Joe College

It's almost noon on Wednesday morning and I'm driving my son to the community college campus where he's dual enrolled for the summer in English Comp and Introduction to Sociology. He doesn't seem very enthusiastic about this latest adventure in learning. Maybe it has something to do with the layover he's got between his classes.

"What am I supposed to do for 2 1/2 hours?" he whines.

"Explore, why don't you? Go in and out of all the buildngs. Find the library, check out the bookstore, see where everyone hangs out," I say.

He looks unconvinced.

"You could do your homework," I offer.

"Pfft," he says. "Maybe I'll just find a place to sleep."

I know he was up late the night before, talking online with his friends. Not for the first time, I find myself wishing his friends' parents were better at enforcing bedtime curfews than I am. I think about asking him if he'd like to stay home today. But I have a policy about calling in sick for school. You have to be throwing up to stay home. If you're not throwing up you don't get to call in sick. My son looks bone tired this morning but he's not sick. Besides, this is the first class of the summer semester. He has to go.

He leans his head against the window and pretends to be asleep. "Whoof," he mutters. I ignore him.

I know what his problem is. I recognize the signs. He doesn't want to go to school at the community college. He wants to cuddle up to the computer in his bedroom instead, talking and typing with his friends online. It's warm and familiar on the internet. He knows everybody there and they know him. Community college is scary. Anything can happen to you out in the real world.

My son has always had trouble fitting into the role of brilliant student that I wanted for him. He ignored all attempts to help him organize his work, instead crumpling and jamming his papers any old way into his books. I could spend any amount of money on school clothes every fall and it wouldn't matter since he wore his shirts inside out and backwards anyway, claiming it was "his look."

I remember when he going through a particularly slovenly period in middle school and I put my foot down and told him he had to change his shirt and underwear at least once a day. It was months later that I discovered he was layering on five t-shirts at the beginning of the week, then taking one off every school day. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have let him get away with it, but it seemed funny at the time.

Today we get to the campus and I walk to the bookstore with him to get his book for his sociology class. There's a line at the checkout that reaches nearly to the back of the store. This is not good. My son is already nervous about college. If we have to wait here for very long it means he's going to be late for his first class of the day. But there doesn't seem to be any choice. He needs this book for his evening class.

After a while we become aware of the muted commentary offered by three girls standing behind us and realize that they're directly contradicting everything one of the cashiers is telling her current customer.

Cashier: "You have to pre-pay for us to order the book for this class."

Girls: "Huh-uh." "Don't do it." "Ain't happenin'."

Cashier: "We'll call you as soon as it comes in."

Girls: "No way." "Huh-uh." "I'm warnin' you."

Cashier: "If it's not the right book, you can return it for a store credit."

Girls: "Don't believe her." "It's a lie." "Huh-uh."

By the time we leave the store, my son is laughing out loud, much less worried, and indeed late for class. I could kiss those girls, but they'd likely not stand for it. ("Huh-uh." "Don't do it." "Back off, yo.")

As we head towards the building where his English Comp class is he separates from me and runs up the stairs to the second floor. "See you later," I call and he turns and waves, then takes the remaining steps two at a time.

I walk to the car and tell myself it's going to be fine. He'll like his classes, he'll enjoy his professors, and he'll find a place to fit in. That's the good thing about community college. There are all sorts of people here. Older people trying to improve their situations, younger people being prodded by their controlling parents. He's bound to find people like himself. Friends in the real world to go along with his virtual ones.

It's not like it's the first time I've watched a child grow up and become more independent. It's just the first time I've seen it happen with this particular child. It's hard letting go of the kid you think you know in order to for him to become the person he knows he is. It's okay, though. We're going to go through this learning experience together.

And now for something completely different

(The following is a story by my sister, Mary. She's my favorite.)

I went to Lafayette, Louisiana and all I got was this lousy black eye.

It started out innocently enough; a long weekend with friends filled with good times, some tennis and a slumber party at a fishing camp. What more could a girl ask for?

The original plan was to fly down to join my former tennis comrades and good friends for a weekend tennis tournament. Well, once the entry fee came to light, $100 per entrant, we all decided unless that tournament t-shirt could bring us to orgasm when we wore it, there was no way any of us wanted to pay that kind of money. So my girlfriends had planned their own tournament of sorts which involved games of tennis each day with whoever wanted to play. Friday we had a slumber party at a fishing cabin that one of the friends was renting while waiting for her house to be rebuilt. Sure, alcohol and fishing poles were involved, a couple of them even ended up being cast into the lake in fact, but that’s not where I got my black eye. No, that didn’t happen until the day before I had to fly home.

We had scheduled a doubles match for Sunday morning, which came in overcast and humid, well this is Louisiana after all. Everything was going along fine, my partner and I were ahead in the match by a couple of games. Couldn’t tell you the score of the game that we were playing at the time when the miscue happened. I was in the back court trying to get my racket on a high bouncing ball, one minute I had it in my sights and swung at the ball and the next minute I can truly say I saw stars. My racket, after making contact with the ball, which I swear was five feet over my head, came out of my hand and was met on the way down by my left orbital socket. No cries for “momma!” or “medic!” was issued from my lips, I was too busy scrambling for my glasses (can’t see shit without them) and putting my baseball cap back on my head. We had a game to play! By the time I’d put myself back together all play had stopped on the court.

“Did we win the point?” I asked my partner, trying to act nonchalant about beaning myself with my own racket.

“Uh, no, we lost it.”

“What?! Oh, maaan,” I whined, “it would’ve made a much better story if we’d at least won the point.”

“What happened?”

“I think I just gave myself a black eye,” I responded, already I could feel the area over my left eyelid swelling.

Karen, my teammate, took a closer look, “Oh wow, I can see what part of the racket hit ya, it left a mark.”

That’s just great, I thought, Jim will never believe this. I mean, one would expect a black eye coming out of Philadelphia, but Lafayette, LA? All that southern hospitality? Please.

After different scenarios were discussed among the players on the court to explain the black eye, like getting into a fight with Bill, Karen’s husband over the point; or a head on collision going after a ball was another. We all decided to consider it a “lagniappe” from the trip, which in Cajun country is something that is thrown in for free.

