Childhood Christmas Memories

One of my first Christmas memories is of my brother screaming.

Someone - one of my father's friends, I suppose - came to our house dressed like Santa Claus. My brother was about 18 months old, and I would have been 4 1/2 years old.

Santa caused my brother to cry bloody murder when he saw the old man in the red suit and beard.

I'm not so sure I didn't join him. I wonder what it is about ol' St. Nick that terrifies little children. I know I've seen many of them sobbing like crazy when I passed by the line in the mall, back when I used to actually shop in malls.

Somewhere there is a photo of this event, of my brother screaming and me hovering anxiously. Regular readers will remember I have always been protective of my brother, so if he was sobbing, I'm sure I was getting in the way to try to console him.

I don't recall many other visits with Santa. I'm sure we went every year to see him some way or another. Maybe we saw him at the Roanoke-Salem Plaza (one of the first area malls). Or at Crossroads Mall, where there was a display that we children loved of real taxidermy deer (and Rudolph in the front with his big red nose) lifting a sleigh up into the sky. That display was there for years and years. (I spent a good hour looking online at pictures of Crossroads Mall and none had the sleigh display. You'd think someone would have taken a photo.)

I suspect sometimes we saw the jolly elf with my grandparents and my two young uncles. My mother worked and weekends were generally full up with housework and taking care of whatever she needed to do. Plus, my father had a band, and they played gigs on the weekends, so we spent a lot of time overnight at my grandparents. It is easy to imagine an outing or two included them and not my parents.

One year, I recall that neither my brother nor I received what we had asked for from Santa. I think I was about 9 and my brother 6. Anyway, apparently feeling entitled and upset with Mr. Nicholas (even though by then I had long known there was no Santa), we both moped so badly about not getting what we wanted that my mother angrily loaded us into the car and took us to this department store called Best Products where I received the Howdy Doody cowboy ventriloquist doll that I simply had to have, and my brother received whatever it was he wanted (I don't remember his toy). 

The must-have toy of 1972

My mother adamantly said we had to play with those toys and only those toys for, presumably, the rest of our lives.

Of course, we discarded the toys within a week or so. I never did learn ventriloquism.

But I sure remember how mad my mother was. I think she called us ungrateful brats for the next six months. We probably deserved it. That is the only time I remember pitching a fit about my Christmas presents. Lesson learned, I guess. Accept what you get and move on.

Going Backwards

When I was 5, my father had me and my brother in a vehicle when he stopped at a convenience store on Apperson Drive.

I don't recall what kind of car we had in 1968, but I want to say it was a Dodge Charger. At any rate, he left us both in the car while he went in to fetch whatever he was after.

In 1968 I suppose there were car seats, but we didn't use them. I don't think we used seat belts either, for that matter. Yes, I am of the generation that rode in the bed of the pickup truck, drank from water hoses, and lived to tell about it.

After my father hopped out of the car, my brother climbed into the driver's seat so he could pretend to be driving. I don't remember if the car was running, but I'm guessing my father left it in neutral and put on the parking brake. I think the parking brake was located where today most people would find a cup holder and a console.

Somehow my brother disengaged something, and the car started rolling backwards.

As in, out of a small parking lot and into a busy highway.

My brother seemed oblivious to what he'd done, but as soon as I realized the car was moving, I started to scream. That made him cry. I remember feeling terrified because while I didn't know how to stop the car, I knew we were in trouble and that if the car went into traffic, we would be hurt. I was screaming and crying and trying to get my brother out of the driver's seat while at the same time looking at the store where my father was. 

"Daddy, Daddy!" I screamed, all the while trying to tug my sobbing brother away from the steering wheel. Somehow, I managed to hit the car horn.

I don't know if he heard me, but I saw Dad look up and realize what was happening. He dropped whatever he had in his hands on the store counter and ran toward the car. I was still screaming when my father wrenched the door open and stuck his foot inside and on the brake. I was able to grab my brother then and pull him over to me in the front side passenger's seat.

It was a close call.

My father yelled at me for not stopping the car (like a 5-year-old is going to be anything other than scared to death in this scenario) as he got in the driver's seat, pulled the car back up, put it in park, and went back in to pay for his stuff. I imagine it shook him up a little, we were so close to rolling out into the road.

I'm also pretty sure he told us not to tell our mother what happened. I don't remember if I ever did.

Mostly I remember feeling so angry that he blamed me for something my brother did that the fear went away, to be replaced with a seething darkness. I couldn't tell him how unfair he was being - I did not have those kinds of words yet, or that kind of courage - nor could I take it out on anybody (except maybe my brother, but I was a good girl). Maybe I went home and beat up a Barbie doll. I don't recall. But this incident has always stood out in my mind as a fine example of unfairness tinged with total terror, and it comes back to me when I have the feeling that I'm going backwards in life instead of moving ahead.

I'm not really going backwards. Being sick for a month has set me back. I was doing more physically before I caught this respiratory thing, and now I'm going to have to work to build up my stamina again. I went to Food Lion today and it wiped me out. 

For some reason, though, my life does feel like I'm trapped in an uncontrolled vehicle slowing heading into traffic, with no idea how to hit the gas or the brake pedal because my legs aren't long enough.

Making Biscuits

We seldom spent a weekend at home when I was growing up. My father played music in a band, and they had gigs on Fridays or Saturdays or sometimes both nights.

My mother seldom stayed home with us. She was like Lucy Ricardo, always wanting to be near my father and eventually edging her way up on the stage where she sang backup vocals on a few songs and beat on a tambourine.

Our maternal grandparents usually kept us on the weekends. We spent either one or both nights with them. I later found out my mother paid them to keep us, but I didn't know that at the time. I just knew we spent a lot of time at Grandma's house. Grandpa was not around us much; he worked and on the weekends, he repaired television sets in his workshop in the basement.

