Lisa Smith Molinari

Archive for the ‘parenting’ Category

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Labor Daydreams

In Humor, Memories, Middle-Age, modern culture, parenting on September 5, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Today is Labor Day, a day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. But who are these so called “American workers” anyway?

The current US unemployment rate is the worst this country has seen in over 25 years, with 9.1 percent of our workforce out of work. This dismal state of affairs takes a bit of the celebratory feel out of the holiday, and lessens the compensatory nature of a day off work.

But perhaps the meaning of this traditional American holiday should be expanded during these difficult economic times to pay tribute to those Americans who are simply hard workers. Today should honor those people who get up each day and work to the best of their ability at whatever they do. The quality that should be celebrated and admired is hard work, not paid employment.

Today should be for anyone who works hard, from cocktail waitresses to computer consultants, from plumbers to paper boys, from homemakers to heart surgeons, and even those people who are currently unemployed but are working very hard to find a job.

I didn’t walk five miles uphill to school and back or anything like that, but no matter what my endeavor, I have always been a hard worker. Like most people already in the throes of middle age, I was raised to understand the meaning of hard work, and was expected to apply it in a variety of situations.

Back in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, kids had real chores and I was no exception. I’m not talking about clearing the table after dinner, mind you. To my parents, chores were only worthwhile if they involved hours of tedious detail or backbreaking labor. My friends were used to me being tied up on the weekends with “yard work,” “gardening” or “house cleaning.”  But these typical childhood chores were different in our home.

For example, cutting my parents’ three and a half acres of grass involved a Yanmar tractor with a mower deck attached, supplemented by a push mower to get around trees and tight angles, and at least two days.  And “gardening” really should have been called “crop tending” because of the hours of weeding, watering and fertilizing needed to cultivate my parents’ gargantuan 40 by 15 foot vegetable garden.

Growing up in a small brick ranch house meant that housework was lighter duty, but in keeping with my parents’ work ethic, these chores were also quite time consuming. I recall my mother teaching me the proper way to dust a room, starting from the angle where the wall meets the ceiling and working one’s way down to the baseboards, wiping all flat surfaces and moving all objects along the way, so that one can start cleaning the floors. Needless to say, I hate dusting to this very day.

And then there was the dreaded silver polishing. Despite the fact that we lived in a 1950s brick ranch on a dead end road off Route 286 in a small Western PA town, my mother had enough silver serving dishes to host the Duke and Duchess of York and their royal entourage for brunch. I toiled for hours rubbing silver polishing creams and pastes into the intricate nooks and crannies of my mothers pieces, which included three large trays; a full tea set with pot, sugar, creamer and biscuit dish; water pitcher; ladle, covered butter dish; candlesticks; fruit bowl; wine cooler; rectangular chaffing dish; and round chaffing dish.

I’m not really sure what a chaffing dish is or why my mother needed two of them, but suffice it to say that the only thing getting chaffed in my mother’s dining room was my hands. Once silver was properly cleaned, rinsed and polished to a bright shine, it would sit on my mother’s buffet, slowly collecting dust and turning yellow until the next time I polished.

After I went off to college, my mother got rid of much of her silver, and the remaining pieces still sit on her buffet today, looking more like brass than silver, because I am not around anymore to take on the unenviable job of polishing it.

My three kids, on the other hand, wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if it hit them in the head with a toilet bowl brush. I tried to start them off right, by making intricate laminated chore charts with velcroed stars and X’es to indicate job completion. When that didn’t work, I resorted to store bought Spongebob chore charts with little yellow stampers. When that didn’t work I tried ranting and raving. Then we tried withholding allowance. And on it went until I was threatening to send them all to military school if they did not make their beds.

Why is it so hard these days to teach the meaning of hard work? Did we work harder when we were kids because we got spanked? Or was it just that there wasn’t anything better to do because the only thing on TV was Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?

Whatever it was, I, for one, am ready to once again recognize the value of an honest day’s work. In fact, even though I am still wearing my pajama pants and haven’t brushed my hair at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, I actually used my Labor Day off to get a hell of a lot done.

I got up at 7:30 am, emptied the dishwasher, loaded the dishwasher, mopped the floors, vacuumed the carpets, dusted the family room (still hate it), cleaned the toilets, stripped the sheets, tried to install a printer disk on my son’s laptop, folded laundry while I was on hold for 45 minutes with Dell Tech Support, put in another load of laundry while I told the Dell Tech Support representative from New Delhi to take a hike for trying to charge me $129 for asking a question, made lunch for the kids, watered my tomato plants, prepared the hamburger patties for tonight’s barbecue, called my mother so we could reminisce about her silver, and wrote this column.

So here’s to hard work whatever form it takes. In the home, at the office, or on the construction site, an honest day’s work is to be appreciated, whether one receives a paycheck for it or not.

As American actress Bette Davis once said, “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

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The Wheels on the Bus

In family, Humor, Memories, modern culture, parenting on August 29, 2011 at 9:34 pm

As a squishy little second grader at East Pike Elementary School, the bus stop on Sixth and Chestnut Streets seemed like a huge unruly mob to me.

Somehow, by the time the bus showed up, the kids at our stop had already climbed trees, thrown chestnuts, knocked books to the ground, acquired fresh grass stains, and executed several wedgie attacks. Much of the shenanigans were prompted by the older boys, which included my 5th grade brother.

