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By infmom, July 4, 2010 12:44 pm

(crossposted to my LiveJournal)

In 1967 we lived in Beatrice, Nebraska (pronounced Bee-ATT-riss, if you can believe that).  My parents had built a house on the block where a school had once stood–one of the first houses to be built there after the old school was demolished.  By the summer of 1967 there were a few other houses, including one whose back yard abutted ours.

This house was inhabited by a family I will refer to as the Pretentious Losers.  The parents were impossible, social-climbing snobs (yeah, hard to believe anyone could have such pretensions in a little armpit town in Nebraska, but they did) and the children were all incorrigible brats.  Needless to say, the family quickly aroused the loathing of everyone in our household, not the least because the youngest child liked nothing better than to stand by our back fence and screech “GIT OFF OUR POPPITY!” any time any of us came near.

In those days, a certain amount of fireworks were legal.  In the days leading up to the 4th, my brothers and I went and stocked up on firecrackers and bottle rockets.  And as soon as it got dark on the night of the 4th, we turned off the lights in the back of the house and went outside with our arsenal.  It took about five minutes to get the angle on the pop bottle just right so that a bottle rocket launched from it would explode right outside the Pretensious Losers’ back door.  We then happily occupied our time with explosion after explosion till all of a sudden the light over the back door went on.  We all scurried back into our house as fast as we could run.  Moments after that, our phone rang.

And then came one of my mother’s finest hours.  She answered, knowing full well what we’d been up to and having had a good laugh herself, and proceeded to put on a fine old display of righteous indignation.  Absolutely not, her children weren’t even home.  Nobody in our house had any kind of fireworks, and how dare Mrs. Pretentious Loser make such accusations.  No doubt she’d been setting off the fireworks herself.  Mrs. Pretentious Loser had better find other ways to occupy her time besides annoying the neighbors with prank calls, and GOODBYE.

Meanwhile my brothers and I and a couple of my brothers’ friends were in the darkened living room literally rolling around on the floor laughing and trying desperately not to be heard.  After Mom hung up, she came in and joined the laughter–but told us we’d better quit while we were ahead.

Someone suggested waiting till midnight and lobbing a whole string of firecrackers into the neighbors’ yard, but in the end we decided not to put Mom through the ordeal of having to do a repeat performance for the cops.

That remains one of my brothers’ and my fondest childhood memories.
photo credit: StayRAW

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By infmom, November 14, 2009 5:13 pm

My parents, and my husband’s parents, grew up during the Depression, but they had vastly different experiences with it. While my inlaws were carefully taught to be frugal, to take care of their things, to not waste food, and never to get rid of something that was still good, my parents were insulated from all that. My father’s parents were wealthy, and while my grandmother went through a lot of hardships, my mother was tucked away at boarding school where everything they felt she needed was supplied.

Thus, my inlaws lived frugally, were as self-sufficient as possible and taught their kids that wasting food and throwing things out that were still good was something akin to a capital offense.  My parents were lah-di-dah about it all, and if things broke, they had no idea how to fix them, and were more likely to just go buy another one.  They also threw other people’s stuff out without a second thought if it got in their way. And it never would have occured to them to buy anything second hand.

When my husband and I married, our parents’ styles didn’t affect us as much as one might think.  For one thing, I was tired of my parents’ needless helplessness and utter cluelessness about money, and there was never a chance in the world I would follow in their footsteps.  I always assumed I could fix things, and I did all the kitchen stuff my mother wasn’t interested in, like baking and making jelly and so forth.

However, the business of “still good” and “don’t waste food” was a bone of contention.  I was not a member of the Clean Plate Club, and I saw no harm in disposing of food that was past its prime.  I didn’t just pick the moldy part off the bread or the cheese and eat the rest.  And while I was as frugal as possible (our financial situation dictated nothing less) I was not a fan of cobbling things together and making do.  When you’re as broke as we were, you do a lot of that, but there’s nothing that says you have to like it.

As time has gone by, and our lives have gotten steadily better,  I’ve been more and more adamant about not cobbling-together, and doing things right the first time.  I saw a book title that was appropriate:  If You Haven’t Got the Time to Do It Right, When Will You Find the Time to Do It Over? And yes, I sometimes toss out, or give away, things that are still good.  We donate bags and bags of books to the library and clothing and household items to the Salvation Army every year.  This satisfies my husband, because it means the items have a chance to be useful for someone else.

What got me going on this today?  Well, one of the things I am taking time to do right is fixing a longstanding problem in our kitchen.  When we moved in here, there was a battered, broken, stained, rotten looking ceramic soap dish (or more properly what was left of it) set into the tile backsplash in the kitchen.  I talked for years about knocking it out and replacing it with decorative tiles.  Even bought the tiles when we were on vacation in Arizona two years ago.  A few weeks ago, my husband dealt with the remains of the soap dish, and I installed my decorative tiles.  The only thing left to do on that project was to remove the ghastly, crumbling caulk around the sink (something else we should have done years ago).

