The Road to Americus

I’ve often thought I’d like a roadmap of my life, an old-fashioned paper map with creases and wrinkles and pencil markings of all the places I’ve been. It would include the happy spaces and the sad places, the places I never should have been to begin with, the wrong turns, the dead ends, the uh ohs and the oh wows, the just-glad-to-be-there safe havens, and the home sweet homes. Some of the roads would have only a couple of lines, the getting there and the getting back marks, others would’ve been penciled in so many times there would just be a torn space where the graphite had once been.

The road from Warner Robins to Americus, Georgia would be one of those torn lines, a dogleg tattered groove starting in the middle of the state and then heading south and finally west.

I’d never thought much about Americus until I landed in Warner Robins as a young wife, mother, and teacher. That’s when my work friends told me about little Georgia Southwestern College, a good and relatively close place to get a Master’s Degree. After eschewing the tiny school as being beneath me, even with my less-than-stellar transcript from the University of Georgia, I decided to matriculate. The first pencil line on my map to Americus would have been dated early June of 1977 when I drove down the rural highway to register for classes. During the next ten summers or so, I traveled that road twice a week, earning two graduate degrees and coming to appreciate all a small college could offer.

It’s one of those quirky tricks of fate that Americus’ claim to fame not only included Georgia Southwestern College but also Magnolia Manor, with its retirement center and nursing home, the place where both of my parents would eventually live and die. Good Methodists that they were, my mother and father believed you just couldn’t get to heaven without at least stopping by Magnolia Manor on your way out the door. I hadn't paid much attention to conversations about Magnolia Manor when I was growing up, never believing in my adolescent mind that anyone I really cared about would ever end up in a place like that.

Of course, as with many youthful beliefs, life proved mine wrong. A few years after I’d finished my last class at GSW, my daddy became too ill for my mother to care for him in their home on the Georgia Coast, so he was moved into the nursing home in the same small town at the other end of that southwest Georgia road I’d driven for ten years.

Daddy wasn’t too happy about being in a nursing home, partly because he couldn’t get a decent haircut, so he called and told me I needed to get a razor and drive down to shave his head. I was horrified at the thought of taking a blade to my daddy’s scalp so I stopped at Walmart on my way into town and bought an electric hair trimmer. When I’d finished with the buzz cut I’d attempted, Daddy looked like he’d just finished a fight with a bobcat, with the bobcat being the paws-down winner. I, on the other hand, was proud he at least still had his ears. During the three years Daddy lived at the nursing home at Magnolia Manor, he never did ask me for a haircut again.

Daddy died in 1994 when I was in the midst of getting my doctorate at the University of Georgia by way of another well-traveled road. When I completed that degree, I was offered a teaching position at none other than Georgia Southwestern State University, the new name signifying my old school's advancement within the university system. I accepted in spite of the pay cut, believing that the lifestyle and the Dr. Mayo status would make up for the lack of money.

Never thinking I would stay as long as I did, I decided to continue living in Warner Robins where Molly was still in school and to commute to Amercius. During the seven years I worked full time for GSW, I made the 120 mile round trip an average of four days a week year round, 600 miles per week. Most of those trips were work related, but some were to visit my mother and take her to lunch, as she, too, had made her way to Magnolia Manor at that point, first in assisted living, finally in the nursing home.

Although the trip itself quickly became perfunctory and mundane, lots happened on that road to and from Americus throughout those seven years. I watched the crops come and go each season and enjoyed some beautiful sunsets. I laughed at the crazy whirling dog who greeted me most mornings as he dirvished himself way too close to the highway for my driving comfort. I mourned the dead deer who apparently weren't as smart as the dog, and tried my best to dodge the turnips that would truly fall off the backs of old farm trucks. I worried about my kids, worried about money, and worried about my future. Then on one trip on a September day in 2001, I learned of the horrific events that would change everything and then I worried about us all.

During that time, I also wrote my three crazy books in my head as I drove, thinking up fictional roles for Macon State Prison, the old Manhattan Shirt Factory, and Debra, my first real friend who happened to be black, as I daydreamed my way to and from work. And there was that Friday evening, driving home after seeing Mama look so bad, and then turning around and going back the next day, marginally functioning in a state of disbelief after getting the call letting me know she was gone.

Now that I live in Atlanta, I don't go to Americus very often, but just this week, I added a couple more pencil marks to my mind map when my friend, YeVette, asked me to teach a class while she was out of town. Because the trip was no longer commonplace, I spent the time appreciating the countryside and awash in memories. The drive was still gorgeous, with its pristine Mennonite farms, verdant pecan orchards, and corn and cotton crops, but it was the pictures in my head that kept me most occupied: Daddy and his hair cut, Mama and her favorite lunch spots, my teachers, students, and friends from my GSW days, and that crazy dog.

But what I thought about most was the life I've lived during the thirty-three years since my first trip on the road to Americus, and all the other roads I've traveled. And, even though my life map is pretty full, I feel relatively confident I'm not finished yet. I'm looking forward to seeing what I'll pencil in next. I just hope it's not one of those places I never should have been to begin with. I do hope those trips are over.

The Left Coast

Okay, I've been meaning to come clean about this but have been putting it off. I think I'm ready now. Here goes.

I'm bi-coastal.

I know it's hard to believe and, trust me, it's a difficult life. The looks I get, people not understanding, the indecision, the not being able to remember where I am when I wake up on any given morning.

I have to blame my children. Two of them just up and moved to Oregon, which is on the West Coast or, as The Big Kat calls it, the Left Coast, while the third one refuses to leave Georgia, which, if I remember correctly, is on the East Coast, or, as the Big Kat would probably call it, the Right Coast. Then, the two who moved started procreating at an alarming rate, three kids in three years, and those kids turned out to be pretty darned cute despite their parentage and grand-parentage. And, to further complicate things, I have to believe my baby will have babies of her own at some point, little southern babies, not western babies.

