Please note, I am tired of pulling the keyboard under the desk out to type the number Five. So, even though those Stunk & White (yeah obviously I never read the book and am not sure if I am spelling the names correctly) might want me to use the actual number for things 1 to 9 instead of writing them out, I am not going to do it. I think those people might be dead by now anyways. I can only reference the book because of things I have heard in everyday life over the years. See, I did not major in English. Oh for years, I have lamented over the choices I made, but now that I am approaching fifty I think I need to take a different perspective, and besides I have read "The Secret" so I am finally "in" on It (The Secrect to Life). If I could do it all over again, I would probably end up at the same parties smoking my way through all sorts of crazy things. That was what I was suppose to be doing in that "Chapter" of my life. Now I am in the middle of the book (hopefully the middle, otherwise I will be dead a lot sooner than I had hoped). I can look backward and forward, the real luxury of turning fifty. Otherwise, you are too young to look back or too old to look forward, the views are disconcerting.
Third Grade, DeWitt Clinton Grammar School (who was he??)
I got Mrs. Gottlieb. She was short, fat, black hair, and wore glasses. Why did ALL the teachers wear glasses? Was it part of some Universal Power trying to project a metaphor our 8 year old minds could not grasp? These people are "near-sighted" , do not trust them for they cannot see the true brilliance and value of the little children sitting in front of them. When did I start having these delusions of grandeur? Probably high school, that is definitely a higher level thinking order.
Mrs. Gottleib was in charge of teaching us how to write in Cursive, and if you ever saw my handwriting you would know what a horrible failure that woman was at her job. My handwriting is atrocious and I can finally see it is all her fault. I feel so relieved. The only other thing I remember about her is how she loved Origami. She spent endless hours teaching us how to make all sorts of things by folding up plain white paper in a thousand different ways. Guess what? I sucked at that too. It was worse than my handwriting. When everyone else was done and had a cute little sail boat, or puppy, or cube, I sat folding and re-folding because if I looked like I was done then they would all know what an eight year old putz looks like. And yes, I knew those words back then. Putz and schmuck and dupa (ass in Polish) were part of my ever growing vocabulary at home. You see, I told you, my real education did not happen during the day at DeWitt Clinton Grammar School. No, the life skills I was going to need to get by had nothing to do with nasty ass teachers, fractions, geography, learning about my home State of Illinois or origami for that matter. I could not fold my way out of what was coming at me in fourth grade.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
347 Days until the Big 50
Was second grade second rate? Probably. I know it sounds like I have a chip on my shoulder about my grammar school, but actually school was not all that bad. The problems were mostly with the teachers at the school.
Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care. After surviving Mrs. Master’s First Class Fright Fest for first grade I must have been suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. I don’t remember a great deal about what I learned in second grade. My second grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Kornacker, hence the reminiscence of a popular childhood song. Physically, she was the opposite of Mrs. Masters. Mrs. Kornacker could only be described as “tight”. She was little and had tiny eyes hiding behind her small pointy eyeglasses. Her blond hair was a firmly compacted covering with a perfectly rounded design on either side of her forehead. Her milky white skin made her look a bit like one of the mannequin’s in the windows of Seymour Paisen’s fine dress shop. She was short, very short and was always dressed in a suit like outfit, blazer on top, a-line skirt, 2 inch heel pumps. She could have probably hid under Mrs. Master’s moomoo type dress and no one would have ever found her.
It was with Mrs. Kornacker that I first noticed the idea of a teacher having “Pets” in the classroom. Mrs. Kornacker reserved her tight little red lipped grins for the kids she thought were her smartest students. Never mind that she probably had nothing to do with how smart the kids were. The teachers at DeWitt Clinton Grammar School had hit the proverbial educational jackpot. In the 1960’s and 70’s they got to work in the City of Chicago at a Public School filled with middle and upper middle class kids whose parents provided a safe clean neighborhood and a deep abiding respect and no interference policy for teachers, even the ones who placed kids in garbage cans. Oh, I know the pendulum has swung the other way. Now, out here in Suburbia, parents who were once silent victims of an oppressive educational regime now demand a say in how their children are educated. But back in my day, the only time we saw parents in a school was when they showed up to watch us sing once a year. And even then it was mostly the stay at home moms. A dad was never seen in school.
I cannot be sure if Mrs. Kornacker actually taught me anything. I continued to learn, but much of what I was learning came from my home. I saw my parents reading newspapers religiously and listened to my brothers who were five and 7 years older than I am. I too started reading the newspaper, first the comics, but as time progressed I would search out other parts of the paper for providing an opportunity to learn new words and see if I could figure out what was going on in the world around me. I also learned a lot in the alley where I spent a great deal of my spare time playing with children of all ages. Perhaps those are the real opportunities missing from my kids lives. No more newspapers. No playing with a dozen kids of all ages. Why bother when we have 120 channels worth of television to watch? They sit in class rooms with round tables or long tables and facing each other. No staring at the back of some other kid’s head with a teacher like Mrs. Kornacker showing her thin smile when and if she felt pleased by one of her students.
Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care. After surviving Mrs. Master’s First Class Fright Fest for first grade I must have been suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. I don’t remember a great deal about what I learned in second grade. My second grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Kornacker, hence the reminiscence of a popular childhood song. Physically, she was the opposite of Mrs. Masters. Mrs. Kornacker could only be described as “tight”. She was little and had tiny eyes hiding behind her small pointy eyeglasses. Her blond hair was a firmly compacted covering with a perfectly rounded design on either side of her forehead. Her milky white skin made her look a bit like one of the mannequin’s in the windows of Seymour Paisen’s fine dress shop. She was short, very short and was always dressed in a suit like outfit, blazer on top, a-line skirt, 2 inch heel pumps. She could have probably hid under Mrs. Master’s moomoo type dress and no one would have ever found her.
It was with Mrs. Kornacker that I first noticed the idea of a teacher having “Pets” in the classroom. Mrs. Kornacker reserved her tight little red lipped grins for the kids she thought were her smartest students. Never mind that she probably had nothing to do with how smart the kids were. The teachers at DeWitt Clinton Grammar School had hit the proverbial educational jackpot. In the 1960’s and 70’s they got to work in the City of Chicago at a Public School filled with middle and upper middle class kids whose parents provided a safe clean neighborhood and a deep abiding respect and no interference policy for teachers, even the ones who placed kids in garbage cans. Oh, I know the pendulum has swung the other way. Now, out here in Suburbia, parents who were once silent victims of an oppressive educational regime now demand a say in how their children are educated. But back in my day, the only time we saw parents in a school was when they showed up to watch us sing once a year. And even then it was mostly the stay at home moms. A dad was never seen in school.
I cannot be sure if Mrs. Kornacker actually taught me anything. I continued to learn, but much of what I was learning came from my home. I saw my parents reading newspapers religiously and listened to my brothers who were five and 7 years older than I am. I too started reading the newspaper, first the comics, but as time progressed I would search out other parts of the paper for providing an opportunity to learn new words and see if I could figure out what was going on in the world around me. I also learned a lot in the alley where I spent a great deal of my spare time playing with children of all ages. Perhaps those are the real opportunities missing from my kids lives. No more newspapers. No playing with a dozen kids of all ages. Why bother when we have 120 channels worth of television to watch? They sit in class rooms with round tables or long tables and facing each other. No staring at the back of some other kid’s head with a teacher like Mrs. Kornacker showing her thin smile when and if she felt pleased by one of her students.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
348 days until the Big 50
You don’t just get a “best friend.” It is hard work and a lot of luck. But I am all about “relationships” and perhaps that is why I never went to law school, or medical school or accomplished any great task like a marathon or any other “thon”. My focus, time and energy is always spent on people, my mom, my friends, my kids, my cousins…
My best friend is someone I met on the way to kindergarten. Our teacher’s name was Ms. Steinway. At the time, she may have been the only teacher under the age of 60 at DeWitt Clinton School. She seemed nice. It was downhill after that as far as teachers go. Even worse, my best friend and I were separated. It turned out we were not even suppose to be in kindergarten together from the beginning. Kids with last names starting from A to M (me) were suppose to be in the class that spent the first half of the year going to Morning Kindergarten and the second half of the year in afternoon kindergarten. Kids with last names starting with N to Z (my best friend) were on the opposite schedule. Yet, my best friend had just moved into the neighborhood and the classes had already been assigned so somehow she ended up in my group. It would be the only time we were ever in a class together yet our friendship cemented itself on the shiny hardwood floor of the big kindergarten room that year in 1965. And the friendship continued to flourish and evolve over the years amidst the alleys, gang ways and side streets of West Rogers Park.
During our 8 years of grammar school there were three classes for each grade. And you stayed with the same 30 kids from beginning to the end of your grammar school life. We all knew when we left kindergarten we would be saying good-by to something rare at Clinton, a nice teacher. We had heard stories from older siblings and cousins who had already been clearing the path what kind of close encounters with mean and difficult teachers we would be having.
We would be at their mercy. Parental involvement was unheard of back then.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Masters, an enormous woman with big black hair resembling a helmet. She probably had enough spray on that do to be the inspiration for Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Her hair was so hard bombs would have probably bounced off her head and gone directly back to Russia. She must have hated our 6 year old guts. She never once smiled. That woman was angry about something and I remember our entire first grade class sitting petrified praying for the dismissal bell everyday that year. She would place kids in garbage cans when they misbehaved. Her opinion of exactly what misbehavior was included whispering, looking in the wrong direction, being unattractive and of course, the usual gum chewing. We use to have to sit in small groups at the front of the class during reading time and take turns reading from Dick and Jane books. We were separated based on skill level, so it was always very apparent which group someone was part of, high, medium or low. The smart kids read quickly and with ease. The medium kids varied more in how quickly and readily they performed. The low kids stumbled and mumbled. We were all on display. If it was not your reading group’s turn then you had to sit at your wooden desk nailed firmly to the floor and pretend to read. But what you were really doing was listening in on the reading group that was in a circle at the front of the room. It was impossible not to. So, if you were a lousy reader, you got to be humiliated in front of everyone. I can only imagine what effect that had. Luckily, I liked reading. I just hated Mrs. Master’s more so I somehow ended up in the middle group all the time. It probably had more to do with how nervous she made me than how well I could actually read.
