tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36029795051732358312024-03-13T21:04:17.056-07:00It runs in the familyMary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-75274565862292886752012-05-28T08:44:00.001-07:002012-05-28T12:35:12.595-07:00EpinephrineOn a scale of one – ten, rate your level of pain?”<br />
“Fifteen,” she replied. <br />
The nurse made a note on her clip board. “I’ll see what I can do.” <br />
A young man clad in green scrubs entered as the nurse was leaving. <br />
“I’m Trent McKay. I’ll be performing the surgery.”<br />
“Nice to meet you,” Mary forced a weak smile in reply.<br />
“Right now, I am planning to tack you on at the end of day, which should be around 9:00.” He paused, “It could be later. We’ve been running behind all day. Can you tell me how this happened?”<br />
She gave him the short version; he didn’t need - nor she suspected - had the temperament for the long one. “I fell off the bulkhead and landed on my hip.” As soon as she said it she regretted it as the look that passed over his face told her what he was thinking.<em> Middle aged female, fragile bones, foolish for sure; maybe feeble minded!</em><br />
“Do you think you had a stroke?” This came out as more of statement than a question.<br />
“I am quite sure I didn’t!” she emphatically replied, fixing him with the look that had unnerved her high school students years ago. <br />
Dr. McKay’s pager went off; he looked at it, waved and left. “We’ll talk about this some more - later.” <br />
The nurse returned with the morphine and as it began to work its way through her system, Mary closed her eyes reflected on the events leading up to this moment.<br />
<br />
<br />
After weeks of unrelenting rain, January 13th had dawned dry and sunny. To celebrate their good fortune, weather-wise, she and Barley, a notquitetwo–year-old golden retriever set off for the beach, he with an acid green canvas lunker in his mouth and Mary with a smile on hers. Heavy rains and high winds the winter before had taken out the last 35 feet of stairs which had been repaired and replaced with a series of new stairs and switchbacks. They paused when they reached the bulkhead and realized that the final four feet of stairs that would put them on the beach was missing. Clearly, this was more of a problem for Mary than for Barley, who flew off the bulkhead, dropped the lunker, and then turned and looked at her expectantly – <em>let’s get this show on the road!</em> At one time Mary might well have followed suit but a torn anterior cruciate ligament and ragged meniscus that led to a total knee replacement a few months previously had made her more cautious. As a consequence, a more circumspect approach was called for. She knelt at the edge of the log bulkhead with her back to the water; intent on down climbing, she gingerly extended her left leg, seeking a foothold on the logs below. She shifted her weight over her left leg, but when the foothold failed her, she slipped backward, landing with all her weight on her left hip. The sand at the moment of contact felt more like cement than sugar. A flash of light behind her eyes accompanied by sharp pain and a momentary loss of consciousness <em>suggested</em> the possibility of a serious injury. Her first thought was a concussion but given the point of impact that seemed unlikely. <br />
<br />
Regrettably, this beach-induced insight that <em>something serious</em> had happened was fleeting. Once she got back in the house, she felt euphoric and downright smug about her achievement, so that she carried on as if nothing had happened. She got out the broom, swept the floor and built a fire to take off the chill. Even though the day was sunny, it was still January with high temperatures cresting in the 40’s. Besides, she felt clammy. When she discovered that she was out of Advil she called her neighbor Pam. There might be some upstairs but at the moment tackling yet another flight of stairs didn’t appeal to her. Pam arrived, located the Advil, helped onto the sofa and promised to check back with her in an hour or so.<br />
<br />
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Ibuprofen is the wonder drug!” she assured her. For the moment, ‘denial’ was clearly in the ascendancy, though, in a matter of hours, it would crash to earth.<br />
<br />
<br />
Around 11:00 P.M. a tired looking Dr. McKay returned to her room “We can operate now,” he glanced up at her,”but I’d rather wait until tomorrow.”<br />
<br />
