September 22, 2021--National Imperfection Day
Now that I'm retired and all, with nothing much to do, I thought I would sign up for a class or two. A friend of mine recommended a Bible Study that is held at my very own church. How lucky for me. She said it was fun place to meet like-minded women, and they serve you lunch. She had me at lunch. I went on line and signed up for something. I am still not sure what I did, but I put my credit card in and got a receipt email. Thirteen dollars. Why that unlucky number for a Bible Study? I think it was a message of some kind. A negative one. Finally, I was going to be one of those women. You know the type. They have no real place to go, yet they dress up as if they do. You have probably seen them in the grocery store on a Wednesday morning. Or waiting in line at the post office. Maybe getting dressed at the gym after a morning round of tennis. I know a woman for whom I was once a problem child. She was the keeper of the assisted living where my dad used to live. I don't think she did much except try to convince everyone that she did. It was one of those kinds of jobs. The kind of job where you just look really good for your age and know a bunch of stuff about the residents, but don't really interact or do anything with them. Every time there was an issue with my dad's living arrangement I had to go talk to her. Since I worked full time and had what I like to refer to as a real job, I always made my appointment late in the afternoon. I had her undivided attention for about twenty minutes. I was always mid-sentence when she ended the meeting with the phrase, "If you will excuse me now, I need to get to a Bible Study across town." If you think about it, it is the perfect way to end an unwanted complaint meeting. No one can fault you for needing to get across town to a Bible Study. I pictured her tutoring newly arrived immigrants or neglected children on the ways of the Bible. Later, my dad told me she lived in an exclusive, gated community. I surmised that she also attended an exclusive, gated church. She seemed like the type. I was kind of excited that I might to get to experience living like that kind of woman. This morning, I got up and put on makeup. I had already chosen an outfit. All I had to do next was show up. Most embarrassingly, I arrived early. A lady was just setting up. There were name tags and books on a table. A food truck was unloading something that smelled good. I apologized for getting there early. I stated my name, and she told me I wasn't on the roster. "Are you sure? I know I signed up for something." "This is a class for mothers of young people." She looked at me. Really? I am a mother. I thought I was a mother of young people. Golly. I'm not. I am no longer a mother of young people. This thought tumbled around in my brain. In fact, it is still tumbling around in there right now. How did this happen? The nice lady went to make a phone call to see where I fit in. She could not get anyone to answer on the other end. I found myself apologizing for taking up her time. As I was about to leave, she told me to check the next building. The building for older adults. That just made me sad. Instead of doing that, I just walked down the street to a discount clothing and home decor store and allowed myself to partake in some retail therapy because I am that kind of woman. When I got home, I powered up my computer. Although I had typed in today's class on my electronic calendar, what I have actually paid thirteen dollars for is some kind of Advent class that doesn't even start until November. Just as well. It's too hot outside for all that makeup anyway. This morning I even had a scarf tossed jauntily around my neck. Picture that. A scarf! It was 95 degrees outside. Before I sorted everything out, Mister met me at the front door. "What are you doing back so soon?" he asked. "Did you get the day wrong? Again?" He knows me so well. "Kicked out," was all I could say. Mister went into the kitchen and came back with my favorite beverage. He handed it to me silently, poured himself one and we drank them in solidarity. And that is how me and mister have become Bible Study reject-day drinkers. September 14, 2021--National Coloring Book Day
by Karen Schwabenland Coloring books. I never thought at my stage of life that I would become an expert at them. Which ones to buy? What are the good ones? What kind of pages do they have? Are they thick? Will a marker fade through it? Is this a new one that I haven't seen before? I can't remember when I stopped buying coloring books for my children, but I find myself at it again. In every store I shop, I know where the coloring books are. I also know which markers are the good ones. And which colored pencils are best. I know all of this because my mother, an Alzheimer's patient, has become a coloring beast. It is what she does. It is so weird to have the tables turned as such. Once upon a time, when I was sick--in the days when kids caught mumps, measles, and chickenpox on purpose--my mom would go to the store and bring me back a coloring book and book of paper dolls. Every single time, without fail, I could count on a new set of paper dolls and a brand new color book with bleach white pages and black outlined pictures to entertain myself with. Now I find myself purchasing her a book before I go for a visit. She probably owns about a hundred of them or more by now. My stepfather, her husband, purchases her coloring supplies from Amazon. I like to pursue what a store has to offer in the genre however. It is important to get the kind with the heavy weight paper, so her marker will not leak through it to the other side. We would all like to know what is on the other side. That is, the side that she sees and no one else does. As her disease has progressed, I find books with bigger and simpler pictures. I know that eventually she will go from the adult coloring book to the children's coloring book. In fact she has already shown a preference for them. She has always been a creative woman. And now that creativity is getting used for coloring. The markers leave stains her clothing which are hard to get out. She ends up looking like a gifted, albeit crazed artist--trying