Words and Music and Memory

It's been many years since I lived with a piano. I have not had daily access to one since I moved away from home. So it's wonderful and strange to once again share my space with one of these imposing pieces of musical furniture.

The piano that now sits in my front hallway beckoned me yesterday when I came upon some old Gilbert and Sullivan sheet music. I sat to play, but it wasn't the plaintive strains of Tit Willow that sent me into reverie, it was what fell out of the book of sheet music.

Hidden away between the pages were some photographs of my mother and father, taken perhaps a year or so before my mother became ill and only a couple of years before their deaths. I felt startled, but I cannot say why. They are familiar faces of loved ones, faces one has known for a lifetime yet strangely missing for some time from my view. I thought briefly about what to do with them, then slid them back into the book of music and continued playing.

This morning, the images of the photos came back into my mind and I wondered if I oughtn't to frame a picture to put atop the piano. But something stopped me, a fear of something I cannot name.

Perhaps it is only that there are not daily reminders that makes it possible to live in a world that is forever changed by their absences. I don't know why I should feel unnerved by photographs of my parents, it may be that they are so alive and themselves in these pictures, and I am overwhelmed.

On Christmas Eve, it will have been 6 years since my mother succumbed to the cancer that took her life. I wonder how long it will be before I can look at a photo and not feel the emptiness that her passing left in my world.

A Sad Morning

Today was one of those days when as a mother, you both sigh with relief and revisit fear. Mondays are always a bit hectic as you start the school week again, and there's a kind of calm that should overtake you once the children are safely on their way to their respective educational facilities.

But this morning I couldn't get over a feeling of restlessness and anxiety. It was one of those "impending doom of unknown origin" days. Perhaps drinking several cups of coffee within an hour or two on an empty stomach contributed to those fluttery feelings that rippled through my middle. It may have started when the Boy's bus was late, and came from a different direction. I always worry when the bus driver seems new, having found that new drivers often make mistakes and children aren't deposited when and where they are expected.

The morning was hardly underway though, when the phone rang. It was one of those recorded messages from the school. But instead of telling parents all about the upcoming open house or the next early dismissal, it was a sobering and heartbreaking message. A young girl had been struck by a car on her way to school. She was crossing a busy street to her bus stop.

I quickly digested what small detail was provided. I noted the street names and could breathe again as I confirmed it could not be one of my children. I listened to the description of injuries known and the fact that she was in the hospital. I was grateful for many things: one, that the girl was alive and two, that my children were safe.

I can only imagine the horror of her friends who witnessed this accident, and the terrible realization of her mother when upon hearing the brakes, screams and sirens, found that it was her little girl who had been struck.

I don't have anything to offer in the way of advice or comfort. As parents, we all do our best to watch over our kids and provide for their health and safety. Every day we take for granted that they will travel securely to and from school, that they will return to us with complaints about homework and a healthy afternoon appetite.

I pray that the little girl will recover quickly and will have no lasting injury or scars from this ordeal. I pray also that vehicles traveling that stretch of road now realize the importance of obeying speed limits and watching for children walking to school or crossing to bus stops. I pray for mothers everywhere who have watched and worried and for those who have had to endure the worst of news.

To my shame, I can remember driving very fast on that very same road early in the mornings on my way to work. We always believe that we are perfectly in control and that the worst can never happen. When you drive to work tomorrow, remember that school-age children are everywhere and they aren't always paying attention - children often don't. And remember that it is better to be a little late for work, than to endanger the life of a child.

A Juggling Act

I have some bad news.

I can't juggle.

Some years ago I was given a set of soft juggling balls and instructions. I did try (in vain) to master the art of tossing three objects into the air and preventing gravity from exerting its power over them, but inevitably I failed to save even one of the brightly colored orbs from its groundward fate.

Why worry about it? I am sure there are millions of people who can't juggle. But according to a new study, when older people learned to juggle, they grew new grey matter in their brains at a rate equal to younger students of the art. The skills mastered in learning to juggle made new connections and caused a growth of grey matter in the older participants so that even those that conducted the study were astonished.

Of course, I don't believe they were that astonished since it was their idea to teach all these people to juggle in the first place. They must have hoped to prove something. The thought occurs to me to wonder who stepped forward to fund this study when presented with the idea of holding clown school, but I have seen sillier studies than this one.

