Wrinkles

Thomas’ mother had a distinct aversion to wrinkles. It was so bad that she wouldn’t even allow raisins in the house; a fact that bothered Thomas to no end, seeing as how Goobers were his favorite candy this month. This week alone he had gone to see the newest film at the small theater in town three times, just so he could sit and eat his candy in peace. Sadly, his friends couldn't understand why he kept paying to see the same movie yet again, but that didn't stop them for teasing him as they watched him walk past on his way to the theater every afternoon.

Wrinkles in the bedding would send his mother into fits… something that Thomas knew all too well. And while he deliberately left his sheets in a wrinkled muddle, rather than pulling them tight as he knew she preferred, he was always careful to be sure the covering bedspread was at least spread smoothly. It gave him a secret delight to know the shock she would receive if she were to ever pull the bedspread back, but then, he also knew his secret was safe, for his mother would not be caught doing such a domestic chore when he was ten years old and more than capable of doing it for himself.

Her revulsion was so bad that not only were all her clothes permanent press, but she also owned no less than three clothes steamers….four, if you counted the travel-size steamer she kept in her satchel-like purse… in case of emergencies you see. You never knew when out dining if a tablecloth would have a crease in it (though he had yet to see her actually use the mini steamer when they all went out dining; she usually just pitched a fit until they were seated at a new table).

Aunt Edna was the only wrinkled thing allowed in the house; though if Thomas’ mother had her way, Edna would have never gotten past the welcome mat. As it was, she always claimed a headache when Edna’s visits were due, and swept herself off to her room, where the linens were crisp, and promptly sit down at her vanity table. Inspecting her face from every angle she would reassure herself that crows feet and other fine lines were not somehow, magically, being transferred from Edna’s elderly face onto hers.

Thomas loved his aunt. Sure, she was getting a little silly in her old age… like just last week when she came over with a Jell-O mold, not even noticing one of her gardening gloves was suspended within. His parents avoided the offering, but Thomas, not wanting to see good lime Jell-O going to waste, helped himself to a large portion... though he was sure to eat from the edges and well away from the offending garment.

Wounds

Not all wounds are visible.

For example, I was at work the other day when my retired boss came in with his 5 year old grandson.

The grandson, who is absolutely adorable by the way, asked me if I was pregnant, because, hey, his mom is pregnant.

I replied that I wasn't.

He looked at me for a moment and then said, "Well, you have kids, right?"

My old boss looked appalled, but I smiled and answered, "No, I don't have kids. I do have cats though... does that count?"

"No," he retorted. "Only dogs count."

"Bummer... I don't have dogs."

"I have a dog. She's a little dog."

"Oh, so she's your little sister, right?"

"No! She's A DOG!"

Ah, the humor that is lost on little kids....

Later that day I received a text from my sister in which she asked me to guess who was pregnant. Excitedly I called her, eager to offer my congratulations, when she hesitantly told me it was a joke and that she was just now typing the reply "Kate Middleton."

Curses.

We talked about her having children in the future, and how I was moving closer to her and would be willing to watch kids anytime. We even cracked a joke about how she's going to get my name for the family Christmas drawing next year and how she'd better get cracking if she's going to provide me with the kid that I want so badly as my present.

Yeah, I was all but demanding space in my sister's womb so I can have kids.... I am definitely shameless.

The subject of kids keeps coming up around me. The boss's daughter is pregnant, the other boss's son is getting married to a gal who has a couple of children. My brother is having their second child, and I live in Utah where pretty much every other woman you see is either pregnant, toting around a baby or both.

Its been awhile since I've really been sorrowful over the fact that I can't have children... a feat that unwed teens accomplish daily all over this country. A feat that, despite education or love, or desire, I can't just achieve for myself. So it breaks my heart when I see people treating their children like something that they are burdened with, rather than the blessing that they are.

I am a firm believer that children should not only have two parents whenever possible, but that they should be allowed as much of a stable home as you can provide for them. Now that my husband and I have been married for a year I feel better about looking into adoption. With our moving home in the year to come it will be awhile before we are settled enough to adopt, but I also have to take into consideration the fact that I am no spring chicken. Maybe adoption isn't a step that will end up working out for us, and maybe I won't ever have children in this life, but at least I have the comfort that there are children in my life in one form or another.

That still doesn't stop the green-eyed monster of jealousy from rearing its ugly head every now and again.

I may keep a smile on my face, but I miss the family that I have not been afforded in this life. I am grateful for what I have been given, but I still can't help wishing for more.

So does that make me a monster? No, of course not. It simply adds me to the rank of all the women in the world who would love to have children, yet are unable to. The despair it can cause is intense and it can overwhelm you at any time. I know many wonderful women who are in the same boat that I am, and I have no idea why those who would make for some truly wonderful parents are unable to have children, when so many children are unwanted and abandoned.

So if you do have children, please take a moment to reflect on how blessed you are. Be mindful of those of us who are unable to share that particular joy, and everyone, please treasure every moment you have with your loved ones, no matter how close or far they are. You never know just how long you'll have with them.