But occasionally my grandparents could not have us over, for whatever reason. The teenager up the road, Melinda, kept us sometimes. While it was fine for me to keep my brother for a few hours after school, it was not ok for us to be alone from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., at least not until after I turned 12.

One night Melinda kept us and she was still there the next morning. My parents apparently arrived home very late, and she slept on the couch. When I got up, she suggested we fix breakfast for everyone.

As we all know, I don't like to cook.

At any rate, we set about preparing breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits, etc. Melinda handed me the biscuit batter and told me to mix it. (I have no idea if this was something she mixed up or if it was Bisquick. Probably Bisquick, if it was around back then.)

Now I had helped my mother and grandmother make cakes, brownies, and cookies. Batter is supposed to be smooth, right? So I beat on that biscuit batter until I had every lump out.

Upon removing them from the oven, Melinda discovered that we had not biscuits, but something more akin to hard tack. By this time, my mother was up and I remember everyone laughing at my hard, flat biscuits.

My mother said I beat the rise out of them.

She threw them in the trash.

I buy frozen biscuits now, or a can of Pillsbury biscuits. I can heat the oven and cook them.

I don't have to worry about anything but burning them.

Latch Key Kids

When I was 9 years old, my mother decided I was old enough to keep myself and my brother for two hours after school.

She worked a full-time job in a nearby city, and did not come home until 6 p.m. My father's hours varied so much we never knew when he would be home.

For a time, we stayed with an older woman. Her name was Dorathea and she lived in a little white house not far from us. I got along with her. I did whatever chores she asked of me, then did my homework if I hadn't finished it on the bus, then read whatever books she had in her bookcase. It was there I first read Victoria Holt, books not exactly suited for my age group. 

My brother, however, was a bit of a troublemaker, and I think Dorathea didn't want us to return. Up the street a ways were the Stewarts. Two of them were teenagers, and one was a year younger than I. We stayed with them sometimes, but after it was obvious I could take care of us, we just exited the bus at our house.

I'm not sure when the term "latch key" kids came into being, but that is what we were. I was the big sister in charge. We each had chores. My father raised a variety of birds - chickens, quail, and other things. My brother's job was to feed them and water them. I was in charge of keeping the stove going, That meant fetching kindling and wood.

We had a pile of boards that came from somewhere, and since I wasn't supposed to use the axe, I would place the boards at an angle against a log and jump in the middle of them to snap them so I could get them into the stove. I couldn't handle the big logs one needs to bank a fire, but we heated with a wood stove and an oil furnace, so it was necessary to keep the fire going. We weren't supposed to turn the oil furnace up.

We arrived home from school about 3:50 p.m. It was a long bus ride as school let out at 3 p.m. My first chore was to make a collect call to my mother's office. I would ask for her, and she would say there was no one there by that name and reject the call. But she heard my voice on the other end and knew we were ok. Sometimes, though, what she heard was something like, "Mom, she's not letting me watch TV and I've done my homework," to which she would respond, "Behave yourselves" before rejecting the call. You could do that back then, back in 1972. At least you could around here.

At some point, the phone company changed it so that calls to the city were no longer long distance, so we didn't have to do that. I just came home and called and let her know everything was ok. We had worked out a code so I could tell her something was wrong. She worried about someone breaking into the house and being there when we arrived. I was supposed to tell this person that if I didn't call my mother right away, she would call the police, and then I was to call and tell her something like, "My brother Jack missed the bus," so she would know something was wrong (since I don't have a brother Jack). That's not the secret sentence, I've forgotten it, but it was something like that.

After we gathered kindling, fed the birds, fed the fire, and picked up around the house - I think I was washing clothes by this time so I would start a load of laundry, too - we were supposed to do our homework. Generally, though, I did my homework on the bus, so I didn't have that much to do. Instead, I would read or watch TV.

I remember one afternoon I decided I would make dinner. I was younger than 12. I don't remember what I fixed, but I set the table, made the meal, etc., so that when my mother came home, everything was done. She said nothing to me about it. No thank you, no good job. She just came in and ate and told me to clean up.

Later I asked her if she even noticed what I'd done. She said of course she had, but no one ever thanked her, so why should I expect to be thanked?

After that, I despised cooking and have ever since. Since I could do it, it became expected, and while I didn't cook on nights I had piles of homework, I frequently threw casseroles or whatever my mother left in the refrigerator in the oven. These were the days of frozen TV dinners and ready made meals. But I got out of cooking as much as I could, and since homework came first, I stopped doing my homework on the bus so I'd have to do it at home. Lots of times we just ate a sandwich and I was fine with that. If my father was home, he expected a nice meal, and my mother usually fixed that when she came home from work, so the days he was home I did not cook. I made no secret of my dislike for cooking.

There we were, me with my brother who was three years younger than I, staying by ourselves in a house with a woodstove when I was 9 years old. I don't know that it hurt us. We had chores we had to do, and if we didn't do them, we were punished, so we did them. I don't recall too many bad things happening - seems like I jumped on one of those pieces of wood one time and had it fly up and hit me in the face - and there were splinters and such to deal with, but we just did it. And we learned to deal with whatever came along, whether that was the chickens getting out or learning how to rebuild the fire in the woodstove.

I don't know if there are still latchkey kids - I assume so - but I also know helicopter parenting seems to have taken over. Maybe latchkey kids are called "free range" kids now. 

It didn't do us any harm, really. I was grown up when I was born, or so it seems, so this was just a part of it.

Can't Do This Anymore

A notice from the Division of Motor Vehicles telling me my license must be renewed before my birthday reminded me of how I actually received my license in the first place.

Today, if you go in for your license, you have to take your papers. And maybe your momma's papers. When we went for our Real IDs just prior to the pandemic, we took along everything but the kitchen sink. I think we even took the deed to the house.

We didn't need most of it, but better safe than sorry, especially when the DMV is an hour's drive away.

But in 1978, all I needed was my daddy.