to tame the muse-like beast that is in her head, and we can't know. I sit and color with her when I visit. She finishes two to three pages to my one. Her marker organization is all a jumble. If you pull a marker with a yellow top out of the box, it may have a pink inside. It makes for some unusual art. She has lost the ability to make her pictures seem part of our reality anyway. A dog is just as likely to be purple as any recognizable dog color. Once, when I was a kid, my mother sat down and colored with me. It was in a Barbie coloring book, and the page she completed was beautiful and perfect. Not one slip or stray mark out of line. And the crayon was blended pure and simple over the whole page. Her hand had held every crayon at the same exact weight and grip. It looked like a sample page from a How to Color book. I kept that page and that book for a long time. Friends would come over and gather in my room. "Want to color?" I would ask. When they opened the book to the page Mommy had colored, they would stop and give pause. "Who colored that?" they would ask. "My mom did." "I hope I can color like that when I grow up." "Me, too, " I would think, "Me, too." September 6, 2021--Stillbirth Remembrance Day
by Karen Schwabenland It was dark. And although it was a church parking lot, my internal instinct to look around and notice my surroundings kicked into to high gear. Muscles, my son, and I were walking out of the group meeting around 9 p.m. on a crisp, fall evening. As usual he walked twenty steps ahead of me toward the car. In the parking lot walked a man whom I had not seen at first. I had seen him in the meeting though. He sat for two hours and never said a word except when directly asked a question. Granted, with such a crowd of people on the autism spectrum in one place, it was difficult to get a word in edgewise. As I walked to the car that night, I had made up my mind that Muscles and I did not need to attend anymore meetings of this particular group. Most of the people there were older than him anyway and had already suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in their private lives. Muscles had suffered his share of those arrows, but he still was not quite as independently minded as most of the people in the group. What's more, many of them had known each other for a really long time. I didn't fault them for their private interactions, but maybe I did. At least a little. They all had issues with communication, but for anyone new trying to get to know them proved hard. The man in the parking lot was walking slowly to his car so I naturally fell into step beside him. "You didn't have much to say tonight," I stated. I thought maybe he was one of the many college interns who appeared there from time to time. Some of them were only present to observe the group. The man introduced himself and said he had Asperger's syndrome. He asked if Muscles was my only child. I answered in a perfunctory manner, naming all members of my immediate family. His reply astounded me. He said that he and his wife had just lost a pregnancy only a month ago. I would have never guessed it. I am quite sure no one in the group was aware either. The man was clearly grieving. His baby had been still born. I rambled on about my own pregnancy losses. "Three miscarriages," I returned, " although I would never assume a miscarriage is the same as what you have gone through." At that, it was like the floodgates had opened up. He shared the details his profound and permanent loss with me. How everything had seemed wonderful. How he and his wife had arrived at the hospital, and how in a short time, their wonder and excitement had turned to shock and agony. It was their first child. Going home with nothing to nothing had to be beyond hopeless. He worried that it was because of his Asperger's syndrome--that there was some yet undiscovered gene that would cause it to happen. I just listened for perhaps a brief six or seven minutes. I tried to reassure him in the best way I could think of. And since it was my church parking lot we were walking through, I did the dumbest thing possible. I invited him to Sunday services. "Or any church, for that matter. Whatever your denomination of preference would be." I hate to admit it, but I have forgotten his name, but not his face, nor his complete candor and relief when all I did was state the obvious and then really listen to him. I don't know what happened to his wife and him. I hope they found a way to cope, and dare I say it? I hope they became parents in some way. Muscles and I never did return to that group. I am happy to say that several years later, Muscles has begun to find his niche and has lots of space and opportunities in our community. However, this post isn't about him, really. It is about pregnancy loss and how those who are dealing with it just want to be seen and heard. I did not write this post today because I think I helped that man in any way. I was just reminded of how he had really wanted to talk. Had needed to talk. He was just in the wrong place to do so that evening. Or, who knows, maybe my slow walking to the car was in fact the right place. September 5, 2021-#Tweet Like Werner Herzog Day/#National Velociraptor Awareness Day
by Karen Schwabenland The dinosaurs are here, or at least have let their mark. In the past five months, two new species of dinosaurs have been discovered. With all of these scientists digging up bones and fossils, it is just a matter of time before someone will want to reignite them, ala Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. And if that happens, it will not be long before the velociraptor becomes an invasive species to our cities and suburbs. I find all of the recent news about dinosaurs a bit troubling. On June 8th of this year, scientists in Australia discovered the largest dinosaur species ever found, the Australotitan cooperensis. Of course it would be called titan something, as it measured at two stories tall. And in March, another species, the Llukalkan aliocranianus, was discovered in South America. This dinosaur (more terrifying than the velociraptor) had an extra sense of hearing, was the size of an elephant, and resembled the tyrannosaurus rex, but with a smaller head. Werner Herzog, the great and influential German filmmaker, once said, "Today would be an excellent day to partake of an existential crisis, questioning your place in the world, your battles with your inner demons, the inevitability of death and your quest to not be eaten...." Isn't it enticing to be reminded of what nature and the velociraptor have in store of each of us as we discuss the possibility of dinosaur resurrections? However, we should not fear it. Following are some interesting facts about the velociraptor:
Although the velociraptor is smallish in size for a dinosaur, it is nonetheless one of the most vicious monsters known to mankind. Herzog, our oft quoted German film maker, also said, “What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” There is nothing quite like a carnivorous monster to set us all to feeling our feels of dread and despair, now is there? Also, doesn't it make it all that much more awful knowing that the victor of our epic battle is smaller than most of us in size? The velociraptor is a bipedal carnivore with a long, stiffened tail and can be distinguished from other dromaeosaurids by its long and low skull, with an upturned snout. Why the upturned snout? All the better to eat us with, I guess. Our friend, Werner Herzog, also said, “In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.” We are all half-finished, poorly... Yet the velociraptor is complete and fully expressed. A beautiful terror. It bores a relatively large, sickle-shaped claw, typical of dromaeosaurid and troodontid dinosaurs. This enlarged claw, up to 67 millimeters (2.6 in) long around its outer edge, is a predatory device, used to tear into the prey, delivering a fatal blow. Much like the end of the film, Jurassic Park, are we not all thinking the same thing, "I did not love him. Nor did I hate him. We had a mutual respect for each other, even as we planned each other's murder?" (quote from, you guessed it, Werner Herzog). September 1, 2021--National Wattle Day in Australia
A wattle is the national floral emblem of Australia. It is yellow and small and looks like a dandelion or the flower that blooms on chamomile in its herbal state. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here to say that the word wattle is a lot like waddle. And do you know who waddles? Ducks and pregnant women. That's who. Let's all admit it. When you are more pregnant than you ever cared to be, you develop a waddle when you walk. It cannot be helped. It is due to all of those ligaments stretching to hold the ever encompassing fetus. As much as we would all like to pretend it isn't true, it is. After the baby is born, the woman may or may not lose the accompanying waddle. It depends on her age, or when she was born. Before the eighties and aerobics, women were waddle keepers. And by the way, today is also Kama Sutra Day. A pregnancy waddle has everything to do with the Kama Sutra. Even if you have never opened the book, you have heard the title. However, I'll go ahead and remind everyone. The Kama Sutra is an ancient Hindu text that loosely translates as "The Principals of Lust." When a woman is in her tenth month of pregnancy and cannot hoist herself off of the couch and none of her shoes still fit(not to mention her clothes), she can only wistfully remember that book. The Kama Sutra is what got her there to begin with. Once, when I was a kid, I was standing in the book section of Target. There were copies of the Kama Sutra for sale, and they were right there at a kid's height. I mean, it was the seventies after all. Something I don't hear anyone talk about much anymore, if we ever really talked about it at all, is that the 1970s were the decade of the sexual revolution. The idea of it was everywhere and even as a young kid, you knew it was out there, and you knew adults talked about it. So I opened that copy of the Kama Sutra. I found the title intriguing. I had never heard of it before. It was large, like a coffee table book. On the front cover was an exotic looking woman who was dancing. I felt it was my fate. I'm there. In Target. The book is in front of me. "Open Me," it said. I hesitated. But then the beautiful woman on the front cover winked at me. "Could it be?" I thought. I put my hand out. The woman was now gazing at me. Her eyes penetrated my brain. My scattered thoughts dissipated. "I should open that book," said my brain. Therefore, I opened it. Quelle surprise! Inside were naked people doing all manner of adult things. I kept looking at it like a person keeps looking at a train wreck. I was old enough to know how babies got made, but this book had crazy positions and drawings of events impossible to imagine. Shocking events, yet strangely beautiful at the same time. Eventually, my brother came over and looked over my shoulder. I was willing to share my new knowledge with him, much like Eve shared the apple with Adam--except he was my brother, so the metaphor doesn't exactly work out now, does it? At the very least, I thought he would be interested to know. Another surprise. Although, it shouldn't have been. It should have been as predictable as the next day. He tattled. It was his obligation as an older brother. I think he signed some kind of contract before I was born. If it looked like I was getting into trouble or doing something I shouldn't be doing, it was his duty to report it to the authorities. So that is what he did. "Mom," he yelled, "She's looking at a dirty book." My mother, who was on the next aisle came over. She was taller, so she could see right away that I was up to no good. "What are you looking at?" she asked. I slammed the book closed. "Nothing..." "Come away from there. You shouldn't have opened that book. It's for adults." "Well, it had a pretty lady on the cover." "You know what they say. Don't judge a book by its cover." Then, my mother, who was intent on getting her weekly Target fix, went back to her shopping cart and waddled away. Like a row a baby ducklings, my brother and I followed. |
AuthorKaren Schwabenland--Keeper of a daily blog of written matter, reporter of events large and small, and charlatan extraordinaire Archives
September 2022
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