So what was a Grammy to do? I tried staying in a hotel when I was in Portland but that was too expensive a way to seek refuge for very long. Stay with the kids? You’ve got to be kidding me. We don’t like each other that much, plus it takes me weeks to get used to west coast time.

I ended up buying a tiny condo in St. Johns, a quirky little village in the middle of Portland, where I’m within walking distance to my first and third grandchild and a pretty quick drive to my second. I like to describe my Portland condo as being like a not particularly well-appointed suite in a mid-priced hotel. I live there each Christmas vacation and during the summer. While I’m gone, my friend Susan waters my poor pitiful Atlanta houseplants each week and checks on my car to make sure it's still there. One thing I had to do was to give my cat Chloe time to die of old age before I could make my move to dual citizenship, as I was pretty sure neither of us would've survived her taking on this lifestyle.

I lucked out with my Portland home, parlaying someone else's misery into something good for me when I purchased it in a short sale. And I like to think, because I enjoy small spaces, my two homes are smaller together than the one home of many of my friends. For example, I have two bathrooms. They just happen to be twenty-five hundred miles apart. Rather inconvenient when I have guests, but otherwise just fine.

Although The Big Kat cleverly calls the West Coast the Left Coast, I’ve found Portland and Atlanta to be about equal on the liberal-o-meter, although that conclusion just might be based on the people I hang out with. Portland is, however, much greener than Atlanta. There are bike lanes everywhere and Portlanders take their recycling quite seriously, so seriously, in fact, that I’m a nervous wreck as pick-up day arrives each week. Am I putting everything in the correct container? Are the garbage people going to ridicule me because there is evidence of meat eating? Is possession of styrofoam in Oregon a misdemeanor or a felony?

Another difference between my Atlanta home and my Portland home is air conditioning, in that, in Portland, I don’t have any. When I tell Southerners that little tidbit of Oregon news, they automatically start fanning themselves with invisible cardboard funeral parlor fans. But, the truth is, except for a few days in late July, I don’t miss it at all. In fact, June almost always finds Portlanders in some kind of funky hoodie as they bike to the green market or recycling center.

In front of my Portland home. Note the bicycling family and the blue recycling bin.

I also like to think about how Georgia and Oregon are alike in a weirdly wacky diametrically-opposed kind of way. Georgia, on the East Coast, is the second most southern state in the contiguous US. Oregon, on that other coast, is the second most northern state within the put-together part of our country. They both have a gorgeous coastline, although Oregon has much more of it. They both have mountains and rivers and back-wood small towns and people with few teeth and/or meth addictions. They also both have professional sports teams and state universities with rabid football fans. I must say, however, that UGA's uniforms are much manlier than those green and yellow get-ups the poor University of Oregon players are forced to wear.

Despite all the ways Georgia and Oregon are alike and different, and my good luck in finding a second home in Portland, the sad bottom line of this otherwise happy story is that my first two children couldn’t have moved any farther away from their mama and still stay in the united part of the United States unless I lived in Miami and they moved to Seattle. But I’ve outsmarted them and I know where they live and I’ll be in Portland in a few days, as soon as I drive down to middle Georgia to kiss my third one goodbye for the summer.

I just wish I could have a cat.

Tuna Tuesday

I come from a short line of bad cooks. My mother always said that anyone who could read could cook, but she and I proved her wrong. At Mama’s funeral, my brother brought us all to tears when he said, “There wasn't a can our mother wouldn’t open to make sure we were fed.” Because I am a more modern cook, my preferred mode of culinary conveyance is the microwave. I not only nuke normal items like potatoes and frozen foods, I also microwave meatloaf and barbecued chicken, dishes known for their slow cooking in order to develop flavor. I tend to believe fast cooking just develops it faster.

When I was married, The Big Kat said that whatever fell out of the freezer when I opened it was what we had for supper on any given day. That wasn’t true, but about once a month we would have what I liked to call our Missionary Meal, which was made up of all the tiny bits of leftovers from former tasty meals I’d packed away in the freezer. There would be a spoonful of this and a spoonful of that on each of our plates, all suffering from some degree of freezer burn. I think that was about the time Melissa started eating soup from a can, literally from the can without benefit of bowl or stove-top or even microwave. Billy still swears he starts swelling up when he just gets a gander at my French fries because of the amount of salt I put on them. I am one of those cooks who thinks if a little bit of something is good, a lot of it will be that much better, especially when that something is salt.


Then there was my powdered milk phase. When Melissa and Billy were little, instead of buying milk and just having to throw it out when it went bad, I discovered the wonderfulness of powdered milk. It was especially great for cereal. My technique was this: pour the cereal in a bowl, pour on some still-granulated powdered milk, walk over to the sink to add a little water from the faucet, stir, and, finally, holler "breakfast is ready!" It was perfect for kids who knew no better until their Aunt Dianne invited them for a sleepover and ruined everything with her refrigerated real milk the next morning.

I’ve passed the bad cooking gene down to all three of my kids. Billy has as his signature dish something known as Flaming Fart Dip, and Melissa has been relegated to dish-washing duty in her family. The other day, I was talking on the phone to Molly and there was a strange noise in the background. When I asked her if she was peeling carrots, she said she wasn’t because she didn’t know how to peel anything. The noise was, instead, associated with tearing the plastic wrap off of something before putting it in the microwave, which, I surmise, is a form of peeling, thereby proving Molly wrong as she can, indeed, peel something.

Not too long ago, my friend Allison invited Molly and me over for dinner. She said it wouldn't be any trouble, she's just do up a London Broil. When I told Molly about it she was really excited, but, because she is my child, she wasn't quite sure what a London Broil was. When she got home, she called Billy in Oregon, asking him what he thought it was. His response: "I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm pretty confident it's some kind of fish."

Although not a good cook, I am an organized planner. When the kids were growing up, they could always expect fish sticks on Friday even though we were Methodist and not Catholic. Monday was tacos; Tuesday, spaghetti; Wednesday, Tuna Helper; and Thursday, dogs in a blanket. Since I didn't want to have the DFACS people stopping by and interfering in my life, there were usually some vegetables thrown in each evening, mostly broccoli.