When I went to the DMV to get my learners permit, I guess it was, my father took me. I did not have my birth certificate with me. I seem to recall this was a spur of the moment initiative on my dad's part, and I hadn't really prepared to do this that particular day.

Hence the lapse.

At any rate, because I didn't have my birth certificate, the nice lady behind the counter was going to send me home. I was upset about this, and tears sprang into my eyes, not only because I wasn't getting my permit, but because I'd get an ass-chewing for not having the paperwork and wasting my father's time when we got into the car.

The nice lady saw my distress and asked to see my father's driver's license. He presented it. She said, "I'll tell you what, if he can tell me your birthday and it matches with what I have here, I will give you your license."

I looked hopefully at my father, who preceded to give her a date. 

"Daddy!" I wailed. "That's my brother's birthday!"

The woman chuckled. Dad looked embarrassed.

"Don't help him," the woman cautioned. I wiped at a tear.

Dad came through with the right birthday on his second guess. I received my learner's permit without any documentation whatsoever. I don't remember if I presented my birth certificate for my final license, but I suppose I did, having learned that lesson.

I guarantee that story could not be told by anyone trying to get something from the DMV today.

The Day After 9/11

When the first plane hit the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, I was working a part-time job at a law office to supplement my freelance income.

One of the lawyers rushed in and told us to turn on the TV. We did, just in time to watch the second plane hit.

At first, we weren't sure we'd seen what we'd seen, but as CBS replayed it and began analyzing it, and then more reports of hijacked jets came in, and the Pentagon was hit, we realized this was big stuff.

We all stood around the small set, watching. When the towers tumbled, my coworker gasped. "All of those people," one of them exclaimed.

"All of those firefighters," I murmured. Being married to a firefighter, I knew who was climbing the stairs while everyone else was fleeing.

The lawyers closed the doors and sent us home. Everyone in the small county seat headed home. My husband was out with his father installing a septic tank, and I had no way to reach him. This was 2001, after all - and he didn't have a cellphone. I wasn't even sure where he was.

I walked into my quiet, empty home and turned the TV on. I sat for hours, watching over and over as the towers burned and then fell, again and again in replays. I listened to stunned announcers try to make sense of this attack on us, heard their voices falter, heard them try to distinguish facts from guesses.

My husband did not come home until about 4 p.m., a little early for him. Someone had seen them working and stopped and told them the country was under attack. My husband and father-in-law had packed up and came home.

So, my firefighter saw the towers collapse in a replay, but he did not see it real time. He did not know, at the moment he was watching, the exact minute he was watching, that people were dying. By the time he watched the towers fall, those folks had been dead for hours.

He was devasted, of course, by the loss of his New York brothers. Firefighters are a close-knit group. Losing 343 of them in one blow was tragic.

But I had seen it happen in real time, along with millions of other people.

Every year since then, I have hunted up footage of the fall of the towers around 9/11. I have watched numerous documentaries about it, seen the conspiracy theory videos, or a lot of them anyway, and occasionally stumble upon some recently uploaded footage someone in New York shot out of a window and then forgot about it.

Different angles of the second plane hitting are always gut-wrenching. I've only seen a few shots of the first plane hitting; no one knew it was coming, after all, so cameras weren't pointed there. However, there is one video that shows the first plane hit; an interview some blocks away, and they heard the plane suddenly come in and the videographer caught the moment of impact.

You can see that here at about 19 seconds in:

In the days after, I remember seeing blue skies unmarred by the trails of aircraft, because the planes were grounded. It was eerie to look up and see the sky so blue without the chem trails of planes, the crisscross patterns that indicated people were going on about their day, flying hither and yon without a care.

People were quiet, at first, and helpful, at first. But after a few days, the air changed. I felt anger, hatred, and evil seething in the store when I went after groceries. It has ebbed and flowed over the last 21 years, that feeling that I have when I am in a crowd, but it has never gone away, not since September 12, 2001. For a day - maybe two - we were one nation, pulled together by the horror of what we'd witnessed.

But after that? We were an angry, scared bunch of people, and we've stayed that way. We frayed. We pulled apart. And the distance and the turmoil grew, and in the end, the terrorists won after all, for all that they've been dead for 20 years.

In the end, they destroyed us - because we have destroyed ourselves.

We've raised an entire generation in that atmosphere of fear and hate. They don't know anything except fear and hate. That's all they know.

What has it been like for them, growing up in this new world that we allowed to happen, the one where everyone is afraid, and big men must carry guns with little, deadly bullets to compensate for their fears?

I know what it has been like for me to live in this time - it's been basically an ulcer-creating atmosphere. But what must it be like for those young folks, the ones who are now turning 21?

What do they think and feel, having grown up every moment with this disease of the soul, this dark pall that has fallen over this nation?

I remember the blue skies on September 12. I looked up at the blue, blue skies, those brilliant September skies.

And the memories of what we were before, knowing what we could have been, and the thought of those clear blue skies, are what pulls me through.

Olivia Newton-John (1948 - 2022)

Word came this afternoon that singer Olivia Newton-John passed away at the age of 73.

I have been an Olivia Newton-John fan for a long time. I listened to her songs like Please, Mister, Please, saw her in Grease, and I was probably one of the 15 people who saw the movie Xanadu. I was only 17 when I saw that last movie but even I knew it was a flop. I might like it better if I revisited it, but I don't know that I've ever seen the movie listed on a cable movie channel.

I'll have to look for it now and see if somebody shows it.

It was the song Hopelessly Devoted to You from Grease that I loved the most. She sang it with so much angst and feeling that I don't know how anyone could not stop and listen to that song when it comes on the radio (which of course is seldom these days, though we may hear it more for a while).

Grease was also the first movie I saw without my parents. My brother and I went saw it together; I was 13, he was 10. I don't know how much my brother liked the movie, but I loved it, even if I didn't get the risqué lyrics in some of the songs at the time.

