Red Flag Day

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Coming East

Virginia Beach

The morning was radiant with sunshine on white sand, rays blazed through cloudless sky, and curling waves spewed surfers onto shore.  Beach umbrellas dotted the waterfront and our freckled bodies glistened with SPF 50.  Families were soaking in the last sounds of summer, ours among them.  Saturday we took advantage of a picture-perfect day to go to the beach.  The waves were stronger than usual due to the lingering influence of Danielle and the pull of the full moon, making excellent conditions for the weekend’s ECSC event (East Coast Surfing Championships).  Nothing about that day to cause anyone to suspect that danger was lurking just a short distance from shore—nothing except the red flags waving from every lifeguard’s chair.  The red flags indicated that strong rip currents were present, currents just below the surface of the water, ready to carry even the most experienced swimmer out to sea.  When the red flags are flying, beach-goers are supposed to stay out of the water or at least go no farther in than to their ankles or knees.  But many swimmers chose to ignore the warning whistles, putting themselves and the lifeguards in danger.  This past weekend the Virginia Beach lifeguards made 148 rescues.

I wish life were like that.  I mean, I wish we had lifeguards that could blow their whistles to keep us safe or rescue us when we’re in trouble.  I wish avoiding impending danger was as simple as staying out of the water.  But life is the water, and we’re in it up to our necks and even over our heads.  Those riptides are out there, but we don’t know where they are or when we’ll be surrounded by one.  On a perfect day without any visible sign of danger, we’re pulled under by a job loss, or by an accident, a diagnosis, a death, or some other unforseen and unavoidable peril.

So, what do we do with that knowledge?  The advice to swimmers caught in a rip current is to swim parallel to shore until they find themselves out of the pull of the current and can safely swim to shore.  In other words, have a plan.  Don’t panic.  The older we get, the more plans we need, it seems.  We can’t live in constant anxiety and fear because we know what is out there.  If we do, we miss seeing all the beautiful, cloudless days that we are blessed with.

Yes, the red flags were flying this weekend, and they will continue to fly with the approach of Hurricane Earl, but we enjoyed the beach anyway.  And I will continue to enjoy the water for as long as I am given the opportunity.

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The Curse of Automaticity

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Coming East

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

“Did you bring your medicine?” my husband asks.

“Of course,” I say firmly.  He asks this question of me, not while we’re turning the corner in our own neighborhood, but after we’ve crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and are halfway up the Eastern Shore on our way to Boston for a two-week vacation.  I sit in tense silence, picturing all our morning procedures before we pulled out of our driveway two hours ago.  Did I, indeed, remember to bring my pills?  “Yes, of course,” turns into “At least I think I did,” and “I always do, don’t I?”

Things that we have done over and over and over again have become so automatic that they are like breathing.  We don’t consciously remember doing them, yet we’ve done them just the same.  It’s automaticity.  It’s what makes you lock your door when you leave the house, use your turn signal when you change lanes, and set the house alarm before you go to bed at night.  Sometimes automaticity can be a little scary, like when you arrive at work but can’t remember the drive along the way.  You are lost in thought about that morning’s meeting and then find yourself pulling into your parking space, wondering how you got there and hoping you didn’t wipe anybody out along the way.

The trouble is, the older I get, I find that automaticity, which I’ve always been able to rely on, isn’t as trustworthy as it used to be.  It’s not working for me anymore.  I’ve left the oven on a couple of times and the garage door open once or twice.  After just a few lapses, I get anxious that I can’t count on automaticity anymore.  I tell myself I need to be more conscious of the things I do, but then memory fails me and I forget to remember to be more conscious.  I want to turn automaticity off, force myself to be deliberate about everything I do.  (Yes, of course I left the stove on.  I intended to burn the house down.)

Automaticity and age are not a good combination.  There is a slow unraveling of the process, but as long as any of it is intact, you can’t shut it down.  I’d rather be certain that I didn’t remember something than to hope that maybe I did.  Am I making any sense here?  Tell me I’m not alone in this.  Come on—don’t tell me you never walk back to your car to make sure you locked it, and, of course, it is locked.  I’d rather think, “Oh, I know I forgot to lock the car.”  Then, at least, the trip back to the parking lot wouldn’t be a waste.