Boarding the bus each morning, I found my assigned seat in a way which would attract the least amount of attention, so as to ward off the onslaught of daily harassment that might follow.

Most days, I kept a low profile (literally, since I was kinda short and could hide behind the green vinyl seatback,) but this particular fall, I was forced to take my turn as the subject of public humiliation.

My brother’s gang had been ordered by the driver to sit in the front seats of the bus due to their consistently boisterous behavior, but rather than serving as a penalty box, the front seats were ironically more of a podium, effectively making the gang of boys our sadistic morning dictators.

Snorting and giggling, the boys would lead chants and jeers targeting particular riders in a twisted game of Russian roulette. One morning, the barrel of their gun was pointed at me, and the chamber was full.

Quite fond of nicknames, my brother had a vast repertoire of epithets for kids in our neighborhood, our pets, and unfortunately, me. I was called Bubbs, Bubbs McGraw, Chunk, Chunky Dinners, Chung King, Skunk, Skunkgrass, and Pig (which was later outlawed by my parents so he reversed the letters and deceitfully referred to me as “Gip.”)

A rare summer trip to Hawaii to visit our grandparents inspired my brother to add the Polynesian nickname “Lee Lae Lon” to his inventory. Despite being meaningless, I hated the name, which was exactly what my brother wanted.  Unable to come up with a retaliatory name other than “Big Meanie,” I soon learned that incessant whining was my only recourse.

After tiring of leading the kids on the bus in several rounds of an old standby chant (“Thad’s on the toilet, ooh, ahh; Thad’s on the toilet, ooh, ahh”) which targeted a shy boy in the back, my brother and his gang turned their attention to me.

“Gimmie an L!” my brother’s hulkish friend, Jimmy, yelled in front of us. Everyone looked confused, so Jimmy yelled the order again, and the crowd hesitantly responded, “L?”

Jimmy and the gang of boys continued, “Gimme an E!” Even I repeated, “E!” and the chant gained momentum.

After L and E, Jimmy added another E, then another L, and so on, until he screamed “What’s it spell?!” No response was forthcoming from the confused riders, but Jimmy’s gang yelled the pre-planned answer: “Lee Lae Lon!”

“Who’s a Pig?!”

“Lee Lae Lon!”

“Louder!”

“Lee Lae Lon!”

Other than the sniveling gang of boys, no one initially understood the chant, but it soon became a well-known part of the morning regimen dictated by the boys in the front of the bus. Thankfully, I was not singled out again after that fateful fall and went on to have many pleasantly uneventful bus rides to school in the years to come.

I only have one other less-than-fond memory of my school bus days: During my secondary years, our bus had an outdated 8-track tape deck with only one tape. Every verse of AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” has been seared into my brain forever.

Despite it all, I am sad that my own kids won’t suffer the slings and arrows of riding the school bus this year. Due to drastic education budget cuts, many kids like mine have been told that the bus isn’t stopping at their school anymore.

A couple months ago, our school district announced that transportation to seven of the county’s best schools would be cancelled, so in the face of high gas prices and tight family budgets, parents like us are scrambling to find carpools to get our kids to school.

Seems that lately, as the price of gold goes up, the value of the Golden Rule goes down, and school districts across this nation are cutting education bedrocks such as sports, art, music, physical education and transportation. Some politicians feel these cuts are just part of necessary reductions in spending, others say taxes must be raised to keep these programs afloat. Regardless of political leanings, many consider it tragic that our children’s educations and ultimately their futures will be compromised by our generation’s economic failures.

The yellow school bus has always been an integral part of our public education system, and despite my own mixed experiences on the bus, I hope the cuts to school transportation and other fundamental programs are only temporary.

As for my kids, they will be sitting in the back of a carpool minivan on their way to school this year. I will try to make their experience as memorable as mine, but without a good old AC/DC tape or the manpower to muster a humiliating chant, the kids in my carpool will have to settle for mumbling along to a song on the radio.

 
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Carry a Big Chopstick

In family, Humor, modern culture, parenting on August 23, 2011 at 1:58 pm

Last week, I spent $290.87 on school supplies at a local “supercenter” that shall remain unnamed. Suffice it to say that the “rollback” in prices still wasn’t enough to put a “smiley” on my face.

I lugged the bags from my car into the house, and dumped the lot out onto the living room floor. I stared at the pile of pencils, paper, folders, notebooks, highlighters, binders, rulers, index cards, and two $88 graphing calculators and thought to myself:

Good Lord, almost three hundred dollars for this stuff. Whose idea was it to have three kids anyway? [The unnamed supercenter] must be making a killing, well, along with the manufacturers I guess . . . hu? Wait! Let me see here . . . oh no! Made in China? What have I done?!

With our economy in peril and so many Americans out of work, how could I have so carelessly handed hundreds of dollars over to China? I contemplated returning all the supplies to [the unnamed supercenter] and telling the kids to just use the free bank pens, hotel note pads, and the crayon nubs left over from last year.

Knowing I did not have the courage to return the school supplies I had just spent the last three hours procuring, I slumped down next to the pile of foreign manufactured goods and hung my head in shame.

A minute or two later, a Chinese lantern blinked on in my head.

Hey, wait a minute, I thought, the Chinese have been making the stuff Americans buy for decades, right? Well, why don’t we do exactly the same thing?

US citizens make up about 4.5% of the world’s population, but China accounts for almost 20%. They figured out long ago that they could manufacture products that Americans want and sell them to us at a hefty profit. Why don’t we make the products the Chinese can’t live without and sell them to China – a market four times larger than the US?