Mrs. Masters would hand out a daily “prize” (balloon, pencil, sticker or a piece of gum you were not allowed to chew) to the best reader within each group. I guess it was her idea of motivation. It would have been better if she would have just learned to smile instead of scowling all the time and kept the lousy balloons and pencils to her big ass self. Luckily, I have gotten over the horrible feelings Mrs. Masters created in me, and First Grade, was just that, First, not second, and not certainly not last. I would have 7 more grades to go. Who, would brighten up my life in 2nd Grade? Stay tuned….
My best friend is someone I met on the way to kindergarten. Our teacher’s name was Ms. Steinway. At the time, she may have been the only teacher under the age of 60 at DeWitt Clinton School. She seemed nice. It was downhill after that as far as teachers go. Even worse, my best friend and I were separated. It turned out we were not even suppose to be in kindergarten together from the beginning. Kids with last names starting from A to M (me) were suppose to be in the class that spent the first half of the year going to Morning Kindergarten and the second half of the year in afternoon kindergarten. Kids with last names starting with N to Z (my best friend) were on the opposite schedule. Yet, my best friend had just moved into the neighborhood and the classes had already been assigned so somehow she ended up in my group. It would be the only time we were ever in a class together yet our friendship cemented itself on the shiny hardwood floor of the big kindergarten room that year in 1965. And the friendship continued to flourish and evolve over the years amidst the alleys, gang ways and side streets of West Rogers Park.
During our 8 years of grammar school there were three classes for each grade. And you stayed with the same 30 kids from beginning to the end of your grammar school life. We all knew when we left kindergarten we would be saying good-by to something rare at Clinton, a nice teacher. We had heard stories from older siblings and cousins who had already been clearing the path what kind of close encounters with mean and difficult teachers we would be having.
We would be at their mercy. Parental involvement was unheard of back then.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Masters, an enormous woman with big black hair resembling a helmet. She probably had enough spray on that do to be the inspiration for Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Her hair was so hard bombs would have probably bounced off her head and gone directly back to Russia. She must have hated our 6 year old guts. She never once smiled. That woman was angry about something and I remember our entire first grade class sitting petrified praying for the dismissal bell everyday that year. She would place kids in garbage cans when they misbehaved. Her opinion of exactly what misbehavior was included whispering, looking in the wrong direction, being unattractive and of course, the usual gum chewing. We use to have to sit in small groups at the front of the class during reading time and take turns reading from Dick and Jane books. We were separated based on skill level, so it was always very apparent which group someone was part of, high, medium or low. The smart kids read quickly and with ease. The medium kids varied more in how quickly and readily they performed. The low kids stumbled and mumbled. We were all on display. If it was not your reading group’s turn then you had to sit at your wooden desk nailed firmly to the floor and pretend to read. But what you were really doing was listening in on the reading group that was in a circle at the front of the room. It was impossible not to. So, if you were a lousy reader, you got to be humiliated in front of everyone. I can only imagine what effect that had. Luckily, I liked reading. I just hated Mrs. Master’s more so I somehow ended up in the middle group all the time. It probably had more to do with how nervous she made me than how well I could actually read.
Mrs. Masters would hand out a daily “prize” (balloon, pencil, sticker or a piece of gum you were not allowed to chew) to the best reader within each group. I guess it was her idea of motivation. It would have been better if she would have just learned to smile instead of scowling all the time and kept the lousy balloons and pencils to her big ass self. Luckily, I have gotten over the horrible feelings Mrs. Masters created in me, and First Grade, was just that, First, not second, and not certainly not last. I would have 7 more grades to go. Who, would brighten up my life in 2nd Grade? Stay tuned….
349 Days until the Big 50
I thought this went on yesterday. I did NOT miss a day. I must have missed a key on the keyboard though. I hope this works now. This is further proof I need to do all my writing and posting in the morning. I am obviously compromised in the evenings and I tried to put my post last night after a long day. I cannot find the original poem I planted on yesterday's post, but while I search my endless computer records I found this substitute which will have to do while I continue looking. I know this will say it was published on July 29th meaning there will be a vacany on July 28th making it look like I missed a day. I guess that is why we cannot, and more importantly SHOULD NOT, give to much credit to how things "look!" Because things are never really what they "seem" to be be.
Wishes on Kisses
The mommy kisses her little boy
The little boy kisses his daddy
The daddy kisses his little girl
And the little kiss swirls round the world.
