a beautiful, extremely sophisticated gray. Surprised? Surprised that I envy her gray hair? It's not just the beauty of the color of her still thick hair that I envy. I envy the freedom her hair gives her. She isn't tied to a monthly appointment with a colorist, lest her roots begin to show. She doesn't fret over just the right cut to make her thin hair look fuller. She doesn't waste money or time on thickening shampoos and blow-drying the "frizz" out. Most importantly, her hair gives her the freedom to be herself, a beautiful woman approaching her fifties, not someone trying to look like the picture on the Miss Clairol bottle.

So, why don't I just ditch the hair color and go gray with her? I've tried. My hair is not the pretty, vibrant gray of my sister's. Mine is a dull, mousy gray that leaves me looking and feeling old, tired, and washed out. That is why I continue to color, why I give up my desire to be a "natural woman," why I make my colorist a rich man.

How long will I continue this un-feminist ritual? I'm not sure. All I can tell you is - my grandmother, the famous Big Red, only this year quit dying her hair. If I follow in her footsteps, I will "go gray" when I am 102 years old. That is only 588 more appointments with a colorist and, if prices don't go up, only $44,000. Yes, I envy my sister.

Someone to Watch Over Me

From framed photographs throughout my house - the kitchen, my bedroom wall, my desk - five familiar faces watch me as I go about my day. One of the framed faces is mine, the others belong to friends, some of whom I've known for over thirty years; well over half of my life.

Other photos show images only of children. Children at t-ball games, at dance recitals, at school competitions, in junior high band, on vacations, in college. The five familiar faces aren't in any of these photos, but I know they were there - somewhere in the background - while the children filled our camera lenses.

When it was finally our turn to be photographed, t-ball games and ballet classes were long behind us. The children were gone and, one would think, so was the reason we were friends. The five familiar faces couldn't be more different - in interests, in political opinions, spiritually. What brought us together was our children. What keeps us together is our history and our love.

The framed photos show us smiling at weddings, at showers (bridal and baby), at Christmas dinners and birthday parties - celebrating the hallmarks of our lives and of our children's.

What the photos don't show, can't show, are the other times - the illnesses, the deaths, the divorce, the crises of our lives when we have come together. We've been there to hold a hand, to bring casseroles and hams, to change the sheets on a sickbed, to offer advice and a shoulder to cry on. We've confessed our worst secrets and our worst fears - knowing we won't be judged or betrayed. In spite of our differences, because of our love, we've become each other's mainstays, each other's constants.

From framed photographs five familiar faces watch me as I go about my life.