My mind raced with the endless possibilities of my brilliant scheme.

Rice. Rice is the staple food and most important ingredient in Chinese cooking. Why not flood the banks of the Mississippi and Lake Superior to cultivate some rice paddies?  

Chopsticks. With the US furniture industry losing market share to Asian imports for the last few decades, why not put our laid off furniture makers to work manufacturing chopsticks?  China uses 63 billion disposable chopsticks a year, or 25 million full grown trees annually, and the US has both the lumber and workers to fill the Chinese need for their beloved wooden utensils.

But I can’t take credit for this idea. A company called Georgia Chopsticks is currently churning out 2 million pairs of sweet gum and poplar chopsticks a day, selling them to supermarket chains in China. That’s what I’m talking about.

After we tackle the basics, why not open up a soy sauce plant in South Dakota? A Peking duck farm in Delaware? Woks in Wisconsin? Pea pods in Pennsylvania? Mandarin oranges in Mississippi?

 And, there’s no need to stop at the dinner table. Let’s ask the various yard ornament manufacturers in the United States to stop making gnomes, pink flamingoes, and gazing balls, and start churning out Budda statues? And I’m sure Parker Brothers would be willing to put Monopoly production on hold long enough to produce a few million Chinese Checkers and Mahjongg sets.

Hollywood has been particularly fond of superhero movies such as Captain America, Batman and the Green Hornet. What about a Chinese Superhero? Let’s commission Hanna-Barbera to get cracking on a cutting edge remake of Hong Kong Phooey and market it to Chinese movie goers. I could totally see Jackie Chan in the part of Penry, with sultry little Rosemary played by Angelina Jolie and Tommy Lee Jones as Sergeant Flint. Can’t you just see the lines at the box office?

Imagine, with the US exporting goods to 1.3 billion Chinese consumers a year, we’ll be rolling in the wonton wrappers before you know it. Put that in your fortune cookie and eat it.

My faith in living the American Dream restored, I sorted through the little mountain of foreign made school supplies without guilt and tried to think of what to cook for dinner. All the thoughts of China had left me with a hankering for Asian cuisine, so I hopped on the phone to Hop Shings for some egg rolls, kung pao chicken, and chow mein.

All made in America, of course.

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Middle School Disorientation

In family, Humor, military, parenting, self-image, social scene on August 17, 2011 at 5:49 pm

My daughters and I nervously passed between two huge concrete lions flanking the entrance, and a door opened magically before us.

“Welcome to Julia Landon College Preparatory!” said the eighth grader holding the door, smartly clad in khaki shorts, a navy blue polo emblazoned with the school logo, and a full set of shining braces.

It was middle school orientation day, and having  just moved to Jacksonville, Florida, we had no clue how to negotiate the vast halls and complex social hierarchy of this new institution.

With every move, our military family has adapted to new surroundings, but this time we were a bit anxious. The girls had been accepted into a top notch magnet school, and while I was grateful for this stroke of dumb luck, I was also a bit worried that I might meet up with some pretentious personalities.

Being from humble roots, I don’t deal well with snooty people.

Besides, middle school parents are a separate and distinct breed. Unlike elementary school children who are a blank canvas, and high school kids whose personalities are pretty much set, middle school children are still forming their individual aptitudes and character traits. Middle school parents still believe that, with their guidance, their children will be neurosurgeons and professional athletes.

At this stage in the game, middle school parents are still living the dream, and they carry themselves as if their children are the cream of the crop.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the parents at Julia Landon College Preparatory Middle School might have cornered the market on elitist attitudes, so I decided to beat them at their own game.

I knew I needed to walk into that school wearing something that would convey the message, “Yea, I’m new, intelligent, interesting, and I have no time for you.”

So, I strategically paired a trendy shirt dress and sandals with a silver pendant necklace on a leather cord. I carried one of those huge tote bags with the name of a European city stamped all over it. Mine read “Stuttgart.”

I envisioned another mom asking, “Ooo, cool necklace . . . where’d you get it?” and I’d have to tell how I bought the pendant from a street market in Rome after a delicious lunch of risotto and fried artichokes in a Trastevere café. I’d have that far-away look in my eye that says, “I’ve got more culture in my upturned pinkie than you’ll get from a case of Yoplait.”

Then someone else might notice my Stuttgart bag and inquire as to whether I have “visited”Germany. I’d have to hide my smirk as I explain, “Why, no, actually we lived in Stuttgart for the last three years.” Again, with that far-away look in my eyes.

That’ll show ‘em, I thought, as we crossed the threshold into the school.

We were greeted by more khaki clad kids, each one more polite and helpful than the last, “yes ma’am” rolling off their tongues without the slightest effort.

I grumbled under my breath at their superiority. I had been trying to get my own children to use that simple phrase for years, but even under extreme duress, I had only been able to elicit a reluctant muttering that sounded more like “S’pam.” Apparently, my kids would rather shove Popsicle sticks under their toenails than subordinate themselves in such a humiliating way. Preferring to not be referred to as repulsive canned meat product, I gave up the fight and accepted the garden variety “Yes, Mom,” usually accompanied by plenty of eye rolling.

We followed the sea of people headed to several stations set up for getting locker assignments, student ID photos, PTA memberships, textbooks, and PE uniforms. The crowd looked like a giant preppy wave of madras plaid, nautical stripes, tanned limbs, sun bleached hair and white teeth. Parents seemed to recognize each other, chatting as the tide swept forward.