Butterfly kisses float from eyelashes to grandma’s cheeks
While Eskimo kisses bump noses high upon snow peaks
Carefully placed kisses heal wounded elbows and knees
And a hug with a thank you kiss is sure to please.
Is it time to put the kids and the kisses to sleep?
Are the stars and clouds starting their moon light dance?
Can we go to a land of wishes in the sky so deep?
Where inside our dreams there’s always one more chance.
Noisy kisses fit perfectly between giggling friends
Whose playtime is over when the day begins to end.
Did you know there were wishes hiding in those kisses?
It’s true.
The people who love you want you to have sweet dreams.
They fill their kisses with wishes like water filling a stream.
Don’t forget to count all your kisses before you close your eyes.
So you will find your wishes before the morning sun rise.
And while we all sleep the little kisses swirling around the world will keep us warm and safe all night
Until the kisses land back on earth in morning light.
Wishes on Kisses
The mommy kisses her little boy
The little boy kisses his daddy
The daddy kisses his little girl
And the little kiss swirls round the world.
Butterfly kisses float from eyelashes to grandma’s cheeks
While Eskimo kisses bump noses high upon snow peaks
Carefully placed kisses heal wounded elbows and knees
And a hug with a thank you kiss is sure to please.
Is it time to put the kids and the kisses to sleep?
Are the stars and clouds starting their moon light dance?
Can we go to a land of wishes in the sky so deep?
Where inside our dreams there’s always one more chance.
Noisy kisses fit perfectly between giggling friends
Whose playtime is over when the day begins to end.
Did you know there were wishes hiding in those kisses?
It’s true.
The people who love you want you to have sweet dreams.
They fill their kisses with wishes like water filling a stream.
Don’t forget to count all your kisses before you close your eyes.
So you will find your wishes before the morning sun rise.
And while we all sleep the little kisses swirling around the world will keep us warm and safe all night
Until the kisses land back on earth in morning light.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
349 Days until the big 50
Bird Poop? or .....
Oh my
Oh my
My eye has a sty
I know why my eye has a sty
It happened when I looked up in the sky
I saw a bird fly by
And I thought I would cry
Because that bird dropped a worm in my eye
I quickly saw that this worm was shy
Because the worm jumped right out of my eye
It quickly slithered away to hide
The bird kept flying nearby looking for a new meal
The lucky worm had escaped what could have been a deadly ordeal.
Being lunch for a bird did not have much appeal
Monday, July 27, 2009
350 Days until the big 50
I must admit I feel like I am cheating when I simply go digging in my old computer files for things I can use on the Blog. It feels a little disingenous because I think I should be "creating" somethng new each day for the big countdown posting. Yet, I have always had a problem in that I write and write and write, but never RE-write. It is like sex for me, when it is over, it is over. I cannot revisit the moment because I need an entirely new moment. But perhaps if I started digging in the archives and simply "polish" some old pieces I might find a gem or two worth sharing. I promise not to pick anything that is obviously dated like my piece on "Desperate House Wives". Is that show still on the air? But if writing is any good, isn't it suppose to be timeless? You tell me. Here is a story from a long time ago when I was only 45 year old, and 20 pounds lighter.
HOARDING? WHY OF COURSE!
Over 5 years ago I took on the daunting task of moving my elderly mother out of the building she had lived in for over 40 years. I now consider hoarding a genetic defect, and I obviously got the “hoarding” gene from my mother. After all, my father, a European immigrant packed all his belongs in one small leather suitcase, which of course I still have. He understood the minimalist approach to life. My mother on the other hand would qualify for the Gold Medal of hoarding. Was it a mutation that occurred in the genes when the poor woman lived through the Great Depression and had gone without so much? What I found particularly interesting was her choice of things to which she needed to amass a huge quantity. What did I find? It would be less time consuming to talk about what I did not find. However, it would not be nearly as interesting.
First, I found her collection of wishbones sitting in a kitchen drawer. All that chicken she ate could not go to complete waste. This bag of wishbones kept her and I busy for about 20 minutes as we took them one by one and pulled them apart while making our silent wishes. Do people still believe in “wish bones”? When I was growing up my mother made fried chicken every Friday. When one of us found the wishbone we would jump for joy. As a child I was always wishing for things like albums and jewelry. I suspect my mom was wishing for a safe journey through life for all three of her kids. That day in the same kitchen more than 3 decades later, we sat pulling apart the wish bones and silently making out wishes. While I gazed at her crooked wrinkled hands wrapped around the tiny bony my wishes were always for her to have a happy and really really long life.
Each afternoon played out like another scene in our own “Moving My Mother” movie. My mother also loved collecting entire sets of dishes from every relative who ever died in our family. One afternoon I found a total of 6 full sets of dishes in large boxes. Each dish, cup, saucer and serving piece was individually wrapped in old newspaper for safe keeping. I opened each box and unwrapped a sample dish to examine the pattern.
My mother would quickly ask me
“Now whose dishes were those?”
