More Than I Bargained For

It's been hard to find a balance this week, between school concerts and work and everyday chores.  There's been a lot more running around than I'd hoped, more times in and out of the car, more waiting for rehearsal or traffic or for someone to get home.  Things haven't always worked out quite right, so I'm a bit drained and off kilter. But for the first time ever, there are bright yellow tulips in my front garden, their slender necks bowed gently in the warm afternoon rain.  Their needs are so simple - sun and water and warm soil to harbor their roots.  For all the long frozen months of winter they lay hidden underground, waiting for just the right moment to step onto the stage.  They have no other purpose but to be, and in their being, to make me smile every time I see them. 

I'm surprised at the pleasure I take in seeing these bright flowers, the yellow and pink and red ones, nodding at me each day when I open the window blinds.  Their appearance has brought more joy than I bargained for, perhaps because they are new and have appeared so effortlessly.  I realize that simple pleasures like these are an integral part of keeping my life in balance.  Like a deep breath for the soul, they put me back on emotionally even ground, something I've really needed to find during these past hectic days.

How about you? What are some of the simple pleasures that help you balance your daily life?

Thriving

Years and years ago, in the dark ages when I was a young teenager, it was fashionable to fill your room with houseplants- spider plants, philodendron, ferns, ivy -green leggy things cradled in macrame hangars or tucked into brightly colored ceramic pots.

My friend J. and I spent several weeks allowance at Frank's Nursery, buying up all kinds of green plants.  For my birthday that year, J. bought me a prayer plant, whose leaves  folded piously at night in the attitude of praying hands, and then opened wide with the sun.  We happily decorated our rooms with plants, setting them on windowsills, hanging them from the ceiling, and crowding them around our desks and dressers.

Sadly, my black thumb soon became apparent.  I either watered too much or not enough, allowed them too little light or sunburned them.  Whatever, most of my plants were soon sickly and yellow, instead of lush and verdantly green.

My mother passed by my room one day and peeked inside. "Tsk," she said, shaking her head sadly at the vestiges of my garden.  "I sure hope your children turn out better than your plants."

About 10 years later, I delivered a healthy, 8 pound baby boy.  Within a few days of his birth, however, he developed a sickly yellow color (jaundice), wouldn't nurse, and started losing weight rapidly.  "Failure to thrive," was the diagnosis applied by the head pediatrician after a week in the hospital with no improvement.   I was terrified - apparently my inability to nourish plants was going to extend to my child, just as my mother had predicted feared.

I finally convinced them to send us both home, claiming we were simply homesick and needed to be in our own environment and away from that horrible hospital.   In honor of our homecoming, my grandmother dished up my favorite dinner - southern fried chicken, potato salad, green beans, and apple pie.   Between she and my mother, I was tended like the rarest of blooms, fed and cosseted like a delicate rose.   And Brian - well, you could say he thrived vicariously, and within a few days sported a rosy glow and three extra pounds.

We've often laughed about that diagnosis, watching Brian grow steadily into his 6'2" and 200+ pounds.  I used to threaten to take him into that pediatrician's office and say, "Remember this one? Failure to thrive, huh?"

I'm still not much good in the plant department.  I can grow impatiens (well, who can't?), and one year I had a vegetable garden with the best darn tomatoes in the neighborhood.  The problem with me and plants is that I lose interest in them.  I start out all gung ho, feeding and watering on schedule, deadheading frequently...but then it starts to seem tiresome, I get interested in something else, and my poor plants languish.

But I never got tired of being a mother...not for one second. 

My son is, of course, a grown man now.  He's healthy and well adjusted, has a lovely wife and a very nice life.  In short, he's thriving.   I don't get much of an opportunity to nourish him anymore, and really, he does a fine job of taking care of himself.    But the impulse to tend to your child never leaves, no matter how old and self -sufficient they become.

