As I was driving home from dropping Sean off at school the other day, I noticed the long line of cars wrapped around Starbucks and the crowded parking lot and I got to thinking how no one drops by for coffee anymore.  It seems that everyone goes to Starbucks instead.

Friends dropping in for coffee is all but a remnant of another era and I think that is kind of a shame that we aren’t available for spontaneous interaction anymore, that we don’t open our homes for that sort thing, that we are just too busy or that we don’t think our homes perfect enough or clean enough or whatever enough.

As I have mentioned here before, my parents live in the same house they bought in 1956.  In that time, they have served approximately 23,436 cups of coffee to neighbors, wayfarers, odd-ball relatives and the occasional long-lost friend who just dropped in.  My parent’s coffee pot has been on for 54 years.

My parent’s kitchen defies everything Southern Living tells us we need to create a warm and welcoming space for visitors.  Their home is not big and bright and you certainly will not find anything new or matching or from Pottery Barn there.  Their kitchen would make Martha Stewart cry.

The avocado green paneling is circa 1972. The pattern on the linoleum floor is all but worn off and slick from the constant ironing of the rolling chairs. (Aside:  I’ve always thought that chairs with rollers were an interesting choice for a kitchen so small you can reach anything without having to get out of your chair.  And in a 100-year-old house that has settled substantially, rolling chairs on slick linoleum means you could potentially roll out the back door if you are not paying attention.)

The refrigerator is covered in pictures of grandchildren and great grandchildren and postcards and magnets with wise sayings.  The table is always so cluttered that you have to scooch books and puzzles and prescription bottles aside just so you might carve out four square inches of real estate to set your cup down.  The trick is scooching it all en masse, like a tectonic plate, to just the correct degree, so that whatever is on the other end of the table doesn’t fall off like California into the Pacific.

The 45-year-old Melmac coffee cups don’t match, nor do any of the not-silverware.

My mother does not serve fancy or flavored coffee — it’s Folgers or whatever is on sale and if you want cream, it’s store brand Coffeemate.

Their kitchen is teeny tiny and cramped and cluttered and woefully out of date.  It’s not fancy or comfortable and would not pass the white glove test.

Nonetheless, people want to go there and hang out for a time and chat,  and they have for more than half a century.  Something there draws ‘em in and it ain’t the kitchen or the coffee.

Must be the conversation and the company.

The other afternoon Sean and I went out for a walk. It was a glorious Indian summer day, warm and peaceful and perfect in every way.

He spied the very last of the ripened dandelions and plucked it out of the ground.  “Okay Mom,” he said, “Be quiet.”

I stood quietly and respectfully off to the side while he stood as still as a totem pole, eyes closed and holding up the dandelion to his lips.  Then he whispered, “I wish Vivian could come see me every year!”

He inhaled deeply with a squeak and then blew with all his might, scattering his wish to the wind. He blew and blew and blew until there was nothing left but a bald stem.

As we continued our walk towards home, I told him I thought that was a nice wish.  I told him I thought it was much better to wish for people than for stuff.

He nodded in agreement.  Then he said, “You know a prayer is kind of like a wish you share with God.”

All I could do was nod in agreement.

I love paisley and I always have. I think paisley adds a touch of class to nearly anything.

Once, when I was a young girl, I was looking through our family photographs when my eye was drawn to one of the few color photographs in the box. I pulled the picture from the box and studied it closely for a long time.

It is a picture of my mother. She is a young woman. She is wearing a paisley dress, cyan blue, the color of a shallow tropical sea. She is seated deep in a chair with her long athletic legs crossed. She is wearing high heels. Her thick wavy auburn hair contrasts with the vibrant blue green dress in the most resplendent way, in a way that makes you want to look from the dress to her hair and back to the dress again. She is looking confidently into the camera with a sultry “I dare you” expression.

The sexy young woman in the picture is clearly my mother. But not. It seemed implausible to me that this paisley wearing woman was the same woman who nightly rescued me from the dark, pulling me into the safety of her bed, curling me into the soft warm curve of her tummy. My mother never wore high heels or fancy clothes, let alone paisley, and she certainly never sat around looking sultry!