Olivia was, in spite of the cigarette and leather clothes at the end of Grease, the girl next door. If Olivia could do it, anyone could do it. She was spunky, she came across as fun, and I enjoyed watching her perform.

There aren't many people in this world that I truly admire, but Olivia Newton-John was one of them.

Her struggle with breast cancer was legendary; I remember feeling saddened when I learned she had it, and happy when I realized it hadn't killed her. She never regained the fame she'd had after the song Physical, but that didn't matter.

She'll always be Sandy Dee.

Playing Pool

Family legend has it that I spent my early years in the pool hall.

My father would take me to the nearest bar, where he gathered with his buddies. He'd place me on top of the pinball machine, and I would chase after the balls. The guys would take turns dropping quarters in the machine to watch me laugh and giggle at the balls, bells, and whistles.

Apparently, I never fell off, or maybe I did and landed on my head and that is what's wrong with me today.

At any rate, I've always loved pinball.

I also like pool. My father played pool whilst his companions kept me entertained with the pinball machine. He once told me I'd sit on a stool and watch the pool balls bounce around the table, fascinated by the swirling balls and the crack of the pool stick against the cue.

As I aged, I learned to play the game at my grandparents' home. They had a pool table in the basement. It was there I learned too that girls were not supposed to beat the boys, that doing so was akin to committing some kind of crime and would result in a tantrum and allegations of cheating when I did win. Young uncles. Phhtt.

Girls aren't supposed to beat the boys at anything, but I know a lot of girls who can open up a can of whup ass that would turn a heart to stone in a New York minute. Sometimes, if I am angry and crazy enough, I am one of them.

I recently found an 8-ball pool game on the AARP website. The irony of playing video games on the site for the old people is not lost on me. But I have enjoyed the little game, trying to remember the angles and such. The online game has rules I'm not familiar with, but I caught on quickly.

Does anyone still play pool? The real thing, with the table and the green cover? I don't know of anyone besides my husband and brother who would even know how to play pool these days. I suppose there are still pool halls and bar joints with pool tables, places that smell of beer and vomit and cue ball chalk. None that I frequently, obviously. I've not heard anyone mention a pool hall in years.

We don't have room for a pool table at my house. My husband's family also had a pool table, but it was in a moldy basement I couldn't play down there because of my allergies. I haven't been in their basement for so long I don't even know if the pool table is still there.

Back in the day, having a pool table at home was a status symbol. It was the thing to own. 

Another cool fad that has died out, I guess. Can you, dear reader, think of any others?

Going Back to Hippie Me

I had forgotten, really, that I was a 1970s version of a hippie when I was younger.

Once I discovered blue jeans and got away from my mother's version of what a girl should look like, I became the epitome of a young woman who lived in blue jeans and T-shirts. Or blue jeans and blouses.

And hats.

I wore lots of hats.

My brother reminded me of this Christmas Eve, when he presented me with this photo from my past:

That's my brother, my mother, and me.

My father must have taken this shot. According to my brother, it had 1976 on the back, so I would have been 13 years old, and my brother 10. He looks very much like he belongs in The Brady Bunch in this picture.

I, on the other hand, look like a hippie from the far hills, with my jeans, oversized coat, dark glasses, and hat.

We apparently were on a hike. My mother has a walking stick leaning against her, and I have one in my hand. My brother has a knife at his side, perhaps to kill saber toothed tigers with, or some such.

I have no memory of this picture, the hat, or the coat. The glasses, I think, were the kind that darkened in sunlight. 

Dressing like that, though, brings back some flimsy memories. Memories of my mother fretting because I refused to dress up anymore. She hated my hats. 

I hated dressing up more than she hated my hats and blue jeans, I guess. Or maybe she didn't think my wardrobe was worth fighting over after a while.

Now I dress like a frumpy old woman. I think it's time to go back to being a hippie. I shall have to look for hippie clothes for large women.

Mamma Cass pulled it off back in the 1960s, right?

I should be able to figure this out for 2022.

So long as I'm wearing pants. Ain't no way I'm going back to wearing a dress.

Happy December!

Here we are, 24 days away from the big day now! Christmas is coming whether one wants it or not.

Thinking back, I can't say that I have a favorite Christmas. As an adult, the two that stand out are the first two I spent with my husband. The first we were dating; the second we were married.

His first Christmas present to me was a pair of cowboy boots. They were the rage at the time. I gave him a sweater jacket.

I don't remember the presents of our second Christmas, only the feeling of waking up to my own tree in my own home with my husband of just over a month in the room beside me. Then it became a whirlwind as we visited my parents and then his, then grandparents, too, all in the same day. We ended that as soon as possible, visiting my family on Christmas Eve and his on Christmas Day. Too much running around for me all in one day.

My childhood Christmas memories tend toward watching. Watching my brother open his presents. Watching the interactions between my parents. Watching the tree, the lights twinkling. Watching the pile of presents grow. Watching my mother wrap things. Watching to see where the toys that "Santa" would place under the tree might be hidden. (I did not always find them.)

My brother and I played with some of the decorations and having great adventures with them. We had an ornament we called Santa Mouse that my brother and I played with, using him as the hero, dashing off in his sleigh to solve whatever we could come up with. Saving Barbie from Johnny West or delivering those little green Army men to the poor underdeveloped Ken to shore up his self-esteem. Whatever.

My brother always received the better presents - the guy things. Electric trains, Lego sets, Erector sets. I received girl stuff - dolls, clothes, makeup mirrors. I am not and never have been a girly girl, so I always coveted my brother's more manly gains. Fortunately, when we were alone and not bothered by other children, we generally played well together although of course there were lots of brother and sister arguments. Young children always have them.

I remember snow at Christmas, something we seldom see now. I remember sleds and toboggans that we used to race down the hill. I remember riding like lightning down a hillside and crashing into a frozen cow pile and nearly knocking myself silly when I hit it, and the laughter from my companions, who at that time would have been my brother and the Stewarts and maybe a couple of Lees.