In a pathetic ploy for attention, I would announce at each station that “We are new here,” but no one seemed to care all that much. They were just as pleasant as eating a slice of summer peach pie on a porch swing. But I wasn’t about to let these sweet-tea swilling snobs get the best of me.

In a last ditch effort to get the upper hand, I announced to the silver-haired guidance counselor, “Well, we are new because WE JUST MOVED HERE AFTER LIVING IN EUROPE,” hoping the surrounding hoard would overhear and drop to their knees to beg for my friendship. But no one batted an eye.

In her slow-cooked southern drawl, the guidance counselor responded, “Well, I do declare, you have come a long way! Welcome, we are so happy to have you here. Now, how may I help you?”

Contritely, I handed the sweet woman my daughters’ health records and thanked her for her assistance. I couldn’t deny it any more. The people at this new school weren’t snooty nor elitist. I didn’t need to beat them at their own game because they weren’t playing one. This was simply a good school with good people in it. With a sigh of relief, I finally let down my guard and resolved to just be real.

As I walked back out the door and between the concrete lions, I remembered the advice I had given my own girls that very morning: “Don’t be afraid, just be yourself. In time, you will make lots of new friends and you’ll fit right in.”

Point taken.

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Corny American Pride

In family, Humor, Memories, military, modern culture, parenting, travel on August 1, 2011 at 7:24 pm

I’ve been thinking lately about the things I’ve taken for granted. After living three years abroad, our military family finally appreciates what we have as Americans.

I’m not talking about ethereal concepts like democracy and freedom. I’m talking about the really important things that make a tangible difference in our every day lives as Americans.

I’m talking about Corn on the Cob.

Yes, that sweet vegetarian delicacy indigenous to this great land of ours. Native Americans cultivated “maize” for thousands of years before Europeans discovered the “New World” and the usefulness of corn as a grain, but it was only a couple centuries ago that Iroquois shared with settlers the sweet variety of corn eaten off the cob. Unlike the settlers, Europeans never really took to eating corn straight off the cob. In fact, they are of the general opinion that corn on the cob is hog feed.

So for three long years, we went without.  

It wasn’t easy, because, as far as vegetables go, corn on the cob has always been kinda special to us. Despite the fact that my father was raised at the boardwalk in New Jersey, he was always a wannabe country boy, which is why we had a garden about eight times too big for a family of four, along with a tractor, six chickens, two goats, a cat, and at least two hunting dogs.

As such, my brother and I had chores that were uncharacteristic of suburban children. We were picking green beans, tending goats, and driving a tractor when our friends were getting jobs at the mall. Also, I had the unenviable task of selling the excess eggs, puppies, and vegetables at the end of our road. Corn on the cob was my best seller, and my first real source of income.

Nearly two decades later, my husband-to-be first laid eyes on me when I was sitting rather unlady like on the deck of a beach house, shucking corn. Unfortunately, I was covered in sand and my wet bangs had fallen into an unflattering middle part. Worse yet, the four thick rolls of my belly protruded between the top and bottom of my bathing suit.

It took a shower and considerable work with my curling iron, but I was able to win him over at dinner that evening, not without help from a heaping plate of delicious Silver Queen corn on the cob.

Even my children have fallen under the sweet corn spell. Our middle child, Anna, has always been a worrier. One night when she was about five years old, I tucked her into bed, placing her tiny hands together under mine to say our prayers.

“Now I lay me . . .” I began.

“Mommy?” Anna interrupted. “Yes, Honey?”

“What happens when you die?” she said, her big eyes staring up into mine.

“Uh,” my mind raced, unprepared. “Well, you go to Heaven, Sweetie. Now where were we?”

“Yea, but, what will happen to my body,” she specified.

As I looked into the worried eyes of my precious little girl, I could not reveal the reality of death and bodily decomposition. Panicked, I began to ramble.

“Well, Honey, when someone dies, his soul leaves his body and floats up to Heaven.”

“But . . .” I knew I had to say something, anything, that would quickly distract her from thoughts of dead bodies being buried in deep, dark graves, where they are left to rot into the dirt.

“Heaven is beautiful!” I said, but her eyes still looked worried, “And you can have anything you want,” her brows were still furrowed, “and, and, you can have wings and YOU CAN FLY!”  

“Can I have purple wings, Mommy?”

“Yes! Yes! You can have purple wings!” I blurted, relieved to at long last please my relentless little interrogator. Her eyes fluttered with visions of purple feathers as we finished our prayers.

“Can I really have anything I want in Heaven?” Anna asked as I kissed her forehead.

“Yep, anything,” I replied, and turned to leave the room. As I flipped the light switch, I heard Anna whisper one last question: “Mommy, can I have corn on the cob in Heaven?”

“Yes, Sweetie,” I answered with a smile, “you can have all the corn on the cob you want.”

To this day, our family still yearns for the yellow sweetness of this heavenly vegetable; in fact, we have consumed no less than four dozen ears since moving back to the States a few weeks ago.

We can’t get enough of freshly boiled cobs rolled in butter, sprinkled with a pinch of salt and cracked black pepper. My husband haphazardly chomps at the cob, leaving tufts of missed kernels. I munch methodically from right to left like an old typewriter, occasionally stopping to chew and swallow sweet mouthfuls. Due to expensive orthodontics, Anna gnaws at the youngest kernels on the ends and trims the rest off with a knife. Lilly takes spiral bites around the cob like an apple peeler. Hayden, who despises all vegetables, seems disgusted by our shameless display of gluttony.

