Far Above Rubies

They told the story over and over of how it had been when Melanie's Papaw got a bee in his bonnet to buy her a tiny ruby ring, a singular development because it was not really like her handsome Papaw to act upon (or even have) sentimental impulses. She was only three and a half at the time and not yet talking, owing to her mild and mysterious disability, but she had no trouble demonstrating a surfeit of bona fide ecstasy as Papaw gathered her up into his long arms, his hazel eyes beaming directly into hers of Wedgwood blue. "Ready to go with Papaw?" he asked, twinkling, jiggling her up and down a little as she flung her tiny pale arms around his tanned neck by way of joyous assent, and those witnesses assembled laughed out of gut-wrenching love for them both. They recounted how that all the way to Wal-Mart she'd babbled to the back of his head from her lawful ensconcement in the regulation carseat with its many baffling buckles, and he'd nodded in all the right places and said "Oh, okay," and "Sure, Mel," a time or two, just so she wouldn't think he wasn't listening. She knew he was. What they could not tell of that story, because they could not know, was that she told herself on the way home (even transfixed as she certainly had been by the way the sunlight probed the tiny ruby ring glowing on her right hand just before she fell asleep), that he was listening with more than only his ears.

Windy City Wishing

The hunger was something she had always known, ever since her earliest real memory, and she figured that was round about the spring she turned four. It was a hunger for beauty and truth and knowledge, and it gnawed at her insides the way, from the iron bridge at Michigan and Wacker, she had seen the rabbit-sized rats down by the Chicago River tear and claw at flotsam that daily washed up on the concrete banks. The tourists who had already boarded the Wendella boats and who bobbed serenely beneath the pale thousand-eyed Wrigley Building as the craft filled to capacity, never noticed the rats because their eyes were trained straight ahead, towards the lake and the spectacular views of the City of Broad Shoulders that would be their reward once they reached the farthest point offshore that their $8 ticket price would take them (this was in the early '60s; those same tickets are $26 now). She often wondered if any of the multitudes who tromped behind her on the pedestrian walkway of that bridge had a cavernous crater inside of them, a gaping maw that could easily fit the Tribune Tower and the Union Carbide Building with room left over for at least part of Navy Pier, just dying to be filled up with beauty and truth and knowledge the way the boats filled every two hours with camera-festooned out-of-towners clad in windbreakers and baggy madras shorts. Positive that there were a few like her among them, she searched faces as Mama and Daddy pulled her along the streets where the cold wind caused tumbling trash to flirt with her ankles and gritty particles to assail her watchful eyes. Twice she thought she recognized one who might be simpatico, a fellow hankerer for truth and beauty and knowledge, but their passage on the sidewalk to her right was swift, and to this day she cannot be sure.

Thank You, Sid! Thank You, Forest!

Many thanks to ultra-good guys Sid Leavitt and Forest Parks.

Sid is the creative genius behind the Readers and Writers Blog (www.readersandwritersblog.com) whereon today he has featured me, my blog, and a few poems I wrote.  The validation of writers like Sid means the world to me.  I appreciate so much the exposure he is giving to writers.  I don't feel as though I belong among them but since he was kind enough to publish me, I leave the worrying to Sid.  He has broad shoulders and the heart of an author.  And happily, he's sarcastic just like me!

Forest Parks hosts an excellent blog about animals -- named, you guessed it -- Forest's Blog About Animals.  Today he has featured my beloved pet Chihuahua, Javier, and also said some nice things about my blog.  You're an angel, Forest!  Check him out at www.blogaboutanimals.com.

I'm so grateful to both Sid and Forest.  I wish them many years of success with their writing and their blogs.

You've Got The Floor

Y'all won't believe what I did today.

If you happen to be issue of my womb, you might want to sit down because this is going to shock you.

I mopped the kitchen floor ... and the floors of two bathrooms.

Now, lest you non-issue-of-my-womb readers think I'm a slob, allow me to elaborate.

