Half of the Sky

GameStop: How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...

1) Because I can't decide whether the fact that "World of Warcraft" has become a greater obsession than Facebook/IM/MySpace is a good thing or a bad thing.

2) Despite the miracle that "Guitar Hero" has introduced my middle son to the music of the Allman Brothers (specifically, the song "Jessica"), I must accept the simple truth that getting down a particular riff is far more important to my children than any of the following: eating, sleeping, talking on the phone to the girlfriend, talking on the phone to regular friends unless one is talking about "Guitar Hero", conversation, reading, Tuesday's storm warnings...complete with funnel cloud sightings, rain, hail and sirens going off all over town, leaving the house to go to the movies, playing a sport and--of course--homework. It should also go without saying that answering any questions I might have about anything (except for questions about "Guitar Hero") cannot be answered while playing the aforementioned game.

3) Because after watching me write a big check to the dentist for two kids whose beautiful, healthy teeth have no cavities, my youngest looked at me and said, "WOW!! For that much money you could buy a Wii plus two games!!" Oh, sure! NOW he understands the value of money!

4) Granting the birthday wishes of a certain 13-year-old boy who wanted NOTHING IN THIS WORLD as much as he wanted a PSP. This necessitated my initial trip to the store to buy something I knew nothing about. Followed by another trip five minutes later because the dope at the counter forgot to sack up two of the games I purchased. Followed by a third trip because I had only bought the Value Pack. It is a value, to be sure, and though it includes a memory card, charger, case, a stand and something else I can't identify, it does not include the actual PSP unit. Followed by a fourth trip to return the "Harry Potter" movie disc because it had red sticky candy stuff all over it. Followed by a fifth trip (yesterday) with receipt and proof of the $20 insurance in case one of the boys tries to shower with it in his pocket. Only this time, there was a black spot on the screen called  a"dead pixel" which caused Harry and Hermione's teeth to appear as though they were habitual users of chewing tobacco. This caused some discussion as to GameStop's policy on dead pixels and whether purchasing a $170 piece of electronic equipment (plus insurance) didn't still require us to "suck it up" when certain aspects were defective. Two young clerks said they could see the dead pixel. The older man ( the dope who sold it to us) claimed he didn't see it. (I SEE DEAD PIXELS....it was like a scene from "The Sixth Sense". Finally, they switched it out and then the older guy claimed we had to buy even more insurance until the younger clerks pointed out that we just bought this unit one week ago and the original insurance was still good.

And then I went home and drank. The end.

Some Are Gone and Some Remain

 

It has come to my attention that I know only two ways of expressing grief. One is to sit stony-faced and mute...and the other is just incredibly messy. I become a big bag of feelings that spill everywhere. And that just makes people want to come by to help me scoop up all those parts and I'm just not all that sure how to handle it. Talking about death always inspires concern from others and though it's appreciated, it has to be said that in this case it's probably not necessary. Rare is it when a good life is followed by a good death, but when it is found to exist I feel it ought to be reported.

So...with that in mind I have to say that Mr. Half's Grandma Y died early yesterday morning on the tenth anniversary of the day we buried her husband. She was 96. She was a wonderful woman and half of one of the most incredible marriages I have ever witnessed. Paul and Martha were true equals in a day when a woman's opinion mattered little. They met when they were college students and many years later, when they were packing up their home and moving to a retirement village, she came across the nightgown she had worn on their first night as husband and wife. As she unfolded it from the box where she had stored it for 60-plus years she confided to me that she spent more time and care searching for this perfect piece of lingerie than she had on her wedding dress.

Grandpa sold dairy equipment to businesses and she was a school teacher. Two of her students were unusual little boys--brothers--in a Beaumont, Texas elementary school and when she mentioned them decades later, she had no idea that they had become rock and blues artists of some renown. That day her grandchildren enjoyed filling her in on what had become of Johnny and Edgar Winter.

I never heard an unkind or judgemental word from either one of them and the word "scofflaw" was reserved for only the worst of humanity. They exhibited patience with even the most vexing of people when the rest of us voiced our frustration openly. When their oldest grandchild (Mr. Half) pierced his ear and grew his hair to his waist (the first time) and then cut it, she carefully wrapped the braid in tissue and laid it in a place of honor...in a drawer drawer next to her own girlhood braid and that of her only daughter...Mr. Half's mother.