I did contemplate applying makeup to the other eye to make the blooming color scheme on the one eye less noticeable, except I don’t carry makeup. So I met Jim at the airport braced for an explosive welcome once the offending eye had been spotted.

Apparently, the lighting at the baggage claim is very flattering because Jim didn’t notice a thing, even after giving me a kiss and a hug. It wasn’t until we stopped for something to eat on the way home at a Taco Hell that things got a bit prickly. If you want to be seen in a bad light, go to Taco Bell, it definitely doesn’t show your best side.

Once we had ordered and taken a seat at one of the tables, Jim is spreading out his meal, I’m congratulating myself on dodging a bullet, and the next thing I hear is, “What the hell happened to your eye?” Damn. So I tell him. He was trying to control his laughter by holding it in during the explanation. His shoulders were shaking so much I thought he might fall off his chair. Shaking his head, with a big smile on his face, “Jesus, Mary” was all he said.

I must admit, it’s a gift.

Apology to my CPA

Sorry, Tim, that I didn't fax back my permission slip for you to file my taxes electronically until the day they were due, but your package was hidden under a stack of bills on my table and I kept putting off looking at it because I knew what I'd find when I opened the envelope and that's a return stating that I owed the government seven hundred fifty seven dollars and the state one hundred twenty nine dollars and the government again nineteen dollars for a total of nine hundred and five dollars, Tim, plus there's going to be your bill coming down the pike for two hundred and sixty five dollars to do all the math and take what deductions there were and file all the paperwork and I don't begrudge you a penny of it because back when I had to do it myself it would take me days to sort out all the receipts and to update my Quicken accounts (why doesn't it do this by itself?) and then I would put all the numbers in and they never came out the same way twice and always I was sure that I was paying too much in taxes and my husband thought so, too. (It completely ruined the month of March for me.) Now I'm sure that I am paying too much again but at least it's not due to my own stupidity, it's due more to the government being greedy, maybe. But I don't blame you. I'll never blame you because you are a numbers man, unlike me, and you understand taxes, unlike me, and so it's good that I know someone like you to do my taxes, because the alternative would be me doing them and that would just be too awful.

I'm awake

It's 1:15 in the morning. I can tell this because I've squinted hard at the clock on the shelf next to my dresser clear on the other side of the room. It would be easier to tell the time if the clock were on the bedside table, but my husband needs it to be farther away from the bed so that when the alarm goes off in the morning he has to get out of bed to hit the snooze button. He usually does this three or four times every day. It seems to work for him.

I can hear him speaking now through the door to our room. He's in the hallway and he's talking to Nick. I know this because he's telling him to pick up the clothes in his room and brush his teeth and get to bed. He's probably just come home from working late and has done the usual perimeter walk through the house, checking on the boys and telling them to get off their computers for the night. He's hates this. He says it feels like whenever he sees them he has to yell at them.

I've wrestled with this, too, but it's not as hard for me. The kids are home schooled so I see them all day long. Not all of the time spent with them is nagging time. Sometimes it's fun stuff, like a park day or club day with other home schooled kids. Sometimes it's a field trip, although that happens less often now that they're both in high school.

It's harder to find field trips that are interesting to teenagers. The last one was supposed to be a tour of a recording studio but because the owner's sound engineer didn't make it in to work that day, it devolved into a monologue about the owner's early days in the music business and how, since his voice is gone, he likes to encourage good looking young women to come and sing on his cable tv show. It was educational, all right, just not in the way I'd anticipated.

I hear the thumping up and down the hallway of my oldest son, Sam, as he reluctantly performs a regular Thursday night chore, emptying the wastebaskets. I notice that he's avoiding emptying the wastebasket in my room. He probably thinks I'm sleeping through all of this. I wish I could.

Briefly I consider doing some thumping of my own, out into the kitchen, perhaps, where I could make a cup of cocoa in a put upon manner and inflict some guilt where it would do the most good. I decide I'm really too tired to get up. Maybe I'll read for a while. I flip on the light next to the bed and pick up a dog-eared copy of "Interesting Times" by Terry Pratchett. I love Pratchett. He makes me laugh and I can use a laugh or at least a grin right about now. Damn it. I was sleeping so well, too.

My sister says that when I was young I used to thump up and down the halls when I was mad, just like my kids do now. My dad called me Thumper, which usually made me stomp even harder. I was slow to pick up on teasing back then. I had a hair trigger temper as a teenager, too. My dad seemed to delight in provoking it, or maybe it just seemed like it to me.

I hear footsteps approaching the end of the hall. Will whoever it is notice that there's a light on in my bedroom and feel all contrite or something? The steps recede again. Obviously, nobody's worried about cutting in on anybody's sleep time tonight.

I read for a while and eventually my eyes close more than they stay open and I put the book down and turn out the light. Whatever fireworks were inspired by my husband's return home are all over for this evening. I can sleep, hopefully the boys will sleep, and eventually my husband will sleep. No more drama, not even from me, Thumper.

It's raining

You know what the best thing is about rainy days? I don't have to go running in them. 

If I were a ninja jogger, I'd be out in that mess right now, slogging around the trail down at Bartram Park, but I'm just an amateur runner, someone who runs because it's just a habit I've got into, and not because I was silly and made some promise OUT LOUD that I'd run every day no matter what. Thank god I've got that much sense, at least.

So today is a free day, hurrah! And I don't have to run. My body will object, of course, but that's what brains are for, to keep bodies from getting out of line.

I'm going to sit here on my comfortable butt and just listen to that wet stuff dribble down the outside of my house and revel in the fact that I am not going to be tying on my running shoes, looking for extra shopping bags with which to clean up after my dog, not going to be grabbing my cell phone, my iPod, my headphones and my car keys, all of which add at least five pounds to my pockets, making them flap at my sides when I run like little chicken wings, not going to be deciding whether it's worth it to bring the cooler and get the milk first or whether I should just walk into the grocery store, wet and stinking, and get it afterwards, not going to pee three times before I leave the house in order to avoid having to squat at the side of the trail, anxiously scanning both ways and practicing what to say for when I'm discovered in the woods with my pants down ("Thought I saw something valuable here, so I'm just taking a look at it, but I'm all done, now, so I'll just be running along,"), not going to be seeing the lady with the red hair out there in the matching jogging pants and sweatshirt, the guy with the hound dog named Jackson, the two probably queer guys who always look disdainful of my own mostly casually thrown together outfit--a shirt that says "You had me at woof" and shorts that are rusty black with holes in the legs--and who run like gazelles, not going to race down the trail to get back to my car before the episode of "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" is through and I have to stop laughing and start thinking about how hard it is to run in the mornings.