At that moment, I realized that my mother had a life before me and beyond me. It was an odd and uncomfortable thought, almost inconceivable, but at the same time… thrilling. And I think it was then, in that moment, that I fell in love with paisley.

My mother is a smart lady. She could have been anything she wanted to be, she could have worn paisley every day. But she chose to have children instead and through us correct the hurts and injustices of her own childhood.

I don’t actually remember seeing my mother wear that paisley dress, but I remember seeing it hang in the back of her closet year after year.

If she had any regrets about the choices she made for her life, she kept them stashed away in the back of her closet along with the paisley dress. And we never knew it.

Christmas 1961.

In case you were wondering who my company was yesterday, it’s my mommy.  She’s still here.  Sometimes I like to be coy. 

The upside to that is that she is occupying my child which means I can do other things, like go get my teeth cleaned – just a little hobby of mine, something I like to do in my spare time.

The downside to that is she can’t vote for me which means I’ll probably win this prize. So, maybe you could get your mother to vote for me? (That’s once every 24-hours through November 8th! Operators are standing by! Call now and get a set of Ginzu knives with every vote!)

I leave you with this “that’s my boy” moment.   The other day Sean came home from school and told me that the teacher asked the class to name a fruit for the each letter of the alphabet.  As expected, he said “A” was for apple, “B” was for banana and I think he said “C” was for canna-wope.  I asked what fruit started with “D” and he said doughnut. 

Yep. That’s my boy!

Oops! How’d that get there??

Last week, we drove to Illinois to visit my parents and let Sean OD on popsicles and Wivian.

Knowing that in the coming week, that Wivian would be indulging Sean’s every whim and thereby be promoted to most favored grandmother status, Cleo, my mother-in-law, made a pre-emptive strike in the Grandma Wars and loaded Sean up with seven or eight presents to open along the way.

When we were about a mile away from MeMaw’s house, Sean demanded to open his first present and being the spineless jelly fish of a parent bent on instant gratification that I am, I let him.

From a beautiful gift bag laden with festive ribbon and colorful tissue paper he pulled a twenty-five cent pinwheel.

“Oh my!” he exlaimed. “I can’t believe my eyes! I’ve never seen such a thing!”

And then he spent the next 50 miles holding the pinwheel up to the air conditioning vent and cackling with joy.

If only his thrills would always be so cheap.

For several weeks, I’ve been pretending that I haven’t noticed that our six-year-old freezer is not really freezing. Having recently replaced a 5-year-old washing machine, the thought of our reasonably young major appliances dying off one by one was more than I could bear, so I scampered off to my happy place where appliances never break, my thighs are thin and chin whiskers are only for cats. La-luh-la-luh-lah!

But then the other day I noticed that the veggie burger that I pulled from the freezer felt more like a sponge than a frozen burger. Although a veggie burger usually tastes like a sponge, it normally doesn’t feel like one until after it’s been nuked. Nonetheless, I convinced myself that Sean had been in the freezer and that he probably hadn’t shut the freezer door all the way. Denial with a twist of logic.

However. It was hard to persist in my denial when my mother reported that she got an ice cream bar out of the freezer — and drank it.

“Have you cleaned your cylinders?” she asked. “Your cylinders are probably just dirty.” I tried to not take that personally.

I just looked at her because I couldn’t think of one thing to say other than “What are cylinders?”

“About once a year, your father brings in the leaf blower and cleans out our cylinders,” she persisted.

The image of my father in the kitchen wearing protective goggles, wrangling the leaf blower and giving the refrigerator a hot air enema while my mom, also wearing protective goggles looked on and supervised made me laugh. There’s got to be a Far Side cartoon in there somewhere.

I seriously doubted that our non-freezing freezer’s problem could be attributed to something as simple as dirt because my theory is that dirt is what’s holding this place together. So I found my owners manual and called the service number and scheduled a repairman out for this morning.

Mr. Cheerful pulled a panel off the front of the fridge and reported with a little too much satisfaction that my cylinders were dirty. I thought my mom was going to high-five him.

So then. Recap. I paid $75 plus tax for a strange man to come into my home and tell me what my mother already told me so that she could say she told me so.

