I’m always a little blue on Sunday nights, the weekend is over and even though I enjoy my job, I’m never quite ready for Monday morning to arrive. The weekends are too short, I never manage to get everything done I had hoped to accomplish. This Sunday night I am even bluer than ever. This Sunday night marks the end of our family reunion celebrating my grandmother’s 103rd birthday. Tomorrow morning I will go back to the office and my family will board airplanes or load up their cars for the trip home. How sad we can’t all live in the same town and see each other more than a few times a year.
I wonder what it would be like if we did all live in the same town. My grandmother has 95 direct descendants, when you add in the spouses that is a boatload of kinfolks. Our weekly family dinner, Wednesday Winers, could no longer be held at my grandmother’s house (we were able to seat 44 in her den last night for dinner, but that maxed it out), we would have to rent a ballroom. The quiet evenings I spend alone with my grandmother would no longer just be the two of us, with that many family members in town there would surely always be several relatives around. The care we give to my grandmother would be shared among all of the relatives, no longer just two or three getting to spend the time with her. There are so many wonderful aspects of the whole family living in my hometown.
The downside to having everyone within arms-reach is that family time would become routine, the novelty of seeing my relatives would be gone. I think I much prefer the excitement and anticipation of family reunions. I just wish we had our gatherings a little more often.
I’ll look at the reunion photos again and chase away the blues with the memories I made this weekend with my wonderful family.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Feeding the Masses
Last night our family group of twenty-four went to a local restaurant for dinner. Great business for the local restaurant, but the logistics must have been a nightmare; how to seat twenty-four people in a small establishment while still accommodating the regular dinner crowd. They pulled it off. The owner is a friend of the family (I think my grandmother was his second grade teacher) who went to great lengths to make sure our party was well served.
Tonight we will seat thirty-five for dinner in my grandmother’s pine-paneled den. The logistics for this dinner will also be difficult to pull off. Tables and chairs will be delivered and set up, furniture will be moved, and the den will be readied to hold our large clan so we can break bread together as we celebrate our matriarch’s 103rd birthday.
All of the preparations for gathering a large family for a meal make me wonder how my grandmother did it on a regular basis. With ten children, there were sure to be at least twelve at the table for every meal. And that was if there were no friends, other relatives, boyfriends/girlfriends, future or current spouses. How did my grandmother do it? Remember, this was in the days before fast-food take-out or pizza delivery. Remember also, my grandmother worked outside of the home teaching a classroom of schoolchildren every day.
One way she managed to pull off feeding the masses gathered at her table was with a lot of help from the children. The older kids each had a meal a week they were responsible for preparing. My aunts and uncles can recite who prepared what dish, as they each had one signature entrée they prepared every week. Aunt Sandra learned to make Eggs ala Goldenrod in Home Ec. Class and “treated” the family to this hard-boiled egg concoction on her nights to cook. My grandmother still shudders when she recalls Sandra’s specialty.
In addition to helping with the cooking all of the kids pitched in with the clean-up, each assigned a week for dishwashing duty. Aunt Karen was notorious for stacking the dirty dishes in the cabinet under the kitchen sink until the supply of clean plates was exhausted, at which time she had a week’s worth of dishes to clean. Meals, dishes, taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen (and the rest of the house) were duties shared by the family. Aunt Gail was known for “cleaning” the house by using every drawer, closet and cabinet to hide the clutter. The house would look clean for about an hour, but no one could find a thing. My grandmother was a great believer in the adage, “Many hands make light the work.” She also believed strongly in, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” but that is a topic for another blog.
This evening’s dinner for thirty-five of my closest kin will be no exception to our family’s tradition of sharing the work. We will pitch in and get it all done. I just hope Aunt Karen doesn’t try to hide the dirty dishes!
Tonight we will seat thirty-five for dinner in my grandmother’s pine-paneled den. The logistics for this dinner will also be difficult to pull off. Tables and chairs will be delivered and set up, furniture will be moved, and the den will be readied to hold our large clan so we can break bread together as we celebrate our matriarch’s 103rd birthday.