When every cob has been stripped of its golden pearls, we sit swollen, with buttered cheeks, giggling about the stuff stuck between our teeth.

We, the People of this great Nation, possess the unalienable right to enjoy distinctly American Corn on the Cob, a liberty which one should never take for granted. Give me hot buttered ears or give me death, I say! Let freedom and the dinner bell ring!

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A Midsummer Night’s Scheme

In Humor, Memories, parenting, self-image, social scene on July 15, 2011 at 11:56 pm
At the Drive-In

Image by Jim Rees via Flickr

On any given summer night, the teens of our great nation take to the streets of their respective towns in search of something fun to do. They can be seen outside pizza joints, ice cream stands and movie theaters, doing what teenagers do best – hanging out.

Except for certain insignificant differences like parachute pants, banana clips and Pat Benatar, things were pretty much the same when I was a teenager.

After summer chores like grass cutting and weeding green beans, usually tempered with an hour or two of laying out coated in tanning oil, I was released by my parents to find whatever fun was available in our little town.

The first step in hatching a plan for the evening was a telephone call to my best friend, Patti (except for that boring summer when she had a boyfriend.) Such calls were always made from the candlestick phone in my bedroom. The second step was to confirm that neither of us was invited to a party (a rarity) or had a date (almost never happened.) The final step was to decide on transportation, which was almost always my dad’s enormous 1977 Chevy Blazer.

I picked Patti up at her house, and after applying copious amounts of lip gloss and making sure our bangs looked just right, we would cruise the town.

Our journey usually started with a drive by the local arcade. “Games 101” was a hangout of sorts, and although Patti and I didn’t really give two shakes about Asteroids or Ms. Pacman, we knew that the arcade was a veritable Command Center where all information on teenage social events was collected.

Sometimes we scored big and received word of a bonfire in Bennett’s woods or a party at the house of a classmate we all referred to as “Meatball,” but usually, Patti and I drove around for hours, all glossed up, trying to not look too desperate.

Some nights, Patti and I would scrape together a few of our fellow goofy girlfriends to pile in the Blazer and go check out the Drive In Movie Theater. The Palace Gardens wasn’t cheap; however, and we refused to spend our hard earned grass cutting/ice cream scooping money on overpriced admission. There were certain well-known strategies of avoiding the normal fees, and we employed them all at one time or another.

On nights when the Palace Gardens offered a one-price-per-carload special, we discovered that we could pack nearly a dozen teenagers, big bangs and all, into the Blazer. On regular admission nights, we would stuff two friends into the dog crate my father had built into the back of the Blazer in order to reduce our expenses, and had a great time trying to keep a straight face while driving by the ticket booth.

If we were feeling particularly daring (or cheap) we would sneak through the woods surrounding the Palace Gardens, and crawl through an opening in the fence to gain cost-free entrance into the theater. On one such occasion, six of us made the attempt as a group.

We had heard the rumors that the management was cracking down on teens who refused to pay by lacing the fence with some kind of foul concoction made from watered down cow manure. We all knew that nothing could ruin one’s chances of getting a boyfriend like stepping in poo, so we were all particularly cautious that night

Using hand signals as if it was some kind of special ops raid on an Al-Qaeda compound, we snuck through the woods and permeated the fence without being hit. Or so we thought.

The nightly double feature included the new hit “Porky’s” but we weren’t interested. We headed straight for the large group of loitering teens near the concessions. Just before we reached the group, we realized that one of our comrades had been hit.

“What’s that smell?” Peggy whispered. Our sniffing noses quickly found the source of the pungent odor – Andrea’s Jordache jean cuff had been tainted by the enemy’s foul biological weapon.

Poor Andrea was a goner, but the rest of us had a great time mingling among the cars under the stars on that balmy summer night.

And now, when I see today’s teens acting out their own version of A Midsummer Night’s Scheme, I remember my youth, smile, and hope that all their dreams of summer fun come true.

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Coffee, Tea or Turbulence?

In family, Humor, military, parenting, travel on July 8, 2011 at 8:33 pm

“Coffee? Tea?” the lanky flight attendant mouthed from above my seat. I pulled my complimentary headphones off to tell her “No thanks,” but regretted the decision a half hour later when I started feeling like I was in a fruit dehydrator and the flight attendant was way up in first class, most likely serving some businessman his second glass of champagne.

My three kids and I were halfway into a nine hour flight, on our way back to the United States after a military tour in Germany. My husband was already at our new duty station in Florida, and was planning to pick us up at the Jacksonville Airport later that evening.

The military travel agency neglected to arrange for us to be seated together, and Luftansa merely smirked when I asked to change our seat assignments. From my isle seat in 29B, I could only see the kids if I stood up on my tray table and used binoculars, and even then I could only see the tops of their heads. Lilly, age 10 was at 39D, surrounded on either side by college kids. Anna, age 13 was behind Lilly at 40D, and my 16-year-old, Hayden, was against a window at 43A.

With four hours down, and five to go, I said a little prayer that there were enough movies and snacks to keep them entertained all the way home.