Edited to add: Maybe they’re not cylinders. Maybe their coils. I don’t know. Because I wasn’t paying attention. I’m pretty sure they start with “c”. I only know that this c-word thing is dirty and I paid some guy $80 to tell me so. As if I needed something else to clean. Someone needs to invent self-cleaning cylinders and coils.

Final Edit: I’ve just been informed by experts who are standing by that it’s a compressor. So I was right. It starts with “c”.

Nothing has been more healing to me this past week than to see Sean interact with my parents. He simply adores them. And the feeling, of course, is mutual. Whereas I shaved about 20 years off their lives back in the 70s, he has added that many years and more back, just in the past week. He makes them laugh, and to hear the three of them giggling together, all caught up in some private joke, is a joyful noise.

I did not grow up with grandparents. Regrettably. And I guess we all want for our children that which we did not have ourselves. To see his eyes light up when my dad walks into the room or to watch him maneuver to sit next to my mother or hold her hand has blessed me and filled me beyond what I could describe here.

Yesterday morning at breakfast, my mother mentioned something about when they would be leaving, and no kidding, in mid-bite Sean dropped his fork to his plate. He could not believe his ears. He was incredulous. “You can’t leave!” he gasped in disbelief. “You can’t go!” He searched all the faces at the table for someone who would tell him it wasn’t so. It had not occurred to him that they would ever leave.

Last night after Antique Daddy had bathed and dressed him for bed, he scampered up the stairs to jump into bed between them to tell them goodnight. Papa Ed tells it that Wivian suggested to him that she might just take him home in her suitcase. “Okay!” he exclaimed. And then he sprang out of bed, dumped all of Papa Ed’s clothes out of his suitcase and onto the floor, tucked himself inside and pulled the lid shut. Then he popped open the lid like a jack-in-the-box and announced victoriously, “See!? I fit!” As if that sealed the deal.

Then, in the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of teeny tiny jingle bells – the familiar sound of Mr. Monkey accompanied by Sean, both stealing up the stairs to the room where my parents sleep.

“Sean!” I whispered in my stern mommy voice from the bottom of the stairs, “Get down here! What are you doing? It’s 4am.” He whispered back in a little boy way that is not really a whisper, “Oh, I was just going upstairs to look at Wivian.”

The image of him kneeling beside the bed, gazing upon the form of my sleeping mother made my heart stop. And in that split second of frozen eternity I allowed myself to wonder what he will remember of her. Maybe nothing more than looking upon the shadow and line of her face in the transparent moonlight as she slept. Maybe only that she adored him. And that would be enough.

Departure day is upon us and it is going to be a sad, sad day all around.

And let me tell you, there’s going to be an airport-style baggage check too.

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It is earlier in the week. We are sitting around the breakfast table. I am not actually sitting, I’m kind of slouched over in my chair with my head on the table because I’m still feeling like last night’s piñata from my adventures in organ removal. But I’m pretending. I’m trying real hard. My parents are reading the newspaper. Sean is being Sean.

My dad looks up from the newspaper and over his eggs and toast, he says, “Hmmph!” as though he’s just discovered something. And he has. He just noticed the day’s date and that today is their 52nd wedding anniversary. In the chaos and the crazy of the past week, everyone had forgotten.

Dad scans the heartwarming Norman Rockwell scene around the table: his doped up middle-aged daughter with her face in her plate, his grandson spooning yogurt down his pajamas and his bride of 52 years obliviously working a Sudoku puzzle.

From the look on my dad’s face, I was guessing that maybe he was imagining himself as a young man standing at the altar of St. Al’s 52-years ago, full of youth and hope, kissing my pretty mom with his hands around her tiny waist. Or maybe he was thinking he just didn’t see this coming.

Nonetheless.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad. We’ll celebrate next year, except without the morphine.

Photo: Wivian and Papa Ed, 1955

by Wivian

1960 ~ I remember it well, as though it were just 47 years ago.

I was 27-years-old and ripe as a plum with my third child. I hadn’t seen my toes since Christmas. We already had two children, two little boys, who would turn 4 and 2 in March, but my husband wanted a little girl and so I had agreed to try one last time. It was extremely cold and windy that day, even by Illinois standards. Everyone was complaining about the weather and kept telling me, “You’re probably going to have that baby tonight ~ the weather always brings babies early.” Did I listen? Of course not. Was I wrong? Absolutely!