Now that I live alone and because I love alliteration, most every week I have Salmon Sunday, Meatloaf Monday and Tuna Tuesday. After that, it falls apart since I can’t cook anything that begins with W or Th and because Allison and I do our early bird dinner on Fridays. Saturdays are sometimes saved for my current specialty, which I first called Mexican Goulash because of its cilantro and noodles. Then when I realized that I might not have offended enough ethnic or food groups with that name and when I remembered my special secret seasoning (Tony Chachere's) and the fact that I sort of stir fry it, I changed it to Mexican Cajun Asian Goulash. So far, no one has accepted my invitations to stop by for a taste.

As sad as this story has been so far, there is a happy ending. When I'm in Portland, I eat like the queen I was meant to eat like. That's because of Melissa. Whereas some people marry into money, Melissa married into culinary expertise in the form of Trevor Stelson. Melissa's husband, Trevor, is a fantastic cook who creates dishes out of his brain and out of his garden, things I don't even know what they are, but they sure are good. If it weren't for Trevor, we'd all be skinny or dead or most likely both.

However, although Trevor is a great cook, he's not a perfect husband. One afternoon a couple of summers ago, Melissa and I were at her house with Miles, who was still a baby. Trevor, however, wasn't at home. He was out drinking beer. Melissa was talking about how it's usually the women who end up keeping the kids while the men are out carousing. I concurred, saying how women have to do it all, how we are overworked and under-appreciated. At that point, I looked at Melissa and asked, "What are we having for supper?" to which she responded, "I don't know. We'll have to wait until Trevor gets home."

So it looks like we'll have to keep Trevor, despite his need to play and/or watch every sporting event known to humankind and don't forget that beer thing. I just wonder if I could get him to spend his winters in Atlanta. I wonder if he would like my Mexican Cajun Asian Goulash.

One Hundred Eighty Days

That’s how long we teachers get for a school year, give or take some days, depending on the weather and the political climate. When the education experts tell us we need more time with students, we gear up for that. When the politicians tell us we need to get it all done in less time, we try our best to do that.

This year, I had one hundred seventy six days with my twenty-two second graders. We had two weather days, one for a flood and one for snow. I missed a day when my granddaughter was born and another one for staff development. Each day was seven hours long. In those hours, we worked hard; we read, we wrote, we added and subtracted and began to understand what it means to multiply, we measured stuff and tried to figure out fractions and old fashioned clocks. We also learned some Georgia history, some geography, some economics, some life science, and some things about matter and the moon. All of these endeavors were deemed by the experts as being important for second-graders to know how to do.

During our time together this year, we cohabitants of Room 119 were also quite busy with things that had very little to do with our instructional standards as we learned about ourselves and each other. Twenty-three people in one room for approximately 900 hours, that’s a lot of time with a passel of people in a small space, a heaping mass of lively humanity.

We laughed, we cried, we tripped, we fell out of our chairs, we argued, we made up, we hurt each other’s feelings, we lied, we cheated, we forgave each other, we played, we drew, we spelled things wrong, we spelled things right, we bled, we asked for band-aids, we asked to see the nurse, we sneezed, we coughed, we had lice, we asked to call a parent, we asked to go to the bathroom, we said it was an emergency, we stayed too long, we said mean things, we said sweet things, we asked a thousand questions, we raised our hands, we spoke out of turn, we were rude, we were polite, we complained, we joked, we hit each other, we ran into each other, we poked each other with fingers and pencils, we sharpened pencils, we broke the points and sharpened them again, we lost scissors and books and notes and jackets and lunch boxes, we found some of those things and swore someone stole the others, we became friends, we became enemies, we became friends again, we told on each other, we broke things, we fixed things, we colored, we cut, we started over, we glued and stapled, we ate our snacks, we shared our snacks, we fought over our food, we had our hearts broken and glued back together, we lost teeth, we put them in a baggie, we shared, we kept secrets, we fooled around, we didn't pay attention, we were sorry, and we learned our lessons.

Our class this year was a passionate one. Our highs were higher and our lows were lower. Despite the fact we could break out in a rage at the the smallest thing, we were the most caring group I think I've ever seen. We helped each other when we needed a hand, we checked on our friends, we worried about hurt feelings, and we railed against an injustice to one of us.

Like the old woman in her shoe, there were times when I didn't know what to do, but we prevailed, and our sum became more than our parts, and we were known as Mayo's class. Before we knew it, seven-year-olds had become eight, and a fifty-nine-year-old teacher was somehow sixty, and then April became May.

And so, we will move on into summer and into our next year, to a new teacher, to new students, but never again will these 23 people ever spend hours together in Room 119. The thought makes me rather sad.

The Little Man

This past Mother’s Day, I decided to re-read some letters my mother wrote to my father during the summer of 1952. Daddy was recalled to active duty by the Army during the Korean War and we were living at Fort Benning, Georgia. At some point, he had been sent to California for a few months and Mama was having to defend the home front all by herself, caring for my brother Sandy, who must have been about five, and two-year-old me. The letters are affirmations of my mother’s devotion to my father and her dedication to post-WWII family life. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

I made an unauthorized $10 expenditure today. However, it will come out of my usual $30 per week household expense account. I bought the children a wading pool.

Apparently, the summer was hot and the post pool didn't offer enough relief, so Mama had taken matters in her own capable hands. What I can't help but ponder is that the kind of frugality mentioned in the letter would be unfathomable today, as would be even considering having the husband “authorize” the purchase of a wading pool from twenty five hundred miles away (especially without the ability to text).

The letters are, indeed, sweet and evocative of the time; however; in re-reading them, I was struck by the theme that runs through them all, a theme as disconcerting with this latest reading as with former perusals.