No, I'm not going to do any of that, because it's raining, and I love rainy days, almost as much as I love running.

Nick Armstrong, boy of steel

One day, when Nick was a sixth grader in middle school, he came home and I asked him how it went.

"I'm sore."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Well, we had to do the President's Physical Fitness test today in P.E. and so Coach told us all to do 25 push-ups. And I said, 'Twenty-five? That's not hard. I can do fifty!' and Coach said 'Oh, you can, can you?' and I said, 'Yes, I can. As a matter of fact, for seven points, I can do 150!' and Coach said, 'Okay. But if you don't do 150 then you lose 7 points," and I said, 'How about 300 push ups for 20 points?' and Coach said, 'You're on!' so then I did 300 push ups."

"You did 300 push ups?"

"Yes, I did. And Coach said, 'Well, Nick, you sure surprised me. I didn't think you could do it,' and he took out his little notebook and wrote down 'Nick Oliver - 120 points' in it. Some kid wanted to give me a high five but I had to hit his hand with my head because I couldn't lift my arms."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, Mom, I managed to get up off the floor without using my arms, but when I got to the locker room, I couldn't get my padlock open to get my clothes out. I turned the combination using my teeth and I was trying to push it open with my nose but I wasn't having any luck and some kid came in and saw me and asked me if I needed any help and I said, 'Sure,' and he opened my padlock and I got my clothes on. Then I backed into my backpack and ran for the bus."

That night I gave him an ibuprofen and made him soak in the tub. He slept like a rock. Next day when he came home I asked if the kids had started calling him "Pushup Boy" and he said, "No, Mom. They're calling me 'Armstrong.'"

Dreaming

I distinctly remember dreaming about talking to a credit card company on the phone and explaining why I missed a payment last month. This really sucks. Michael Swanwick dreams about writing the perfect paragraph and I dream about explaining myself to my creditors.

How does a person go about dreaming about what they want to do for real? I mean, I recognize that my dreams are all about what's stressing me out at the moment. Bills, money, and how to make enough of the second to pay all the first. I get that.

What I want my dreams to reflect are my hopes, not my fears. How do I make that happen?

It's probably got somehting to do with believing that my dreams are under my control and not something separate from me, something that happens without my active participation. Dreams are something that I've always thought of as uncontrolled longings. Things that I don't know anything about in advance. Isn't that funny? I mean, they're my dreams, right? Who should know better than me what they're going to be?

But you're talking to someone who willfully ignores a lot of what she worries about, so those worries come out when I'm sleeping, when my guard is down, when my brain has gone loose.

Dreams. It's such a beautiful word. I should be able to enjoy them. Controlling a word like that seems wrong somehow. Dreams should be free to float around and touch you here and there and tickle you in places that are unexpected but nice. Dreams should be mysterious but in a good way, opaque like heavy cream, but rich with possibilities.

Contemplating darkness

My husband and I were talking about how afraid we are that we'll begin to lose our minds in another fifteen years. He thinks he'll be working for ten of them and he's angry that his retirement won't come sooner.

I think about how fifteen years isn't any time at all and what if I live fifteen years beyond the time when I begin to go senile? I bet fifteen years of relentless creeping senility lasts a hell of a long time.

Most my father's siblings suffered from dementia before dying. (All right, Alzheimer's disease. Does it matter what you call it?) Two of them are still alive, living in the care of their spouses.

For years I watched my father fold into himself, become something other, horrifying and angry and monstrous. I remember laying my head on his knee, his hand on my head and wishing that it wasn't just an automatic response on his end, that he remembered I was his daughter and that he loved me.

I don't want to be him when I get old.

I've read that dementia sets in early, when you're in your thirties or forties. That if you're going to be senile when you're in your seventies and eighties, there's nothing you can do in your fifties or sixties to prevent it from happening to you.

Whenever I have trouble thinking of a word, or find myself in a room with no idea why I went there, or when I feel compelled to respond to a situation with a particular favorite phrase or line of movie dialogue, I think, "Is this how it starts? Have I begun the long journey already? What's next?"

I know that memory lapses happen to everyone, that I'm normal, that I'm silly to panic, and besides, what good would it do?

But it's like I'm living just in front of a shadow. I'm standing in the light right now, but I can feel the creeping coldness at my back and sometimes it touches me, just briefly, and I almost know what it will be like when I'm caught by it and covered completely.

So much for that project

I ended up not using a writing prompt or a picture prompt for this one. A friend was over and telling me about a Glinda the Good Witch wedding dress she made for someone once and I thought it'd make a nice picture.

Purple nails

I'm trying an experiment. I want to learn to use pastels but I'm having a hard time deciding what to draw so I'm using writing prompts to direct my efforts. I found "purple nails" at http://dragonwritingprompts.blogsome.com/ . I'll continue this way until I get tired of the project. Could be months (not likely) or it could be days (much more likely).

A sign of better times

I recently posted a sign over the kitchen sink. It reads: "If you dirty it, then you must wash it. The Management." Notice I've given myself a promotion. I'm no longer chief cook and bottle washer.

Mom smirked when I told her about my new plan to do less cleaning up after all the able bodied men in the house. I actually heard her do this over the phone. It sounds like it's spelled. "Smirkff," she said and right away I started worrying that this experiment in training my children and my husband to be better roommates was doomed to failure. She told me to tell her how it was going in a week's time.