My husband brought home a tube of name brand kitchen/bath silicone sealant that he’d scrounged from somewhere a week or two ago, with the idea of using it to caulk the sink.  Today, since he’s away for a training meeting all weekend and I have the chance to do the work on the sink my way (let’s just say our repair-work styles are mutually incompatible; I’ll talk about that some other day) I got at it with a razor knife and a screwdriver and scraped the last of that godawful old caulk out of there and left it to dry for an hour or so.

And then I picked up the scrounged tube of sealant.  There was an expiration date stamped faintly into the crimp at the end of the tube.  USE BEFORE 04/03, it said.

I got some more at Home Depot.

photo credit: van swearingen

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By infmom, September 19, 2009 1:13 pm

When we lost Zoe, I felt too much battered by life to consider getting another cat.   I did say, however, that while I wouldn’t go looking for a cat, if a cat found me it’d be a different story.

Well, apparently Someone out there who looks after tiny kittens was listening.

Wednesday night, my son and his co-workers rescued a very tiny, terrified kitten from under a car.  He knew who to call.  I certanly wasn’t prepared to take on the care of a kitten this small, but I didn’t want her to go to the shelter, either.  So, home she came with us.

We had her checked by the vet yesterday and she’s fine, and about six weeks old (older than I had guessed).  She’s had her worm treatment and she needs a bath, which I’ll take care of as soon as I get some kitten friendly flea shampoo.

I’ve named her Jenny Linsky, after the feline heroine of a series of books I loved as  a child.

Here is the fictional Jenny Linsky, and here is the real one.

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By infmom, November 5, 2008 10:47 pm

Image by Renegade98 via Flickr

Last year sometime I idly put one of my maternal great-great-grandfathers’ names into a Google search, just to see what turned up. What turned up was Barack Obama’s family tree.

No, we don’t share a relative that close.  I did some figuring, though, and as it turns out, Barack Obama’s mother and I are tenth cousins, whch means my kids are Obama’s 11th cousins.  That’s good enough for me!  We are all descendants of Nathaniel FitzRandolph, who lived in the mid 17th century.

My branch of the FitzRandolph family scooted across the border from New Jersey to New Brunswick come the Revolution, and left behind lands on which Princeton University (and the FitzRandolph Gate) sit today.  They were Canadian forever more, or at least until my grandmother re-crossed the border during WWII and became an American citizen, when my mother was 16.

My mother was delighted to hear about this relationship and I know she would have voted enthusiastically for Cousin Barack had she lived.  My mother took great delight in politics and in activism and she was, for the most part, a progressive.   She would have loathed Sarah Palin, you betcha.

I expect my grandmother would have felt the same way.  I bet she’s already bustled up to Obama’s grandmother and welcomed her long-lost cousin to a happy afterlife.

My dad’s parents had many good and admirable qualities, but they were Republicans to the core and racists to boot.  The thought of them spinning in their graves right now makes me happy.

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By infmom, September 27, 2008 10:20 am

My mother had the hots for Paul Newman from the get-go.  People used to tease her about it, we four kids included, but that bothered her not a whit.

I find it somewhat melancholy to reflect that Paul Newman died of lung cancer, just like my mother, and within a few months of each other.

I do hope Mom is getting to meet him in the afterlife and, um, express her appreciation for his talent.

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By infmom, September 14, 2008 10:00 am

My mother would have been 79 today.  She always told us she wouldn’t make it to 80 and we always told her she was being silly.  I guess she got the last laugh.

This poem always reminded me of her.  Don’t take it literally; Millay was referring to the Greek version of “hell,” not the Christian one.

Prayer to Persephone

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”

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By infmom, August 12, 2008 11:04 am

My brothers and I are all baby boomers. So are all our spouses. Thus, we are a group of people whose parents grew up during the Depression.

That’s an era that produced lasting scars, in ways not always apparent. As most people realize, the deprivations of the Depression led to the excesses of the Fifties, because kids who grew up with nothing were now prosperous adults, the war was over and it was time, by golly, to enjoy not being deprived.

Why did I get to thinking about this today? Well, because one of the lasting effects of the Depression concerns food. Our parents were taught by their parents that Wasting Food was something akin to a capital crime. Why, those starving children in [name some exotic country halfway round the world] would be happy to finish what you ungrateful kids are refusing to finish! I/you put that food on your plate so you darn well better eat it! Clean your plate!

The result was that several generations of kids were trained from the get-go to keep eating till the plate was empty, regardless of whether their stomachs were full. And to Not Waste Food. Which might well be the reason why so many of us turned out to be fat adults.

Fortunately, my brothers and I weren’t treated to the extremes of Not Wasting Food Mania that some of our friends were, because my dad was an Olympic gold medal picky eater and we were a bunch of sharp, wiseass kids who weren’t shy about asking why we had to clean our plates when Dad didn’t. But my husband’s father would brook no such backtalk and by golly if you put it on your plate you had to eat it, period.