All of the preparations for gathering a large family for a meal make me wonder how my grandmother did it on a regular basis. With ten children, there were sure to be at least twelve at the table for every meal. And that was if there were no friends, other relatives, boyfriends/girlfriends, future or current spouses. How did my grandmother do it? Remember, this was in the days before fast-food take-out or pizza delivery. Remember also, my grandmother worked outside of the home teaching a classroom of schoolchildren every day.
One way she managed to pull off feeding the masses gathered at her table was with a lot of help from the children. The older kids each had a meal a week they were responsible for preparing. My aunts and uncles can recite who prepared what dish, as they each had one signature entrée they prepared every week. Aunt Sandra learned to make Eggs ala Goldenrod in Home Ec. Class and “treated” the family to this hard-boiled egg concoction on her nights to cook. My grandmother still shudders when she recalls Sandra’s specialty.
In addition to helping with the cooking all of the kids pitched in with the clean-up, each assigned a week for dishwashing duty. Aunt Karen was notorious for stacking the dirty dishes in the cabinet under the kitchen sink until the supply of clean plates was exhausted, at which time she had a week’s worth of dishes to clean. Meals, dishes, taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen (and the rest of the house) were duties shared by the family. Aunt Gail was known for “cleaning” the house by using every drawer, closet and cabinet to hide the clutter. The house would look clean for about an hour, but no one could find a thing. My grandmother was a great believer in the adage, “Many hands make light the work.” She also believed strongly in, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” but that is a topic for another blog.
This evening’s dinner for thirty-five of my closest kin will be no exception to our family’s tradition of sharing the work. We will pitch in and get it all done. I just hope Aunt Karen doesn’t try to hide the dirty dishes!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Big Red's Hair
Her white hair, once red, softens her drawn and softly wrinkled face. (How can a face be softly wrinkled? I don’t know, but the more wrinkled her face becomes the softer it gets.) I am glad we’ve stopped dying her hair, the red was becoming garish at one-hundred years of age – but the color was her trademark, her nick-name, Big Red, given by an aunt’s long ago boyfriend because of her beautiful auburn hair color. Little did that long ago boyfriend know, the hair color was courtesy of a Miss Clairol bottle. The color matched the braid she wore twisted into a bun (or a cow-patty, as some of us less respectful grandchildren called it) on top of her head. Few knew that the plaited bun was not her hair. I imagine generations of second graders thought Mrs. Owen’s hair, when unbound from the confines of her braid, hung down her back practically to her butt. (But I’m sure Mrs. Owen’s Catholic second graders would never think the word “butt.”) How shocked would they have been to see her remove the big sliver hair pins and take off her bun each night?
The braided bun has been a fixture in my life and on my grandmother’s head for as long as I can remember. I loved to watch her unbraid it, wash it, comb it out, and re-braid it. I was fascinated with this switch of hair. I liked to imagine it had once belonged to John Steinbeck’s “Little Red Pony,” but rumor had it that the hair was actually my grandmother’s own hair, cut off and made into a hair piece. This version was more romantic when I entered my teen years and left behind the horsetail theory. I imagined she cut her hair in sorrow over a lost love or perhaps when being forced to enter a convent. When I lived with her in my twenties I asked how she could have cut her long hair off. She laughed and told me the braid was ordered form a wig maker.
She had a few braid escapades over the years. Once, driving home from school, exhausted from staying too late in her classroom grading papers or preparing lessons, she unpinned her bun and set it on the passenger seat of her car. The next morning she searched the house for her bun, not finding it. She reconciled herself to arriving at school with a bun-less head. How relieved she was to find it when she got into her car. Imagine the horror and trauma she spared those second graders.
One night while sitting up grading papers (my grandmother could wrap the planet with all the papers she graded while sitting in bed), she began to smell something burning. She would get up to investigate the burners on the stove, or the pilot on the water heater, but each time she got back to her paper grading she would smell the acrid odor of fire. On her next foray into the kitchen to find the source, she noticed, as she passed her bureau mirror, that her head was smoking. She hadn’t removed her bun and it had been in contact with the bulb of the reading lamp illuminating the homework assignments she was marking with her red ink pen. She had to un-braid and re-braid the bun that night to hide the scorched hair.