Well, it's been a week and it's still working. It's all due to the paper plate with the marker message on it that's taped to the kitchen window. When the boys see the sign it reminds them that I'm right there, looking over their shoulders, making that Dog Whisperer noise, that "tch" sound that stops them from setting down a dirty plate or cup somewhere convenient and prompts them to run some hot water and soap over them and then put them in the dish drainer.

It hasn't been perfect. I still have to empty the dish drainer from time to time, otherwise the stack gets teetery, and broken china was never part of management's vision, but if you look at it as a way of counting how many dishes I don't have to do every day, it's impressive. I'm thinking of making another sign on a paper plate, enclosing it in a ziplock and hanging it in the shower. "If you shed it, you must clean it out of the hair trap. The Benevolent Dictatorship." I'm due for another raise.

Bleeding creativity

My fingers are sore and stiff today. Why, oh why do I ruin the skin on my fingers trying to execute these elaborate hand sewing projects? I must be going senile. I know this, not because words and names I used to know escape me, but because I've forgotten once again what a pain it is to push a needle through six layers of denim at a time. Satin stitching a teal border on a blue jean pocket is a cool way to hide a hole on a pair of pants destined to be made into a big purse, but it's also a very painful way to express oneself. Does it make you more creative if you bleed on your projects?

One minute I was searching the house for the pile of old jeans I'd last seen moldering in a corner of the living room, the next I had cut them up into rectangles and was piecing them together in interesting ways, not caring what this would mean for my poor fingers. If you're going to the trouble of hand making a fashion accessory, racking up hours of labor and pain in the process, then the end product has got to be cool, cool enough to draw admiring remarks and envious looks from all your equally craft-crazed friends.

Twenty four hours into this project, I've already decided to reduce the number of pockets on it from four to two, soon to be one, maybe, probably, definitely. And I'll just paint on any more embellishments I think up from here on out. For one thing, it'll be easier on my hands, and for another, this way I may even get to use the purse before Christmas. Besides, if I don't scale back on the amount of effort required to finish this endeavor pretty quickly, it will end up tucked away in a shopping bag somewhere, filed in my mind as another PTBCSWIFME (Project To Be Completed Sometime When I'm Feeling More Energetic).

The thing is, projects like this one -- labor-intensive, spur of the moment and falling into the category of Biting Off More Than I Can Chew in a Weekend -- always prompt me to think inconvenient thoughts while I'm doing them. Thoughts like, I could walk into any number of thrift stores and pick up a perfectly serviceable purse for $4 or less and paint it to look like something I would be proud to claim as my own and it would be a lot less trouble than what I'm doing now. The problem with this solution is that nothing is open until 10 am (it's 8 am now) and I have no money, not even an extra four dollars, which is precisely what prompted this whole project in the first place. Also, I wanted a bigger purse than what I'm using now.

Unfortunately, I think that this purse will also be too small to be practical. Stupid to start with my son's old blue jeans, really. They're a size 8. Slim. There's only so much yardage available in jeans this size. The purse I'm building has to be able to carry my wallet, my checkbook, my sketchbook, my notebook, any current sewing projects, my water bottle and snacks. In other words, about 20 pounds of stuff.

I had a bag like this when I was in college. It also held, in addition to the list above, a masonite board, clips, an 18" x 24" pad of newsprint, assorted drawing pencils, tubes of student grade acrylic paint, paint brushes and a plastic can for holding water. As I recall, it was while I was carrying all this plus four bags of groceries up a flight of stairs to my apartment that I experienced my very first back spasm, which put me on the floor, then in my bed for two weeks. I lay there, waiting for the pain to go away, meantime consuming ibuprofen by the handful and counting the minutes until my boyfriend got home from work every day so he could help me to the bathroom.

On second thought, maybe there's enough fabric here after all...

That dog

That dog lays on the couch
legs every which way
completely open to the universe
accepting herself as a creature on a blue gingham covered stick of furniture.
She doesn't wish the cushions were stuffed with feathers
she doesn't worry the curtains
which are trapped behind it
and don't hang straight as a consequence.
She just sprawls on the end
spreading herself as thinly as possible
on the pillow and the seat
cocking an ear when my pen scritches across the paper
slashing in the lines for a checkerboard pattern.

Taking comfort where you can find it

When she came to the phone last night she sounded so fragile, so near to tears and so bewildered.

"I did it wrong," she said. I didn't ask her to tell me what she'd done. My sister had already told me in an earlier phone conversation that Mom had used a pen knife. "If she'd really wanted to kill herself she'd have used the scissors. They were sharp," my sister said.

I found myself wondering if she'd made a mess of her clothing. Was there blood on her sheets? Mom told me that the nursing home staff had called for an ambulance and then she was at the psychiatric hospital. "I thought it was taking a long time to get there and then the driver said we weren't going to the regular hospital," she said.

Mom feels a need to visit the hospital on a regular basis. When she stayed with me, before we moved to Florida, we averaged a trip to the emergency room about every three weeks. She'd go and the staff would hook her up to all kinds of equipment and they'd monitor her for an hour or two and then send her home. She'd be okay for a few weeks and then something would trigger another anxiety attack and her heartrate would jump and she'd have to go again.

Invariably, it happened over a weekend, when she couldn't see her doctor. My husband felt sorry for her but he used to get very frustrated by what he thought was a waste of time and resources. "Do you think you're having a heart attack?" he'd ask her sternly and she'd tell him no. "Then you don't need to go to the E.R. Emergency rooms are for emergencies. You're not in danger of dying so you don't need to go."

Sometimes a talking to was what she wanted and she'd subside for a day or two. But sometimes she'd insist she needed a doctor to look at her. When my husband took her he always fumed a little afterward when the medical staff would send her home without having changed anything in her list of medicines. He kicked himself for giving in to her panic.

I remember a story Mom told me about the time right after she'd given birth to one of my older brothers. She was hemorrhaging badly and suddenly she could see herself below where the doctors and nurses were busily trying to save her life. She floated up and away and then saw a light and started toward it. Then she was stopped. I can never remember who it was she said stopped her progress toward the light. It was two or three people, I remember that, and one of them was a saint, I remember her telling me that, too.

She said these people stopped her and told her she had to go back, that it wasn't time for her to go yet. She said she argued with them about this, that she wanted to go on toward the light but that they were insistent that she couldn't, not yet. And so she went back, she said, but she was angry that she'd been turned away.