He's  been out of the country for six months, which is by far the longest amount of time I've gone without laying eyes on him since the day he was born.   He's on his way home today, and I'm pretty disappointed that I can't be in Florida to greet him.  Last time I was there, I left some of his favorite foods in the freezer and a few little gifts in the house.  It felt like a pitifully small offering, and I was sort of laughing at myself for even doing it - but it was, at least, something, and will probably prove more satisfying to me than to him.

Here at home, I've been outside today, tending some new plants in my garden, spreading loamy dark mulch around their tender fresh leaves, working bone meal into the soil at their roots.    I have Magic and Molly beside me, keeping me company.  Every so often I hear the distant roar of an airplane overhead, and my thoughts return to that fairest of all blooms in the garden of my life, the child who thrives, with or without me, and is on his way home.

How about you?  What's thriving in the garden of your life these days?

The End of an Era

People develop all sorts of loyalties - to athletes and sports teams,  musical groups, actors, restaurants, and even our favorite blogs.   Over the years our family developed quite a loyalty to a certain type of car  -the Pontiac - and so with General Motors announcement yesterday about  the end of this division, we're all feeling rather mournful. My first car wasn't a Pontiac, but my second car definitely was - a 1975 silver Trans Am, making me the envy of not only all my girlfriends, but my boyfriend as well.   Over the next few years, we built a stable of Trans Am's - my boyfriend (now my husband) purchased a 1976 Trans Am in Firethorn Red, and so we had two "screaming eagles" in our garage.

But our ultimate Pontiac purchase was in February of 1980.  Barely hours after our son was born, Jim was investigating the purchase of a 1979 black Trans Am - the infamous Smoky and the Bandit edition.  While I lay in my hospital bed, he and my father were out test driving this car.  Now some women might have been offended and angry - but I was actually pretty excited about the whole thing.   A new baby and a new Trans Am - what could have been better?

So when I brought Brian home from the hospital, the Bandit was in the garage.  We've always teased Brian that he and the Bandit were siblings, coming to live with us at the same time.  And indeed, he fell in love with that car practically from birth.  In my mind's eye there's a vivid picture of him perched proudly in his car seat  driving off with his dad for one of their "guys nights out."    Later, he would pose for his high school senior portrait with the Bandit in the background, and later still, drive it from the church on his wedding day.  

Yes, we still have the Bandit - it's 30 years old this year.  Although it's been languishing in my mom's garage  for the past 15 years,  it's still in pretty decent shape for a girl that age.   And even though Brian and Jim each bought brand new  Trans Am's in 1998, I daresay they both have a lingering soft spot for the "old '79."

As you can see, we're definitely a car family.  Certainly living our entire lives in Detroit makes us more interested in "rolling sculpture" than someone who lives in the farmland of Iowa.  The fact that our livelihoods have depended on automobile companies for three generations has a lot to do with it.   In fact, Brian is the first male in our family since the Great Depression whose work is not related to auto manufacturing.   (Right now that seems like a very astute choice on his part.)   It's ironic isn't it, that during that other period of economic upheaval it was the automobile manufacturer's who provided hope and a fresh start for so many Americans.  My own maternal grandfather left behind the only life he'd ever known as a farmer and horse breeder in the hills of Kentucky to bring his family to Detroit and make a new life in the factories.  I recall my paternal grandfather, who came here from Armenia as a refugee from the Turkish genocide, saying "Thank God for Ford Motor Company."  My in-law's pensions and health care benfits from Ford Motor Company and Chrysler provided them with a good lifestyle throughout their retirement and until their deaths.

So I'm saddened by the troubles that plague the American automobile companies.  And I'm angry at all the circumstances which conspired to bring this once proud and flourishing industry to its knees. I wish people on both sides of the corporate fence hadn't been so greedy, outsourcing so much of our labor to increase profits.  I wish the American people had been more loyal to the industry and purchased cars built by American companies.  And I hope someday I'll be able to take my grandchildren for a ride in a new sports car made in America, even if it won't be a Pontiac.

 The other day I bought a few shares of stock in General Motors.  Though it was little more than a symbolic show of support, it was my small way of saying thanks - for the rumble of a 400 cubic inch engine, for the memories of wind in my hair, and for the look of pure delight on a small boy's face.   