As she aged and her own hair grew thinner it was harder and harder to attach the heavy bun to her head. There were many occasions when a bun avalanche was averted at the last minute by a half dozen more hair pins. Eventually the bun was put away and my grandmother’s trademark was gone. But she still insisted on coloring what was left of her hair the same auburn red it had been since she was a child. She continued to dye her hair until her one-hundredth year. I guess one-hundred is as good a time as any to go gray. I plan to follow her lead. Someone needs to keep Miss Clairol in business.
The braided bun has been a fixture in my life and on my grandmother’s head for as long as I can remember. I loved to watch her unbraid it, wash it, comb it out, and re-braid it. I was fascinated with this switch of hair. I liked to imagine it had once belonged to John Steinbeck’s “Little Red Pony,” but rumor had it that the hair was actually my grandmother’s own hair, cut off and made into a hair piece. This version was more romantic when I entered my teen years and left behind the horsetail theory. I imagined she cut her hair in sorrow over a lost love or perhaps when being forced to enter a convent. When I lived with her in my twenties I asked how she could have cut her long hair off. She laughed and told me the braid was ordered form a wig maker.
She had a few braid escapades over the years. Once, driving home from school, exhausted from staying too late in her classroom grading papers or preparing lessons, she unpinned her bun and set it on the passenger seat of her car. The next morning she searched the house for her bun, not finding it. She reconciled herself to arriving at school with a bun-less head. How relieved she was to find it when she got into her car. Imagine the horror and trauma she spared those second graders.
One night while sitting up grading papers (my grandmother could wrap the planet with all the papers she graded while sitting in bed), she began to smell something burning. She would get up to investigate the burners on the stove, or the pilot on the water heater, but each time she got back to her paper grading she would smell the acrid odor of fire. On her next foray into the kitchen to find the source, she noticed, as she passed her bureau mirror, that her head was smoking. She hadn’t removed her bun and it had been in contact with the bulb of the reading lamp illuminating the homework assignments she was marking with her red ink pen. She had to un-braid and re-braid the bun that night to hide the scorched hair.
As she aged and her own hair grew thinner it was harder and harder to attach the heavy bun to her head. There were many occasions when a bun avalanche was averted at the last minute by a half dozen more hair pins. Eventually the bun was put away and my grandmother’s trademark was gone. But she still insisted on coloring what was left of her hair the same auburn red it had been since she was a child. She continued to dye her hair until her one-hundredth year. I guess one-hundred is as good a time as any to go gray. I plan to follow her lead. Someone needs to keep Miss Clairol in business.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Babies
When you are from a family as large as mine there are always babies; babies in arms, babies in strollers, babies in car seats, or babies in utero. Someone has a baby, is expecting a baby, or wants to be pregnant.
Being around the babies brings back memories of me as a young mother at our family reunions. I was so proud to show off my beautiful daughters to the gathering of relatives, but traveling with children, staying in a hotel room or in a grandparent’s guest room was never easy – especially on the kids. My perfect daughters turned into perfect monsters on these trips. A baby accustomed to sleeping through the night would awake crying every few hours which resulted in a cranky disposition taking the place of her normally sunny personality. The perfect child I so wanted to parade in front of my family now replaced by a female version of Damien from The Omen. I was usually on my own on these trips (my husband saving his vacation time for a “real” vacation) and tired and cranky myself from the baby waking every hour, I could only offer pitiful protests and lame excuses. “She’s not like this at home.”
Thankfully, everyone at the reunion had been in my shoes at one time. Thankfully, everyone at the reunion loved me and my children in spite of our surly behavior. “Give me the baby, I’ll rock her while you go catch up with your cousins,” or “So what if your four-year old has made the hotel elevator her personal carnival ride.” Then the family lore would begin. “Remember when,” would be followed with tales of other relative’s children, about the time my cousins put red dye in the hotel fountain, or the time the so-in-so boys shot toothpick darts through drinking straws in a nice restaurant. And on it would go, everyone relating a horror story about a cousin, a niece, or a nephew that would make my wild children look like the perfect angels they were (at home in their own surroundings).