I can't juggle. I can't learn to juggle. My brain is doomed to become an ever-shrinking remnant of what it was - mostly due to having children - but apparently also due to my lack of hand-eye coordination.

I can't whistle, either. I can't wait to find out what that means.

My Mother Should Have Been a Writer.

I was clicking through a friend's blogroll and came upon this blog. The first post I read was about working amidst chaos and it really rang a bell with me, but even more so did the Word of the Day, " rapscallion".

Rapscallion was one of my mother's favorite words and she had many. Her daily speech held words that deliciously filled the mouth with rich vowels and muted dipthongs and bold words that employed teeth, tongue and lips to give them full effect. Just say "rapscallion" and tell me you don't like the feel of it as it escapes from the mouth to be sounded. Now, say it louder, as a chastisement. Perfect, isn't it? I must remember to say it to The Boy the next time he is mischievous.

My mother didn't always use words strictly according to definition. Sometimes she went for texture and effect over meaning. My mother probably should have been a writer, but I don't think she was ever encouraged in creative areas. However, she was a wonderful storyteller. I wish that I could remember enough details from her childhood stories to write them all down. They were stories that were full of childhood mischief and peppered with colorful phrases never heard outside her family.

I wonder now if her surviving younger sister would know some of these stories. I know she would tell them in the same downeast Maine accent and excited tone. Now I have a project. Thanks for that Word of the Day, Easy-Writer.

Why Dusting is Dangerous

Sometimes I think I far exceed my mother in housekeeping skills, at other times I think I am just the next-generation pack rat. Although I occasionally get inspired to finally throw away something that has been kicking around the house unused and unwanted for years, it is never anything from my mother's house. Those little knick knacks, however tacky or incongruent with my color schemes, mean much more to me than tasteful objets d'art or color-coordinated art posters designed to "tie it all in". My decor is definitely not like that, it's the most un-tied interior non-design you will ever see.

One item I cherished, although it had no place to call its own, was one of two decorative hand-painted plates, graced by red and purple grapes on one and a pineapple and some other unidentifiable but equally textured fruit on the other. My mother had bought these stunning works of art and hung them on her kitchen wall. And they hung there unmolested for a very long time. That is, no one cleaned or dusted them, they just became a way of measuring the passing of time by the inches of sediment.

One night, as my mother talked long distance on the phone to her sister, she got one of those occasional inspired urges to dust the plates. For reasons no one ever understood, at half-past midnight my mother suddenly couldn't stand the dust that accumulated on those decorative plates any longer. So with the phone in one hand and a dustrag in the other, she set about clearing the dust and cobwebs from the pineapple.

My mother had recently installed a ceramic tile floor, or rather my brother had done it for her (she complained bitterly about the hard nature of the tile for years). Anything that left your hand, was pretty much destroyed once it hit that floor.

My mother dropped that pineapple plate and it split into three pieces upon contact with the tile, bounced up and a knife-shaped shard sliced up her calf on it's way back towards the wall . I don't think she even felt it and there was no blood at all, the wound was so neatly cut. But as I came to examine it, I cautioned her against twisting around to see the back of her leg, for several layers were sliced through and it looked more like something you would see at the butcher's shop than a calf. Instead I encouraged her to go to the Emergency Room with as much calm urgency as I could manage.

Several stitches and a few weeks time healed the leg wound. The empty wire plate holder still hung on the wall next to its twin, which still held grapes securely in place. Many more years would pass before the application of new wallpaper necessitated the removal of the two fixtures.

I still have the grape plate, although it suffered a similar fate as the pineapple by falling to the floor. It only got chipped but enough so that it isn't suitable for display. Some would say, thank goodness, as it wasn't very attractive. But I keep the plate because it will always remind me of my mother, her aspirations to cleanliness and her complete acceptance of her failure to achieve it.

Or maybe, I just want an excuse not to dust.

Ben Franklin Never Had a Mom

The sun is shining brightly outside my window, so brightly in fact, that it's hard to see the computer monitor. Whoever would have thought that I would come to prefer dim rooms with little light for the sake of reading words from a little screen?

Despite the bright sunshine the weather forecast promises thunderstorms. Now thunderstorms are the bane of the computer addict - close and severe storms mean powering down to protect your machine. Separation anxiety can overcome you within minutes.

But thunderstorms are greeted in my house with as little fanfare as possible. I don't want to have the children overly-anxious about lightning as I was when I was a child. A healthy respect for its power and the dangers it possesses is fine, but my mother knew how to instill deep and lasting fear.