She would have been around 35 years old then. I always think about the pull of that light on her and how powerful it must've been to tempt her away from a family of now five boys and a husband. Or, alternatively, how unhappy she must've been to want to leave so soon.

Maybe when you're freed from your body you leave your emotional, glandular self along with it. As her child I try to think up reasons for her to want to leave me and this one is as comforting as any other.

I've been here before

My brother left a message on my answering machine yesterday morning, "Marie, it's your brother. Call me as soon as you can," and I thought, "It's Mom."

I know it's Mom because I can't think of anything else that would make his voice sound like my dad's voice -- deep, authoritative and brooking no nonsense. I call him and he answers, "Good morning," in a tuneful way so that I know my first thought, that Mother had died or was mortally ill is wrong. He wouldn't sound so cheerful, I think, so normal, if it was really bad.

He rants for a little while about the upcoming election. "It doesn't matter who we elect! We're fucked, either way! They're both going to raise taxes!" I ask him if this is why he called, hoping that this will, after all, turn out to be nothing more than a brother/sister jam session, bu he says no, and all at once he's sober again, serious. "Mother tried to kill herself last night by means of a sharp implement to her wrist." "One wrist?" I ask. "One wrist," he says. "So, not a serious attempt?" "No, not a serious attempt."

I feel sorry for my brother because it's him that's closest in proximity to Mom than anyone else, so it's him that has to deal with Mom. It sounds bad, to say it like that, "deal with Mom," but there isn't any other way to think of this thing with my mother.

WEATHERING THE WEATHER: A week in the life of Tropical Storm Fay

Day 1 - Supposed to have a hurricane by next week. Jacksonville mayor says prepare now. Not sure what to do. Fill water bottles? Have a shower? Replenish liquor cabinet? Decide to take the dog for walk. Then think about panicking.

Day 2 - Pace around house, look for things to do. Dust the piano, fix the blind in bedroom, do laundry. Start sorting things. Wait for Fay. Supposed to be tropical storm strength when she gets to Jacksonville. TV weathermen tout their Doppler radar reading skills. "We've got DOUBLE DOPPLER RADAR and we know how to use it!"

Day 3 - Fay stalls south of Jacksonville. Watch the news, track the storm online and start to feel a tiny bit anxious. Open bag of Doritos. Think it's good these storms are spaced out every few weeks or I'd be a blimp by November. Give kids permission to eat Pop Tarts even though they're technically part of storm food stockpile. Realize if I didn't have a wholesale club membership, I'd probably go broke buying snack food. Review new vocabulary words: maximum sustained wind gusts, wind shear, category I, category II, tropical storm, tropical depression.

TV weatherman predicts if storm breaks up then the worst we get will be rain bands. Doesn't sound terrible. Think seriously of getting a DC to AC converter for the car to power the fridge. Slap myself and try to remember that this is an adventure. Stare at Doppler radar. Try to see a pattern in the waves of blue, green, yellow and orange. News anchor announces, "No school tomorrow or the day after. Keep the kids home to help prepare for the storm."

Moved everything close to the house last week and now it looks like none of it will have to come indoors. No room for it anyway. Think about starting a window painting. Haven't gone for a walk or a run in three days. Start to feel fat.

Read through the messages on internet forum. They're equally divided between panicked newbies trying to get definitive answers to the question, "If it's coming, how scared should I be?" and relaxed veterans who shrug their shoulders and reminisce about storms gone by, "Remember 2004? That was the year from hurricane hell!"

Day 4 - Make repeated trips to the computer to check www.weatherunderground.com. Stare at storm tracking and 5-day forecast screens and play the satellite animations over and over again. Wonder why they don't update them every fifteen minutes instead of just eight times per day. Think about installing storm shutters, remember I don't have any. Wonder if it's too late to go get plywood from Lowe's. Eat rest of Doritos. Lay in bed, listen to crickets and cicadas, sure it's one of the warning signs of a huge hurricane in the book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," that I read last year.

Day 5 - Move all non-perishable food items into the dining room. Only room in the house that doesn't have windows. If roof blows off we'll have food at least. Need water jugs there, too, and a bucket with a garbage bag and kitty litter in case we can't get to the toilet. Where do I put the mattresses? Go looking for bag of ranch flavored Doritos. Make mental note to save nacho cheese flavored Doritos for last next time. Marvel that storms are so big that they take days to move just a few miles.

Day 6 - Stare outside at trees for signs of incipient blowage. Wonder if the line of pines on the east side of the house will act as a wind break to prevent riding lawnmower from being picked up like a child's toy and whipped into the neighbor's house or if they'll just fall over and crush everything in their path. Look up how to calculate height of the tree using yard stick and protractor to see if it could hit house. Check weatherunderground.com again.

Start making dish rags from old athletic socks. Decide to throw socks away instead after realizing that I'd be too embarrassed to use them. Clean some more. Realize that if storm drags on much longer I'll have cleared off every available surface in my house just in time for it to float away.

Cut up old blue jeans to make hurricane afghan, consisting of small squares with spirals embroidered on them. Add designs of swirling clouds, crashing waves, Doritos. Wish I had more chips. Wonder if it would be completely tacky to call neighbor to see if she has any. Notice that spirals have fewer coils the more embroidering I do. Wonder if this means I'm feeling more relaxed. Use up last of white embroidery floss and think seriously about going out during a lull to see if any craft stores are open. Picture self getting tased by cop for being stupid.

Start painting a window. Listen to weather man predict more rain, more flooding for today and tomorrow. Admire dexterity of person performing sign language next to the governor while he talks about what to do and what not to do. Notice there is no sign for "utilize" and "impacted."

Get phone call from neighbor that "There's a tornado headed straight for us." Gather children and dog and huddle on futon mattress in hallway. Listen to radio weatherman talk about bands of color on Doppler radar that only he can see. Decide the whole thing is ridiculous. Wait until five minutes before official end of warning issued by national weather service and then disperse. Lose power for long enough to find and light two oil lamps and four candles. Listen to someone's generator running a block away. Congratulate myself on not buying one.