This reunion weekend it is my cousin Leigh’s turn to experience the stress and joy of having two small children at a far from childproofed grandparent’s house. She made a 600 mile trip with a baby and a three-year old (her husband saving his vacation time for a “real” vacation). The kids are tired and cranky, they want to touch, move, or break every fragile item in their reach, they need a nap, but can’t sleep in unfamiliar rooms, and the meals we are serving are not exactly child-friendly. But it will be okay. Someone, an aunt or a cousin, will rock the baby until she falls asleep and I will tell Leigh, “Remember the time…”
Being around the babies brings back memories of me as a young mother at our family reunions. I was so proud to show off my beautiful daughters to the gathering of relatives, but traveling with children, staying in a hotel room or in a grandparent’s guest room was never easy – especially on the kids. My perfect daughters turned into perfect monsters on these trips. A baby accustomed to sleeping through the night would awake crying every few hours which resulted in a cranky disposition taking the place of her normally sunny personality. The perfect child I so wanted to parade in front of my family now replaced by a female version of Damien from The Omen. I was usually on my own on these trips (my husband saving his vacation time for a “real” vacation) and tired and cranky myself from the baby waking every hour, I could only offer pitiful protests and lame excuses. “She’s not like this at home.”
Thankfully, everyone at the reunion had been in my shoes at one time. Thankfully, everyone at the reunion loved me and my children in spite of our surly behavior. “Give me the baby, I’ll rock her while you go catch up with your cousins,” or “So what if your four-year old has made the hotel elevator her personal carnival ride.” Then the family lore would begin. “Remember when,” would be followed with tales of other relative’s children, about the time my cousins put red dye in the hotel fountain, or the time the so-in-so boys shot toothpick darts through drinking straws in a nice restaurant. And on it would go, everyone relating a horror story about a cousin, a niece, or a nephew that would make my wild children look like the perfect angels they were (at home in their own surroundings).
This reunion weekend it is my cousin Leigh’s turn to experience the stress and joy of having two small children at a far from childproofed grandparent’s house. She made a 600 mile trip with a baby and a three-year old (her husband saving his vacation time for a “real” vacation). The kids are tired and cranky, they want to touch, move, or break every fragile item in their reach, they need a nap, but can’t sleep in unfamiliar rooms, and the meals we are serving are not exactly child-friendly. But it will be okay. Someone, an aunt or a cousin, will rock the baby until she falls asleep and I will tell Leigh, “Remember the time…”
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Family
My grandmother’s 103rd birthday celebration officially kicks off today with our weekly Wednesday Winers dinner being attended by a few out of town guests. The remainder of the party attendees will arrive tomorrow and the next day; by Saturday all of my aunts and uncles will be here for the birthday party.
It is hard to imagine a family gathering without my mother in attendance. The eldest of my grandmother’s ten children, gone now for almost twenty years, her absence will be hard to reconcile. No one loved a family reunion more than mom. It was she who instilled in me the respect and awe I have for family. I learned at a young age that family ties were the relationships that mattered – every letter, phone call or visit from a relative was cherished. Family trumped every other relationship.
My mother had a slew of wonderful friends, neighbors and co-workers, all vying to become a part of her inner circle, not knowing they lacked the “golden ticket.” In order to become one of my mother’s closest friends and confidants you had to be family. Mother had a knack for making others feel special and everyone wanted to be her best friend. Everyone wanted my mother’s light to shine upon them – to be her best friend. She was fun and outgoing, she was beautiful and charismatic but she never let anyone get as close to her as her family members. She held everyone else at bay, only letting kin, specifically her siblings, into the inner circle.
Spanning a twenty year time frame, my mother and her nine siblings were the clique everyone wanted to join, but couldn’t, because they didn’t have the requirements for membership – you had to be family. Cousins were allowed in, but ordinary people weren’t. Like a private club whose membership requirements were a secret – the family group was exclusive. Much like the Kennedy clan, we considered ourselves special and somehow, untouchable. All of that changed when my mother was diagnosed with cancer at an early age and passed away at fifty-seven. Suddenly the family was vulnerable. A year later my Uncle Ron died of the same cancer that took Mother; we were mortal after all.