A Taste of the Holidays....

So sticky and sweet.... why can't these count as a serving of fruit?

Endeavor.... to try hard to do or accomplish something.

It seems strangely out-of-place that so many of my thoughts are about you. That I am still spending so much of my time weeping about the fact that you and I will have no more adventures together here in this life; that any new memories I form will not have you in them. That I have days where I cannot seem to bring myself to focus on the matter at hand.

Surprisingly, I do have days where I feel good. Days where I can accomplish the tasks I set forth to do. There is a balance in knowing that while there are bad days, there are good ones too, and I can take comfort in the fact that as much as it hurts, that I can go on.

I have made plans; plans that you would be happy over, and projects started that you would approve of. They will take awhile, but it not only gives me something to do with my time, but some of them are things that I can still share with you.

I am trying my hardest to keep moving forward and not live in the past; to focus on the future, instead of weeping for my lost youth, but its an uphill battle. I have a feeling it is something I will fight against for a long time... but I am trying, really I am.

I love you.... I miss you.... I look forward to being with you again but, until then, I continue to work towards that glad day.

I will be a poet, a writer, an artist.... everything that I wanted to accomplish in this life I will do. I will continue to be kind to those I meet, and help wherever I can.

I will continue to move forward until the day where we can all meet as a family at the end of this mortal journey.


I will not hold myself back...

Little Reminders

I looked down at the old cookbook page; stains from previous cooking endeavors had left colored tints of pale pink and burnt umber across the edges; the remains of delicacies long since partaken and gone.

I hadn’t looked inside this particular cookbook in ages. Mostly because it was so old and delicate, with pages slipping away from their binding even as I had pulled it from the shelf. It was nearly forty years old, and many of the recipes were for strange sounding things like noodles encased in gelatin, and every image showed some kitschy kitchen contraptions in psychedelic colors.

The cookbook was my mother’s, at least it had been, back when she was still amongst the living and the baking.

Frankly, I wasn’t even sure why I had pulled it from the shelf now. It was one of those books that was faithfully packed away with every move, only to be put back on the same shelf at each new residence. Permanently parked between a vegetarian cookbook I had flirted with once, ages ago, and one on baking your own bread; an endeavor I fully intended to take up one of these days.

Whatever my reasons for opening this relic, I now found myself sitting at my kitchen table, gazing at a recipe I had not thought of in years. A recipe for cookies that my mother had baked faithfully every Christmas; a cookie that I waited in anticipation for as the holidays approached each year. Every year, that is, until I turned eighteen, when my mother died suddenly.

There was no joy in that holiday, or in the one to follow. By the time I was able to look forward to holidays again several years had passed, and I forgot all about this tradition...until now, that is. I looked down the page, and was surprised to notice spidery scrawls, made with a ballpoint pen in my mother’s handwriting. “Robin’s favorite cookies” she had noted in the margin.

Tears welled up as I remembered the innocent and carefree days of my youth, and I found myself skimming over the list of ingredients. Surprisingly, I had everything on hand, and found myself pulling bowls, measuring spoons, flour and sugar from the cupboards. I began pouring ingredients, sifting, mixing, and inhaling that rich, buttery smell I remembered so well from my youth.

I followed all of my mother’s notes; changing a teaspoon of vanilla to two, adding an extra egg, and even the quaint-sounding “dash of nutmeg”. Unable to resist, my finger slid along the side of the bowl, scooping out a taste of this confection. A burst of nostalgia struck me and I remembered a kitchen of years ago; Bing Crosby crooning about his dreams for a white Christmas, my mother handing me one of the mixer beaters to lick and my greedy wishes for just a little more dough to cling to that precious metal.

I rolled, and cut, and baked per the recipe instructions, and breathed deep as the air filled with the scent of baking cookies. I could hardly wait for one to cool, and found myself juggling a still hot cookie from hand-to-hand. I broke off one soft edge, and then found I couldn’t eat. I sat down, holding that cookie, as the tears came, hot and fresh. The cookie had cooled by the time I pulled myself together and finally took that first bite.

I looked back at the cookbook, back at that scribbled notation “Robin’s favorite cookies”, and I wondered what other things I may have forgotten. I began to thumb gently through more of the pages, nibbling on my cookie as I went, lost in memory. I found a recipe for a beef stroganoff that, according to mom, was good for feeding a large crowd, and that dad must have really been nuts for pecans, because there were several nut-filled recipes noted with reminders of “try making these for Don” next to them.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pouring over those pages, inserting scraps of paper on recipes she highly recommended that sounded as if they would be nice to try. Some pages mom simply changed an item or two, others were more heavily marked up through her own trial and error. I reached the end and was amused to see dozens of my impromptu bookmarks now jutting out from the cookbook’s I once consider not worth my time.

I carried the book to my office, set up my scanner, and copied those pages before carefully tucking them back into their proper places. Maybe one day I would find a way to preserve the book; until then, I would have to content myself with tying a string around it in order to keep more pages from falling out.

I gently placed the book back on the shelf; this time in a new place, next to the cookbooks I used more often. I gathered up the dozen or so loose pages I had just printed out, and set them in my “most-used” recipe folder.