Both Grandpa and Grandma were citizens of the world and displayed a curiosity about countries other than the one they called home. Seasoned travelers and voracious readers, they respected each other and accepted encroaching age with admirable dignity and never let you come by for a visit that they didn't tell you how happy they were that you were a part of the family. Near the end of their time together they pooled their abilities and he took over all of the driving that she had given up. When the effects of childhood polio and cancer impaired his flexibility, she bent each day to tie his shoes for him. Despite the fact that she missed Grandpa every single day of the last decade and frail health kept her from traveling, doing her famous needlework or reading her favorite books, she never complained. She was glad to be alive and she embraced life's small moments with enthusiasm and grace and a gentle sense of humor.

In this family, Grandma was the last of her generation...of her siblings and their spouses as well the last survivor of Grandpa's siblings and their spouses. And yet she stayed interesting and interested--as he was-- in the growing products of her marriage: her three adult children, eight grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. To her there were no in-laws or out-laws...only family. And in the case of Grandma Y, I was as important to her as her real grandchildren. And she was like a grandmother to me. I am fortunate indeed to have known her...both of them...really.

To slip away from this life with no regrets...well...I can't imagine it, but I know that this is the case with Grandma Y. If there was a way for Grandpa to have been there to help her cross over in those early morning hours, it is a great comfort to think that this is how it happened. It's important for us to believe it because they were such wonderful individuals who, as a couple, provided an unaffected model for mutual respect and love. Our world is a little emptier today, but it's also difficult not to celebrate the full circle-ness of life. We cry a little...and then we tell another story that makes us smile or laugh. And we keep the lessons alive by trying to be a little more like the people who provided us with the best example. That way...they're always with us.

Medium Rare

I think I've written about portions of this incident before, but in May of 1985 a woman read my palm. It wasn't Madame Cleo and she wasn't wearing a turban and working out a booth at the State Fair. She was an older woman working in an office with my younger sister and there was no reason on earth to believe that she could see into my future by looking at the inside of my hand. Similarly, there was also really no reason that she couldn't. So...one day I availed myself of her services.

Her name was Dorothy which is the same name as the young girl in "The Wizard of Oz", not to mention the same name given to my sister's Barbie doll. For some reason this made me trust her more. Yeah...I'm a freak.

She told me that I already knew the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with. She said we had already had a previous relationship but had parted as friends. We were going to meet up again after a long time of not seeing each other and it would be like fireworks going off. (That July, I met Mr. Half after five years...having parted as friends in college. We married the following June)

Dorothy also told me that I wouldn't always work as a school teacher but that for the rest of my life I would find myself in situations where I was teaching anyway. (From tutoring to teaching classes for kids at the Modern Museum called "Writing About Art" or art classes at camp...this is exactly what I've been doing. And I've just been contacted about a new program at the children's hospital where, beginning in September, I may be a contract worker teaching art to critically ill kids.)

She said I would discover an artistic talent that I didn't know I had and would make an avocation out of making things with my hands. She also said I would make money but that I would never get rich from it.  This has come true as well, though I didn't really think about it as it was happening. I just looked up one day and found that I was following my bliss and that it just happened to be along the predicted path of which Dorothy had spoken.

The only thing that didn't happen the way she predicted was the number of kids we ended up with. She told me that we'd have two kids whose sex she couldn't determine. Of course, we have three boys. I can only hope that her intuitive nature was thrown off by the fact that our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage and then the next two boys 13 months apart in '89 and '90. Number Three Son wasn't born until four years after that. I'm hoping that she, like me, is just really, really bad in math or cosmically nearsighted. Because, although I don't really believe in that stuff, Dorothy showed an amazing facility for showing me what my life was going to be like.

Have you had any experience with this kind of stuff? I know there are charlatans out there, but I'm wondering about experiences that actually turned out to be real enough to be spooky. Operators are standing by.