On the opening day of my 103 year old grandmother’s birthday it is hard to remember that mortality is eminent. On the eve of my grandmother’s birthday I want to thank my mother for the legacy she left me; entrée into this special family circle and the sense to know what a fabulous family I had the good fortune to be born into.
It is hard to imagine a family gathering without my mother in attendance. The eldest of my grandmother’s ten children, gone now for almost twenty years, her absence will be hard to reconcile. No one loved a family reunion more than mom. It was she who instilled in me the respect and awe I have for family. I learned at a young age that family ties were the relationships that mattered – every letter, phone call or visit from a relative was cherished. Family trumped every other relationship.
My mother had a slew of wonderful friends, neighbors and co-workers, all vying to become a part of her inner circle, not knowing they lacked the “golden ticket.” In order to become one of my mother’s closest friends and confidants you had to be family. Mother had a knack for making others feel special and everyone wanted to be her best friend. Everyone wanted my mother’s light to shine upon them – to be her best friend. She was fun and outgoing, she was beautiful and charismatic but she never let anyone get as close to her as her family members. She held everyone else at bay, only letting kin, specifically her siblings, into the inner circle.
Spanning a twenty year time frame, my mother and her nine siblings were the clique everyone wanted to join, but couldn’t, because they didn’t have the requirements for membership – you had to be family. Cousins were allowed in, but ordinary people weren’t. Like a private club whose membership requirements were a secret – the family group was exclusive. Much like the Kennedy clan, we considered ourselves special and somehow, untouchable. All of that changed when my mother was diagnosed with cancer at an early age and passed away at fifty-seven. Suddenly the family was vulnerable. A year later my Uncle Ron died of the same cancer that took Mother; we were mortal after all.
On the opening day of my 103 year old grandmother’s birthday it is hard to remember that mortality is eminent. On the eve of my grandmother’s birthday I want to thank my mother for the legacy she left me; entrée into this special family circle and the sense to know what a fabulous family I had the good fortune to be born into.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Snow Rant
Winter weather in a town little accustomed to it brings all manner of delays and cancellations, some well thought out – like school start-time delays, others unintentional – like the idiot who thinks he knows how to drive on ice and snow careening his car off of a highway overpass. The moral of this is: It is better to cancel or delay intentionally.
I had an important engagement at 7:00 a.m. today, following six inches of snow which began last evening. The organizers of this gathering waited until after the late evening news to decide whether or not to cancel. My phone rang right on schedule, just as I heard the weatherman advise his viewers not to travel. My appointment was NOT cancelled. The person calling to deliver this news, the same person who scheduled my appearance, told me she would not be attending, and doubted many others would make the treacherous early morning trek. Excuse me? I’m still expected? The event is not cancelled? No one else wants to brave the elements? Does this make sense to anyone? I’m to drive across town on snow and ice to speak to a group, the majority of whom will not show up. Hmmmm. When I questioned the sanity of this I was told I cold make my own decision about whether or not to go in the morning. Maybe the organizers thought the sun would come out at 3:00 a.m., melting the accumulating snow.
I awoke extra early after a fitful night’s sleep, turned on the local news to learn every school district in a one-hundred mile radius was delayed. I also watched news footage of overnight accidents, including a wrecked police cruiser and an overturned pickup truck. Let’s see, I’m going to drive across town to an event that may have no one in attendance but me – not gonna happen.
What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know we live in a town that comes to a screeching halt when we get even a light dusting of snow? We can barely drive in the rain! If you are reading this from, say, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (hello, Aunt Karen) or Denver, Colorado (hi, Lisa) you are probably baffled by it. “What’s the big deal about a few inches of snow?” you are asking yourself. In west Texas we don’t own snow tires or chains, nor does our road department get in any hurry to bring out the sand, salt or snow plow. (I’m not sure our city owns a snow plow.) The ice/snow covers the city streets as if a zamboni has prepared it for the Olympic figure skating event. As I am not expecting to medal in my cross town drive – I’m staying home.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Exercise
What can I say about exercise? I don’t particularly care for it. I know it is necessary. I’ve never been good at it. I’ve had issues with it my entire life. There was a short time in the fifth grade when I got into touch football, but that was nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse to hang out with the neighborhood boys. I never played sports in junior high, high school or college.