And that theme is The Little Man and what a gem he was, the little man being my brother, Sandy. Now, you're probably thinking I'm making too much of the sibling rivalry thing here, but I'm not. Read below for evidence of my assertion:

On Sandy’s teeth pulling:

He had two teeth pulled this afternoon without a whimper. I was so proud of him and everyone made over him which pleased him no end..... Back to Sandy and the way he took this today. I really believe he is beginning to grow up and lose some of those vague fears he has always had.

Okay, maybe he was a suck-up little scaredy cat with delusional tendencies but she was still so proud of him.

Then there’s this about what a perfect little student he was at the age of five:

Did I tell you about Sandy’s report card? The comments were to the effect that Sandy is a quiet, mannerly child who is cooperative and well adjusted.

And athletic and brilliant, although a bit odd and perhaps a voyeur:

Wish you could see Sandy in the water. He’s a funny child. He learns more by watching than any other way. He was watching the life guards fooling around in the water and I looked up and there he was doing the breast stroke and not badly either. Last week he watched some boys for a while and then walked over to the edge of the pool and dived in – no preliminaries, no announcements or anything. I guess he figured it out in his head and then went and did it. Some child!

And did I mention good with money?

Sandy made a purchase today. He’s saved his allowance for 4 weeks plus his silver dollar for an inflated raft. He’s thrilled to death. By the way, he has 2 loose teeth – front bottom. One is awfully loose but he’s trying to save them till you get home so you can help him get them out. Of course, the whole idea is based on the return that the fairy is supposed to give him. I believe he'd swap every tooth in his head for suitable financial remuneration. He’s a money conscious little fellow – do you suppose he’ll be a tycoon?

It’s not that she never mentioned me, but notice how quickly she changed the subject.

We were in the water only about a short time and Marcia got mighty red. I was afraid last night that she would have blisters – but seems to be okay today. You should see Sandy. I took him out in water over his head and taught him to tread water. He did very well and would swim 3 or 4 feet out there.

Okay, the only mention of me was that I was too stupid to get out of the sun, but, at least I wasn't much trouble. See below for another example of my stupidity, but also a rather exceptional tolerance for pain.

That night she pulled the fire extinguisher over on her bare foot and I just knew I’d have to take her up for an x-ray – but apparently after the initial fright there was no damage except for white stuff being sprayed everywhere.

It was only after my mother's death that my brother owned up to being the one who dropped the fire extinguisher on my foot, the injured foot that caused me to be crippled and "different" for my entire life, having the fourth toe on my left foot be shorter than my pinkie toe.

I did, however, excel in one important way.

Wish you had seen Marcia eat tonight. She ate 2 and ½ pieces of chicken, 2 helpings of rice and gravy, English peas, cantaloupe, milk and then went over to the Olson’s and ate a piece of cake, 3 pieces of cheese, 3 carrot sticks, came back here and ate 2 graham crackers, small glass of milk and 3 mints. She probably won’t need to eat again for a week.

A great ending to this sad story would undoubtedly include additional evidence of my abuse and anecdotes about what an entitled ass my brother grew up to be. However, I must tell you that Mama was a wonderful mother to both my brother and me, and The Little Man grew into a big man and a good man, turning out to be all the things Mama predicted he would be when he was just five. I'm not sure one would call him a tycoon, but he did well in all the ways that are important, and he's my brother and I love him.

As for my tiny toe injury, I now believe Sandy told me it was his fault to make me feel better about being such an idiot when I was two. However, what would really make me feel better would be 2 and ½ pieces of chicken, 2 helpings of rice and gravy, English peas, cantaloupe, milk, a piece of cake, 3 pieces of cheese, 3 carrot sticks, 2 graham crackers, small glass of milk, and 3 mints.

Well, maybe not the English peas.

The Little Man and me. It's a wonder I could stand what with my injury.

Why I'm Not a Hoarder

I can’t watch the show, Hoarders, on A&E. It’s not that I don’t feel bad for those poor people because I do. And it’s not because it grosses me out, although it does.

It’s because I suspect I’m one of them.

Even though I don’t watch the show, I do sometimes run across an Oprah hoarding segment or a commercial for the program. When that happens, my eyes start ricocheting around my living room like ping pong balls in an after-school program, checking out the piles of books on my coffee table, the Christmas ornament on my book shelf (in May), my son Billy’s cowboy boots from when he was three, and the afghan I gave up on two years ago with the knitting needles still sticking out of it.

Right now, I’m looking at mardi gras beads I got from church (don't ask) which are suspended from iron candle stands I found in the trash, dried roses hanging up-side-down in my window (no clue what the occasion was), my mother’s souvenir necklaces adorning my walls, and a basket of CD cases on my floor. Where the CDs themselves are I don’t know, but I suspect they are somewhere in the back seat of my car.

However, from doing my Google research on the topic of hoarding, I find that I have only a couple of the traits of a true hoarder. For one thing, real hoarding, according to Google, is a sign of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I can say for pretty sure, that type of behavior would require a lot more work than I'm interested in doing.

Wait a minute. Maybe I have a few more than a couple of symptoms. I do have a cluttered living space and an inability to get rid of things. I also have an excessive attachment to Billy’s little boots and my mama’s necklaces. In addition, I don’t like people all that much and I do harbor the belief that I’ll be able to create next year’s Christmas gifts (for the few people I do like) out of those CD cases.

A friend just sent me a link to an NPR story on hoarding, hopefully because she knew I was writing about it and not because I'm a lost cause trapped under a pile of old Ladies' Home Journals. However, while reading it, I was horrified to find yet another personality trait that could indicate I have a problem, and that trait is my inability to categorize. I am one of those right-brained thinkers for whom most everything is gray. In other words, I'm not a black vs.white, good vs bad, take-a-stand kind of person, which causes me to be a Democrat, keeps me from being a Baptist, hinders my ability to tell the good from the bad and/or the ugly, and makes it difficult to decide what needs to stay and what needs to go.