Thus, my husband, from long conditioning, believes at a visceral level (no pun intended) in Not Wasting Food. It pains him to toss out an unopened jar or can that’s past its expiration date. Even though he studied organic chemistry all the way through grad school, he refuses to believe that organic substances in sealed containers deteriorate in any way. And any cooked food that is placed in a storage container in the fridge is Still Good until it starts growing green and purple alien life.

Even though I do my best to put dates on the various zip-lock bags and containers in the fridge, if the stuff still “looks good” he is going to eat it, period. He likes taking leftovers to work for his lunches and for the most part that works out fine. Not always, though. Apparently he deemed something “still good” a couple days ago that wasn’t… and came home sick from work today.

Putting dates on stuff is not enough. I’m going to have to be the Fridge Police and throw things away myself. While he’s not looking, of course, lest he suffer gastric distress of a different kind.

photo credit: Jill – Glossy Veneer

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By infmom, March 19, 2008 12:15 pm

Charm bracelets were really hot when I was a kid.  My cousin even sent me an official American Bandstand charm bracelet, which I wish I still had because they seem to be going for pretty good money on eBay these days.  My aunt and uncle gave me one from Switzerland that had lovely little bells on it.  I can still remember how it sounded.

Alas, those have both disappeared somewhere over the years and through my family’s many moves.  My high school friends gave me another one when we moved away from Iowa, and oddly enough I still have the actual bracelet but the charms are gone.  How that happened, I have no clue.

The bracelets seem to be undergoing a fashion renaissance of sorts these days.  And vintage ones are all over eBay (and I have been sorely tempted by several, but they went for prices higher than I could justify).  So about a year ago, I got another charm bracelet of my own, using a discount with the Exposures catalog.  It’s a nice double-linked silver bracelet that came with one small photo charm, and I bought another photo charm at the same time so I could have small photos of both my kids when they were each in the first grade.

I have slowly added charms to represent other important memories.  A silver sixpence for luck and for my time living in London.  A mother cat carrying a kitten, in remembrance of Caliban and her children.  A pewter cathedral rose window for my grandmother, who loved Notre Dame (the Paris original).  A bookworm for my son’s childhood nickname, and a Welsh dragon for my daughter (and for my memories of Wales).  An old-fashioned radio microphone for my husband, whom I met when I hired him for a radio station job.  And so forth.

I have been thinking long and hard about what charms I should buy to represent my parents.  I thought originally of a charm representing the “I love you” hand sign for my father, who was hard of hearing, but he never used sign language other than putting a hand behind his ear to indicate he had no idea what you just said.  Maybe a small record, for his love of jazz.  Or skis, to represent his time in the 10th Mountain Division during WWII.  Or a car to represent his love of travel.  If I could find a charm representing Nags Head, North Carolina, I’d buy that in a flash, because that was his favorite vacation spot.

My mother died last Sunday and I was wondering what I should get to represent her.  It didn’t take long to figure it out.  Years ago, the summer before I got married, I went with my family to Nova Scotia where my mom grew up.  We were exploring the beach area one day and I came across a big stack of lobster traps and took time to investigate.  My mother got the idea that I would like to have my very own lobster trap (heaven knows why) and she made arrangements to buy one.

Alas, we lived in a very small apartment and had absolutely no place to put a full-sized lobster trap.  It remained at my parents’ house for years until, after my parents divorced, my dad’s second wife disposed of it.  That wasn’t the only mean spirited thing she did, but that was representative of the way she thought.  Oh well, water under the bridge.

At any rate, yesterday I realized that a small lobster trap charm would be perfect, and I managed to find one.

Now, what on earth to get for my dad.

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By infmom, March 16, 2008 12:03 pm

The estimate of Mom’s remaining time turned out to be overly optimistic.

She died peacefully today around 2pm her time.  Between the cancer and pneumonia, she just had no more strength left to fight on.

Mom was a Christian and I think she would have liked the idea of dying on Palm Sunday, a day of joyous celebration and hope of the resurrection to come.

She donated her body for medical research, so she may save other lives.  I think she’d like that, too.

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By infmom, March 11, 2008 12:20 pm

My mother started smoking when she was 14 or so, because “the movies made it look so glamorous.” Or so she told us in later years.

While she tried to quit, and did quit, several times over the years, she always started smoking again. It wasn’t till she had a stroke at age 69 that she finally gave it up forever.

I always thought that if she were going to get lung cancer it would have happened long ago, but I was wrong. She was just diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and it seems that her remaining time with us will be measured in months.

Mom never knew her father. My grandmother bravely had her and raised her as a single parent in times when such things were Not Done. Her father was much older than her mother and married to someone else. He saw her only a few times when she was a baby and she has no memories of him whatsoever. He was never involved in her life.

A few years ago she said that she’d like to at least know what he looked like. So I started browsing the internet, looking for photos. He had a title, and he was a big muckety-muck at a respected British institution, so I thought surely there would be a picture of him floating around somewhere, but there wasn’t, at least not one that I could find.

Yesterday, through a happy set of circumstances and through the kindness of someone I only just “met” via email, I managed to obtain a photo, print it out and send it to my mother.

So at least there is that, to brighten up some otherwise gloomy times.

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