Only My Hairdresser Knows For Sure

Did I ever tell you my hair color horror story?  I was in such a state of shock for several weeks, that I don't believe I could bring myself to write about it.   While the most devastating effects have now faded from my memory (and thankfully from my hair!) the ramifications continue in other ways. Here's what happened...

On December 4, 2008, I made an appointment for my regular hair cut/color session.  I've been coloring my hair for a while, first getting highlights, but recently having an all-over color just to brighten my dark brown hair and cover the isolated gray hair that cropped up now and again.  I've had the same stylist for a couple of years, and I love her dearly.   My heart goes out to her in many ways - she has an interesting life, but that's for another post.

Anyway, she puts the color on as usual, checking her little notebook for the formula.  She comes back with her dish of color, and starts brushing it on. 

"Wait a minute," she says.  "Let me just check that formula again."  She grabs the notebook and runs her index finger down the page.   "Yes, okay,"  she says.  "That's what I did.  Okay, then."

She continues painting away, and we talk - about my plans for the night which include attending my husband's big Christmas concert at U of M's Hill Auditorium, about all my friends who are going, about my boss and her husband and their friends who are going for the first time, about how I will see some of my former high school students in the Michigan Men's Glee Club, who are guest performers at the concert.  How excited I.  How much fun it will be.

And then I sit for 30 minutes while the color "takes."

And then she unwraps the towel from my head and says the words no woman wants to hear from her hairdresser.

"Oh, no."

"What?" I said warily, rearing up from the shampoo bowl.

"Oh, Becky," she said in a whisper.  "You hair is not the right color."

"What do you mean?" I yelped. " What color is it?"

"It's too...red," she replied, pushing my shoulder down into the crux of the shampoo bowl.  "Here, let me see if I can rinse some of this out."

"How red is it?" I asked as she scrubbed my head.  "I mean, is it bright red? Or auburn? Or orange? What color red?"

"It's not orange-red, it's -  well, it's more purple," she answered.

"Purple!"

It's 3:00 p.m., I'm leaving for Ann Arbor in 2 hours, and I have purple hair.

I caught a glimpse of it once, in between rinses and clarifiers and all kinds of other treatments.  At one point, four stylists were clustered around me, conferring like a bunch of surgeons over an ungainly and inoperable tumor.  My hair was that cranberry color some of the younger girls are wearing now.  It was unbelievably horrible. 

I swallowed hard.  "My God," was all I could say.  Finally, I had to call a halt. 

"I have to leave," I told them.  "You've got to make it as presentable as possible." 

"Presentable" turned out to be almost equally terrifying shade of black - the dark black some of the other younger girls are wearing, the girls they call "Goths."

Believe me when I tell you there were days I couldn't look at myself in the mirror.  I have always had dark brown hair, but this was jet black - like my daughter in laws beautiful Asian locks, but looking absolutely ridiculous on this fair skinned, middle aged Caucasian woman.

And so I swore up and down I would never color my hair again.  I was desperate to see my "real" hair, longed to see my own brown, wavy hair, the color I was born with.  I ached with regret for covering it up, for being so vain as to want a new color.  "If my real hair is under here," I begged, "I'll never cover it up again."

It's been four months now, four months of daily washes with clarifying shampoo (for a while I was washing my hair in Tide with bleach, trying to strip out the color faster).  The horrible black has faded to a quite presentable chestnut brown.  And there is new hair growing in daily, new hair that is apparently the natural color I was so longing to see once again.

Except it isn't.  Because all my new hair growth is gray.

 I've never been terribly vain about my appearance. I don't wear tons of makeup, and I've  never even considered having cosmetic surgery.  But I am finding it difficult to accept the idea of seeing my hair entirely gray.  I've always been fond of my hair - even though it's occasionally unruly in humid weather, it's thick and wavy, it lies beautifully when cut well, and is extremely easy to style with 10 minutes and blow dryer.  And it was a rich, chocolate brown, with natural auburn highlights. 