Day 7 - Fay gone like she never existed. Air is liquid and warm. No standing water in the yard, even. Put on running shoes, leash the dog and go out to take our chances. While out of house review lessons learned over past week: Buy less snack food, stock up on craft supplies, turn off television, read more books, panic less, breathe more.

Family Recipe

Our trip up north so far is turning out a bit differently from last year. For one, it’s just me and my two teenage sons squeezed into the Corolla, instead of five of us all spread out in the Expedition. For another, we had to roll down all the windows three times the first day to let the "bad" air out. Boys have no inhibitions about releasing inner demons in mixed company. Car games tend to have a different focus as well. I quit playing "20 Questions" when the last three answers turned out to be complicated weapons systems that only the boys knew anything about and which subsequently prompted arguments about classification ("It's a rail gun!" "No, it's not! It's a mass driver gun!"). Most of the drive I spent thinking ahead to my family reunion, part of our annual summer vacation.

When I was a child our family reunions were held at my uncle's house. He and my aunt lived on a lake and they had a big L-shaped dock that stretched a hundred feet out into the water. After arriving we'd spend the day getting sunburned, playing badminton in the big back yard, swimming in the cool water, hoping that this was the year we'd be allowed past the second ladder to the deep end and the diving board where the big kids hung out.

Always my mother made sheets of baked chicken and a pan or two of apple slices to bring for the potluck and the smells of both would make us crazy the whole drive there. I remember the women in the kitchen, heating food, the men outside sitting in lawn chairs or playing lawn darts. There was a player piano in the rec room in the basement and we kids, there must’ve been a hundred of us, would take turns pushing the pedals and watching the keys magically go up and down, not really hearing the old timey music, just hurrying through to the end because the fun part was flipping the lever to make the paper roll rewind, and listening to the snap, snap, snap sound as the little metal hook on the end released and whipped around over and over.

When it was time to eat we'd make a beeline toward the back of the house where the cloth covered picnic tables held stacks of plates and plastic silverware. A line would form and, shivering in our wet bathing suits, we’d shuffle up either side of the food table under our parents’ watchful eyes, careful not to take dessert before we'd had some "real" food first.

Besides my mom’s chicken, and my aunt’s chicken, and my other aunt’s chicken, there would be meatballs in barbecue sauce, bowls of potato salad, soft rolls with butter, lemon cake and fruit pies. There were huge watermelons cooled in the lake, then cut into half moon slices. These were eaten standing up and a little hunched over so the juice dribbling down the sides would miss your bathing suit. We ate them all the way to the white rind, saving a mouth full of seeds to use as ammo on our cousins.

After lunch my uncle would take us out in his motorboat, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on the back of the seat, standing and watching the waterskiers skimming over the water behind us. I never attempted to waterski, sure I couldn't in a million years attain that perfect balance between the pull of the boat and the push on the skis, admiring the others who circled around and around the lake and made a game of letting go of the handle at just the right moment to come coasting all the way back in to the dock.

Things have changed in the past twenty years. My aunt and uncle no longer host our reunions. Most of their generation is gone now. Instead of meeting at someone’s home we get together at a park with picnic pavilions and a swimming beach. There are fewer of us that show up every year, partly because we’re more scattered and partly because it’s difficult to commit the time and effort to come.

As children we played in the water until we were so tired we could barely lift our arms to wave goodbye and we sprawled in the back of the car, sleeping all the way home. Now we’ve become the grown ups we watched as children, content to sit at the picnic tables under the shelter, talking for hours and looking at photos.

There are ultimate Frisbee games played in the field at the front of the park and someone usually brings water pistols. This year my sister brought a ball and chalk to play four square. At the end of the day we gather together for one of my all time favorite games in which a family member sets the camera to take a picture and then runs like hell to get in the shot over and over because someone keeps saying they blinked until finally said family member falls down from heat exhaustion while everyone else cracks up.

In an effort to help boost the turnout numbers this year my brother organized a recipe book to mark our reunion. He contacted family members via email this past spring requesting pictures and recipes. I put it together on the computer, then posted it online for downloading. We got a good response from the families with over thirty pages of recipes, covering a broad range of foods from appetizers to desserts, although there was a curious duplication of effort regarding a particular dish so that at one point we thought about calling it the Marfia Big Book of Baked Bean Recipes.

My brother hopes the recipe book will become part of the reunion tradition for us, binding us closer together as a family, encouraging us to add recipes and pictures to it every year. Everyone will be able to participate regardless of where they live and no matter what age they are. We’ve already heard from family members who want to be included in next year’s book, so I’m sure it will be a success. My favorite picture in this year’s book is the group shot on the front. Everyone’s laughing because I just made it into the shot before the camera went off. Unfortunately, I blinked.

BEACH NIGHT

"Under no circumstances are we cancelling tonight."
"Okay."
"If there's a tornado, maybe, but anything else, we're still on,
all right?"
"Right. (Tornado, maybe?)"

I'm on the phone with my friend, talking about our beach night
tonight. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, we drive to
Mickler's Landing, a public beach south of Jacksonville. We bring
folding chairs, blankets when it's cold, thermoses of herbal tea and
something we've written to read aloud. We've tossed around a few
names for our group, including the Full Moon Women's Writing Circle,
the Moon Maidens and the Loonies, but nothing has really stuck. It's
the getting together that counts.

Earlier this month we had to cancel our plans because a newcomer to
our group had a previous commitment. My friend and I have
decided we're going to meet up anyway, just the two of us. "I really
need this," she says, and I realize that I do as well.

When I moved to Jacksonville from Ludington I left more than a house
behind, but it took me a while to sort out what else was missing.
Some things were obvious, like dentists and produce markets and
trails through the woods. Some things took a little longer to
identify, like where to drink coffee while writing in the morning,
the best place to sit while talking on the phone and faces you know
and who know you back.

When we arrrive at the beach we walk to a flat spot, then arrange our
chairs and take turns reading what we've written. This month's topic
is "The path not taken." My friend decided in the middle of writing
her essay that it was actually about parts of herself that she'd
failed to nurture. My piece turned out to be about learning to love
the life you've got instead of the one you wish you had.