I struggled through P.E. class back in the day when girls had to wear atrocious gym uniforms. Mine was a navy blue polyester knit short romper number which snapped at the shoulders. U-G-L-Y, not to mention that polyester is not a good fabric choice to wear when sweating is allegedly the point. The uniform should have been taken home daily for a washing, but we were only allowed to take them from our gym locker on weekends. I blame my school district’s poor fashion sense and lax laundry requirements for my failure to bond with sports.
In college I took modern dance and bowling for my physical education credits. Bowling was fun. We met at an off campus alley and I actually became a decent bowler. In my mid-twenties I even joined a bowling league. It seems bowling might be the only college course I took that I actually used later in life. Modern dance was another story. That class has come to be known as the Great Dance Debacle of 1976. I was in a class with girls who were actual dancers; they all had years of ballet, tap, jazz, baton twirling, and God knows what else behind them. I had two gymnastics classes at the Y before my mother decided it was too much trouble to load up all four kids and drive to the classes. I rarely attended my modern dance P.E. class and the final exam, which I had to take if I had any hope of barely passing the course, was to perform our own choreographed dance. I danced my “original” dance composition to Cat Stephens singing “Morning Has Broken.” For my costume I wore a chambray work shirt with “Morning Has Broken” embroidered in orange and yellow variegated thread on the back over my black dance leotard. I stitched the words myself in high school and thought its beauty might carry the dance. I choreographed the entire dance on the spot in front of the teacher and my classmates, hoping they would think I had spent hours figuring out the steps. I shudder to think what I may have looked like. Martin Short’s Ed Grimley comes to mind. I made a “D” on the final and passed the course. I’m sure I was given a “D” instead of an “F” just because I had the nerve to show up for the final. I can’t hear “Morning Has Broken” without wondering what an ass I made of myself that day. As a consequence of the Great Dance Debacle of 1976 both of my daughters have extensive dance training beginning at age 3.
My first experience with organized exercise was at a place called Elaine Powers Exercise Studio in the late 1970s. My Aunt (three years my senior) and I joined together and went for exercise at least three times a week. We wore Jane Fonda-inspired leotards and headbands. We stood or laid on machines that jiggled our (non-existent) fat, did a few sit ups and then went out that night for a few cocktails and fattening happy hour food. We were young and thin and only imagined we had bulges. I was a size three then and can still recall the horror of purchasing my first size five designer jeans (ah – to be so young, naive, and thin again).
After two pregnancies I began an expensive habit of buying gym memberships and never using them. I must have thought the mini scan card hanging from my keychain would magically reduce my ass and sculpt my arms – it didn’t. Shortly before my 50th birthday I found Haffis, the personal trainer. He charged even more than the previous gym memberships combined, but he held me accountable. He made me exercise, and if his phone calls chastising me for missing scheduled workouts weren’t enough the monthly bank draft that rivaled a car payment sure did the trick. Haffis was fun, pushed me hard, and got results. For the first time in my life I felt athletic. With a background on the U.S. Olympic track team he believed everyone could run, even an almost fifty year old overweight woman who bought running shoes based on color, not function. He made me run (or perhaps jog is the more appropriate term). I found I could do it. I never got to the point of liking it, but I could do it; first one mile, then two, then a 5K run. Wow, I even had aspirations of a half-marathon before my fiftieth birthday. And then, pain. My almost fifty year old knees, unaccustomed to such brutal treatment, rebelled. Ice packs after every run became a necessity. So I quit, cancelled my bank draft, told Haffis goodbye and never went back.