Four years and four days apart

Both of you had the same due date...April 11 and both of you let that day come and go without making your individual appearances. Tucker, you showed up on April 15...Tax Day. Surely you were the only good thing that has ever happened to us on that particular day. It was also Easter morning and your older brother Greyson (our St. Patrick's baby) was not yet fully 13 months old and could barely grasp who or what you were. You were our surprise baby and a nine-pounder at that. The first to walk and talk, you ate everything and slept like a top. You still do. Now you're 17 and threatening to follow closely on the heels of your college-bound brother. And then there will just be one.

Wilder, we thought you might be our Earth Day child, but you decided to come eight days late on the 19th...causing me to place a late night desperation call to the Psychic Friends Network to ask someone WHEN THIS BABY WAS COMING OUT!!! The day we brought you home your father left to bring the car around and I was in the hospital room holding you while your brothers (wearing their "I'm the Big Brother t-shirts) were running circles around my mandatory wheelchair and singing nonsense songs before falling down on the ground. I wondered how on earth I would be able to cope at home with Moe, Larry and Curly you and your brothers at home, but having you was one of the best decisions we ever made. Plus you'll keep me from curling up drunk and in a closet when your brothers leave us for Faber College Texas A&M. Tomorrow you are officially a teenager.

Happy 17th and 13th. I love you both.

Mom

No Words

I don't live in Virginia anymore...the place where I was born. I live here in Texas where, as we all know, there is no escape from the violence we're safe. That said, I find myself unable to process what's going on at Virginia Tech right now. And it's hard not to personalize it, given that my oldest baby will be leaving for college in a few months. So now the dorm and the classroom are the just as dangerous as a rainy highway or the parking lot in a bar. Great. Just...great. I'm thinking about each and every one of those people tonight. Every kid with a future that won't get to be realized or every teacher who lost his/her life in the pursuit of higher learning and love of those young people. Every one of them was someone's baby. And that's true no matter how old you are.

Lost Days

Soon after the breakup of the relationship that was partly responsible for my purposeful transfer from one university to another, I had exactly three official college dates with the man who is now my husband. At the time there was on way I could have known that this redheaded stranger with the friendly ways would wind up being not only the father of my children...but also my best friend.

What's funny about this is that those three dates grow fuzzier to me with each passing year, but after all this time I remember that breakup clearly. It was January and I was standing in the tiny kitchen of the apartment I shared with my sister and a childhood friend and talking on the telephone to the guy in question. I remember needing desperately to go out that night with girlfriends to a little bar called Duddley's Draw. We drank a pitcher or two of beers and with every hoist of my glass I felt as though it was possible for the alcohol to accomplish what alcohol is supposed to in cases like that. It makes you forget. Because I may or may not have let loose with a few gypsy curses aimed in the direction of the guy who did me a huge favor broke my heart (and sealed those curses by smuggling my pilsner glass out of the place in my purse), I found the entire evening to be quite satisfactory. I also held onto that glass (through six+ moves) until a couple of years ago when one of the boys broke it, but that's another story. The next morning I was sitting next to a stairwell in the Old Academic Building waiting for my English class to start when Mr. Half ambled up and asked me to a movie for the evening of February 3rd. I said yes.

(Yeah...right here next to that stairwell is where he asked me. Ask our kids how many times they've heard the story and their collective eyeballs will roll dangerously far up into their heads. I enjoy reminding them that at least it's not a story about how their father pushed me down those stairs. "One day you'll be glad your parents are still hot for each other, " I remind them. They hate it.)

The first part of that first evening is fragmented, but I know we saw "Gone with the Wind" at the campus theater and the second date involved going to hear some live music in a beer joint called "Grins" whose claim to fame was a large extended porch under which were hung a dozen wooden porch swings. Located in the ramshackle neighborhood of tiny Depression-era houses on the campuses' Northside, there was romance in the shabbiness of its environs. The same neighborhood where musicians Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen, Jr. had lived as students. It was dark inside and there were wood floors and tiny colored Christmas lights hung around the walls. I don't remember the third date at all. After this mini-trilogy of evenings we faded into a friendship of study dates spurred by the fact we were in the same Anthropology class together. Then he moved off campus and graduated early and I didn't see him again for another five years.