Most people know how to avoid the most obvious dangers during a thunderstorm - turn off the computer, maybe turn off the TV, don't talk on the cordless phone, don't take a bath. Don't try to emulate Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod experiments. But my mother had much more detailed rules.

Windows all had to be closed. No one was allowed near windows or doors. We weren't allowed to tread upon the carpet as it might contain wool fibers, and she was convinced that wool was a great conductor of electricity. For similar reasons, we weren't allowed to pet the dog, not even if she was dry. She felt that dog hair was probably as good a conductor of electricity as the carpet. So we were a family of 5 sitting on the couch with our legs crossed under us, yelling furiously at the dog to go out to the kitchen until such time as the storm had passed.

They say the odds of getting struck by lightning are about one in nine million. Strangely, although I don't know nearly nine million people, I personally know three who have been struck by lightning. None of them were walking on the carpet or petting the dog.

My rules for thunderstorms are a little more lax than my mother's. No playing outside in the rain when there's lightning, no holding steel rods out the windows. You can watch TV if you sit on a chair a good distance from it until the power cuts out. If there is more than one crack of lightning in a row that sounds like it just blew up your garage, it's probably best not to sit too close to an open window. If the power goes out, only the mother can light the candles and no, you can't take one to bed with you.

The truth of the matter is, if you don't do anything really stupid, the chances of being struck by lightning are one in nine million. Let's face it, if it's gonna get you, it's gonna get you. Might as well watch the end of American Idol.

Where's My Febreeze?

The Boy has an embarrassing social problem. It's become so bad that even he is aware of it. There are times he doesn't want to be in the same room with himself. Not to be too delicate about it, basically, The Boy's feet stink!

And I mean stink. This is no slight sweaty gym sock scent but full-out nostril-searing stench. I have tried to fix the problem in any way I can think of. We have washed his sneakers, washed his feet in fragranced soap, creamed and powdered them. But the smell lives on.

He's far too active riding his bike, skateboarding and just generally doing boy things to wear sandals. He nearly lost a toe that way. I have just scrubbed the feet clean and applied sweet-smelling lotion. I am washing the sneakers right now. I am waiting until the very last second before I buy him a new pair of shoes for school or they too, will suffer the summer stink.

That's the problem. It's summer. His feet just excrete sweat madly during hot weather. What's worse is that even though he leaves for summer camp with clean socks on, he comes back without them every day. His feet swelter and sweat inside those sneakers and the result is that when he takes his shoes off in a room full of people, it is like employing biological warfare.

I don't think I can put off buying new shoes much longer. School is still two weeks away and any minute now I expect the haz-mat team to show up in my driveway.

Boys, Bumps & Bikes

The Boy is growing up. I guess I still think of him as someone who wants Batman pyjamas and Spiderman shaped snacks, but little by little he's eliminating those icons of boyhood with items that are "cool". We were looking together for a skateboard online, and I was quoting him the specs of the ones we could afford. I later overheard him telling a friend, with a sad resignation in his voice, "I have to get the Spongebob one".

A few weeks ago, the kid couldn't even ride a scooter. I have to hand it to him, he practiced for hours in the driveway, a few feet of coasting at a time. He was out there regardless of whether the sun was beating down on his fair face or whether rain was dripping off his hair into his eyes. And - he mastered it.

The next thing was the daily harangue to take the training wheels off his bicycle. I told him it had to wait for a weekend, when I would have time to come out and help him learn to ride it, relating serious stories of the dangers involved - learning to steer, falling down, collisions, injuries, crashing into solid objects. He was unmoved. Alas, he had outgrown his bike and it was in bad shape so taking the training wheels off didn't make a difference, the bike was unrideable. Not one to be easily defeated, he opted to try the girl neighbor's pink bike. The kid rode it easily on the first try, he didn't fall once. I guess all that practice on the scooter had already honed his balance.

Now he has a new bike - larger and more manly in red and black. He is obsessed with riding his bike the way he was obsessed with mastering the scooter. He rides the bike every moment he can, thinking up ways to go faster, looking for objects to run over and plotting tricks and risky maneuvers with which to frighten his mother.

I am nervously biting my nails and biding my time over this one. I know the obsession with the bike will cool and eventually his bike-riding will be just one of many things he likes to do. I know that his skill on the bike will increase and so far, I have managed to keep him from ditching his helmet (although I have my doubts about its future, it has Power Rangers on it).