From my isle seat against the bulkhead, I was just a few feet from the only restrooms in economy class. Not only did I see just about every passenger on my side of the plane pull when they should have pushed the bathroom doors, I heard scores of those characteristic sucking flushes that makes one wonder where it all goes. A line started building up past my seat (it was about 45 minutes after the coffee service after all,) requiring me to sit facing forward for fear that if I turned my head, the tip of my nose might brush against someone’s hip.

A little while later I heard the clank of the lunch cart, and started getting excited. No, I wasn’t hungry. I’m never hungry during airline travel, perhaps because my intestines sense that I will be sitting for hours on end, and go completely dormant. So every peanut, pretzel, stale roll with butter pat, mushy noodle, and fruit gelatin square I consume lays in my stomach for the entire flight, completely undigested.

The back up of undigested material actually makes the flight even more physically uncomfortable, if that is possible, yet I get eagerly accept the lousy morsels offered out of sheer boredom.

“Would you like the Asian chicken or vegetarian pasta?” the voice from above asked. I chose the former, envisioning something similar to the Szechuan dish I like to order from King’s Palace when I’m feeling hormonal. A tiny rectangular tray is placed before me with a roll, butter, cheese wedge, a square dish with a gelatinous fruit dessert, and a foil covered container.

Peeling back the foil, I discovered that the “Asian chicken” looked nothing like my beloved Szechuan dish. I ate it anyway, savoring every mediocre bite, just for the entertainment value.

As I hunched over the sections of my little rectangular tray, I wondered how the airline chefs sleep at night.

The Indian businessman beside me was also hunched over his vegetarian pasta. His elbows were tucked compactly at his sides, his hands hovered over his tray while his fingers tore at the little packages, shoving tiny bits into his mouth while his eyes darted. It occurred to me that just about everyone in economy class ate in this manner. It was as if we were all a bunch of squirrels nibbling at our acorns.

After the trays had been taken away, I went back to find the kids happily engrossed in their seat back televisions. I decided to use the opportunity to take a little catnap.

I always envision myself cradled comfortably against my travel pillow’s C-shaped contour, but I inevitably awaken with my head fallen forward so I look half dead, or worse, cocked back with my mouth wide open. No matter which way my head falls, my spine is always compressed into temporary scoliosis and my rear end goes completely numb. I can feel new spider veins bursting forth on my thighs.

For the next two hours, I dozed uncomfortably, contorting my body into every imaginable position, every one seemingly more painful than the next.

I finally gave up on rest, just when the snack cart appeared. This time I chose the vegetarian pizza, which was a rectangular slab of dough upon which was smeared some kind of cheeseless orange sauce, and embedded with tiny fragments of vegetable material, to include a German pizza topping favorite – corn.

Soon after snack service, the airplane began its gradual descent and we hit turbulence. It felt like the corn, Asian Chicken and fruit gelatin were playing lawn darts in my stomach. I closed my eyes and reached for the armrests, awkwardly caressing the Indian businessman’s hand which had beat me to it.

I heard a commotion and opened my eyes to see the flight attendant grabbing paper towels out of the restroom. My brain quickly calculated probabilities and reasonable inferences, coming to the surefire conclusion that my daughter Lilly must’ve thrown up.

I craned to look back to her seat, and saw a college girl pinching her nose shut. Everyone was looking into Lilly’s row with a grimace. I waved to the flight attendant and pointed at myself as if to say, “Hi! Remember me? I’m the one who asked to be seated with my kids and was refused!”

It all worked out in the end. The college boy who was seated right next to Lilly and who got hit by “friendly fire” was quite understanding. We were able to get Lilly some fresh clothes after retrieving our luggage. And, best of all, Daddy was there waiting at the Jacksonville Airport as promised. Our family is finally on solid ground again.

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The Call That Launched a Thousand Tears

In family, Humor, marriage, military, parenting on June 23, 2011 at 9:01 pm

So, I called my husband the other day.

“Hi Hon, so what’s up?” I asked.

Now, before I go any further with this story, I need to set the scene:

My husband, bless his heart, has been at Naval Station Mayport on the sunny Atlantic shores of northFlorida, for almost three months. He went ahead of the rest of our family to start his new job there, and to live in the oceanfront base hotel, with daily maid service.

I, on the other hand, stayed in our stairwell apartment on Patch Barracks in chilly Germany with the kids so they could finish school. Our seemingly fool-proof plan included me arranging and managing our household goods move, the shipment of our dog “Dinghy,” meaningful travel with the kids at spring break, inspection and shipment of our minivan, checking out of military quarters, arranging hotel and airport shuttle, and other tasks associated with moving a family across the world.

As a military spouse, I am used to handling things while my husband is away, so I thought this little three-month separation would not be much different from the rest.

I was wrong.

When I made that fateful phone call to my husband, I had endured a grueling week of shocking school progress reports, driving around base for two hours in search of my teenage son who had failed to turn in his final Biology project, a malfunctioning oven and resulting visit from the grumpy German Fire Department, a broken dryer and resulting shameless display of underclothes hanging on radiators and windowsills, and lots and lots of overwhelming move details. I was out of patience, energy and dignity.

“Well, I rented a movie last night,” my husband responded, “it was no good, but I got another great pizza from Sal’s.”

“Oh, that sounds nice,” I offered weakly, wondering if the kids would be OK eating cereal again for dinner.

“Today, Dinghy and I needed a little change of scenery from our daily beach walks,” he continued, “so we hopped in the car and went to the Riverwalk area for a nice long run and lunch at an outdoor café.”

I had fallen silent, but my husband didn’t notice.