Five years of not really knowing where the other person was. Eleven months after we met up again we were married and it's been a wild and wonderful ride ever since. But it has always bothered me that those first three supposedly-important nights at the beginning of our relationship are fading for me like ink on high-acid paper. The second installment of our courtship is something I do remember quite well, but it's always puzzled me that our trial run at a relationship hardly registers except in fits and starts.

I wish I could remember those nights. What we said. What we did. What I wore.  The music we listened to. The books we must have discussed.The first time he held my hand. The ride back to my apartment in his truck. All of that is gone from my memory...or stored so deeply behind some useless bit of trivia that I can't find it anymore. If I could get back three days, those are some I'd ask for. Just to see. Just because.

What is it you'd like to remember?

Parenting Lesson # 532

When your kids are little they turn to you for everything. You are the answer to all problems. It gets tiring sometimes, but it's the reality of parenting. In addition to shelter and food, you give advice on movies to watch and peer groups to avoid. You decide if clothing matches or if a cut is deep enough to merit a trip to the emergency room...or just a band-aid. You supply the ideas for a good science project and you also drive to three different stores to find the right kind of materials. You hold hands and you read stories and answer embarrassing questions. Night terrors, hurtful friends, triumphs and failures are all yours for the witnessing. You listen to unfunny jokes and sit through school talent shows/plays/assemblies that have elements so boring and frustrating that  even Jesus would be tempted (to borrow a phrase from Anne Lamott) to drink gin out of a cat dish.

And then it happens. The break you've been waiting for. Your child wants to stumble around on his own...and badly, I might add. He doesn't want your help or your advice. Every word from you is met with a stony expression of either amusement or dismissal. Possibly both. Your life, as an example, is irrelevant and nothing you have learned or experienced is anything he wants to hear. Your job is to sit by quietly and watch him fumble his way around knowing fully that he isn't about to ask for help, and if he does, he'll take it from anyone but you.

You have worn out your welcome. You have chewed on him like a new piece of Juicy Fruit until he is stale and flavorless. Everything that is wrong with his life is about to become your fault...unless you shut up now and pretend that the miserable place he's in right now can't be changed by anything you might say or do. Reaching out now would only keep him from solving his own problems and not reaching out is the hardest thing you've ever done.

So now? The night terrors you lived through when he was so little? The time the dog bit him in the face? When he was the only kid who was overlooked for the Christmas party favors handed out by the Fourth Grade homeroom mothers? This is much, much harder. Feel free to hate where you are right now, because that's pretty much all you're allowed to do. I suppose there are worse places to be on a Monday morning, but right now it's hard to think of one.

Trapped in a Corner Wearing Too Tight Pants

Yesterday Mr. Half and I attended a little anniversary shindig for the parents of some childhood friends. With the exception of the honorees' four sons and a couple of their contemporaries, we were the only people there under the age of seventy.

And this was fine. Many were, like the celebrated couple, docents at two of the city's art museums and were spending their retirement years doing something very interesting. We milled about the museum cafe which had been reserved for the late afternoon event and drank our tiny glasses of wine or water-with-lime. It was a time for small talk and this isn't something at which I excel. At one point I found myself backed into a corner with my too-heavy purse sliding off of one shoulder while becoming aware that I absolutely hated the pants I was wearing.

That was when the mother of Mr. Half's childhood friend decided to move in for a chat. She is, to put it in Seinfeldian terms, a "close talker". She was so close I could count the downy hairs on her upper lip and the uneven way she put on her eyeliner. Given my legendary bad vision, this would not have been  possible if she hadn't been eight inches away from my face.

She wanted to know about our kids and what they were doing, so I showed her a picture... whereupon she said it was too bad we hadn't had any daughters. I was torn between the indulgence/respect one must give to older people who say puzzling and inappropriate things and yet I wanted to set her straight. Without smacking her. So I told her that I was glad that I didn't have daughters because I really didn't want to live with other females. And I let that sink in for a moment.

She pointed to the picture and asked which one was graduating and when we told her that he had been accepted to A&M she made a surprised face and then said, "Oops!"