My husband used to laugh at me when my memory started to fail.  Not so much anymore because of the following incident:  Husband walks around the downstairs, obviously searching for something.  He looks at the clock, worried he’ll be late for work.  Husband goes upstairs and continues looking, then stomps downstairs again, stopping on the landing when wife finally asks, “What are you looking for?”  Husband replies, “My glasses.”  Wife, with only a trace of a smirk and very little audible chuckling, says, “You’re wearing them.”

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The Spice of Life

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Coming East

My husband and I were shocked this spring when his 83-year-old mother told us she was going with my husband’s brother on a trip to Ukraine.  This is a woman who has vowed she is too old to travel anymore, yet she jumped at the chance to see her husband’s family and homeland, a place she’s never been.  Although it is close to her own homeland of Belarus, she has never been back to Eastern Europe since she left it as a young woman during World War II.  We were proud of her, though we wondered if she could even imagine how long a trip that was going to be.  It meant she has not given up on life and is not simply existing until death visits her door.

It reminded me of my father.  My dad, just like my mother-in-law, never stopped looking to the future.  He took up watercolor painting when he was 81 and bought himself a new car and a new computer.  He had a screened in porch put on his house just a year before he died.  Several times during his last ten years, he tried to get me to let him pay for braces so I could get my teeth straightened.  They don’t tell you that you must wear your retainer for the rest of your life, so my teeth had shifted over the years to the point that I was self-conscious and wouldn’t smile with my mouth open.  My dad knew this, even though I never said anything, but I kept declining his offer, saying I was too old to bother with braces again.  He couldn’t understand that attitude.  His philosophy was that life is meant to be enjoyed, and you do whatever it is that makes it enjoyable, no matter how old you are.  You only go around once.

After my mother died, my dad began inviting my husband and me over to dinner.  He enjoyed making meals from scratch, something he never attempted while my mother was alive.  She was a fabulous cook.  Often, he tried recipes gleaned from Mom’s old cookbooks.  He would serve us a delicious meatloaf.   “Betty Crocker,”  he’d proudly proclaim, as if Betty were on par with Julia, “but I added some of my own seasonings.”

Dad had a cupboard full of seasoning and spices, most of which were granite-hard and lacked any pungency in their little jars or tins.  I asked Dad one time, “How long have you had these spices?”

“I don’t know.  Your mother bought them.”  Mind you, Dad had been a widower for nine years by that time.

“Dad, you really need to replace these.  They’re only good for a year at the most.”

“But they’re more than half full.  Who could possibly use that much allspice in a year?  If they expect you to replace them so often, they should give you smaller portions and charge less,” he said.  I had to admit he had a point.  “I think that one year rule is just a ruse by the spice companies to make more money,” he continued.  He was a child of the Depression.

That Christmas I bought Dad all new spices.  It cost a fortune.  But I didn’t throw all the old spices away.  I kept one—the allspice—to remind me that the spice of life that is in us must be savored every day or we become dried up and stale.

By the way, Dad, I got my teeth straightened.  See my beautiful smile?

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Letter to My Third-Grade Teacher

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Coming East

Dear Mrs. Zunker,

I found this old photograph of my third grade class, and it brought back so many memories of you and Roger Sherman Elementary School.  That’s me, in the second row, third from the left, with the overbite (it’s been fixed since then, in case you’re interested).

My third-grade self with my brother

You taught me many valuable lessons, and I never thanked you.  You taught me never to sit in front of Christopher Rappolt when I was wearing pigtails, never to set my milk carton on the radiator unless I was fond of the taste of warm wax, and never ever to be the tail in Crack-the-Whip.  As valuable as those lessons proved to be, it was what you didn’t say that taught me more.  You never spoke to any of us with an angry voice.  You never corrected us in front of others or made us an example to the whole class.  You never made us feel stupid, even if our answers were wrong.  You never punished us for youthful transgressions but taught us to make better choices.  When I became a teacher, I thought back to that third grade class and the lessons I learned about treating others, taking responsibility for my actions, finding wonder and beauty in even the seemingly ordinary things of life, and always striving to be the best that I could be.  I hope that my life reflected that teaching to my own students.  Thank you, Mrs. Zunker, for being my teacher.