“I have no idea. How would I know?” Then I examined the newspaper it had been wrapped in “Wait a minute. I know how we can solve this mystery” I exclaimed! “Who in our family died in 1968?”
“Aunt Ruth” she shouted like a happy contestant on Family Feud.
As my mother’s face lit up with memories of her beloved sister I cracked open the next box and begun unwrapping one of the coffee cups.
“Who died in 1983?” I asked.
“Oh that was Aunt Minnette.” She says wistfully while taking the cup into her hand. Her brother Mikey’s wife was one of her best friends.
A box of black and white photographs found in brown paper bags provided endless trips down memory lane and my mother easily recalled endless details including old addresses, phone numbers, and names of friends from factories where she worked during World War II. She never forgets anything. There is no irony that she also collects figurines of elephants. They are her favorite animal, and one that is known for having an excellent memory. There are elephant figurines on every window sill in the house and on all the coffee tables. A herd of elephants that could populate a small country managed to find room in my mother’s apartment.
But of all the collections, the one that belongs in the Guinness Book of Records is the dreaded Bag Collection. They were everywhere, drawers, cabinets, sheds, closets, under stairwells, behind appliances, inside other bags. There were bags made of plastic, and paper (with and without handles), and canvas and nylon with names from companies that had gone out of business long ago like Lyttons and Woolworths and Pint Size. There were too many bags to count. There wasn’t enough time. We had to be out in a year.
Our biggest fights were over the bags. “NO don’t throw that one out, it is strong and has handles.” She would scream. The inherent value of these bags was astronomical to my poor old mother. I offered to sell them on EBAY but she did not get the joke. I had to explain to her what EBAY was and after I did she became distraught. “You want my bags to go to strangers?” “Don’t worry I told her I will do back ground checks to make sure they find a good home.” “Don’t’ be so funny, we can use those bags” she always responded. It made no sense. She had not used them in 40 years. What was she waiting for? In her mind the potential for “use” far outweighed all other possibilities, especially disposal.
Thus, I got wise. While my poor mom who could barely walk, would sit from a chair giving me orders every afternoon I devised a plan to distract her. One day I went into her bedroom and opened a dresser drawer and found bags of necklaces from all those dead aunts who were kind enough to leave us their dinnerware. The plastic colorful beads were exactly as I had left them from days of playing dress up with my dolls. They were all tangled. I gave my mother a project! Now even she would be useful and she could do it while sitting. I asked her to untangle the necklaces. If they were untangled I could give them to my daughter to play with just as I had.
“Useful” it hit me like a thunderbolt. My mother hoarded, but was willing to give away anything to anybody if the thing would be “used”. My mother needed to feel useful and more importantly she needed all those things she had saved over the many years, the things she could never have had enough money for or the room to store them in during her impoverished childhood, to be “used”.
So on one of my many moving dates with my mom I watched her sitting at our kitchen table untangling the 50 or so necklaces she had accumulated while she mumbled about how much my daughter was going to love having the multi colored plastic beads that were the height of fashion in the 50’s. “You know your Aunt Ruth loved jewelry. She had to put a different necklace on for each outfit.” My mother lovingly talked to me about my many dead Aunts as if the necklaces she was untangling had brought them back to life in her mind. She never lifted her eyes from the task at hand. And while she stayed focus with her new found purpose, I secretly went back and forth throwing out all those bags in the dumpster sitting in the alley.
Towards the end of our packing odyssey, I found treasures only my family could appreciate like the collection of coin purses my grandmother had always used. Moving my mom was a lot of work, but finding space in my house for all those things I made fun of her for saving was even harder.
HOARDING? WHY OF COURSE!
Over 5 years ago I took on the daunting task of moving my elderly mother out of the building she had lived in for over 40 years. I now consider hoarding a genetic defect, and I obviously got the “hoarding” gene from my mother. After all, my father, a European immigrant packed all his belongs in one small leather suitcase, which of course I still have. He understood the minimalist approach to life. My mother on the other hand would qualify for the Gold Medal of hoarding. Was it a mutation that occurred in the genes when the poor woman lived through the Great Depression and had gone without so much? What I found particularly interesting was her choice of things to which she needed to amass a huge quantity. What did I find? It would be less time consuming to talk about what I did not find. However, it would not be nearly as interesting.
First, I found her collection of wishbones sitting in a kitchen drawer. All that chicken she ate could not go to complete waste. This bag of wishbones kept her and I busy for about 20 minutes as we took them one by one and pulled them apart while making our silent wishes. Do people still believe in “wish bones”? When I was growing up my mother made fried chicken every Friday. When one of us found the wishbone we would jump for joy. As a child I was always wishing for things like albums and jewelry. I suspect my mom was wishing for a safe journey through life for all three of her kids. That day in the same kitchen more than 3 decades later, we sat pulling apart the wish bones and silently making out wishes. While I gazed at her crooked wrinkled hands wrapped around the tiny bony my wishes were always for her to have a happy and really really long life.