I repeated what I had said, thinking that she hadn't heard me correctly and then she said, "Yeah...oops!" Not "congratulations" or "how nice for him" or "I'll bet he's excited".

Then she explained that she had gone to the university here in Fort Worth and that her husband had been a history professor there, which I already knew, and that's why she felt so inclined (I guess) to indicate that Number One Son had selected the wrong place for college. But she wasn't really joking and she never backed off of her stance. I wanted to blame her close stance and my tight pants for my temptation to push her into a potted plant. In reality, the whole thing underscored why I suck at cocktail talk...or maybe it's just that years of watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers where people never say rude things has discombobulated my ability to smoothly side-step around people like this woman.

So tonight when we are seated in a dim dance hall listening to the high school's jazz band, I will be grateful that casual conversation will be nearly impossible unless one resorts to screaming. Even then, all I'll have to do is occasionally nod my head in agreement and smile. I won't have to hear what they're saying at all and--truthfully--it's probably best that I don't.

Don't Say It Unless You Mean It

Many, many thanks to Sandra of Not That Desperate for bestowing me with a Thinking Blogger Award. The fact that four days out of seven I can pull something from the lint trap of my brain, paste it here and have it be mistaken for cogent thought is high praise indeed. I do appreciate the...er...appreciation and-- when pressed-- I guess I could say that I do a pretty "okay" job of representing my little corner of the world, such as it is. While much is going on AROUND me these days, there's not all that much happening TO me personally and finding interesting tidbits to write about is a lot like making the proverbial Kate Spade handbag out of a sow's ear. In other words, boring. For example: The father of each of my children is the same man AAANNND I know who it is. So...Zsa Zsa Gabor's elderly husband? You can put that phone down right now because no one wants to hear from you (including me) and besides that....EEEWWW!

I'm making it a mission this year to find gainful employment so that I can stimulate the growth of more neural pathways to stop the wrinkles in my brain from smoothing out so incoming information has a place to land and take root rather than skimming over the slippery surface where it crashes into a dark wall of my skull and dies a lonely death. Also, I need a life AND the money would be nice, too. I'd love a desk right next to Jim on "The Office" because he's so lovely to look at I know he'd be the most qualified guy to train me, but I'm so desperate that I'd settle for a seat next to Phyllis...or the red-headed woman who drinks all the time.

But my real purpose today was to ask a question: Does it irritate you when people say things that you know they don't mean? Sure, some of the things we say every day are just reflexes. The cashier at the store tells us to have a nice day and we say, "You, too". Of course, we want that person to have good things happening to him/her, but the manner in which we say it is just something automatic. We don't really give it much thought and when we see that person again in a week (or, in my case, 45 minutes later because someone in our house forgot they needed posterboard), we don't ask them if they remember that time we wished them a good day and if, in fact, it turned out to be one. It is...like so many other things...forgotten.

But how many times have you read a blog comment where after reading something funny that person says that they just spit coffee/juice/white wine/water/iced tea all over their keyboard. Really? Did this really happen? Because if it's really taking place as often as I read it then there are a lot of drippy keyboards out there right now. Is it not enough to tell someone that what they wrote was funny without claiming to have shorted out an important component of their computer?

At my mother's 70th birthday I was standing with her and one of my cousins who was expressing her amazement that my mother was as old as she was. She wanted to convey that my mother didn't look 70 and said so. That should have been enough...but it wasn't. She proceeded to say that my mother looked SO NOT SEVENTY that she could pass for someone in her sixties.

Okay...uh... maybe...sort of...I guess.

But then my cousin added "Or you could even be in your fifties or....forties...even".

(Blink...Blink...Blink)

And I am standing there in (at the time) all my 46-year old glory and unable to unhinge my jaw because...HELLO!!!...I'm in my forties and there's no way my mother looks anywhere near my age and I want to point out that there are worse things in life than looking one's age but it's my mother's birthday and pointing out the obvious is sort of a depressing present, plus my misguided cuz has sailed to another corner of the room to no doubt spread more insincere compliments to the unsuspecting. Perhaps to challenge my my mother's elderly (85) sister to a game of hoops? Who knows?