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Endless Summer

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Coming East

I took my little Emily and Matt to school today.  After such a wonderful summer, it was hard to say goodbye to them at the classroom door.  Baby Ben and I are left behind, our little four-some broken up for nine and a half months before the school bell rings one last time to signal the start of another summer.

I will miss hanging out at Fairfield Beach with them, pulling starfish off the rock revetment and catching brine shrimp in a seine.  No more going to the dairy barn to watch the cows be milked or a calf be born.  Do you know how much like sandpaper a calf’s tongue feels?  No more flying kites in the cornfields or walking in the woods, listening to the creatures stir.  No more hearing my children laugh with summer sounds as they play with the neighborhood kids.  

Now they will be sitting in four-walled classrooms, in structured rows, the spontaneous joy of summer left behind.  When they return at the end of the day, they will have lessons to do, tests to study for, the ease of summer all but forgotten.

Baby Ben and I will take walks to the student union at the university so he can have his cheese egg for breakfast, then walk past the chapel so he can say good morning to Jesus.  We will still walk to the library, returning with a stack of books we read together on the sofa, crying as the dog in the story dies, then reading the story again and crying some more.  I will savor this time for he soon will be joining his brother and sister and this time will never come again.

Oh, wait!  That was thirty years ago.  Sigh!  A mother never forgets how it feels.

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In Praise of Mediocrity

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Coming East

My pedicurist just bought a beautiful old Steinway, not a baby grand, mind you, but a full-grown concert grand.  She intends to have a piano roll installed and make it a player piano since she doesn’t know how to play.  When I asked her why she doesn’t take lessons so she can enjoy playing it herself, she answered, “Because I will never be great at it, and I’m such a perfectionist, being mediocre would drive me crazy.”

How sad to be paralyzed by perfectionism.  I am often paralyzed by procrastination, but never by perfectionism.  If I worried about being perfect at everything I did, I would never have tried half the things I enjoy doing.  I play many musical instruments—the piano, the violin, the recorder (both soprano and alto), the tin whistle, and the baritone ukulele.  With all of them, I aspire to mediocrity.  Yes, I fairly stink at most of them, some more than others, but it doesn’t bother me a bit.  I enjoy playing them anyway.  I am by no means a perfectionist, and my life is richer for it.

We live in a world where being the best is the only thing.  Witness the Olympics where the commentators bemoan the athletes who had to settle for the silver medal.  Do I wish I were a better musician?  Of course.  Everyone desires to be better.  If I worked at it diligently, would I improve?  Absolutely.  But I would still never be better than mediocre, so let me stay where I am and enjoy myself rather than aim for an unreachable goal and be miserable in the striving.

All three of my children are phenomenal musicians, and I firmly believe they got their love of music from hearing it constantly in their home growing up.  That is a case of mediocrity inspiring greatness.  Sometimes, it is just the sheer exuberance that is transformational, not the skill.

So let’s celebrate the mediocre among us.  You don’t have to have the lead in the play.  You can be in the chorus of life and still enjoy the show.  And I think I want to learn the hammered dulcimer…

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Creative Finance

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Coming East

It’s nearly that time again.  The time that deluges me with dread, makes me tremble with trepidation, and floods me with fear.  The scenario goes like this:

“Honey, bring me your checkbook so I can reconcile it,” my husband says.  He tries to keep his voice light, gentle even, like the Horse Whisperer, not wanting to spook me.  With wavering hand, I give him my checkbook and all my receipts and slink into another part of the house.

“Darling,” he calls, his voice still calm, “what is this deposit here?”  I creep back to the living room where he sits at his secretary, and peer over his shoulder.

“Um…it’s a deposit for $82.00,” I say softly.

“Yes, I see that you’ve entered $82.00, but where did it come from?  I don’t see a deposit slip and there’s nothing in your statement to indicate you made a deposit.”