When my water broke, a neighbor came and stayed with my two boys. The night air was frigid and the wind battered our jalopy of a car as we made our way to the hospital. There are two sets of railroad tracks between our home and the nearest hospital, both of which almost always have a train sitting on them, and I believe it was only the power of prayer that kept the roads clear until we got to the hospital.

Three records were set in our town that night. The wind had never blown so hard and it had never been that cold on that date. The other record was the birth of our little daughter. This was the first girl in my husband’s family for many many years! She topped the scales at just over five pounds and looked like a little doll.

AM’s brothers figured their lives were ruined the day we brought her home and likewise, she was always convinced that there was some mix up at the hospital – that those two hellions could not possibly be her brothers, and would we please return her to the rich family across town where she was certain she belonged. Alas, there had been no mix up and after 40-some years, I believe they have finally come to appreciate one another.

The first word most babies say is “Mama”. AM’s first words were, “Where’s my coat?” I didn’t know at the time how prophetic those words were. As soon as she could toddle, she was ready to leave home. Her favorite place to visit was her Godparent’s house, across the street. At two-years-old, she would pack her dolls and nightgown in a brown paper sack and go across the street where she was appreciated ~ and where there were no brothers to pester her. They loved her as if she were their own and the feeling was mutual. Then when she was 21, she packed what few things she had and moved to Texas – where she seldom needs a coat – and she has been there since.

It has been a joy to be her mother and it has been an even greater joy to see her be a mother. Except for the years between 1973 and 1978, I’d love to do it all over again.

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It’s a lovely day here in the Dallas metroplex, so Sean and I are going off to have a fun day together and leaving the computer behind. Which means that I’m going to schlufff off (I think I just made that word up) on you something from the archives. I find I do a lot of schluffing these days. But before that, there was this amusing exchange this morning:

Sean: Mommy, can I drink this? (my coffee)
Me: No, not until you are bigger, then yes, we will drink coffee together.
Sean: Daddy don’t drink coffee
Me: No (shaking head sadly) Daddy does not drink coffee.
Sean: Then he will have to drink alone.

* * *

Concrete or Cheerios, It’s All The Same

Haven’t we all, at one time or another said, “When I have a child, I’m going to do things differently than my parents.” And then of course, when you are actually entrusted with the responsibility of a pint-sized, uncivilized, miniature human being — you do all the things your parents did, and even make up some new stuff along the way. That way, when your kid grows up he can list all the things he would never do as a parent. It’s the glorious cycle of life.

Really and truly, there are not too many things my mom did growing up that I plan to avoid. What I am discovering — the longer I’m at this parenting-thing — is that I hope to be more like her and not less.

My mom was pretty laid back about most matters. It took quite a bit to push her buttons and even when you did reach that elastic limit, she would freely extend grace most of the time. This came to mind the other day when my son had dumped an entire economy-sized box of Cheerios into the sofa. I guess he thought if he stomped on them like grapes, I wouldn’t notice. As I was shoveling Cheerios out of the depths and bowels of the sofa, I really had to focus to keep my humor. My own mother would have laughed about it and then served a mixing bowl of Cheerios for lunch. I mean it wasn’t like he was free-form mixing concrete in the garage or anything like that…

When I was about 9-years-old, I decided the garage needed cleaned out. The Neat-Freak Gene exhibited itself early on. So I hauled everything out of the garage, including a 25-lb of concrete mix, but since it was 25-lbs and I was 9-years-old and weighed not much more than that, I dropped it and it broke open. That’s when I had the great idea that I would hose it out… And the funny thing is that when you combine concrete mix and water – you get concrete!! I kept working quickly and quietly with the hose and broom hoping to get the mess cleaned up before anyone noticed, but I just kept making more and more concrete until finally my spaghetti-sized arms could do no more. So I ran inside and tried to tell mom that there was a growing mass of concrete in the garage. I now recognize that expression she had on her face. It’s the one where you hear a heavy thud somewhere in the house and then silence. Never a good thing.

Anyway, I expected when Mom saw my handiwork that she would blow a gasket and blister my behind, but she just grabbed a shovel and made a nice little sidewalk beside the garage.

Calm and creative. That’s the kind of mom I want to be.