Bizarre Moment from a Navy Family Childhood

True story. I was in kindergarten, which means we were in San Diego. We lived in a newly-built subdivision in the midst of desert.  The entire neighborhood sprang up in less than a year—in fact, we had the first completed house. Our neighbors tended to be in the military as well. Sometimes ringing the doorbell at a friend’s house meant waking up a newly-returned soldier who, fresh from combat in Vietnam, would answer the door with a dagger in his hand and a crazed look in his eyes. Sometimes our neighbors were educated people, engineers who had travelled around the world with the Army, sometimes they were the enlisted men and their wives and families. For the most part, all of the men were gone, and the women were left to run things. There was a war on, after all, and even non-combats like my dad (Navy radioman) were gone for nine month deployments or longer.

My mom knew most of the ladies in the neighborhood. They traveled in packs to the PDX, sharing precious resources like cars and lawn mowers and punch bowls. Not many women drove back in the 60’s and fewer had access to their own cars. My mother could drive after a fashion, but she couldn’t drive stick shift, so my father made it a point to only buy stick shifts. Thus, we had a car, but it sat in the garage awaiting his return. My mother made do with the bread truck—oh, what a glorious day when the bread truck came by!---and the gift of a ride to the store when a neighbor offered. She often bought a month’s worth of food at a time, just in case the next ride wouldn’t come along for a while. (It was the 60’s, may I remind you, the nadir of the Canned Food Movement.) We also went out to eat in packs, two or three fatherless families hitting the Shakey’s together so our mothers could get the hell out of the house and talk to an adult for a while.

A few families in the neighborhood were non-military, or had a dad with a “regular” job at the base, such as jet mechanic, which meant the women’s days revolved around a hot meal on the table promptly at five-fifteen, when He walked through the door. Evenings were devoted to waiting on Him hand and foot. The ladies partied among themselves during the day and scattered like sad little clouds promptly at four, when it was time to Start Dinner. Since I was in half-day kindergarten (morning session, ugh) I was often dragged along with my mom to local houses for afternoon Tupperware parties, teas, and bridal showers.

Many of our neighbors had not, I believe, finished high school. Many had married quite young—seventeen was considered an “old” bride—and many were Southern. I remember very clearly one of my favorite families: they had a fascinating back yard with a fish pond, quail, and a chopping block for butchering livestock. The mother, Mrs. Cosby,  was very sweet to me, with good Appalachian manners, fresh from what can only be described as the backwoods. Her children were far older than I was, and everyone in the family had an accent so thick I often had trouble decoding what they were saying, and often ran to my mother afterwards to ask the meaning of phrases such as “Thankee” and “Tha’ thur’s a gra-cee-ous PLENNY!”  

On this particular occasion, a bridal shower for a sixteen-year-old, the women participated in a party game which left me mystified. I’ve asked my mother about it and she can’t remember much, but I’m still appalled when I think about it.

           

One of the older women took a dishtowel (imprinted with strawberries, the “theme” for the kitchen of the bride-to-be) and did a bit of mountain origami on it, producing a long thick tube with a funny-looking knot at the top of it. The women took turns passing it around, carefully handing it to one another with a funny grip, ensuring that it remained upright, topknot aloft. As they did so they chanted a poem, carefully typed out on a piece of paper for the uninitiated. When the towel finally slumped down from its upright position the women screamed with laughter and the unfortunate holder of the towel lost. This went on for a while until Mrs. Cosby remembered my presence and sent me out of the room to watch my favorite soap opera, Dark Shadows. (Two kids were trying to raise a demon in that episode. Quite wholesome fair compared to whatever was going on in the other room.)

It was forty years or so before I realized what that towel was meant to resemble, and another few years before I realized I may have been witnessing not a party game, but some antiquated bit of backwoods voo-doo. Mom doesn’t remember, and my source of reliable facts, my sister, wasn’t there. She was there, however, the day that Mrs Cosby invited my mom over for some “fancy” drinks. Mrs. C used her best gas station  give-away drinking glasses, and when she pulled out the jug of wine, she filled my mom’s Speedy Gonzalez 16 ouncer to the brim. Now that’s a gracious plenty.