My father once brought home these snow pans. They were an invention and he wanted to see how they worked. He gave them to my brother and I and told us to go play with them. He watched while we fell down and sat on them and generally could not figure out how to use them. He decided not to invest in them, I think. In my mind, they were the precursor to the snow board. They apparently weren't, but I wonder if that man ever took his invention elsewhere and did something with it. I don't know. But I'm afraid one could not have found a klutzier person to test such a thing on than I. I generally spent more time on the ground than I ever did on things like skates or skies.

The first day of December arrives with bleak gray. I don't know how much of that is cloud and how much is smoke from a major fire on Pilot Mountain in North Carolina.  It appears to be a combination of both. It is not overly chilly, though. It's just cold enough to let everyone know that winter is on the way.

I Tried to Teach

I could not be a teacher. Not today, not ever. 

Not that I didn't try. Back in 1994, I decided to apply to substitute teach. I was having migraines and had quit my job as a legal secretary, because so many headaches in a month lead to an inability to think properly. 

Why I thought substituting would be a good idea I do not recall. Perhaps it was the promise that I could say "no" on the days I didn't feel like working. Perhaps I thought to see if I enjoyed teaching, and thus then would pursue a teaching degree and find a place amongst the English teachers at the high school.

Whatever the reason, the school board approved my application. There was no training, aside from an admonishment that I could not discipline. If I had a problem, I was to send the student to the principal's office. The fact that I had a BA apparently meant I would know how to handle any situation thrown at me.

I did not.

I recall a class of 4th or 5th graders at Eagle Rock Elementary who simply paid no attention to me at all. The teacher had left no syllabus, and I had no clue where they were in any subject. Finally, I read to them. And when I finished that book, I told them local history stories. I told them about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson being in Botetourt County. I told them about the author Mary Johnston, who grew up in Buchanan and became rich and famous. Most were bored but it did quiet them. I was happier than they were when the bell rang.

Then there was a class of 7th grade special education students that I was expected to teach for an extended period as the teacher had had surgery. That did not go well. I had no training with special education students. They basically ran wild and I simply let them because I had been told I couldn't discipline them. I believe I sent every single one of those students to the principal at one point or another, and he simply sent them back. I finally told someone I could not do that class anymore, and they found someone else.

A math class, also in the middle school, stymied me completely. I administered the quiz the real teacher had left, but when asked for assistance, I could offer none. Despite passing algebra and trigonometry in high school with straight As, I had no clue what this "new math" was about. When one student asked me why I didn't know, I simply replied, "I majored in English."

Finally, I remember a high school English class. This I could do, except high schoolers were about as well behaved as the fourth graders. I had to take some kind of gizmo from some boy, who pouted that the real teacher let him play with it. I gave it back to him after class. Fortunately, at this level, the classes rotated in and out and so I could give the same quiz over again and I had some idea what they were doing in an English class. It was the only time I felt like I could do it, but the teacher has also left me detailed notes. I had but to follow them, and I did.

Were there other classes? Yes, but those I've written about stand out as my big failures and the one I felt I was most successful at. They all felt more like babysitting than teaching. I did not substitute a second year. I may not have substituted a second semester. Maybe that all happened in the space of a 1/4 of a year. I don't recall.

After I obtained my masters degree, I had thought to teach at the college level. Maybe I could manage people who were almost adults. I started out teaching non-credit classes through the community college, expecting to mostly bring in older adults. I wanted to see if I could make it work, figure out this new world of education. My plan worked well. I taught two courses on how to keep a journal. They were well received. Then the college asked me to teach a summer course on "writing."

Four weeks into that class, my gallbladder went bad. I remember going into class a few days before I had surgery, and one of my students, who was a nurse, took one look at me and said, "You are sick." By that time I'd quickly dropped about 10 pounds because I could eat nothing. I took two weeks off to recover from surgery, and then had to return to finish the final two weeks of class. While the students gave me good marks for the course, I did not feel it was my best work. How could it have been, when I was so sick in the midst of it? And the two weeks I went back? I was still recovering and who knows how much that early return (insisted upon by the college) cost me? Is that why I have chronic abdominal pain today? Because I went back to work too soon? I don't know.

So standing in front of a class and teaching is not my forte. I know the schools are hurting for substitutes, but unless they offer a training course in substituting, I would never attempt that again. I wouldn't do it during a pandemic anyway.

However, I tried to teach in another way, and that was through my writing. Every story I wrote I considered a lesson of some kind. This is how government works. This is why it works as it does. This is where tax dollars are spent. This is why they are spent that way. This community is not a town, this is a town but not a community. These funds may be spent on this project but not on that. This person is noteworthy because he or she showed extraordinary courage. This person is a historical reference because he or she did thus and such. This land is being rezoned because of this reason. A hotel is going up across the street from where you live; be aware.

Today I see now that none of my efforts, my 35 years of writing, taught anyone anything at all. I see angry people accosting school board members about things over which they have no control. I see angry people not understanding that the county simply cannot take money from the state that's slated for roads and use it to build a building. Mostly I see angry people who do not understand the framework of their government, and who believe they understand the US Constitution without having a clue about it, much as Christians spout off chapter and verse of some Biblical passage when they really have no idea what they are saying. I see things taken out of context and put in places where it was never meant to be.

I wasted my life trying to teach through my words, to make people understand that Eagle Rock is a community, not a town, and therefore has no taxing authority. I tried to help them see that the school board can't raise taxes, they have to ask the county for money and accept what the state gives them. And the county can only tax what the Virginia legislators allow them to tax, because we're a Dillon Rule State, and I tried to explain what this means, too. (It means that localities only have the powers vested to them by the legislature, they can't simply decide to tax green beans, for example, if the state hasn't said they could.)