It's not that I never clean my house.  I do.  It's just that, well ... I'm awfully busy and it tends to slip my mind.  If you ever have the distinctly uninteresting experience of being a guest in my home, it's not the kind of place you leave and say (or even think) "You could eat off the floors in that place!"  It's the kind of place where, as soon as you walk in the door and I say hello, the next words out of my mouth are likely to be: "Make yourself at home!"

The water got all cloudy right on cue and the sudsy part was coming along nicely, so I left the room.

Which sounds all nice and hostessy but in Weberese is synonymous with either "I now invite you to fend for yourself" or "You're on your own, buddyroe" ... whichever directive makes you feel more warm and fuzzy.

Now, if you visit you are as welcome to eat off the floor as you can possibly be.  Javier does it all the time.  But I would not recommend it.  For onesies, we have lots of perfectly clean dishes for the purpose of eating from.  They are in the cabinet above and to the right of the sink.  Glassware is over on the other side.  If there's one thing I do, it's keep the dishes clean.  But the same rule applies: Helpee Selfee!

For twosies, you might as well know going in that, in keeping with the fact that I'm a blue-star mother, my style of housecleaning tends to be of the "wing and a prayer" variety.  My kitchen floor is roughly a fourth of an acre of ceramic tile that I did not pick out, and oddly it's a light-colored marble-ey pattern that never looks either clean or dirty.  It always looks both.  O the mystery!  So what I do is, each day when I change out my dishcloth and dish towels (I can't stand it if they've been in use for more than a day), before I kick them downstairs bound for the laundry, I do a quick visual check and use them to wipe up the stray coffee dribbles -- or anything else suspiciously sticky-looking -- I might see on the floor. 

Oh, and I do sweep up a couple times a week.  Sometimes I actually use a dustpan but that's a lot of work.  Generally I open the door to the deck and sweep it out there, then off to the side, down onto the ground.  It's only a few crumbs and a teaspoon of dust!  This way there's less in the landfills.

I have a Swiffer thingie but TG broke the handle and so far I have not been motivated to replace it.  Maybe that's because I never used it!  The moistened cloths got all dry after about two years.

My bathroom floors (two of the three are very small and the one that's not small is upstairs so I make the kids "clean" it) get a similar glance-and-swipe treatment with paper towels and a spritz of whatever cleaner happens to be under the sink.  When I remember, that is.  I told you ... I'm busy!  House cleaning is not my thing.  When my first six-figure advance on that novel I'm writing comes in the mail, the first thing I'm doing is hiring a housekeeper.  Well, after I set up a money-market account and wipe out the Little Debbie shelves at Wal-Mart.  Then I'm hopping a plane and going wherever in the "wold" Johnny is and stalking him until he gives me his autograph and lets me take his picture.  With me beside him.  I've heard he always rubs your back when posing for a photo with you.  Jay?  Can you confirm?  (Jay's a woman, by the way ... a woman as changing and harsh and untameable as the sea ... and she's met Johnny three times).

But I digress.

The last time I really and truly mopped the kitchen floor -- with every intention of using an actual mop -- I put a stopper in one side of the sink (I'm too lazy to haul out a mop bucket and besides, walking back and forth to the sink is good exercise), chugged in a bunch of Pine Sol (original ... accept no substitutes), and let the water run on hot.  The water got all cloudy right on cue and the sudsy part was coming along nicely, so I left the room.

I went downstairs to my desk, where I promptly got distracted.  I get distracted in less time than it takes for a cell to divide.

When I got distracted from what had distracted me (yes ... it is a vicious cycle), I moseyed back through the family room and heard water running.  Ruh Roh.  What to my wondering eye should appear upon entering my kitchen but a puddle beneath the sink, reaching several feet out into the floor.  About three gallons, I'd guesstimate.

I sprinted for the cabinet where I keep big fluffy pool towels and grabbed an armful.  I turned off the water and started throwing the towels down.  It was real good arm exercise to wring them out in the sink!  Then when I'd gotten most of the water up, I "walked" the rest of it around the kitchen on a towel, just cleaning up a storm!  It was lots more fun than using a mop and it was a totally original idea.  The folks at 911 did not put me up to it.