Some of my few friends have similar problems with holding on to things for too long and sometimes not being able to locate them. My friend, Debbie, looked and looked for her Christmas tree stand one year, only to find it on her front porch where it had been since the previous Christmas. I also remember the Thanksgiving when Debbie had to purchase a new stove in order to cook her holiday turkey. Her old stove had been out of commission for, well, a long time. However, if Debbie were a true hoarder, she would have installed her new oven on top of her old one, which I don’t believe she did.

And here is an excerpt from a recent email from my friend, YeVette:

Yesterday I bought a sofa at the Junior Service League Attic sale. My neighbor, who is in the League, watched it and when it went to half price, twenty dollars, she put my name on it and then proceeded to pay for it and haul it home for me in her husband's pickup truck. She parked it under my carport until today when my other neighbors helped us haul it in. I was so excited to find an "antique" sofa. Okay, I admit it is a strange fabric and color, and no, I really do not have a place to put it, but I love it. I envision the day I can get it recovered for my living room. Until then, I will clean it and rearrange the living room to make a home for it. I thought about putting it in the dining room, but that just might be too much work for now.

Although YeVette has some of the attributes of a hoarder, her reference to rearranging her living room is a testament to the fact that she still has enough space to rearrange. Again, a true hoarder would have placed her new sofa on top of her old sofa or under her dining table. I do, however, need to comment on the worrisome enabling behavior of her neighbors. I can't help but wonder if there are Hoard-Anon meetings in some church basement in Americus, Georgia.

I need to say here that the two particular friends I've mentioned above aren’t lacking in smarts, education, or the ability to navigate the real world, as Debbie is a judge and YeVette, a college professor. They, like me, might be hurting a little in the womanly-arts department, and we’ll never have our homes featured in House Beautiful, but what do we care? We are people who find ourselves to be incredibly interesting (not to mention funny) and we don't really want people visiting us anyway.

Just this morning, I felt much better as I went to find my shoes for work. The bottom of my closet is currently a choreographed beauty of organized shoes, situated, two by two, like All God's Creatures hanging out in the Ark awaiting the Flood. This is so because I arranged them a few weeks ago, cleaning out my closet and putting things aside for charity, activities hoarders just don't do. I currently have my discarded shoes in a bag next to my closet and I have plans to drop them off soon. That's unless I can figure out a way to create some kind of op-art 3-D sculpture by nailing my shoes to my bedroom wall. I kind of like that idea.

Finally, I must admit some good can come from watching Hoarders. The last time I saw an episode, I ended up throwing out a bag of ice I’d purchased five years ago when I first moved to Atlanta, an act that made me feel good about myself, as I was taking control of my life. What I need to remember is that it's all about balance and taste and organization. I definitely think throwing away my five-year-old ice serves to make room in my life for other things, things like my shoe wall art. Ultimately, I'm just happy to know I don't have a problem.

Good Golly

Miss Molly

What a week this has been for you. After making the ridiculous decision to take four teacher-certification tests in one day, having had a total of eight weeks of education courses, you managed to pass all of them, getting your results a few days ago. And then there was the going to class and finding out you are now highly qualified (a No Child Left Behind leftover term) to teach either Special Ed or English or some kind of crazy combination of both.

But let’s go back about 25 years.

You were my late-in-life baby, a surprise but never a mistake. On the day you were born, as I put you to my shoulder to smell your sweetness, you patted me on my close-to -middle-aged back with your little hand, as if to say everything would be all right.

There were times during your teenage years when I questioned your commitment to that promise.

Although we had picked out Emily for you, you were a Molly from the first time I saw you. Whenever you complained about being named after a Little Richard song, your daddy told you to be grateful it wasn’t Tutti Frutti.

You didn’t have an easy childhood with your father and me divorcing when you were six, with your anxiety causing you to throw-up into Barbara’s kitty litter box each morning on your way to school, and with your sorry eyesight requiring your little pink glasses.

Barbara’s house was your safe haven while I traveled with work and other things. She did your hair, bought your clothes, packed your lunch, and was generally your mother while I climbed my ladder and followed my bliss. You were so good at school and so worried about it that I promised you a party if you’d just get into some kind of trouble.

That was a mistake. You later got into all kinds trouble and had your own parties. When you were in Middle School, I remember you drawing body parts in class and then proudly wearing the shameful orange vest with the other “misunderstood” miscreants.

And then there was high school and your first love, which could and probably should have done you in, but didn’t. I’ll never forget that day in July of 2004 when you told me you wished we could look ahead a few years so you could surprise me with how you would turn things around. Well, almost six years later, you’ve gotten your wish. However, even though I’ve been amazed by your intelligence, commitment, and stamina, and delighted with your success, I’m no longer surprised by the adult you’ve become.

The rest of that tough summer, you and I spent a lot of time together, getting to know each other all over again, reading good books and watching bad television. You began to make new friends while holding on to the old ones, who, like you, decided it was time to grow up.

I knew you were going to be fine when you got to college and started actually liking your professors, and when you changed your major from practical Computer Sciences to totally impractical English "because you loved it". At that point, those bits and pieces of earlier hard times managed to make you strong enough to take on the world, while also helping you to understand and accept the frailties of others, characteristics that will make you a wonderful teacher.

And so, my youngest child, friend to brilliant odd balls, old souls, and facile survivors, I predict you will continue to find your own way in this crazy world on whatever paths you decide to follow. In addition, it seems you have managed to keep that very first promise you made to me when you were just a few hours old. Everything is, indeed, all right.

Big Kat Does the ATL

My ex-husband, Gary (AKA Big Kat or, even better, THE Big Kat) is a character and a curmudgeon. He’s also a philosopher and a pundit. Gary is an expert on many things, even those he knows very little about.

Take Atlanta, for example. The Big Kat has been to Atlanta only about twenty times in his entire life, but he systematically reads the AJC online every day so he can keep up with who was murdered where, and why he hates it (Atlanta, not the murdering) so much.