Looking at the things I see going on locally, and looking at the people who are behind most of the craziness - people who I know read those articles, because they're about my husband's age, and they read the paper and talked to me about it, and they should know better now, but they are people who are bigots and fascists and can't see who they are because they're too busy calling "the other side" bigots and fascists and socialists because they don't know what the words mean - I see only that I failed. Nothing I wrote sunk into their tiny brains. They did not get it then, and they don't get it now.

What is the point of trying to teach, if no one is listening or reading with comprehension?

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

My first bicycle was a present from Santa when I was five years old. It was baby blue, and Batgirl was sitting on the bike seat when I woke up Christmas morning.

It had training wheels at first, but by summer's end, my father took them off and, holding on to me, or so I thought, sent me off down the road. By the time I realized he was no longer holding on, I'd gone a long way on my own. I didn't need the training wheels anymore.

Generally speaking, I did not ride my bike at home as much as I rode a bicycle at my grandmother's house. By the time I was 8 or 9, we were all riding bikes, even my brother who would have only been 5 or 6. I guess the bikes belonged to my departed uncles and aunt, maybe even my mother, I can't remember.

In any event, when we stayed with Grandma over the summer, she shooed us out the door, and inevitably, we'd take a bike ride.

Here is our route, as seen today from Google Earth with mark-ups:

The green line is the bike route. We'd start off from Grandma's house, go to the right from this picture, and ride around that circle. The squiggly lines on the left-hand side indicate the maze of a path we created in the pine trees that the Forestry Department had planted behind their building. All of us kids around there rode our bikes through the pine trees, sometimes for hours as our bikes turned into steeds and we chased after one another.

This is where we were supposed to ride, in that circle. Sometimes we'd dare one another to ride up to the green line on the right, where there was a rickety old empty house. We called it the haunted house, so riding up to it was an important dare.

As we got older, we rode around the big building labeled "Mom's Office" down in the lower part of the picture. We weren't supposed to do that because we might run into a vehicle or have a car back into us or whatever reason the adults could find, but we would do it occasionally anyway, whizzing past my mother in her front office in hopes she didn't see us. Mostly she didn't. Sometimes she did. Oops.

When we were even older, say 10, we could take our bikes across Apperson Drive to the Orange Market so long as we used the stoplight. And on Fridays, we could ride our bikes beside Grandma while she walked up to Aunt Neva's to do her hair. That was always hard because we weren't supposed to cross Apperson at that location (no stoplight) unless Grandma was watching and of course she was walking so we had to ride up and down and up and down and do circles around her until we reached a safer area.

The yellow squares I added are where there were once houses or buildings. The remaining house on the right hand end of the block belonged to my grandmother's brother, Uncle Curt, and his wife, Aunt Elsie. My two cousins, Tim and Pam, lived there and sometimes they played with us but Aunt Elsie didn't let them out very much. Other kids - mostly boys - lived around the block, too, and we'd all ride around together at various times. I remember a Journell boy and I think a boy named Dennis (?) lived behind my grandmother's house. I'm not sure that's right. My brother might remember.

The river back then was lined with trees all the way up to the road. That was a tangled jungle we were also supposed to stay away from, but somehow there were paths that led down to the water for fishing or wading. I can't imagine how they got there.

At home on the farm, bike riding was complicated by the dirt road and gravel. A wipe out there was actually worse than one on the asphalt at Grandma's, because the gravel would embed itself into your knees or elbows. 

My blue bike died a violent death when my father backed over it with a truck. My brother had been riding it and left it there. I received a whipping for "not taking care of my things" even though I'd been out with my mother and had no idea my brother had left it behind the truck. I'm sure I deserved many of the whippings I received, but I definitely remember the unfair ones, which that one was.

That bike was replaced by a green three-speed that I didn't ride much. I started driving when I was 13 - a beat up ol' Jeep that was manual transmission - and I guess bikes lost their allure after that.

The very last bicycle I owned was a purchase I made in the early 1990s. I had decided I should take up bike riding for my health. I rode it around the exterior of the house a few times, parked it, and asked my husband to take it back to the store. It terrified me. I was too high off the ground. I had no balance. Whatever riding a bicycle in childhood had given me, by the time I was in my 30s, it was gone.

Happy New Year!

Welcome 2021! At long last, 2020 is over.

Unfortunately, as years tend to do, this one so far looks like last year. It's raining, it's cold, and there is still a bad virus out in the world.

But now we move on. Beginning years of decades seem to not be the best ones. Maybe soon this will be the Roaring '20s of the 2000s. I hope so.

There are many rituals about the first of the year. The ones I am aware of have to do with what you eat and opening doors. I have never subscribed to any of them, so while I tried black-eyed peas one year, they were not on the menu today.

I did get up and open a door and shoo out the old year and then waved in the new. I didn't think it could hurt anything and fresh air is always nice.

Another superstition, maybe it's a local one, I don't know, is that good luck comes depending upon who enters the house first as a visitor - a man brings good luck, a woman brings bad luck. (Sexist much?)

This superstition has haunted me a long time. When I was seven, we went to my grandmother's house on New Year's Day. I was so excited to see my grandmother that I bounded into the house.

My grandmother immediately burst into tears. "She came in first. We'll have bad luck all year long," she wailed.

My grandfather, who had watched my father enter second, suggested that only held true for adult visitors and children didn't count, so my father was bringing good luck.

My grandmother was having none of it. I had ruined the entire year. I still remember her clutching at her chest and the tears in her eyes.

I was walking bad luck.

As one might imagine, this had quite an impact upon me at that particular age. I spent the entire year ducking anytime something bad happened, sure I would be blamed. My young uncles would tease me if something happened - a glass broke, I remember, - and remind me it was all my fault. 

I was bad luck.

This kind of thing can dampen the spirits of even the most resilient child. I, however, have always been prone to melancholy and moodiness. 

That year I was about as melancholy and moody as a little girl of seven could be. I had moved to a new school that year. I told my classmates to stay away from me - I was bad luck. I shied away from making friends.