After reading we walk up and down along the water, carrying our
sandals, looking for shells. I recently borrowed a book from the
library about decorating with sea shells and so I'm gathering
materials for a project. I don't know what I'll make, only that
I'll need lots of shells to make it with. We pick up orange, brown, blue,
striped, smooth and ridged shells and put them, whole and fragmented,
into a bucket.

Back in Michigan the only shells I've ever found are zebra mussels
and snails. When I was a teenager I would collect lucky stones, small
fossilized plant segments with a hole through the middle. I got to be
pretty good at seeing them among all the other stones on the beach.
I'd like to develop that skill down here to spot shark teeth. I tell
my friend that I won't feel like I've really settled here until I
find one for myself. I've been studying them in the stores so I can
see the shape in my mind. She says she's been here twelve years and
hasn't found a single one.

In Ludington, past First Curve, the beach is lined with dunes. On
this beach in Jacksonville as far as we can see in either direction
there are lines of mansions staring out to sea. We talk about what it
would be like to live in one. "Maybe it would be like living in a
magazine photo shoot," she says. "Too clean and perfect, like nobody
lives there." I think about my own house, evidence of life scattered
over every surface -- dishes, clothes, books, receipts, loose change,
and lately, shells.

Most of these houses seem empty, with long rows of dark windows. My
friend says she and her husband decided a long time ago it wouldn't
be worth it to live in one of them. "You'd have to evacuate for every
hurricane," she says. "And you have to replace the light fixtures all
the time because they corrode in the salt air so quickly." She adds,
"I wouldn't mind walking through one, though, just to see what it was
like."

I think that if I had a house on the water I'd never leave it. But
I've never lived on an ocean. Maybe, when the sea rose up and crashed
against the shore I wouldn't want to stick around to see what
happened next. It's not something I'm likely to experience anyway.
Shoreline property is even more expensive down here in Florida than
it is back in Michigan and, by the looks of these places, once you
have the land, you're required to build a castle on it.

My friend and I return to our chairs and then talk until nearly
midnight. We speculate about whether the lights floating slowly by on
the horizon are a barge or a cruise ship. Occasionally a helicopter
flies past, hugging the shoreline, probably from Mayport, a naval
base just north of us. We wave but they don't wave back. I tell her
about my chopstick diet and she tells me about her daughter's dream
to fly an airplane. Eventually we stop talking and just lean back in
our chairs and look at the stars. I think about how the Big Dipper I
see here is the same one I see when I'm in Ludington. When the
mosquitos come out we pack up to go home.

As I drop my friend off at her house I ask her what next month's
writing topic is. "Moments of joy," she says. Piece of cake, I think.
I'll start with tonight and go from there.

Fair Game

Back in Michigan tourism season is just getting under way. There are more visitors crowding the beaches and walking the state park trails. You have to park your car a little farther away from the entrance at Wal-mart. The stores, restaurants and galleries are open seven days a week instead of "by chance" and there are fishing tournaments and fireworks and parades and art fairs to look forward to. I feel nostalgic thinking about all the cool stuff I'm missing up north.

So when an artist friend asked me if I'd be interested in selling my window paintings at the Lake Asbury Pottery and Art Fair just south of Jacksonville I told her, "Sure." It seemed like a pretty good deal. She said the organizer of the event was looking for more vendors, the entrance fee was cheap and she'd even loan me her tent. I thought about how I'd enjoyed strolling through the art fairs in Ludington in the past and how I'd always wanted to try to sell my stuff in an art show. It would be fun to hang out with other artists and watch people browse through the booths. I pictured a pretty green lawn crowded with tents and the spaces between filled with folks in brightly colored summer clothing. Maybe I'd get lucky and sell some stuff. How hard could it be?

Right away I threw myself into preparations for the show. I made lists of materials I'd need to make more window paintings, like more window sashes and window paint. I started thinking about things I'd need to sell the finished work, like a credit card imprinter and a receipt book. I thought about how to arrange my booth to create an inviting retail space. I'd have a guest book available for people to sign up to get regular updates on my latest art. I'd have a giveaway at the end of the show. I'd have three pricing tiers — a high end, a mid-range and a low end product — to tempt every customer no matter how much money they had to spend. I'd craft free-standing sculptures to hang my paintings on. I'd make eye contact with everyone who passed by my booth because as I'd once smugly told my then six-year-old daughter who was trying to sell Girl Scout cookies at K-mart, "If you don't ask for the sale, they don't have to buy."

I had plans. Unfortunately, they were more suited to a six month lead time instead of three weeks, which was all I had. Instead of 30 paintings I ended up with nine. I didn't have time to make 50 window clings, only 21. The mid-range set of products never happened. The clever sculptures to hold the paintings devolved into precarious bamboo tri-pods, held together at the top with twine. After three weeks of furious activity I was tired and discouraged and wondered how I'd ever thought this was going to be an easy project.

The day of the art fair was a beautiful one, pleasantly warm, with a light breeze. The sun shone brilliantly through the leaves of the tree under which I had set up my tent. I had hung my paintings and strung up the window clings between the tent supports. From the booth space to my right a pair of watercolorists came over to offer encouragement. "These will sell," said Edith, after introducing herself. "They're beautiful." I felt reassured about making the decision to come and was grateful for her comments.

I carefully aligned my credit card imprinter with the edge of the table. I had special business cards stacked in a neat pile, ready to give away, and my cell phone was close at hand, pre-programmed to dial the credit card authorization number if a customer wanted to buy a window painting with a credit card. I daydreamed about quitting my day job and making art 24-7 in a cute little art studio/gallery in my back yard.

Al, the vendor on my left, asked me to watch his booth while he made a final dash to the restrooms before the show opened. "Remember, $2,000 takes it all," he joked as he left.

It was beautiful all day, perfect art fair weather. But no one took advantage of it. Well, that's not precisely true. There were about sixty people who came to the show and that includes toddlers and dogs. I found out weeks afterwards that there were two other art events happening at the same time as the one where I was, each well-established, well-attended and well-publicized. Funny how you can completely not recognize a losing proposition when you're blinded by hopeless optimism.

