Right the Wrong

There was a time, not so long ago, when I would talk on my cell phone whilst smack in the midst of other folks.  It was annoying to everyone within one to one hundred feet, I was told, because I must have thought the persons on the other end of the line were hard of hearing. Now that I have been made aware of my bad phone manners, I have become more considerate when using my cellphone in public.  Unfortunately, in my efforts to not offend strangers, I have lost three friends who are hearing impaired.

It was because of this newfound sensitivity to others' feelings that one day last week I elected to remain in my car in Walmart's parking lot until I was finished with my cellphone call. The conversation was lively and loud. Very loud. Shortly after I pulled into a parking space, a lady in a Cadillac Escalad parked in front of me. After turning off the engine, she pulled down the visor mirror, picked her eyelashes apart with a toothpick, looked to make sure there were no boogers hanging, applied lipstick, and then she combed her hair. When she was done making herself pretty for Walmart, she stepped out of her SUV.

It was at that moment when the loudness brought me to her attention. She put her hands on her hips, said a naughty word, and directed a disgruntled frown in my direction. Cadillac Lady was not happy. I rejected her frown and kept talking. She continued to look at me. I continued to look at her. Then she shrugged her shoulders and walked away. But the loudness had nothing to do with my bad phone manners and everything to do with her door hitting--unintentionally, yet with great impact--the side of a new Ford F-350, 4 x 4 Super Duty diesel truck parked next to her. She knew I knew, but would I tell on her?

You know how sometimes in life, when you witness bad things happening to good people, you feel compelled to get involved? There is that need, that strong desire to right that wrong. When Cadillac Lady shrugged her shoulders and walked away, I felt compelled to get involved, but herein lies the dilemma.

Dilemma

Dilemma is when you find yourself impaled

on the sharp, uncomfortable horns of selecting

an option, none of which are good. Some option

 choices can be uncomfortable, even painful.

                                                 --Google Search, really

If I've learned one lesson over the past six plus decades, it's that picking the wrong dilemma option can be painful (remind me to tell you about the time I was assaulted in a Mexican restaurant because I made a comment to a mother about her unruly child). I've been told I should never insert myself into other people's business, but not doing so can be extremely difficult. I still haven't learned that mind-your-own-business lesson.

While I was frantically searching for a McDonald's receipt, styrofoam cup, or any scrap piece of paper to jot down information that might help right a wrong, the owner of the truck returned with two bags of groceries. Within seconds he saw the dent.  Enraged, he dropped the bags of food on the ground, yelled about somebody's mother having sex, and then stared right at me. Yes, Ford Truck Man, I saw the whole thing go down. I was the one and only witness to the wrong done you. But, but, but should I tell you what I know or should I not get involved? Before I had the chance to pick a dilemma option, Ford Truck Man opened his passenger side door, slammed it with all his might into Cadillac Lady's car, looked directly at me, and then smiled.

Oh, what a dilemma I'm in.

You know how sometimes in life, when you witness bad things happening to good people who turn out to be not so good, you feel compelled to do something? No? You don't feel compelled to get involved in other peoples' business? Okay then...never mind.

Cry

When you look around and see the world getting younger, give gratitude for having lived this long. When your grandmother frowns at you every morning from the bathroom mirror, smile back. When your necklace gets lost in the folds of your neck chin, say you never liked that necklace in the first place. When small children want to play "connect the dots" on your hands, let them. When you finally get that beautiful platinum hair (without the aid of a hairdresser), think of all the money you're saving. When you can no longer zip or button your jeans, reminisce about how happy you were decades ago when the doctor said there was a baby under that bulge. I want "you" to do that; as for me, there is no way in hell I can do it. Of course I'm grateful for my sixty-eight years, but I'm not happy with how the whole aging thing works. Not happy at all. In fact, after I eat this prune, I'm going back to bed and cry myself to sleep. Hey! It's my pity party and I can cry if I want to. Cry if I want to. Cry if I want to. You will too when it happens to you.