Our Mommy Says It All

My mother has Alzheimer’s. I make an overnight trip to see her and Dad weekly. I call a lot. Sometimes she’s in a fuzzy little world where she’s not quite sure what I’m saying, and sometimes my sharp and funny mother is there. We call these two states Other Mommy and Our Mommy. Other Mommy smiles weakly a lot, and looks tired, and responds to any comment with “Well, isn’t that something?” Our Mommy makes a wisecrack. Other Mommy cannot remember a time when Dad was less than patient and kind (and trust me, that’s about the only memories his children have of him) whereas Our Mommy can still take a good dig at the foolishness of men. Both of the Mommies love to hear the dirt on people, although they differ in the type. Other Mommy likes to hear about the cast of Everyone Loves Raymond and Big Bang Theory, gentle “Did you know” type facts.  (Did you know Sheldon can really play the piano?) Our Mommy likes to hear about why the diabetic down the street is gaining weight, or why anybody (me excluded) is piling on the pounds.

So I was rambling on to Other Mommy about the idiot exploits of The Boyfriend and his ex, nicknamed Hippie Whore. Other Mommy was responding with “Boy, SHE’S something” which signaled to me that she wasn’t really processing much of what I had to say. Suddenly the marbles in her brain shifted and her eyes grew clear and bright. She reached over and rapped me on the hand. “All men are dumbasses,” she said. “It comes with the pants.”

He Doesn't Just Poop at Parties

There's always a naysayer somewhere, the sort of kid who sneers, "What's THAT s'ppozta be?" at any project he or she sees. This, coupled with the ubiquitous "Whydja use all them big words?" pretty much sums up peer relations until I was in my twenties or so. But the "suppose to be" comment still rankles, possibly because I still hear it on occasion (I'm a teacher and I work with a lot of lower-income kids.)

 Only slightly higher on the scale is the person who belittles or knocks down an event just as it's passing--the dinner guest who complains about too much garlic while gently belching over his coffee, or worse, the boyfriend who "lets" you plan, shop for, cook, serve, and clean a special dinner and then blasts you for serving too-large portions. I'm still ticked over a recent incident in which I was delayed (by the complainer himself) several hours, and then found that the oven was broken. I thought I did a good job of finishing on time and presenting a nice meal, but oh, no, the portions were too large. TOO LARGE!

I said, rather tartly, "Then say you can't finish and save some for later," only to be greeted with incredulity. No, can't do that, wasn't raised that way. I think of some of the things I was raised with--being told I didn't need to learn to drive because I didn't have kids, and that I didn't "need" college because I was pretty, that girls don't need math...and I think of the best thing I ever learned from a pop song. It was thirty years ago, but Neil Finn said it best when he wrote "You can choose what you choose to believe." I believe my efforts are worth more than condemnation for a perceived mistake, and if you want to wallow in what you see to be my errors, I believe you're full of shit.

Spring is Here, I Hear

We're all fools in April. It's the sunshine, I think, or perhaps the green on the trees. We hope that our own lives will unfurl like buds that were hidden all winter. We not only hope, but for a few minutes, here and there, we feel that our time will come. I felt like that when I was sixteen, that life was full of wonderful surprises that were just waiting to shower me with happiness, and in spring, in early April at least, some faint hint of that resonates through me. Somehow calling this "Topsy Turvy Day" and trotting out my ritual meal for whatever small children are around me seems a bit like a slap in Fate's face, but there you go: even if I'm alone, every April Fools Day sees me serving meatloaf with mashed potatoes dressed up as cupcakes, and cupcakes decorated like spaghetti and meatballs, and possibly a "fried egg" made of creme anglaise and half a poached apricot (with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top.) Like that rhododendron out front--the one that's almost dead--I struggle to bloom yet again. 

Yule Be Happy Or Else

I started out Christmas Eve morning with snapping at Chef, aka The Boyfriend. Like most computer geeks, he is concerned with my limited ability to  navigate the Net and offers little suggestions, like getting a Hangout account, or trying more complicated passwords. Being an old and tired person, I poo-poo a lot of what he has to say, only to turn shrew when I can't remember a password and am unable to retrieve it because I foolishly moved to another country, switched browsers AND changed my phone number. I already had a headache when I woke up this morning, having spent a nightmarish broken sleep in which my worse imaginings were brooding and lurking, namely, that the "joke" gift he put in my stocking is indeed the ONLY thing he's giving me for Christmas. OK, he supports me at this time and he's offered to buy new tires for the car I drive, but this is probably one of the things that clearly marks our differences: I believe in gifts, stuff you can unwrap, and he thinks a candy bar with hazelnuts (which I'm allergic to) given a month after the day counts as a lovely birthday gift. (Granted, he also gave me a card, also one month after the day. The card was sweet--it would have just meant so much more if it had arrived in a timely manner and I hadn't had to cry to get it.) For the record, in his defense, he did buy me a birthday cake from a very good place and didn't complain too much when I chose one that was pink. Is it churlish of me to mention that I had been looking forward to making one myself?