I told my teacher I was bad luck. After about the third time of hearing this, Mrs. Wright sat me down and told me there was no such thing as good or bad luck. She asked me where I'd gotten the notion that I was bad luck.

"My grandmother said I was bad luck because I'd walked in the door first on New Year's," I explained.

I remember seeing Mrs. Wright inhale deeply and look off in the distance. Then she looked back at me.

"Now see here. There is no such thing as bad luck or good luck. That's all superstitious nonsense and you should not believe any of it," she said.

"But my grandmother dropped a glass," I said. "She said it was my fault."

"Everybody breaks things. In life, things happen. We have to accept that. But they do not happen because someone walked into a room. Sometimes things simply happen, and all we can do is accept them," she said.

This advice lightened my heart, but only a little. (To this day, I do not leave my house on New Year's Day. Nor do I go into anyone's house first, if I can help it.)

However, on this New Year's Day, I think back on Mrs. Wright's advice and realize that she was right. I also realize that this lesson - that sometimes things simply happen and we must accept that - is one lost on the majority of the population right now.

The virus happened. The election happened. People have car wrecks, lose their jobs, lose their families, and sometimes - maybe most of the time - it's through not fault of their own. Nor is it bad luck. Sometimes it is the result of a choice made a decade ago, one that a person may not remember ever having made. 

Sometimes things happen.

Occasionally, we break a glass.

My Music Teacher

I learned that my elementary school music teacher passed away recently. Her name was Mrs. Tingler, and she taught music from the time I was at Breckinridge Elementary School until I left there in sixth grade.

She did not instill my love of music in me - that honor belongs to my father, who has always sang and played the guitar. But she did impress me with the variety of music available, and opened my eyes to many different types of instruments.

She would bring in drums, bongos, triangles, recorders, tambourines, and other such instruments and hand them out to students to play.

Some of my favorite songs we sang were Senor Don Gato, a song about a cat, and Goodbye, Old Paint, a song about an old pony. Sometimes I call my husband "Old Paint," and he always looks at me funny when I do that.

Once Mrs. Tingler took me and another student to other elementary schools to sing. I also played the flute during the songs. The only song I recall that we sang was Morning Has Broken, but I know there were others. It was a big deal to be pulled from class to go around to other schools, riding in Mrs. Tingler's car from place to place.

A while back, I connected with Mrs. Tingler on Facebook and was able to thank her for her influence in my life. I am glad I was able to do that.

I don't know if students still have music at the elementary school level, what with the focus on STEM learning and teaching to tests. But hearing the sounds of young folks playing instruments and lifting their voices in song has to be one of the greatest delights of life.

I hope every young student has a Mrs. Tingler in his or her life at some point.

 

I Miss School

I miss college. I miss the atmosphere, the ideas, the notion that there is a world where positive change is possible.

I hate living in this new world that evil has created, the one where everyone is angry, people are dying, and the life is being sucked out of everyone by a bully who thinks he can become the dictator of the USA.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending 45 minutes with one of my former professors in a webinar, along with many other Hollins students (most, I am sure, were former students of hers), and it was 45 minutes of bliss - the kind of relaxation I haven't felt in months (years?).

I felt at home. How nice to have a conversation about writing, about ideas, about creativity. A conversation that did not involve politics, stupid flags, police states, or the cost of pork and other meats. How beautiful to see the sparkle in my old professor's eye as she talked about her creative process, her work habits. How amazing to hear the solemn joy in her voice as she read one of her poems to us. How utterly decadent to spend 45 minutes doing something I loved, instead of the things I must do (like laundry).

How wonderful a campus is, where you can mention Rilke or Descartes, or talk about Sisyphus, and somebody knows what you're talking about. It's a place where ideas go to find their owners, because people on campus are creative learners, who want to learn, and they are seekers of truths and knowledge. They value knowledge and learning. They don't think that opinion is the same as fact; they understand the difference.

God, I miss college.

The Orange Lamp

I've been watching Melissa Etheridge play live on Facebook (6 p.m. EST) for about 10 days now. She gives a four-song concert every evening. She talks about how she wrote the song, plays hot guitar licks, throws in a day on the piano, and talks about taking care of ourselves during this time of weirdness. She advises us to drink water, take walks, be kind and fill the universe with love.

Hey, that's a message that I can get into. It's like stepping into her secret room and learning a lot about her. How very kind of her to do this for her fans during these difficult days.

Her concerts are taped in what looks like a little shrine room, where she has a chair, her Grammy statue, things she's been given or whatever that has to do with her career.

Beside the chair, is a lamp. Its shade is orange and fringed.

 

Melissa's orange lamp.

From the first concert, I have stared at this lamp when I wasn't watching Melissa play on the guitar. I swear my mother bought a lamp just like this one when we went to California in 1976.

We were on a family adventure, complete with extended family that included my grandmother and two young uncles plus the four of us, taking a cross-country tour to California. We were in a big van of some kind; my mother said it drove like a bus.

Anyway, in San Jose, I think it was, there was a huge flea market. Stuff everywhere. My mother decided she had to have this lamp.

We had to sit with the lamp and nurse it all the way back to Virginia, trying desperately hard not to break it.

Having succeeded in getting it back home safely, my mother put the lamp in the formal living room.

I hadn't thought of it in years, but seeing it in Melissa's room has had me wondering what became of this lamp.

My brother told me in a text that it was destroyed in a house fire that occurred in my parents' home in 1989. I was married and out of the house by then, and my mother insisted that only she and the ServPro people could clean her stuff, so I have no real notion as to what was and wasn't destroyed when the roof of the house burned off following a lightning strike.

But I guess that is what happened to the orange lamp.

(I never did like it; orange is not my color.)

Pictures of My Mother

At Thanksgiving, my aunt came to Virginia from Texas and brought with her the photos my grandmother had had of my mother. She thought I might like them.