Each afternoon played out like another scene in our own “Moving My Mother” movie. My mother also loved collecting entire sets of dishes from every relative who ever died in our family. One afternoon I found a total of 6 full sets of dishes in large boxes. Each dish, cup, saucer and serving piece was individually wrapped in old newspaper for safe keeping. I opened each box and unwrapped a sample dish to examine the pattern.
My mother would quickly ask me
“Now whose dishes were those?”
“I have no idea. How would I know?” Then I examined the newspaper it had been wrapped in “Wait a minute. I know how we can solve this mystery” I exclaimed! “Who in our family died in 1968?”
“Aunt Ruth” she shouted like a happy contestant on Family Feud.
As my mother’s face lit up with memories of her beloved sister I cracked open the next box and begun unwrapping one of the coffee cups.
“Who died in 1983?” I asked.
“Oh that was Aunt Minnette.” She says wistfully while taking the cup into her hand. Her brother Mikey’s wife was one of her best friends.
A box of black and white photographs found in brown paper bags provided endless trips down memory lane and my mother easily recalled endless details including old addresses, phone numbers, and names of friends from factories where she worked during World War II. She never forgets anything. There is no irony that she also collects figurines of elephants. They are her favorite animal, and one that is known for having an excellent memory. There are elephant figurines on every window sill in the house and on all the coffee tables. A herd of elephants that could populate a small country managed to find room in my mother’s apartment.
But of all the collections, the one that belongs in the Guinness Book of Records is the dreaded Bag Collection. They were everywhere, drawers, cabinets, sheds, closets, under stairwells, behind appliances, inside other bags. There were bags made of plastic, and paper (with and without handles), and canvas and nylon with names from companies that had gone out of business long ago like Lyttons and Woolworths and Pint Size. There were too many bags to count. There wasn’t enough time. We had to be out in a year.
Our biggest fights were over the bags. “NO don’t throw that one out, it is strong and has handles.” She would scream. The inherent value of these bags was astronomical to my poor old mother. I offered to sell them on EBAY but she did not get the joke. I had to explain to her what EBAY was and after I did she became distraught. “You want my bags to go to strangers?” “Don’t worry I told her I will do back ground checks to make sure they find a good home.” “Don’t’ be so funny, we can use those bags” she always responded. It made no sense. She had not used them in 40 years. What was she waiting for? In her mind the potential for “use” far outweighed all other possibilities, especially disposal.
Thus, I got wise. While my poor mom who could barely walk, would sit from a chair giving me orders every afternoon I devised a plan to distract her. One day I went into her bedroom and opened a dresser drawer and found bags of necklaces from all those dead aunts who were kind enough to leave us their dinnerware. The plastic colorful beads were exactly as I had left them from days of playing dress up with my dolls. They were all tangled. I gave my mother a project! Now even she would be useful and she could do it while sitting. I asked her to untangle the necklaces. If they were untangled I could give them to my daughter to play with just as I had.
“Useful” it hit me like a thunderbolt. My mother hoarded, but was willing to give away anything to anybody if the thing would be “used”. My mother needed to feel useful and more importantly she needed all those things she had saved over the many years, the things she could never have had enough money for or the room to store them in during her impoverished childhood, to be “used”.
So on one of my many moving dates with my mom I watched her sitting at our kitchen table untangling the 50 or so necklaces she had accumulated while she mumbled about how much my daughter was going to love having the multi colored plastic beads that were the height of fashion in the 50’s. “You know your Aunt Ruth loved jewelry. She had to put a different necklace on for each outfit.” My mother lovingly talked to me about my many dead Aunts as if the necklaces she was untangling had brought them back to life in her mind. She never lifted her eyes from the task at hand. And while she stayed focus with her new found purpose, I secretly went back and forth throwing out all those bags in the dumpster sitting in the alley.
Towards the end of our packing odyssey, I found treasures only my family could appreciate like the collection of coin purses my grandmother had always used. Moving my mom was a lot of work, but finding space in my house for all those things I made fun of her for saving was even harder.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
351 Days Until the Big 50
Countdowns. Names etc.
I never realized how difficult counting backwards was going to be. The other day I called my mother and asked her if she was still 90. She turned 90 on July 14th. She answered “no, I am going backwards, I am 82.” She can be pretty funny sometimes. I told her I was going to change her name to Benjamin Button, but she did not catch the reference and skipped to a different topic. Benjamin, my father, that is who you are named for. “My Benyamin”, and she says it so endearingly I can actually feel the love over the phone.