Although he wasn’t born in Warner Robins, Gary has lived there for about 80 of his 62 years, leaving only to travel to Perry to play golf, Athens for football, and Augusta for the Masters.

Now that two of our three kids have moved to Portland, Oregon, The Big Kat has yet another metropolis to obsess about and hate. To make matters even worse, those two kids have “done gone” and had three kids of their own and so now, if he wants to see any of them, he not only has to fly to Portland, his second least favorite city in the world, he also has to drive to Atlanta, his most hated city in the universe, to catch his plane. Of course, College Park, where Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is located, isn’t really Atlanta, but to Gary, it still counts.

Just recently, Big Kat had to sojourn to the real Atlanta for a doctor’s appointment at Crawford Long Hospital right smack in the middle of Midtown. He worried about it for weeks and planned his route for days. He ultimately decided, instead of attacking it head on, he would infiltrate from the east, a maneuver General Sherman would have considered brilliant. He left just after noon on Sunday for an appointment at eight on Monday.

I'd suggested that Gary stay at the historic Georgian Terrace Hotel right across Peachtree Street from the Fox Theater as it was close to Crawford Long and because both old establishments would be in keeping with his allegiance to "how things used to be". He committed because of the $99.00 Special Rate.

However, when he called me late Sunday afternoon, all was not well. He'd made it to his hotel via his special route and had checked in just fine. The problem appeared when he couldn’t find anything on the hotel menu for supper, saying, “I can’t even tell what any of that stuff is.” The poor guy was wandering up and down Peachtree Street as out of place as a grizzly bear in a wine bar. Although most of the loud comments he was making to me from his cell phone were too politically incorrect to include here, I can report that he said he was "the only one wearing a belt", and that some Beamer had just pulled up next to him with a poodle hanging out the window barking at him.

As it turns out,The Big Kat finally happened upon a Quiznos, which made him pretty happy, and he survived the night, making it to his appointment the next morning. When I talked to him Monday afternoon, he was back in Middle Georgia where the Allman Brothers got started and God Still Lives. He had, of course, become an expert on leaving Atlanta now that he’d done it once, telling me how to access I-75 in a way much superior to any of my ways.

Although Gary was a bit peeved his $99.00 special had ended up costing him $137.50 after taxes and valet parking, he now considers the Georgian Terrace to be THE place to stay in Atlanta, not because of its relatively easy access, its comfort, its history, or the poodle; and definitely not because I recommended it. I think it’s because of the Quiznos.

Old Glory

Now that I’m finally finished with commemorating birthdays, weddings, and Daylight Savings Time, I can get to something really important, something that’s truly close to my heart (and other parts of my body for that matter), and that something is my bathtub.

My current bathtub is one of those old galvanized steel numbers they no longer even make. When I started thinking about writing about it, for some reason, Old Glory came to mind. Now, I know that Old Glory is what we call our flag and I’m as proud to be an American as anyone, but, with the American flag, you are expected to stand up. With my bathtub, I get to sit down or even recline when I take the notion.

I’ve always been a bath person. I still have memories of our bathtub in Savannah when I was a little girl, the one I was sitting in when my brother and his friend jumped out of a closet and scared me, and made me so mad I still remember it, even though he would tell you we lived in Waycross when he and his friend jumped out of a closet while I was in the tub. All I know is that it happened somewhere and I was sitting in a bathtub and I still haven’t forgiven the pervert.

Not that the bad experience turned me off of bathtubs, apparently. I told friends just recently that I’ve had very few showers in my life. They said they could tell by the smell of me. Seriously, showers have been so few and far between that I remember most of them. My most documented showers were in college. There were no bathtubs at Center Myers Dorm at the University of Georgia where I lived for two years. The showers were in stalls, kind of like toilet stalls, but with two sections, one for your towel and other showering accouterments and one for the shower itself.

I also remember a couple of cruises my mother dragged me on where each minuscule bathroom had a tiny shower and no bathtub. The good memories of cruising the beautiful Mediterranean were overshadowed, I'm afraid, by having to stand up to get clean.

And the pain never seems to end. When I visited my friend Linda on Hilton Head last weekend, I was horrified to see that her garden tub was non-functioning and it looked like a shower would be necessary. Since I was already commandeering her bed while she slept on the couch, it seemed to be a bit pushy to ask her to get a handyman in to fix the tub before bedtime.

The reason I don’t like showers is that I can’t get the temperature right and some part of me is always cold. Then there’s the standing up part. I don’t think I’m particularly lazy but I can't understand why anyone would bathe vertically when she could sit or lie down.

I do worry some about wasting water but, so far, I haven’t done anything about it. I have considered throwing my bath water out of my sun room window to hydrate the grass and bushes below but can’t figure out how to get it from the tub to the front of my condo, and I also wonder about the heart attack my friend Susan, who lives below me, would have with several gallons of dirty bathwater pouring past her window. She still hasn’t gotten over the time I threw Molly's clean laundry out of the window so we wouldn’t have to carry it down two flights of steps, which makes me remember that I don’t wash my own clothes all that often, a habit that's probably helping with that carbon footprint thing.

People tell me they won’t take a bath in a hotel because of germs or waterborne infections. You’ve got to be kidding me! Hotel baths are the best with their usually unlimited hot water that’s already been paid for with my astronomical bill and their cute little bottles of shampoo and body wash. Besides, according to those shows I watch on the Discovery Channel, after sitting on the hotel bedspread and picking up the remote control, we are already infected (and infested) with much ickier things.

In the past, I’ve decided against buying homes based on bathtubs. The back angle of the tub is of prime importance. There needs to be a slope so I can recline comfortably and submerge myself for hair-washing purposes. When I go to an open house, even for a place I have no interest in purchasing, I’ll do a surreptitious arm swoop on the back of the tub to ascertain if I could or could not live there. Whereas other people want granite counter-tops in their kitchen or a pool in their backyard, I want an obtuse angle in my bathtub.