“The folks at the café were so nice and gave Dinghy three bowls of water to drink since it has been so hot and sunny here.”

I stared out my window at the dark clouds that hadn’t lifted in days.

“And after that we headed back here to the homestead for a quick swim and to watch some boob tube. . . .So what’s been going on there?”

I began, slowly at first, to relate the details of my agonizingly stressful week. My rant picked up speed, leading to some crucial information about our move I needed to go over with him.

“Ooo, hey Hon, can I call you back in like five minutes?” he said.

“Uh, sure,” I agreed, believing the delay to be due to some minor urgent matter relating to our dog. Our 110 pound labradoodle was prone to gulping water and then spontaneously vomiting it all back up on a whim. I wondered if that was the problem.

Five minutes later, I answered on the first ring.

“Hey, so what happened? Is Dinghy OK?” I asked.

“Oh, heck yea, he’s fine. I just had to run down to the beach real quick. Right before you called I had come up from the beach to grab another beer. I left my beach chair and book down near the water, and wanted to go grab it before the tide started coming in.”

That was all it took. The floodgates opened and a veritable tsunami sprang from my tear ducts. Within 10 seconds, I was a wailing, blubbering, snotty mess.

Stunned, my husband had nothing much to say, offering only, “Hang in there, Hon, you’re doing a great job.”

My husband and I learned a dual lesson that day. I learned that long-term military separations are so much easier for the spouse to handle when the service person is somewhere icky like on an aircraft carrier floating out in the Pacific, or living in a tent in some God-forsaken dusty hot climate, or at least behind a big metal desk working day and night to support the family.

My husband learned that, next time his wife asks him, “What’s up?” he should definitely respond, “Oh, not much, what’s up with you?”

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Taken for a Ride

In family, Memories, parenting on May 11, 2011 at 1:44 pm

As I nervously watched my daughters reeling down our street in an abandoned shopping cart, memories of my own childhood misadventures rushed into my head.

Any kid who could get his hands on certain common household items like shopping carts and refrigerator boxes, was golden.

On spring in the 1970’s, my brother Tray scored two large inner tubes. He called his friend, Tracy, to come over to help him figure out what to do with them. Tray and his friends were in Junior High School and wanted nothing to do with little sisters like me. They were mischievous, parted their hair in the center, listened to Foreigner and Supertramp, and said things like, “That’s decent.”

After lunch, Tracy and Tray disappeared to hatch their plan while I trotted up the hill to the neighbor’s house to find my two friends.

We had recently moved from town into a rural neighborhood on the side of a hill with only five houses. Our house was at the bottom of the hill on the road, and my two girlfriends lived at the top of the hill near the woods. 

Starting from the tree line, our hill sloped steadily downward, flattening out a bit at the neighbor’s property, but then taking a steep drop toward a barrier of blue spruces, my friends’ grandma’s house, and the road beyond. In winter, we rode sleds down the long hill and in summer we rolled down the hill and played in the tall grass.

As I trudged barefooted up the hill to find my friends, I picked a handful of newly sprouted dandelions along the way.

About an hour later, there was a knock at my neighbors’ playhouse door.

“Hey, Lisa! C’meer! Wanna do something fun with me and Tracy?!”

Completely gullible, I threw the baby doll I was nurturing into the spider-webbed corner and ran out the door. “Whaddya wanna do?!” I yelled excitedly.

Tracy and Tray lead me to the side of the neighbors’ house where I saw the inner tubes lashed together, side by side, with twine. Glancing sideways at each other and down at me, my brother said, “Lisa, if you climb inside the tubes, we’ll roll you down the hill and it’ll be really fun!”

I couldn’t see the red flags or hear the alarm bells going off. All I knew is that my big brother finally wanted to play with me.

I crouched down and climbed into the center hole, gripping the metal valves like handles just as they instructed. With my chin on my chest and my legs criss-crossed, I fit snuggly into the tiny space.

Assuring me that the ride would be better than the Scrambler at the County Fair, they carefully shoved me off down the hill.

As the tubes took their first few rotations, I squealed with excitement. But then, I reached the sharp drop off at the front of the neighbors’ property, and the tubes spun wildly with the sudden acceleration.

The undulations in the grass sent the tubes airborne, causing them to change shape as they hit the ground. The circle distorted into an elongated oval with the impact, and my teeth clacked.

As the contraption flew down the hill toward the border of blue spruces, my initial squeals of delight turned into breathy screams of terror, and then into the silence of survival mode.

From my cramped vantage point, I could see flashes of blue sky, the approaching spruces, grass, and Tray and Tracy screaming down the hill after me.

I knew I had to save myself from certain disaster, so as I slammed into the ground after a particularly high bounce, I allowed a foot to pop out of the ring. My toes immediately caught the grass, flipping the tubes like a quarter in a coin toss.

My wheel of terror teetered to a stop just before the spruces, and I instinctively burst out of the confining hole onto the grass. The entire universe spun around me.

I could hear faint yelling coming closer, until Tracy’s silhouette appeared against the blue sky above me.

“Lisa! Lisa! Are you OK?!” Tracy panted as a drop of spit began to ooze from his gaping mouth. Just before the elongated globule could detach itself, Tracy slurped and swallowed.

What an idiot I was to trust my brother. He had baited me into many a judo flip, locked closet and harebrained scheme, so why did I think that moment would be any different?