Too bad I grew up hating my strange name. I would badger my mother when I was a child about this topic. Actually, I still do. Beth, Betsy, Beverly, Barbara. All perfectly good girl names starting with the letter B that would not have made me stand out like a sore thumb among the Marlas, Julies, Eileens, Michelles, Judys, Janices , Audreys, Helens and Lauras. I grew up when people did not want some unusual name . Now it is more acceptable, almost chic to be something other than one of the top ten most popular names. Now everyone strives to make their kid stand out from the get go and it all begins with a name. By time the kids are 3 or 4 then the parents can make them stand out in some other way, usually sports, sometimes academics or music. Just as long as they, “stand out” or is it really about standing “above”. The competition never ends. Was it always that way? My mother will regale me with stories of how they helped each other “back then” or slept on beach without fear because there were no air conditioners. Now she finds herself making new friends and being irritated by some of them. “Estelle wants me to save her a seat in Bingo, but she shows up late and I am not going to get in a fight with someone else because Estelle wants to sit across from me. Yesterday she got all angry and huffed out when she could not sit near me. I am in a wheel, I cannot move. It stay where my caretaker puts me. Is she wants to sit by me, then she will have to show up on time.” The story sounds a lot like the ones I hear from my 10 year old about recess and who wants to play with whom and why it is not her fault if there are not enough swings on the playground. My mother calls all the old people where she lives “recycled teen agers.” I guess it is all about going green, not gangrene of course, that would be bad. Just girls in depends squabbling over their place in the dining room/high school cafeteria or Bingo hall.
My mother lives in Lincolnwood Place. I imagine a monopoly game aimed at the elderly. Now they either play Bingo or cards. But what if we could customize the monopoly game. It is done for other markets like Pokemon lovers or Disney aficianodos. I think the Senior Citizen Edition would be fascinating:
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Social Security.
In stead of 4 train stations, we would have 4 Rest Stops with Bathrooms for those who need to make frequent stops (hell, that applies to my age group now!)
Go Directly to the Hospital (aka Jail) , do not pass go, even if you have to “go”, and do not collect Social Security.
Get out of Hospital Free Card.
FREE PARKING, shows a pictures of a walker or a wheel chairs instead of a car.
COMMUNITY CHEST: Possible cards include:
Mazel Tov, Your Son became a doctor, you collect $1,000 (okay, obviously I am Jewish)
Mazel Tov, Your Daughter Marries a doctor, you collect $300 (after all you are just an
In-law.
Congratulations, Your Daughter became a doctor, you collect $10,000. Now aren’t you glad you told your daughter girls could be doctors too!
You buy stock in Depends, collect $200
You held on to your family home just a little too long, pay the tax man $10,000
You get into the movies at a discount collect $3.
You can no longer use the bus, call a cab, pay $40.
CNANCE: Possible Cards include:
Chance? What chance? There is no such thing.
Chances Are…. That was my favorite song
Chance, I tell you what chance is. That neighbor I hated for 40 years and was so happy
to get rid of when I moved into this place, just moved in down the hall.
Any Chance there is a bathroom within 10 feet of here?
Possible property sites:
Ellis Island
The Fruit Stand
Maxwell Street (Chicago version)
Perhaps a restaurant ROW featuring: What’s Cooking (okay, Chicago version again), The Bagel (Sorry, you may be able to take the writer out of a Jew, but you cannot take the Jew out of the writer), McDonalds with a Senior Discount Card.
States with a lot of old people: Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas , ANY warm climate I guess.
The corner
The Bench
Park “Yourself” Place
Bored With Walkers Place
In order to account for inflation or simple as a nostalgic gesture of good will houses would only cost $10 and apartment buildings would be $30. Also, if you afford them, you just rented like the rest of the world. Better yet, for those who could not qualify for a mortgage you would borrow the money from your sister and your spouses sister (which is what my parents did) and pay them back monthly instead of finding some money scavenger to put you into debt with interest payments so far above your means you could not crawl out from under it with a bulldozer!
Those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end and most of us were not even alive yet. In 1950 my mother was 32, and an old maid living with her parents and her sister. My father had just arrived from Europe. If time was really traveling backwards for my mother who is now 90 I wonder if she would make the same choices during her game of Monopoly in Real Life? Would she buy the same properties? Would she take a Chance on marrying a charming foreigner and having kids? Would she have seen through the charm into the darkness of his past and stayed happily living with her parents and sister for her entire life? Oh, well, she may want to go backwards and we can all fantasize on the “what ifs”, but in reality my mother likes Bingo and Card games better. Yes, luck is involved in all these games, but at least Bingo and Card games let you finish and start a new game a lot quickly than Monopoly, which can seem to go on forever at times. I don’t like playing games that feel as if they never will end. I preferred Scrabble, it comes with a timer and it involves words. But life, hopefully, is a lot more like Monopoly, really long. Keep going forward Becky, 90, 91, 92, 93 because if you start going backward eventually you might just erase me (and my crappy name). Then who in this world would remember Benjamin Katz and all that love you had for him?
I never realized how difficult counting backwards was going to be. The other day I called my mother and asked her if she was still 90. She turned 90 on July 14th. She answered “no, I am going backwards, I am 82.” She can be pretty funny sometimes. I told her I was going to change her name to Benjamin Button, but she did not catch the reference and skipped to a different topic. Benjamin, my father, that is who you are named for. “My Benyamin”, and she says it so endearingly I can actually feel the love over the phone.