Which leads me back to my current bathtub, the best bathtub in the whole world. The paint is peeling; the grout is bad; and guess what, the angle is wrong in its uprightness. There is no slope. What makes it the best bathtub in the world is based on two things. First, it’s five feet long. I know because I just measured it with my yardstick, this time doing real research, not just a Google search. The length of the tub allows me to wallow in the water from head to toe with just a minor bend of my neck. Second, we get our hot water from a big old boiler down in the basement, so it very rarely runs out. By the way, that’s the same boiler, according to rumors, that Margaret Mitchell’s husband used to burn the original manuscript of Gone with the Wind in his grief after her untimely death.

People also say baths aren’t very good for cleanliness and, when you take a bath, you are just sitting in your own dirt. I agree and would add that, in my case, I’m not only sitting in my own dirt but also in the dirt of all the people who took baths during the 93 years my bathtub has been in service. Just think of the historical aspect of all that dirt, especially my dirt, with little bits of Rhett Butler thrown in.

Just now, I was thinking and laughing about the fact that, if Rhett Butler showed up in my bathwater, the only person who'd be more undone than I would be poor Rhett, himself, as he got a gander at my sixty-year-old bathwater-shriveled nakedness. Now that would be something to write about. There might even be a movie in it.

It’s Hammer (Toe) Time

Last week, I spent spring break with a group of friends at Fernandina, a gorgeous old beach community on the Atlantic coast of Florida. It’s a group I hadn’t seen much of in recent years and we were excited to get together to catch up, chill out, and maybe even get down. We were going to be away from our husbands (those of us who still have one) and we planned to stay up late and be as raucous as we wanted in our borrowed vacation home. Dianne kept saying something about dancing on tables like we used to do, and I could see it happening, being that we would be a couple hundred miles away from home with no supervision. At the very least, maybe we could share crazy stories about our exciting lives.

We five women have a long history. We met when we were first married and just beginning to birth little ones. Throughout the years, when we would get together, our girl talk would center on whatever was important to us at the time. In our twenties, it was clothes and babies; in our thirties, diets and children; in our forties, PMS and teen-agers; and in our early fifties, we obsessed over empty nests and hot flashes.

I couldn't wait to see what would come up this time as we were all currently in our late fifties and early sixties. Now that we were older and less encumbered with work and children, would our interests revolve around more exciting topics? Would our talk be of younger men or increased sex drives or going back to school to become a bartender or masseuse? Had any of us taken pole-dancing lessons?

Susan had made the reunion happen. A friend of hers had purchased a get-away home one block from the beach and we were the lucky recipients of the friend’s generosity. We all arrived and unpacked after calling dibs on one of a couple of sleeping options. I ended up with the fold-out couch in the downstairs den, which was okay with me as I figured, what with all the hell raising I was going to be doing, I wouldn't be spending much time down there anyway.

The first evening, after a celebratory glass of white wine, we went early for dinner and ate inside the restaurant instead of on the patio because, well, it was a bit cool and noisy out in the wild and some of us had forgotten our sweaters and some of us have a hard time hearing if there's too much commotion. After we ate, we headed back to our island home and were in our jammies before seven. By eight-thirty, I was exhausted and ensconced in my fold-out bed, trying to stay awake long enough to hear what the others were undoubtedly saying about me.

The next day was more exciting as we were well rested and ready to go. We went to the beach in the morning before the sun got too hot, but, by noon, we were hungry and I needed a nap, so we went back and ate pimento cheese and chicken salad sandwiches.

Later in the afternoon, we went shopping in the charming village, and spent our time dipping in and out of shops, looking for mementos of our trip and asking a very patient waiting husband of another woman to take a group picture. Since Patty and I aren't much for shopping, she and I stood on the sidewalk a lot, holding our pocket books and basking in the Florida sun. After a kindly shopkeeper asked if we thought we could make it up the stairs to her second-floor gallery (we could), we gave up and ate at a seafood restaurant overlooking the harbor and then went back home, once again, anticipating the elasticity of our pajama waistbands.

But that night would be a late night, not another eight-thirty night of reading in my portable bed before the sun went down. After continuing our dinner celebration with some cookies for dessert, we settled in, getting into a deep discussion about favorite books and authors, a discussion somewhat diminished by the fact that none of us could remember the names of either the books or the authors. At some point, the talk somehow veered from literary preferences to trying to remember the name of Ellen Degeneres’ current romantic partner. The discussion went something like this:

What's Ellen’s new girlfriend's name?
Ellen has a new girlfriend?
Yeah, she's an actress. She used to be on that show.
What show?
What was the name of that show?
The one with the girl who’s with what’s his name.
Who?
The old actor who's still hot.
What’s his name?
Remember, he used to be in those movies.
What movies?
What were the names of those movies he was in?
They're together although I don’t think they're married.
Are you still talking about Ellen and her girlfriend?
No, the main character. The one with the same name as the snow.
What’s her name?
What was the name of the show?
What are the names of those movies what’s his name was in.
Who's what's his name and what does he have to do with Ellen?

All I can say is thank God for Google. How did the elderly survive in the olden days without the internet?

You'd think all the excitement over books and the beach and shopping and eating and old hot what's his name would have been enough for our sprightly group, our gaggle of still happening ladies of a certain age, but that's not so. There was another topic, a topic that garnered our attention at every juncture, at every segue, at any point when the conversation lapsed, not for just that one evening, but for the entire trip. It was the one thing that absolutely commanded our attention the whole time we were there, and that thing was

OUR FEET.

Every time I looked up, someone (including me) was investigating her foot and pointing either at her big toe or the sole of her foot or her heel or somewhere on top. The terms bandied about included bone spurs, planters warts, fallen arches, dead toenails, morning feet, night feet, and the good old hammer toe. But the bottom line was that our feet hurt! All of us. Every one of us had feet that hurt. Carol has rheumatoid arthritis and has had metal rods put through her toes. You'd think that would have shut the rest of us up, but it didn't. We kept on about our feet. We didn't talk about younger men or stripper poles or even becoming bartenders, because how could anyone pursue any of those things with feet that hurt?