Anyone with an older sibling knows the answer to that question. No matter how much my brother acted annoyed by me, no matter how many times he gave me a charlie horse-producing punch, no matter how many times he called me “Chunky Dinners,” no matter how many of my Barbis he maimed, I would drop anything if he showed me the slightest amount of attention.

And now, as I watch my daughters careening down the street in a shopping cart, I say a little prayer that no one breaks an arm, I accept the natural order of things, and understand that some things never change.

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Spring Break Odyssey: Relay for Relief

In family, parenting, travel on May 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Good times before the seasickness set in.

We awoke to a glorious Italian sun. This was the day we were to board our cruise ship in Venice, and we were all excited.

Lilly had fully recovered from the stomach virus that nearly got us thrown out of our last hotel, I purchased a map after our GPS sent us through the Italian Alps, and we managed to find a nearby vacancy when a hotel in Venice did not acknowledge our reservation. We survived all that, and felt that the worst was finally behind us.

There was only one little pesky lingering problem. An embarrassing personal issue that seems to plague me any time I travel. My digestive system was on total lockdown, so I decided that I’d better hit a pharmacy for some “products” before we boarded the ship.

Just down the street from our hotel, I saw the characteristic blinking green cross, the symbol for pharmacies all over Europe. Taking a deep breath, I walked up to the pharmacist and his assistant behind the counter.

You see, European pharmacies are nothing like CVS, Rite Aid, or Walgreens. You can’t peruse the aisles in relative privacy and sneak embarrassing items up to the cash register. Here, you must tell the pharmacist your problem, within earshot of everyone else in the store, so he can find the right medication for you. He then hands it to you, and loudly instructs you on how to take it.

“You-a take-a one-a tablet-a, and-a in-a twelve-a hours-a, you-a will-a, uh, uh . . .” the pharmacist looks to his assistant, who shrugs. “Yea, yea, I get it, just put it in the bag,” I responded, humiliated.

We all took a Dramamine in the passenger terminal parking lot before boarding the ship, and I snuck one of the little pharmacy tablets with my bottled water.

It looked so fun from the pier....

 Boarding the ship, the kids could not wait to find the four pools, the waterslide, the kids’ center and the arcade. After going over some safety precautions, I turned them loose.

The first of many 7 Euro Shirley Temples.

Meeting up later for dinner, the whining started.

“The arcade games all cost money,” Hayden reported. “The water slide is closed,” Lilly moped. “The pools are all too cold to swim in, and there are big hairy men in all the hot tubs,” Anna sighed.

“Don’t worry, everyone! I am sure there are fun things to do in the kids’ center, and look! You can eat as much pizza as you want!” I countered.

We joined the buffet line and fought to grab plastic plates. As we surged forth in the line, none of us could find anything that looked appetizing. Gelatin with fruit, some kind of seafood salad with octopus suckers in it, a large cylinder of pressed meat with a big glass bowl of translucent gravy. Ew.

Finally at the end of the line, we spied the pizza! Before we could grab a slice, some pushy Europeans emptied the pan. We waited for the next pie, elbowing the other patrons circling around us.

Finding all the inside tables filled, we sat at a chilly patio table on the empty pool deck. Hayden grabbed his first slice, which looked kind of stiff. Taking a bite, it crunched like a cracker, and the wind blew tiny fragments of crust dust around our table. The pizza was as hard as a sea biscuit.

Subscribing to the theory that all pizza is good, we ate it anyway.

Sea biscuit pizza.

 Later at the kids’ center, we learned that, other than some coloring activities, there really wasn’t anything for Lilly to do. The teenage activities for Anna and Hayden were posted on a flier that read, “Meet Lorenzo in Dante’s Disco for Speed Dating at 8 o’clock!”

There was no way my timid kids were going to subject themselves to forced mingling with foreign teenagers, so we hit the hay early and hoped for a good port visit in the morning.  The rocking of the boat lulled us to sleep like babies in a cradle.

Just as the Italian pharmacist had predicted, the little tablet took exactly twelve hours to work its magic. Stumbling through the dark cabin, I found the bathroom door. Locked!

With teeth clenched, I impatiently awaited my turn. Finally, the door opened, and Anna appeared, looking pale in the dim moonlight.

“Mom, I threw up,” she said weakly. “Yeah, that’s great, Honey, now could you just step aside and we can talk about this later?” I said as I shoved my way into the bathroom.

The proverbial floodgates opened, and I felt relieved. (Little did I know, there was plenty more to come.) I turned my attention to Anna, who I found right outside the bathroom door.

“Oh Mom! I feel sick again!” she said, pushing me to the side.

This bathroom relay went on into the wee hours of the morning. Poor Anna had caught the stomach virus Lilly had, and I was battling a combination of seasickness and Italian laxatives. Even Lilly, also seasick, came down from her bunk to compete with us for time in the head.

The toilet paper ran out at about 4 am. It was a rough night, to say the least.

Over the next few days, we aimlessly wandered each port like seasick zombies. Back on the ship, we grimaced at the buffet, nibbled at our food, and resolved to go to bed early.

On solid ground in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

 Finally, the ship pulled back into Venice’s harbor. After paying the tab for taxes, hidden fees, service charges and overpriced drinks, we made a beeline for our beloved dirty white minivan.

This time, I kept my GPS in the glove box and followed a map. As my minivan whizzed along the toll road on its way back to Patch Barracks, I realized that the girl in the ruby red slippers had it right when she said, “There’s no place like home.”

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