Too bad I grew up hating my strange name. I would badger my mother when I was a child about this topic. Actually, I still do. Beth, Betsy, Beverly, Barbara. All perfectly good girl names starting with the letter B that would not have made me stand out like a sore thumb among the Marlas, Julies, Eileens, Michelles, Judys, Janices , Audreys, Helens and Lauras. I grew up when people did not want some unusual name . Now it is more acceptable, almost chic to be something other than one of the top ten most popular names. Now everyone strives to make their kid stand out from the get go and it all begins with a name. By time the kids are 3 or 4 then the parents can make them stand out in some other way, usually sports, sometimes academics or music. Just as long as they, “stand out” or is it really about standing “above”. The competition never ends. Was it always that way? My mother will regale me with stories of how they helped each other “back then” or slept on beach without fear because there were no air conditioners. Now she finds herself making new friends and being irritated by some of them. “Estelle wants me to save her a seat in Bingo, but she shows up late and I am not going to get in a fight with someone else because Estelle wants to sit across from me. Yesterday she got all angry and huffed out when she could not sit near me. I am in a wheel, I cannot move. It stay where my caretaker puts me. Is she wants to sit by me, then she will have to show up on time.” The story sounds a lot like the ones I hear from my 10 year old about recess and who wants to play with whom and why it is not her fault if there are not enough swings on the playground. My mother calls all the old people where she lives “recycled teen agers.” I guess it is all about going green, not gangrene of course, that would be bad. Just girls in depends squabbling over their place in the dining room/high school cafeteria or Bingo hall.
My mother lives in Lincolnwood Place. I imagine a monopoly game aimed at the elderly. Now they either play Bingo or cards. But what if we could customize the monopoly game. It is done for other markets like Pokemon lovers or Disney aficianodos. I think the Senior Citizen Edition would be fascinating:
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Social Security.
In stead of 4 train stations, we would have 4 Rest Stops with Bathrooms for those who need to make frequent stops (hell, that applies to my age group now!)
Go Directly to the Hospital (aka Jail) , do not pass go, even if you have to “go”, and do not collect Social Security.
Get out of Hospital Free Card.
FREE PARKING, shows a pictures of a walker or a wheel chairs instead of a car.
COMMUNITY CHEST: Possible cards include:
Mazel Tov, Your Son became a doctor, you collect $1,000 (okay, obviously I am Jewish)
Mazel Tov, Your Daughter Marries a doctor, you collect $300 (after all you are just an
In-law.
Congratulations, Your Daughter became a doctor, you collect $10,000. Now aren’t you glad you told your daughter girls could be doctors too!
You buy stock in Depends, collect $200
You held on to your family home just a little too long, pay the tax man $10,000
You get into the movies at a discount collect $3.
You can no longer use the bus, call a cab, pay $40.
CNANCE: Possible Cards include:
Chance? What chance? There is no such thing.
Chances Are…. That was my favorite song
Chance, I tell you what chance is. That neighbor I hated for 40 years and was so happy
to get rid of when I moved into this place, just moved in down the hall.
Any Chance there is a bathroom within 10 feet of here?
Possible property sites:
Ellis Island
The Fruit Stand
Maxwell Street (Chicago version)
Perhaps a restaurant ROW featuring: What’s Cooking (okay, Chicago version again), The Bagel (Sorry, you may be able to take the writer out of a Jew, but you cannot take the Jew out of the writer), McDonalds with a Senior Discount Card.
States with a lot of old people: Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas , ANY warm climate I guess.
The corner
The Bench
Park “Yourself” Place
Bored With Walkers Place
In order to account for inflation or simple as a nostalgic gesture of good will houses would only cost $10 and apartment buildings would be $30. Also, if you afford them, you just rented like the rest of the world. Better yet, for those who could not qualify for a mortgage you would borrow the money from your sister and your spouses sister (which is what my parents did) and pay them back monthly instead of finding some money scavenger to put you into debt with interest payments so far above your means you could not crawl out from under it with a bulldozer!
Those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end and most of us were not even alive yet. In 1950 my mother was 32, and an old maid living with her parents and her sister. My father had just arrived from Europe. If time was really traveling backwards for my mother who is now 90 I wonder if she would make the same choices during her game of Monopoly in Real Life? Would she buy the same properties? Would she take a Chance on marrying a charming foreigner and having kids? Would she have seen through the charm into the darkness of his past and stayed happily living with her parents and sister for her entire life? Oh, well, she may want to go backwards and we can all fantasize on the “what ifs”, but in reality my mother likes Bingo and Card games better. Yes, luck is involved in all these games, but at least Bingo and Card games let you finish and start a new game a lot quickly than Monopoly, which can seem to go on forever at times. I don’t like playing games that feel as if they never will end. I preferred Scrabble, it comes with a timer and it involves words. But life, hopefully, is a lot more like Monopoly, really long. Keep going forward Becky, 90, 91, 92, 93 because if you start going backward eventually you might just erase me (and my crappy name). Then who in this world would remember Benjamin Katz and all that love you had for him?
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