I wonder if one day The Boy will be grown up enough that I won't worry about his high interest level in dangerous activities.

I doubt it.

I think I'm going to need a lifetime enrollment at the nail salon.

Saved From Television

I don't watch TV anymore. It's a conscious choice now, but it started when my cable bill became too exorbitant to budget about three or four years ago and for the next two years we didn't have television in our house. The reception these days is so weak, an antenna provided nothing more than snow.

After the cable went off, I bought the first of what turned out to be a series of cheap DVD players and invested in movies and children's shows for the kids to watch. A membership in the local video store provided the newer films that we couldn't afford to buy. Besides, once the kids have watched a movie about 25 times or so, they lose interest. Of course, once they have watched it 25 times or so, you have lost brain cells. By the way, you don't get those back.

I noticed how well-behaved and engaged the children were when we visited relatives with cable. They would turn on Disney or Nickolodeon and sit transfixed before the flickering screen. Foolishly, I thought that if I relented and got them real television at home, it would have the same effect. So, in an effort to avail myself of an electronic babysitter, I got satellite TV with not just one Disney channel, but two! East coast and west coast so they could watch everything twice if they wanted to.

I never re-entered the world of television viewing myself. I kept up with all the news I needed on the net and threw myself into blogging - a brave new world. The internet had taken up all the slots in my prime-time.

As I traverse the blogosphere I find I don't actually need a TV to keep up with all the latest shows. There are entire blogs dedicated to sitcoms, reality shows and soap operas (although these are starting to lose popularity).

As for the kids, they tire of television easily now. My grand scheme to pay a monthly fee and secure a few moments of quiet for myself hasn't really panned out. These days, they would much rather play outside, ride scooters, run and scream and get deliciously dirty.

Sometimes, they make me proud.

I asked my mother one question...

Genetics is a science. Like all sciences, genetics follows mathematical equations and set parameters. If you are a geneticist, you know that aside from the occasional mutation, all gene combinations are going to fit within these parameters.

Yes well, all those theories and equations work fine until you get to my mother.

You would suppose that by combining the genes of two completely different people, you would arrive at five offspring whose characteristics would have wide variations within those genes' codes. But, it doesn't always work that way. My mother, for instance, refused to have any children who didn't look just like her.

My mother had genes that were predatory. They seek out and destroy all other genes even to the second generation. And they grow stronger with age.

As I look in the mirror each day I see her face more than I see the face that I used to think was me. I look at my children and see my mother in one and "mini-me" in the other, and I realize that science held no sway over this woman. I suppose if I have to look like someone, I should be happy to look like the woman who conquered genetics.

Time continues to prove my mother right as I notice all my siblings turning into versions of her. In any case, by the time I was an adult, I was sure we only had her genes too. My father seemed to provide only a means of support as my mother sought to spread her genes to future generations.

Which led me once to ask her a strange question.

I must preface this by saying that my mother, though compassionate and fond of animals, often grew tired of pets that refused to follow her rules or whose presence was becoming annoying. I remember being about 8 or 9, standing outside on a porch every night for weeks and calling a cat who never came home only to discover that he had been taken to the ASPCA. A dog disappeared while I was at school, he had just had his third flea infestation and I guess the third time is the charm. Pets disappeared without warning. It gave my childhood that element of surprise and mystery.

But all my life, I had believed that Benny the dog had run away. He was just the kind of dog you would expect to run away, frenzied and impulsive. I believed this, that is, until a few years ago. One evening as my brother and I sat in my mother's kitchen we discussed a dog who had run into the yard a few years after Benny had disappeared. This dog taunted the owners who chased him, turning himself inside out with the joy of his apparent escape. This dog looked and acted so much like Benny that we wondered if he had wandered home to say "hello".

It was then the truth was finally brought out into the open; a confession finally forthcoming from my mother and my eldest sister. All those years before, Benny and another neighborhood dog had been involved in some incident with a neighbor's cat; an incident that ended badly for the cat. My mother had taken the dog and had him put down, never letting on to us children that he had not, in fact, just run away.

It was then, at the scene of this startling revelation that a terrible thought occurred to me. The full impact of the ease with which my mother dispensed with unwanted pets combined with her insistence that all her offspring resemble her, compelled me to turn to her and ask:

"How many children did you really have?"