I have to say, now that I'm back home and sleeping in my very own real bed, I'm so happy we five had some time together, not because it was particularly exciting, but because I finally had a group of people whose minds and bodies function like mine. Since I work with mostly young people and have young people as offspring and teach really young people, I've become accustomed to folks finishing my thoughts for me. Talking to me is typically like playing a very sad game of charades with me saying things like thingamajig and whatchamacallit, and, yes, what's his name a lot. With this group, our game had no winners, only losers, which made it an equal playing field and not quite so sad. In fact, it was a lot of fun! And then there was the foot thing. That was a blast! Having people share their gross foot stories was great. It made me feel not quite so alone in my old age.

So, here's to old friends. May we live long enough to have another spend-the-night party. Next time, I have dibs on the good bed, and maybe, instead of shopping, we should just get a foot massage.

Not Dead

In 1967, when I was a freshman at the University of Georgia, I called my parents once a week from the pay phone at the end of my hall on the 4th floor of Center Myers Dorm. It was typically a Sunday night and we girls would queue up, waiting our turn to ask the operator to please place a collect call to our families back home.

For the duration of my college years, my mother wrote to me faithfully once a week, although I don’t remember ever writing her back. In one letter, she wrote of a dream she’d had the night before, a dream in which I’d fallen or jumped out of a window and died. I suppose, at the end of the week, on a Sunday evening, I placed a collect call to let her know I wasn't dead.

When my own children were young, I remember going to the Master’s Golf Tournament each April and returning home late in the evening, worrying toward the end of the trip that something terrible might have happened to them, since there was no way anyone could have gotten in touch with their father or me. Another time, we grown-ups went out only to come home and find a fire truck in front of our house. After a short panic, we learned that our next-door neighbor had called in an alarm when her heat was turned on for the first time in months, giving off that burning smell we all know so well but forget each summer.

Opportunities for parents and offspring to communicate have certainly burgeoned in the last twenty years, sometimes to the consternation of the offspring. I can keep in touch with my now grown children via email, phone, text messaging, and paper mail, I guess, although that doesn’t happen very often. I can also stalk, I mean check up on them via MySpace, Facebook, online banking, and electronic credit card records (if I can just figure out their passwords). So far, they've held my Skype queries at bay lest I spy on them at all times day and night.

I once decided my son, Billy, was depressed because of the “sad face” emoticon on his MySpace page. When I called to ask if he needed psychiatric help, he responded that the little-picture choices on MySpace were quite limited and, shortly thereafter, he left MySpace for Facebook, hoping I wouldn’t notice.

Having each of my children “friend” me on Facebook through intimidation and guilt trips was a coup I’m still proud of, although they sometimes toy with me via that particular social network. Just this past April Fools Day, my daughter, Molly, posted an engagement announcement with an “April Fools Mom” a few hours later. However, I outsmarted her by going to bed so early that, by the time I read the posting the next morning, she’d already had to explain her prank a dozen times to other “friends”.

The problem I have isn’t that I’m not able to keep up with how (and what) my kids are doing on a weekly or even daily basis. It seems I need a minute-by-minute update; otherwise, I tend to think something disastrous has happened. This is especially true for my baby who lives about an hour and a half away and who, at 25, is way too young to be on her own. My two older children, both in Oregon, get a break because of the long distance and time difference. Whereas, my mother seemed to be okay with not knowing if I were dead for an entire week, I have to be constantly informed. It’s gotten to the point that Molly and I text each other at least once a day with the message “not dead.” That’s a worrisome thing for a mother and daughter, isn’t it?

One of my young teacher friends recently had a fight with her mother over this exact issue. It seems my friend got busy one evening and didn’t answer her phone for a couple of hours. By the next day, she and her mother weren’t speaking and, when she came to me with her problem, I told her to call, text, or email her mother immediately to tell her she understood her concern that she might be dead, and that a quick Skype feed might not hurt either.

My children and I even have an agreement about what to do in a cell phone emergency. If, by some crazy set of events, all our cell phones fall into our separate toilets at the same time, we are to consult and use our printed phone lists which we keep in our wallets since we no longer know anyone’s phone number, including our own. The primary problem with this plan is, if all of our cell phones were to be out of commission at the bottom of various bowls in some kind of sublime serial synchronicity, we wouldn’t have a phone with which to call from or to, as not a single one of us has a land line. Another problem is that I’m the only one who actually made a list.

We (mainly I) also have a major catastrophe plan. If a nuclear holocaust or a natural disaster happens, we are each to call the kids’ father’s number since my ex is one of the few people we know who still has a land line and it’s the same number he’s had for thirty years. In addition, I believe his phone still has a rotary dial and I'm pretty sure he will have lots of beer.

I'd been planning to end this story with yet more cataclysmic silliness but, when I re-read the previous paragraph, I was suddenly gripped with memories of people in Haiti, in Iraq, in our own New York City, when the unthinkable did happen, and all the newest and best means of communication couldn’t stop the heartbreak of not knowing if loved ones were alive or dead. At that point, I realized that, while technology can help us to keep in touch, even to the point of obsession, love and loss are still a part of human experience, and the ability to text message can’t ensure the safety of my loved ones.

I do believe, however, that worrying about and caring for our family and friends, and even those we don’t know, is an important part of God’s Big Plan, and, perhaps, modern technology can help us do that. I recall hearing about the huge role cell phones and computers played in the Haiti recovery effort in those first days after the earthquake, and that online donations, many for just a few dollars, ended up helping to save and support many lives.

Ultimately, I finally remembered that my mother’s dream about my being dead led her to call, not write, that next morning, a weekday, not a Sunday, something almost unheard of in my frugal, yet loving, family in 1967, and I knew that she, too, worried about me to the point of using the latest technology (and to hell with the cost) to be sure her baby was safe. To her credit, she didn't ask if I needed to see a psychiatrist.