It would have been fine if she had just said "You look great" and left it at that. But she had to say something that wasn't anywhere close to the truth and, to me, that's just insulting our intelligence. What do you think? Has anyone ever lobbed something like that at you and you knew it was SO NOT THE TRUTH. Tell me about it.

Now...get out of here and have a nice day. And when I say it...I really, really mean it.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Everyone has an opinion and I believe the hallmark of a truly civilized person is knowing when...and when NOT...to share whatever subjective thought that is rolling around in his/her brain. If you want to the person you're with to know that you simply adore the shoes she is wearing, by all means please share. Praise for good taste, the results of which now caress the feet of another, are always welcome. If, on the other hand, you find the style so offensive that you'd rather poke your own eyes out with a dull spoon then you should probably keep this little tidbit to yourself. The fact that you're not feeling the love for someone else's footwear is really no one's problem...but yours. The same goes for their parenting styles, their taste in reading material/houses/cars, their politics AND... religion. This is where it gets sticky.

Most of us struggle to keep that civil tongue in our heads...even while unkind, evil and otherwise destructive thoughts are running naked and amok though the fluids of our shallow brain pans. We tell ourselves that we criticize because we care and we rationalize our inabilities to SHUT THE HELL UP by saying that it's only for the other person's own good. I'm as guilty of it as anyone.

This weekend, however, I learned that a woman I know went just a little too far. Actually, she's gone too far with me before and the only reason why she's still able to draw breath is because I feel she operates at somewhat of a disadvantage in comparison with most others I know. I'm no rocket scientist, but on a good day the woman of whom I speak has only about 6 braincells bumping up against each other. I try to take her inability to process certain facts and figures into consideration and just walk away grinding my teeth. It appears that this woman decided she had had the duty and the right to tell the young daughter of another friend that she was...going to Hell. Not only that...she said that the young girl, her sister and mother as well as everyone else in her entire church were also headed to the Casa de Flame. What prompted this intellectually-challenged person to display such audacity? Who bestowed upon her this gift of prophecy to determine the course of someone else's life? What caused her sudden "hiccup" in good manners?  Is this what Jesus would have done? Somehow...I doubt it.

In the interest of full journalistic disclosure I should tell you that the young girl in question goes to the same church that I do. One of the reasons for the woman's sudden breakdown in decorum is that our church ordains women. We believe that if a woman hears the call to serve in the ministry, it is as valid a call as that of her male counterparts. We do not impress upon, request, demand, or browbeat our females parishoners into believing that they exist as the "joyful servants" of men. That, as well as the fact that we carry on an interfaith dialogue with various other houses of worship (mosques, temples, etc) in town and that we leave all judgment--should any be necessary-- (and as well as we are humanly able) to God.

This life without gender limits (as well as the notion that God loves everyone and hears the prayers of ALL who petition him/her) is something that the woman in question cannot fathom nor abide. And in a fit of intellectual incuriosity and downright meanness...she verbally attacked a 13 year old girl and condemned her to a place that only a divine entity can make a reality. A girl who is only just now becoming aware that she's every bit as good as the boys she knows. And if it is a sin to waste the abilities God gave her...then why is this insane woman insisting that she do so IN THE NAME OF GOD? One of this young girl's classmates just happens to be the son of the woman who attacked her. A boy who is raised (along with his two younger brothers) by a not-too-bright mother and a father who is dismissive and threatened by all women. A boy who is taught that women are put on earth to be ordered about and whose opinions and abilities are to be devalued and laughed at.  A boy who calls his mother "stupid" in public...a phenomenon that comes as no surprise since she's literally teaching him that her gender places her in lesser role of leadership.

And this woman feels she has the right to question the practices of a different congregation because they don't lean in the same direction as her own church. I don't know whether to cry for this woman...or laugh at the irony that allows her to claim to "speak in love" and yet be so incredibly hateful. I have my own feelings about what we should or should not be teaching our kids about the way the world functions and my church reflects those feelings, but I don't foist them on people unless confronted and I certainly don't threaten kids with them. What I do know is that this woman should learn the difference between constructive truth and an opinion. Hers was only the latter and she should have kept it to herself.