In Girl Land, a place I rest my soul in, boyfriends may give only one gift but at least it's wrapped and thoughtfully chosen. It doesn't have to be expensive (I am forbidden from even joking about pretty sparkly things) and I have resisted peeking in that stocking to see what is in there. I fear it is a Dollar Store purchase. I am proud of my noble choice to eschew peeking, while I am very sad that any part of my brain is actually concerned about this. What if it is truly crap and I open it in front of his kid and burst into tears? Or worse, get angry and silent because anything I say will be fight fodder for life?

I know a lot of guys just don't get the whole gift-giving thing. Chef himself has suggested that I return the gifts I give him and "give the money to the poor."  Who thinks like that? Wasn't our leftover Halloween candy enough? (Kidding: I have donated  many household things Chef doesn't like to several organizations.) I've been gathering little things for him, magpie-like, for months. If he mentioned he wanted to try a certain spice, I bought it. If he needed an item of clothing, I looked around to match his specifications. Gifts are a physical reminder that we do indeed pay attention. I love pink, I love Hello Kitty, I have marked preferences in perfume. Not hard to shop for. So why am I so afraid that this dear, thoughtful, gentle man is going to give me a cheap wrench? And worse--why the hell does it bother me so much?

Moving On

Just a quick update--with a thousand more to follow--I am still alive, in great health, very happy, and in the process of relocating to the US. Once there, more shall be revealed. Let's just say It Was Time To Go.

Life Lessons Straight from the Bowels of Satan

Those of you who know me and love me know that there are two constants in my life (three, if you count being chronically single), namely, I am always starting a new job, and I am always moving. I do change jobs a lot, usually every two years or so, and it always happens that after the first year on the job I am moved to teach a different subject, or another level, keeping me in a constant flux of developing curriculum and teaching plans. I would like JUST ONCE to teach the same subject two years running so that I don't spend September in a panic trying to come up with a year-long teaching plan based on materials I haven't written or which haven't been ordered yet. As for moving, that comes with the change of jobs, or in the old days when I had a child with me, dependent on which school she was attending that year. Since I live sans wheels in the form of my own car, this has limited our housing options quite a bit.

Given this, as well as a huge hit of heartbreak, it should come as no shock to anyone that I am moving again. Yes, I'm giving up my lovely sunny one bedroom flat on upper northwest Beijing to move smack dab downtown. The reasons are myriad, but include the fact that I have lost a temporary battle with the Health Gods and am having difficulty coping with the lack of grocery stores on this side of town, as well as my ayi's difficulties in getting over from the extreme east side of town to this neck of the concrete jungle known as BJ. Having the unnamed auto-immune disorder apparently wasn't enough--I sprained my knee again and also dislocated my left shoulder. It's been popped back into place but the agony of sprained muscles, torn tendons and strained ligaments remains. It's been over a month but the alternate numbness, tingly, and searing pain in three fingers of my left hand is breathtaking in its variety, as well as its tendency to flair up at night when I'm sleeping.

The only thing more wearisome than having ill health is reading about it, so enough of that. This, in a nutshell, is why I've been silent. I have veered this year between extreme happiness, having too many wonderful projects, to being alone and in pain and in the dark. But that is life, sometimes, or at least its my life sometimes, and I just have to deal with it. I don't call people at three a.m., because who the hell wants to deal with my shit at that time? Conversely, I'm silent on the subject during the day, because who wants to bring anyone down? But it's there, lurking under the jokes and the pain, the knowledge that I got myself into this situation and will get myself out again, but that it's increasingly difficult to remain upbeat and positive when you're not cute and young anymore. Yet this is the pay off too, when you get to a certain stage in life you learn to relax and forgive because that's what you just have to do to keep positive and upbeat and keep moving on. I really don't know if I'm going to end up a bag lady on the streets who can't button up her own cardigan, or if there's going to be a miraculous last-minute intervention when one of the products I've written will actually sell and get me money and kudos and financial security or if miracle of miracles I actually meet someone who thinks I'm cute and funny and who wants to hang with me the rest of my life--or if this thing that hides in my cells flares up and sniffs me out like a candle in the wind--I honestly don't know. Perhaps that's just as well.