Of course, the next day I felt like I'd competed in the first leg of the Tour de France.

Anyway, the floors are sparkling now and the air is pleasingly redolent of housewifery, if you like that fake pine foresty smell, which I do ... and today I used a genuine mopping device.

This squeaky-clean experience will last approximately until Andrew comes home from work and walks the length of the kitchen, tracking in whatever's clinging to his work boots.

I'll sigh but I won't say anything because I've got other fish to fry, y'all.  Other mighty fine fish to fry.  When may I expect you?

Remember To Forget ... To Remember

Yesterday TG and I had one of those conversations ... you know, the kind of exchange that people who have been together for thirty years tend to have.  It contained many instances of that loaded and lively question ... "Remember?"

Pulling over to park here for a mo ... increasingly as I go about my business I notice that in lots of situations I am the oldest person present.  It is not all that unusual for me to be seated at a conference table with two or three lawyers and a deponent, and for every one of them to have been born after (in some cases long after) me.  I hope you won't think me conceited when I say that often (but by no means always) I note with no small amount of gratification that although I may be someone's senior in calendar years, I look at least forty-five minutes younger than they.  At least I think I do, and if I don't, please no one tell me.  This dream world I inhabit suits me just fine (she said with a beatific smile). 

She says that she mentally relives her entire past life daily, constantly, in minute detail.

At any rate I can take no credit other than my religious -- yea, near fanatical  -- use of sunblock.  And possibly a slight genetic advantage ... no, I do not refer to early blindness!  I will thank you not to snicker.

When I was the age of these younger people, the thought of being the oldest person in the room would have bothered me ... if I could have envisioned such a scenario back then, which I'm fairly confident would have been beyond my ken.  The young think they will always be young.  Period.  It's part of the charm, the fascination, the pink bubble that is indefatigable youth.

But honestly, y'all ... the older I get, in many ways the younger I feel.  And while I don't have that all figured out, I'm good with it.  It's true what they say: Youth is wasted on the wrong people.  If you are reading this and you have not yet attained an age you consider "old," don't ever let anyone tell you that "old" people don't have fun.  It ain't so and you heard it here first. 

Not that I am old.

Let's swerve back onto the highway, shall we?  That detour took longer than I had planned.  I sure hope nobody got off the bus and took a train in the opposite direction ... not that I would necessarily blame them.

After TG and I had verbally reminisced enough to virtually reconstruct an event that took place when we were newlyweds -- an adventure of sorts, with all manner of dangerous twists and turns -- and reconciled our individual recollections of the epic saga as best we could, he asked me if I had heard about the lady who has been in the news lately ... a lady who is unable to forget anything.

I hadn't heard the story, so today I Googled it.  Her name is Jill Price.  She is forty-two years old and she remembers everything that has happened to her since 1980.  You can name a date seventeen years and three months and two days ago, and she can tell you what she wore, what the weather was like, and what she ate for breakfast that day.  She says that she mentally relives her entire past life daily, constantly, in minute detail ... while trying to stay afloat in her present life where she works as a school administrator.  Of course many scientists have been studying Jill for a number of years, and they have even coined a new term for her condition: hyperthymestic syndrome.

Ms. Price says that while some of her memories are warm and comforting, the problem is that she also remembers in sharp detail every sorrow, every failure, every embarrassment.  Anything -- a smell, a few bars of a song, a color -- may trigger a fresh deluge of memories.  She has difficulty sleeping at night because she finds it nearly impossible to relax and stop remembering.

I'm glad I can't remember every sorrow, every failure, every embarrassment ... that would put me under the bed and no mistake.  The ones I do have a hard time forgetting are plenty to deal with, thank you very much. 

And those are just from last week.

Oddly enough, Ms. Price says that while her exhaustive memory is a terrible burden, her worst fear is losing it.

Remind me to count my many blessings before I sleep tonight.  Something tells me I won't be able to remember them all.