Valentine's Day

It is on this day, February 14th, that we are expected to do something special for that special someone in our lives. The expectations don't come from everyone you love, though. I'm just talking about who you share your bed with. No, not Fido. That would be wrong and if caught you might be expected to do something special for Big Bubba every Valentine's Day for the next ten to twenty-five years.

If you think about it, love has nothing to do with Valentine's Day. It's all about sex, money and expectations, but not necessarily in that order. It just depends. For my bed partner, it's about expectations, sex, and money.  If he expects to have sex with his valentine, then he has to spend money. As for me, with this nagging headache that just won't go away, I haven't been able to go to the store, so...

If you think about it, and trust me I have, Valentine's Day is a very special day indeed.

Thanks for the chocolates and the one and half hour massage gift card, Sweetheart.

Here...I made you a card.

Sisters: We Are All Whole

Sisters, I have two. No, make that three. I mean four. One whole, two halves, and one step. But, growing up, I thought I was an only child. That's because my whole avoided me at every opportunity, one of the halves thought I was her mother, I didn't meet the other half until we were in our forties, and the step was out of the house, married with children when we met.

Judy, the whole, likes me now. At least I think she does. Otherwise, why would she send me birthday and Christmas cards? Wait a minute! Did I get a Christmas card from her this year?

Lynnette, one of the halves, calls me Sissy, but she spells it M O T H E R. That's because I raised her. Don't tell my mother that, though. She hasn't been in a good mood lately, and that piece of news would not go over well.

Janet, my other half, likes both of her halves and wishes they were whole. She doesn't know my other half, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Helen, my step, refuses to do the math. She loves every single one of us equally, and to her, we are all whole.

Cluttered Mind

Looking for a paperclip? No problem. Just look on my desk in the paperclip dispenser. An apple? In the fruit bowl. Potato? In the vegetable drawer in the frig. Need a dime? In the coin jar. Car charger for your cell phone? In the car, of course. Matches? In the bathroom next to the toilet. Anything else you need? Don't hesitate to ask because I know that rule everything has a place and everything in its place. What? They're not there. Nothing is where I say it is? Okay, then. Check the wicker basket on the kitchen counter.

I said I know the rule about everything being in its place; I didn't say I adhere to it. I want to, though. I have good intentions. I desire to live in a home that is, dare I say the word, organized. Oh, I've fantasized about how nice it would be to not dig through the dirty clothes hamper every time I want to wear my Chico mama jeans, or shimmy under the bed to hunt for a missing shoe, or dump the crumpled contents of the underwear drawer on the bed when looking for Tom's thongs, or not look in the dishwasher when I can't find one dish in the cabinet, and then, to my horror, discover that they're all still dirty. The displacement of things is giving me acid reflux, but is the pain enough to add "organization" to my New Year's resolution list? You want the truth? Probably not.

A cluttered home is a cluttered mind. I know that rule. I can't say that I believe it, though. My apples and potato may not be where they belong in the dishwasher, but my mind is not, my mind is not...uh...my mind... . I'm sorry I seem to have forgotten what I was talking about. It's my mind, you know. Not what it used to be. Excuse me. Has anyone seen my Tums?

Paragraph Fifteen

Starting with the first row, I counted each seat until I came to mine. Fifteen. Figuring each seat would take approximately thirty seconds, I calculated a total time of seven and a half minutes before disaster would strike, and my world would never be the same again. Up until now, no one knew. With my bag of tricks, I had been able to fool everyone into thinking I was just like them.

I opened the book to Chapter One and counted down to the fifteenth paragraph. That would be my paragraph. When the student in front of me finished reading paragraph fourteen and sat down, I would then stand up, and, in a room where everyone's focus was on me, I'd reveal my shameful secret. At eleven-years-old I couldn't read.