My mother had beautiful dark brown hair too, just like mine.  Her hair turned gray when she was in her late 30's.  Back in those days, she colored her hair with a technique called "frosting," which was similar to highlighting now.  Once, having just returned from the salon with a fresh "salt and pepper" look, my great grandmother took one look at her and said with her usual candor, "Honey, I don't know why you don't let your hair go back to its natural color."

My mother laughed.  "Grandma, I sure wish I could!" she replied.

Ah yes, so do I.

How about you? Do you have a hair color horror story?  Do you color you hair, or go au naturel?  Or does only your hairdresser know for sure?

Breaking the Bank

My mother's next door neighbors have two children, kids who were tiny when they moved in, and have now, as is the way of children, grown into large, rambunctious teenagers.  They're a nice family, though, and my mom has fond memories of summer evenings when they would tumble around in her backyard, or sit on her patio coloring and devour the homemade cookies or cupcakes she kept on hand for them. When Ashleigh, the eldest, turned 16 a few years ago, my mother bought her a cute ceramic piggy bank and put 16 crisp, new one-dollar bills in it.  Travis, the younger boy, is set to celebrate his 16th birthday this weekend, and she wanted to give him the same gift.

Trouble is, we can't find a piggy bank.

"Piggy bank?" asked the clerk at K-Mart, barely more than a teenager himself, with an interesting tatoo on his inner arm and a very dangerous looking spike in his left ear.   "Uh, no, we ain't got those."

"Piggy bank..." said the older lady stocking the shelves at  Dollar General.  "You know, I haven't seen one of those in ages."

I had a couple of piggy banks, a dark blue one I particularly remember because it was painted with bright pink flowers.  I think my uncle brought it to me from Mexico...it was distinctly un-porcine in appearance.  The nicest feature about it was the rubber stopper on the underside, so that making periodic withdrawals was quite easy.  The other one was made of glass, and the only way to get the money out was to smash it.  (I never used that one.)

But I did stuff money into the piggy bank every week - I got an allowance in those days, I think 50 cents or a dollar per week, and I always put some of that money into the piggy bank.   Saving money was kind of fun, actually, and I was encouraged to save up for things that I wanted.  I admit that my parents usually gave in and "helped" me finance the purchase price (I was an impatient little consumer), but at least they urged me to make an effort toward saving.

Apparently (and now I'm going to sound like a old fart) children are not taught to save money these days.  At least, they're not putting it into piggy banks.  Maybe all kids have brokerage accounts - to go along with their cell phones and computers.  Maybe they have ATM cards, and can withdraw money from one of the kazillions of machines located in every place from the library to the laundromat.  Maybe they just charge their comic books and bubble gum graphic novels and granola bars. 

My father in law lived through the Great Depression, and never tired of telling us how he went to his bank one morning and saw a closed sign on the door.  His entire savings - money he intended to purchase his own farm - gone in the blink of an eye.  Naturally, he was paranoid about money forever after.  He kept emergency stashes of cash in his own version of piggy banks - steel boxes hidden in the rafters and buried in the cellar.  He even had a suitcase filled with cash  shoved under the bed and chained to the bedframe. 

The idea of money has become so nebulous to children..it appears on gift cards and debit cards and electronic transfer, but rarely as greenbacks or silver in the palm of your hand.  The concrete exchange of money for services rendered is all but obsolete. We pay for everything from gasoline to major surgery with a quick swipe of a card through an electronic reader.   So the direct line from work to compensation to purchase gets very blurry, creating a disconnect in the process which leads to very poor money management skills.  Hence, a generation of people who are drowning in debt.

And all because you can't buy a piggy bank.

So Travis won't be getting his 16 shiny new dollars in a piggy bank.  My mom ended up getting a tiny red sand pail instead, which she stuffed with confetti, candy, and the 16 dollar bills.  I'm sure he won't mind not getting the piggy bank, for he's liable to head straight to i-Tunes or Best Buy with his birthday loot. 

Unless he stashes it in a suitcase under the bed.