Later that day, Al told me that Sundays were terrible sales days at any art fair he'd ever been to. He was trying to cheer me up. I didn't point out that it was Saturday. He left again to use the facilities, but this time dropped the price for everything in his booth to $500. I'm pretty sure he was still joking.

At the end of the day, when we were packing up to go I ended up buying a bird feeder from Al. I did it to thank him for helping me set up and tear down my tent, and also for his kindness in not mentioning that when I first got there I arranged my booth so that it faced away from the flow of foot traffic. "I figured you knew what you were doing," he said.

The day wasn't a total loss. I had one person sign up for my mailing list who asked if I did work on commission. I may have gotten drool on my shirt then. And toward the tail end of the day a gallery owner stopped to admire some of the paintings and ask if I'd be interested in selling them at her shop. I nearly asked her to adopt me. And I sold two clings for a total of $14.

I'm not sorry I did the art fair. I met some good people, gained experience giving impromptu workshops on window painting to other equally depressed vendors and learned that displaying artwork at leg cocking height is extremely dangerous when there are loose dogs around.

What's more I can now cross this off my list of things to do before I die. I've moved on to the next item which is, "Learn How to Fly." How hard can it be?

Trash talking

"What an amazing coincidence," I tell my husband. "Ludington is having their spring clean up the weekend that you'll be there hunting for morels."

"Let me guess. You want me travel 2,000 miles so I can trash pick windows?"

"Please?"

My husband is leaving to go to Ludington this weekend to spend a few days combing the woods for morel mushrooms. This is an annual outing for him and he's looking forward to the trip. Maybe he'll be lucky and find lots of fungi. He's bringing his GPS unit to be sure of hitting every one of his secret spots in the woods. Last year he forgot to take it and he's sure he missed finding the morel motherlode for that reason. I'm glad he's going, but not because of mushrooms. It's spring clean up time in Ludington and he's promised to bring me back some trash.

In Ludington in the spring people put out all the bulky items that aren't allowed during the rest of the year. This is the signal for flat beds and pick up trucks to crawl along the streets, looking for free stuff on the curb. When we lived in Ludington it was a bigger deal than Easter. We'd pack up the kids, the dog and Grandma in whichever vehicle had the most storage capacity and drive up and down the streets of Ludington, looking for treasure. Once we brought home a heavy old cash register, a big brass one with a segmented drawer on the bottom and numbers that popped up behind the glass along the top. The kids played store with it for a year and then we put it out on our own curb during the following spring clean up, tired of barking our shins on it in the living room. I like to think that it's entertained eight or nine other famlies with small, button-pushing children since then, endlessly rescued from and discarded on a different curb every spring.

We used to take the opportunity provided by spring clean up time to empty our own house of old computer parts, building materials and things that were one or two parts shy of being garage sale fodder.

I wasn't sure of the proper etiquette during those times when I'd be outside hauling things to the street and someone would pull up to look over my castaway items. Should I greet the lookers with a "Hi, how are you?" and an offer to help them load up or would that be embarrassing? Would acknowledging their presence drive them away like startled deer caught in mid-forage? Maybe they'd prefer it if I just pretended they weren't there at all.

I settled this the way I usually do, by not quite doing one thing or the other. I'd wave a little, smile a lot and fade back to the house to watch from behind the living room curtains, commenting under my breath. "Yes! They're taking the couch! Hey, hey, hey! What about that piece of countertop over there? C'mon, buddy. You know you want it. Yes! It's history! It's outta there!"

I'm a rubbish picker, a rag puller and a dumpster diver from way back. Along the window sill in my office lie trophies accumulated during neighborhood walks: a Fiona head, some wire, a chewed up scoop, a rubber heart that says "Barbie" on it, a green plastic lizard, and a purple bird-shaped cookie cutter. Once I found a heavy buck knife and I picked it up thinking my husband might like it. A few steps farther on I found the sheath for it. I decided it had probably belonged to a teenager. They tend to congregate along the ditches down here at night, drinking their parents' Natural Light and casually boinking in the bushes. I felt no guilty twinges for taking the knife home, figuring a slew of flyers saying "FOUND: BIG FAT KNIFE - CALL TO IDENTIFY" posted on telephone poles would net me a whole lot more trouble than I cared to endure.

There isn't a spring clean up in Jacksonville. People don't put out trash down here, they sell it. Recently I've been scanning the roadside for wood windows. I need them to paint pictures on to sell at an art fair that's coming up. They're amazingly difficult to find around here and it's particularly galling to know that I used to pick up old windows by the boatload every spring in Ludington for free. Unfortunately, down here they're considered vintage and priced accordingly.

I visited a salvage place called Burkhalter's last weekend looking for some single pane wood sashes, lured by the pictures of cement elephants, rows and rows of pink and blue toilets and demolition slide shows on their website. They're located right in the middle of old Jacksonville, about a half hour north of where I live. I found windows by the hundred there, years of dust on them, most of the glass broken, covered with dirt and grime, stacked upright in an old shed that my son, who was with me, declared too creepy to enter.

Starting price for these crumbling beauties was $20 each with additional numbers of panes adding to the total. I asked the guy minding the store to cut me a deal on four and he nearly choked. Obviously he was very attached to them.

I miss spring clean up in Ludington -- the air of anticipation, the annual appeal in the newspaper asking people not to put stuff out until the night before their scheduled pick up date, the cars full of avid treasure seekers, necks craning out the windows, pulling over to grab a lawn chair or two, only to exchange them on the next block for a better looking pair on another pile.

But most of all I miss getting enough raw material to keep me chin deep in art projects for the rest of the year in exchange for a few hours driving up and down the streets. Last week I caved and bought enough windows to see me through the art fair but it's not the same. There's something addictive about finding cool and funky junk and turning it into cooler and funkier art. It's the thrill of the hunt mixed in with my natural cheapskate tendencies that makes me do things like ask my husband to look for trash for me while he's on vacation. Any normal person would be happy with a postcard, although if he happens to find cool ones in a pile somewhere, I hope he'll bring them back. I need some for a decoupage project and free's a great price.