“I’ll go and look for one,” I say, just for an excuse to escape, knowing perfectly well there is no deposit slip because I don’t know where the hell that $82.00 came from.  I sit in a dark corner of the kitchen, wracking my brain for an explanation.  Rising panic makes it hard to breathe.  Why can’t my husband take it on faith that somewhere during the course of the month, I had $82.00 fall into my hands and I entered that amount into my checkbook.  Why does he always need nit picky details?

“Sweetheart, did you find it?” he calls, voice a little thinner, and I slink back in.

“No, sir,” I say, forgetting I’m not a teenager addressing my father.

But he won’t let it go.  He keeps probing and prodding and pulling the explanation out of me until I finally scream,”I remember now!  That $82.00 isn’t a real deposit.  It’s more like a transfer from my no-show.”  He sighs rather louder than I think he needs to.  My no-show is an imaginary place in my checkbook or the bank or outer space, I don’t know, that catches any money I haven’t spent from my retirement deposit that month.  I just minus that amount from my checkbook with a notation that reads, “move to no-show.”  It’s like an imaginary savings account.  It’s really still in my checkbook, but I pretend it isn’t so I can build a little nest egg for something special.  My husband knows about my no-show but really doesn’t understand how it works.

“I made that $82.00 babysitting last month,” I say, proud that I figured it out and we can end this nightmare.

“But Dearest,” my husband says, with just a hint of exasperation I find a bit offensive, “you have to actually enter deposits into your checkbook before you move them into your no-show.  Otherwise, I don’t know how much you’re supposed to have in your no-show.  Do you understand?”

No, I don’t understand.  To be perfectly honest, I think my husband is a little obsessive.  “I write everything down on a little scrap of paper,” I tell him, wondering where I put it because I know for some ridiculous reason, he’s going to ask for it.  The evening continues in a similar manner until things are more or less resolved or my husband figures things out the best he can while trying hard not to let my sobbing disturb his concentration.  And thus I have survived another monthly bank statement.

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Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Coming East

I’ve noticed that the space between my nose and the top of my upper lip is shrinking.  It’s like a blotter soaking up excess ink.  I wonder if people would notice the shine if I were to smear Vaseline below my nose as a barrier so my Dusty Rose or Apricot Glaze would know where to stop?

I’ve about given up on those beauty products that promise they will reduce lipstick bleeding.  They’re expensive and don’t work for me.  After using them for several months, my lipstick still spreads everywhere, and even my lip liner can’t keep it corralled.  I’ve always wanted bigger lips, and it appears I finally have them, except if you look close, you notice that pink smear isn’t really my top lip.  Tiny wrinkles fan out and give my lipstick a means of escape.  I’m getting this picture now of my granddaughters building a moat around their sandcastle at the beach only to have little rivulets from the tide seep into the wall and destroy it.  Or the computer on the Enterprise droning, “Containment breach eminent!  Containment breach eminent!”

I remember once when I was in my thirties I saw an old woman with red lipstick that had nearly devoured the lower half of her face.   I wondered what possessed her to go out into public and frighten people like that.  The thought has just occurred to me, “Oh, my God, that’s me!”

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My New Best Friend

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Coming East

Since I retired, the library has become my best friend, figuratively speaking, of course.  Not knowing what to do with my freedom, I headed to the library in hopes that it would entertain me, help me discover hidden talents, and teach this old dog new tricks.  When I discovered iBistro, the search tool that allows me to find resources in the entire Virginia Beach library system and have them sent to the little branch library I walk to, there was no stopping me.

After an entertainment focus that led me to read a massive saga consisting of five books, each with 850 pages or more, eliminating any time I had to cook, clean, or even get dressed in the morning, I moved on to the Julia Child French cooking phase.  Very short phase.  Next, I tried learning yoga from a book.  The only page I mastered was, “Lie down on the floor and breathe.”