Most of them I don't recall seeing. I scanned them, printed them out, and made an album of them and gave them to my brother for Christmas so he would have them, too. I have the originals but I wanted to put some of them here so they would be in my blog. I have my blog bound into a book every three or four months.

Mom hated to have her picture taken, so I doubt she would like to have these photos where everyone can see them, but she isn't around and I want them memorialized here.

So without further ado, photos of my mom:

Mom with her China doll that my grandfather gave her.

I am not sure, but I suspect Mom is pregnant in this picture.

My mother, my brother, my father, and me at the Grand Canyon in 1976.

My grandmother holding my mother when she was a baby.

Mom around age 6 or 7.

My grandfather holding his newborn daughter.

My mother in her Girl Scout uniform.

My mother and my father, taken in 1996, four years before my mother died.

Mom around age 10.

Mom in 1966, bringing home my brother.

Mom's high school photo.

As you can see, my mother had loads of freckles. She told me once that when she was young, someone told her that early morning dew could rid one of freckles. She spent a summer getting up very early, before everyone else, and going outside to rub her face in the grass in hopes of ridding herself of her freckles. Finally, my grandmother caught her and put a stop to it. As you can see, the folk remedy did not work, although the freckles became less apparent as my mother aged. She was very skilled with make-up.

Also, up until about 1993, my mother's hair was black. Then the gray started showing and she dyed it that burnt orange color you see in one photo. When I remember her, I always remember her with black hair.

Why Learning Matters

I was seven years old and the bus dropped me off at my babysitter's house. She lived a good walk from the trailer my parents and I (along with my brother) were living in at the time, on a dirt road. I wasn't supposed to walk on the road. I was supposed to go to the babysitter's house, though.

On this day, though, I found the front door to my babysitter's house locked. There was a note on the door - a note that did me no good.

The note was written in cursive. I had just started second grade and we hadn't learned cursive yet. I could make out a few things - by that time I could read extensively for a 7-year-old - but only print. I knew my mother's signature in cursive and that was about it.

I wandered around the back and found that door unlocked. I went in and called for my caregiver. The house echoed only my timid little voice as I first called out a name and then moved to a sobbing wail as I realized I was alone.

The phone lines were still party lines, and I had been told on multiple occasions not to touch the telephones, no matter what, not even to answer what was called "our ring." I did not dare call anyone because everything was long distance. The only number I knew was my grandmother's, anyway, and she lived 30 miles away.

My mother worked at a job near my grandmother (it was a long way off to a little child), and my father was a traveling salesman and I never knew when he would be home. It would be two hours at least before my mother came to fetch me.

Two hours is a mighty long time when you're a little girl. I made myself a jelly sandwich and tried not to make a mess - my babysitter hated messes - and sniffled myself quiet long enough to do whatever homework I had. Then I settled in to finish reading Bambi, by Felix Salten. This was the original novel, not the Disney version for kids, which tells you how progressed I was in my reading.

My mother finally turned up, followed not long after by my babysitter, who had left because she'd had an emergency with one of her own children.

Both were surprised to find me alone in the house.

I had not followed directions. I was supposed to walk up the road in the opposite direction of my home to the trailer up the hill, where an adult was waiting to take me in hand (why the adult never came for me, I do not know). I remember being yelled at, and my mother giving me a swat on the behind for not doing what I was told and for leaving crumbs on the kitchen table.

After they all finished yelling at me, I tearfully explained that I couldn't read the message. "You can read!" my mother exploded.

"Not that kind of writing," I cried.

It was then my mother saw the note and realized it was in cursive. I could not read cursive at that time, though I made it a priority after this incident. (I remember going to my second-grade teacher and begging her to teach me cursive, bursting into tears while I asked, and so without question she took me aside during the daily quiet time when the other children were napping, and taught me to read cursive writing, which wasn't taught until third grade. Bless her.)

I don't recall an apology from the babysitter or my mother, but I generally don't in most of my memories. Adults in my youth were not known for apologizing when they screwed up. Unlike Andy Taylor in the Andy Griffith Show, big people in my life were not good at recognizing the need to sit tiny little me on a knee and kiss me on the head and say, "I'm sorry." That's too bad, really, because it would have gone a long way toward making childhood more bearable. (It helps in adulthood too, if people say they are sorry, but I no longer expect apologies from anyone. I just hand out "I'm sorry" like candy, myself, knowing it is somehow my fault that I was too young to read cursive (with said incident serving as a nice metaphor of everything I cannot do or do not do right).

It wasn't long thereafter that I had a new babysitter, though I don't recall if the incidents were related or if it was because the babysitter was going to have a seventh child. Oddly, I don't know who kept me after school after that; certainly someone did for a time. After my brother started school I know where we stayed but there is a gap there for me in that I don't know where I went after school for the remainder of the second grade and none of the third grade. Maybe I just went home and stayed alone, although that doesn't sound right. I'll have to ask my brother if he remembers.

This odd memory came roaring back this morning, totally unbidden, while I was in the shower. It is neither a bad memory nor a good one; it's more a tale of how life was when I was growing up.

Perhaps a recent article I read about how certain states are bringing cursive writing back into the curriculum brought this incident to mind. Supposedly cursive has always been taught here where I live, but my 24-year-old nephew, who went through the same school system I did, only 25 years later, cannot read it. Two years ago when my brother sent him a recipe in my mother's handwriting, he couldn't understand the words because they were written in my mother's beautiful cursive.

When I go to the county courthouse, all of the old records are handwritten. Court orders, civil verdicts, birth and death certificates - all written in longhand, all illegible to thousands of people who cannot read cursive and apparently have no desire to do so.

Many primary sources that pre-date the 1900s are handwritten. The original U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are written in the cursive of the time. Can you read them?

 

My cursive handwriting is awful; I turned to print a long time ago. I still remember how to write it, though.

And I certainly now know how to read it.