In the fifties, when I attended grade school, there were no special education teachers or safety nets for below-the-curve students, and there were no second chances. Every child was given equal opportunity to fail or succeed. I took that opportunity to fail first grade. How in the world does someone fail first grade, you ask? That is a very good question. Thank you for asking. This is how I did it. I never attended preschool or kindergarten; they didn't exist where I lived or if they did, my mother didn't think they were necessary. So one fall day in 1951, my mother told me we were going for a walk. I was confused because it wasn't Sunday, yet I had on my Sunday-going-to-church clothes. We walked for several blocks before stopping at a busy intersection. An old lady wearing a bright-colored apron walked out into the middle of traffic, held up a sign, and when all of the cars stopped, she motioned for us to cross the street. After several more blocks, Mother took my hand and led me up steep steps and into a red brick building. I asked where we were going, and she said, "School." Since I had no idea what that meant, I was fine with it, until...

We walked through a large door and beyond the door to the left was a room with lots of children sitting at little desks. Stopping at the threshold of the door, my mother, still holding my hand, asked a lady at the far end of the room a question. At that moment there was a sudden rush of noise as every child turned in their seats to look at us. In a split second, I decided that "school" was not for me. I turned around to leave, but mother's hand had clamped down on my fingers, and she pulled me back to the door with the staring eyes.

Later that day, after mother told Hazel the story about how I held on to the door molding, refusing to let go even as the teacher and Principal pleaded with me to release my grip, I was expecting the worst. If spilling a glass of milk was grounds for the switch, then what would happen to me for being expelled from school?  Nothing. As Mother sat crying, everyone else found the humor.

* * *

Having finished the fourteenth paragraph, the girl in front of me sat down and turned around to face me. There was a sudden rush of noise as everyone else did the same. I stood up and while all eyes in my fifth-grade class were on me, I read each word in paragraph fifteen with ease. Like I said, I had my bag of tricks and once again my secret was safe.

The Gift of Illusion

The Bible says good works alone don't guarantee admission into heaven and Mother knew that. Still, along with the ten percent of her earnings that she tithed to the church every week, she insisted on also setting aside time for the needy and less fortunate. Spreading the word, testifying to His greatness, and helping others was a natural antidepressant for my mother. During these acts of giving back, she was the picture of happiness, and the witnesses and recipients of her good deeds were none the wiser.

Shortly after we moved in with Hazel, Mother established a good-samaritan routine that lasted for seven years of Sundays. After the morning service at First Church of the Nazarene, we headed southeast to the small town of New Palestine. About the time I'd nod off and hit my head on the window, the Plymouth would turn left and wind down a long narrow gravel lane to a monster red brick building looming on the horizon. Three stories tall, with a hundred thousand rooms, it housed a million very old, sick, and crazy people who liked to grab little girls.

Hazel stayed in the car and napped or read the Bible while Mother, my sister and I made the rounds from room to room, bed to bed. It was impossible to stop at every bed, so each Sunday Mother picked a wing of the building and concentrated on twenty or thirty residents.

Mother blossomed in an environment that reeked of incontinence. Although her stage was dark, cold, and unwelcoming against a backdrop painted with despair and hopelessness, she was radiant. Moving from bed to bed, she revealed a personality that I rarely saw at home: happy, gregarious, nurturing, and a cultivator of hope. She believed these people needed her, and she was happy to accommodate. Even though I was too young to articulate my feelings or even understand their origins, I needed her too. I needed her to be all of those things for me--a daughter just beginning a life--not for an old senile stranger who had used up a life and now couldn't see or hear or comprehend the pretty lady who stopped by every week with promises for a better tomorrow.

Still, in a peculiar way, I understood why Mother had to go to the red brick building with a hundred thousand rooms. Young and attractive, with two well-behaved daughters dressed in their Sunday best, Mother brought with her an opportunity for the less fortunate to look outside their bleak reality and focus on this gift of illusion, and with the illusion came a silver of hope. I see now that the gift was as much for my mother as it was for them.


From the book Only Birds Can Fly (c) 2007 with revisions