I took out two videos on Irish dancing, something I’ve always wanted to learn since I married into a big Ukrainian-White Russian family full of stories and folklore, and I wanted to show them we Irish people have a lot of culture to be proud of, too.  Who would have thought that a people who had one of the shortest cookbooks in the world could have one of the most complicated dances, fascinating to watch but impossible to learn.

So I took those dance videos back and exchanged them for other, more reasonable dance instruction videos in preparation for my son’s wedding (NOTE:  I’m not at liberty to say which son or give details because I tacitly agreed not to drag my sons’ lives through the world of the Internet.  My daughter, however, is fair game because she has her own blog (Pajama Days) and I’ve been mentioned many times, nubby fingernails and all).  I took out videos on ballroom dance, executing the perfect wedding dance, and swing dance, both East and West Coast.  For weeks before the event my husband and I would move the coffee table out of the way or move the car out of the garage and practice looking like old pros.  We should have started a year ago.  Anyway, when the big day arrived, I was looking forward to gliding onto the dance floor.  I even bought expensive flat sandals so I wouldn’t have to dance in heels.  All eyes would be on us, jaws dropping in awed appreciation of grace in action.  But by the time the dancing began, my husband had been “celebrating” a little too long, and as the music started, he stood in front of me, glazed eyes glistening, and said, “What’s a rock step?”  Can’t blame the library for that one.

I just came home with three DVD sets on how to learn Russian, which I’d like to learn for personal reasons I can’t share with you (see NOTE above).  Let’s see…Oh, this one says it’s the short course.  It has eight CD’s and a 567-page book.  Let me open the book and see what this is all about.  What’s this?  Another alphabet to learn?  You mean it’s not presented phonetically?  Hmm…Think I might need to renew this once or twice.

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A Matter of Perspective

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Coming East

“Mom, I posted an embarrassing picture of you on the web today.”  These are not words you want to hear from your daughter first thing in the morning.  Actually, not at any time of the day.

“Oh?” was all I managed to say.

“Just kidding.  It’s not really embarrassing.  But I hope you’re not mad when you read my blog,” my daughter said yesterday morning.  That was not exactly reassuring.

“Let me call you back,” I said, heading for my computer.

This year my daughter wrote a note on the Mother’s Day card she sent me that said she’s enjoying our new relationship as friends instead of just mother-daughter.  My husband asked me, “What does she mean by that?”  I shrugged and said, “I’m not sure.  I don’t think she remembers that she’s written that several times before.”  Since I save all my cards from the kids (some years were leaner than others), I’m sure I could reconstruct a timeline of our “changing” relationship.

My daughter and I

My husband’s question prompted me to think about the nature of relationships, especially the mother-daughter one.  If I look at my relationship with my own mother, I’d say it never progressed or changed like mine has with my daughter.  My mother was one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known, extremely loving, but she was from another time.  Being a wife and mother was her career, and she did a great job of it.  But she was so totally devoted to my father that after we children left home, she didn’t make time to spend just with us without my father.  I missed out getting to know her as a woman with her own identity, and she missed the opportunity to get to know me in a new way.

My mother and my daughter

I, too, am devoted to my husband, but whenever it’s been possible, I have traveled to see my daughter so we can have some one-on-one time (well, as one-on-one as it can get with my daughter’s houseful).  Plus, we call each other and can talk for nearly an hour at a time, something I never did with my own mother.  Long distance was expensive then, and my mother worried about the cost.  I wonder what we would have said to each other anyway after we discussed how the kids were and what the weather was like.  Now I have so many things I’d like to say to her, but she died when she was only a few years older than I am now.

I tried never to spend a lot of time wondering what my children thought of me as a mother when they were growing up.  Whenever my thoughts would stray in that direction, I’d rein them in with a, “You don’t want to go there…”  So it was with trepidation that I read my daughter’s blog yesterday (“The Mother Load” on mypajamadays.com).  Never did I expect what I read there.  It was something a mother always hopes for from a daughter but so few are privileged to hear.  My daughter is seeing my life through a new perspective and it finally makes sense to her.  I want to preserve this moment.  I want to savor its sweetness and store it up for when she shakes her head at the wacky things her old mom does so I can say, “Just you wait, dear daughter!”

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