All except the cookies.

That sheet I pinned to the front of the refrigerator with my favorite magnets…. a gentle reminder of things that were not completely lost.

Dash - Dashing - Dashed...

Today's rambling is brought to you by the word Dash…

We can go dashing through the snow….
and dash away, dash away, dash away all….
Or we could be dashed against the rocks (ouch!)

We can add a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper…..

Mr Darcy is considered to be one of the most dashing literary figures, however, I still prefer Mr. Rochester…
Don't forget about My Little Pony’s Rainbow Dash
Who would probably be good at the 500 meter dash….

With punctuation the hyphen is also called a dash... funny, it also looks like a minus sign…..
I just learned there is a difference between dashes!
There is an en dash - which means single dash
and an em dash - - which means two dashes
And you can use three dashes --- for starting quotations!
(you learn something new every day).
And if we’re talking punctuation there is also that cute little wavy dash ~ we can’t forget about him.

Fighter pilots wear a DASH – A Display and Sight Helmet

Queen Victoria has a dog named Dash
An archeologist named Aurel Stein has named every single one of his dogs Dash (must make it easy to remember when calling the poor things)

It is no wonder that people find the English language a bit of a pill to learn…. When one little word can mean several different things, its easy to be confused.

The short, pointless end of Winifred the spider

Based on a true experience of my sister...sorry sis!


I came in because it was warm. I hadn’t felt good for days now, and I thought no one would mind; after all, the house looked big enough to include someone as small as I was. I would be unobtrusive, warm up for a bit, and while I was certain my time was coming to a close, there was the faint hope that perhaps I would start feeling better.

I guess I wasn’t quick enough, for the owner of the house saw me and freaked out. I’m not sure why, after all, she was miles taller than me. She even pointed me out to her pets and tried to get them to attack me. Thankfully they weren’t interested and I was able to drag myself wearily out of sight.

I heard some camera snaps, but I have no idea why she would be interested in taking pictures of someone as ordinary as I. I was warmer than I had been in days, and now I just wanted somewhere soft to lie my head.

I found it in the bathroom. I laid down on a throw rug until one of the cats found me and started poking at me with its paw.

“You can’t stay here”, the cat told me.

“What if I moved somewhere else?” I asked.

The cat must have noticed how pale I was looking, for she sighed and told me that if I could get out of her reach then there was nothing she could do to kick me out. She then wandered off on her own business, and left me looking about for where to go next.

I noticed a soft towel hanging from the wall, the bottom of which was right above me, and found that this was far easier to climb than going directly up the wall. Maybe I would find a new place to rest when I reached the top and could get a better view of my surroundings.

It took all night, but I was nearly to the top of the towel. I was exhausted, shaking with the exertion, and took a few moments to gather the last of my rapidly dwindling strength before tackling the last part of the climb. From there I could see it wouldn’t be much farther to climb into the windowsill and hide behind the things placed there. Surely no one would mind if I was up there, as the items looked mostly decorative, and not for regular use.

To my surprise, the light came on, and the owner of the house came in. She turned on the shower and didn’t notice me hanging there as she hopped inside and pulled the curtain shut.

I began to climb again, urging my tired muscles to go faster, but it was a losing battle…. my strength was gone. I looked down at the ground far below me and grew dizzy from the height…to my shame I found myself crying at the stupidity of my situation.

The shower curtain opened, and the next thing I know the towel I was clinging to was pulled from its hook and I barely had the presence of mind to hang on for dear life. Everything got fuzzy at that moment as I was shaken up and down and from side to side rather vigorously. My head cleared and I realized that I was no longer clinging to the towel, but was now half in and half out of the girl’s mouth!

I was hit with a blast of hot, fetund breath as she turned towards her mirror and noticed me lying there, limp and unmoving. I’m not even sure she knew it was me at first, for she calmly spit me onto the ground as if I were nothing but a clump of hair. The pain as I crashed into the hard tile was excruciating, and I blacked out for a moment.

I regained consciousness to the sounds of screams, as the girl realized what I was.

I squinted, trying to get my eyes in focus as she pulled away, and from her horrified reaction I worried that her next step would be to smash me.

Honestly, the pain was so intense that smashing might have been a welcome release.

I managed to wave one leg at her, beaconing her closer so she could make it a swift kill, but she let out another shriek and ran from the room, leaving me there on the cold floor in pain so intense that I had never felt its like before.

There was a roaring in my head and I felt light-headed. I knew I couldn’t leave myself on the floor like that for her to find. I felt bad about causing her the problems I had. After all, I had only wanted to die quietly in a warm place… preferably within a wall where I wouldn’t be a bother.

I stretched forth my front legs, and somehow managed to drag myself slowly across the floor. I don’t know where the strength came from, but it seemed like ages before I finally pulled myself under the dryer.

Here I lie. Unable to crawl further as my crushed body finally gave out on me. Here I will stay until I am allowed to die…

..here…..

….among the dust bunnies…..

…….but at least I am finally warm.