Which brings me to today; I’m hitting the pavement this morning. It is 7:00 a.m. and 28 degrees and I am going for a run. I may not get far, but I’m going outside where I will put one foot in front of the other. I have my ipod cued up to “Morning Has Broken” – I may not be a dancer, but I know I can run, maybe only to the end of the block, but it’s a start. Thank you, Haffis.
I struggled through P.E. class back in the day when girls had to wear atrocious gym uniforms. Mine was a navy blue polyester knit short romper number which snapped at the shoulders. U-G-L-Y, not to mention that polyester is not a good fabric choice to wear when sweating is allegedly the point. The uniform should have been taken home daily for a washing, but we were only allowed to take them from our gym locker on weekends. I blame my school district’s poor fashion sense and lax laundry requirements for my failure to bond with sports.
In college I took modern dance and bowling for my physical education credits. Bowling was fun. We met at an off campus alley and I actually became a decent bowler. In my mid-twenties I even joined a bowling league. It seems bowling might be the only college course I took that I actually used later in life. Modern dance was another story. That class has come to be known as the Great Dance Debacle of 1976. I was in a class with girls who were actual dancers; they all had years of ballet, tap, jazz, baton twirling, and God knows what else behind them. I had two gymnastics classes at the Y before my mother decided it was too much trouble to load up all four kids and drive to the classes. I rarely attended my modern dance P.E. class and the final exam, which I had to take if I had any hope of barely passing the course, was to perform our own choreographed dance. I danced my “original” dance composition to Cat Stephens singing “Morning Has Broken.” For my costume I wore a chambray work shirt with “Morning Has Broken” embroidered in orange and yellow variegated thread on the back over my black dance leotard. I stitched the words myself in high school and thought its beauty might carry the dance. I choreographed the entire dance on the spot in front of the teacher and my classmates, hoping they would think I had spent hours figuring out the steps. I shudder to think what I may have looked like. Martin Short’s Ed Grimley comes to mind. I made a “D” on the final and passed the course. I’m sure I was given a “D” instead of an “F” just because I had the nerve to show up for the final. I can’t hear “Morning Has Broken” without wondering what an ass I made of myself that day. As a consequence of the Great Dance Debacle of 1976 both of my daughters have extensive dance training beginning at age 3.
My first experience with organized exercise was at a place called Elaine Powers Exercise Studio in the late 1970s. My Aunt (three years my senior) and I joined together and went for exercise at least three times a week. We wore Jane Fonda-inspired leotards and headbands. We stood or laid on machines that jiggled our (non-existent) fat, did a few sit ups and then went out that night for a few cocktails and fattening happy hour food. We were young and thin and only imagined we had bulges. I was a size three then and can still recall the horror of purchasing my first size five designer jeans (ah – to be so young, naive, and thin again).
After two pregnancies I began an expensive habit of buying gym memberships and never using them. I must have thought the mini scan card hanging from my keychain would magically reduce my ass and sculpt my arms – it didn’t. Shortly before my 50th birthday I found Haffis, the personal trainer. He charged even more than the previous gym memberships combined, but he held me accountable. He made me exercise, and if his phone calls chastising me for missing scheduled workouts weren’t enough the monthly bank draft that rivaled a car payment sure did the trick. Haffis was fun, pushed me hard, and got results. For the first time in my life I felt athletic. With a background on the U.S. Olympic track team he believed everyone could run, even an almost fifty year old overweight woman who bought running shoes based on color, not function. He made me run (or perhaps jog is the more appropriate term). I found I could do it. I never got to the point of liking it, but I could do it; first one mile, then two, then a 5K run. Wow, I even had aspirations of a half-marathon before my fiftieth birthday. And then, pain. My almost fifty year old knees, unaccustomed to such brutal treatment, rebelled. Ice packs after every run became a necessity. So I quit, cancelled my bank draft, told Haffis goodbye and never went back.
Which brings me to today; I’m hitting the pavement this morning. It is 7:00 a.m. and 28 degrees and I am going for a run. I may not get far, but I’m going outside where I will put one foot in front of the other. I have my ipod cued up to “Morning Has Broken” – I may not be a dancer, but I know I can run, maybe only to the end of the block, but it’s a start. Thank you, Haffis.
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