“That’s fine with me,” she replied, now that the morphine was coursing through her system, there didn’t seem to be any rush. By the time her hospital stay was over she would arrive at a heightened appreciation of pain. Medication might dull the pain but didn’t obliterate it; she realized, however, that she had the power to control it to a certain extent; to move it off center stage to the wings, as if it were a vase of cabbage roses blocking the view of her dining companion. It remained there in her peripheral vision but no longer front and center. <br />
<br />
Dr. McKay continued, “Let me give you an idea of what you can expect following the surgery.” Nothing that had happened to her so far was as scary as what followed. <br />
“Expect to spend four to six days in the hospital following the surgery and then another six or seven days at a rehab center.”<br />
“Real-ly?” she replied, her voice dropping on the second syllable. <br />
“Of course, if things go well, those times might shorten up a bit. But that’s the schedule I prefer and the one you should plan on.” He rose, smiled tiredly, “I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”<br />
<em>We’ll see about that!</em> She congratulated herself on keeping her mouth shut. Going forward there would be ample time to straighten him out. She smiled to herself, and then lay back against the pillows of her hospital bed. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In her living room, she had adjusted the sofa pillow as she took in the view of the Olympic Mountains and the Sound that never failed to soothe her; today was no exception. The wind had picked up so the water was rougher, but still it looked much the same as it had an hour ago. <em>How long ago was it that I went to the beach? </em>She had no concept of time anymore.<em> More than an hour,</em> she concluded. <em>Maybe two</em>?<br />
<br />
She remembered that she and Janey were meeting at Casa Mia for dinner tonight and then going to the library to hear Garth Stein talk about his book they both had loved, <u>The Art of Racing in the Rain</u>. She and Janey were ‘dog people’ and had laughed and cried in the same places in the book.<br />
She was annoyed that she hadn’t asked Pam to bring a phone into the living room. As it was, she would have to get herself to the kitchen in order to make a call. She was beginning to feel antsy anyway; she couldn’t stay on the sofa all day! She tried to sit up and fell back against the cushions. <em>Ow!</em> A violent pain took her breath away and left her feeling faint. It was hard to sit up without bending at the waist but she would have to find a way. After a few more painful false starts, she managed to get upright by planting her right foot firmly on the floor and pushing off with her right hand. A graceless gymnastic vault – but it worked. She made it to the phone and called Janey. <br />
<br />
“Oh hi Mary, what time should we meet tonight?” <br />
Mary paused. “Um - I hate to do this but I don’t think I can make it. I had a little tumble on the beach this morning . . .”<br />
“Oh dear,” Janey broke in, “did you hurt yourself?”<br />
“That remains to be seen. I slipped off the bulkhead and landed with all my weight on my left hip.” She paused, and then added. “It feels like a bad sprain.” <br />
Janey chuckled. “Mary, you know you can’t sprain your fanny!”<br />
“I know; it feels like it though.”<br />
“You need to go to the hospital.” Janey said matter-of-factly. Mary was beginning to agree with her but by now was pretty sure she couldn’t drive herself. Janey interrupted her thoughts. <br />
“You don’t sound like yourself. I’m coming out and can drive you there. ” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
After a hard landing, she didn’t feel much like herself. She began to straighten herself out of the crumpled position she had landed in. In a rush, everything that she needed to do occurred to her. For starters, she couldn’t continue to lie on the beach much longer. The tide was coming in fast and she had to get a move on. She wiggled her fingers and toes; relieved that everything seemed to be in working order, maybe I just have a bad bruise - <em>a hematoma - her doctor daughter would have called it.</em> She took a deep breath, exhaled as she rolled over, and then pushed herself up on all fours. About that time, Barley pressed the lunker, wet and coated with sand into her face. <br />
<br />
Unlike Lassie, Barley didn’t have rescue on his mind. Retrieving was in his DNA and she had a necessary role to play. From the crouched position she was able to lob the lunker a short distance into the water distracting Barley long enough to crawl to the bulkhead and pull herself up. She leaned against it until the dizziness went away. In between lunker launchings, she calculated her next move which, all things considered, was the most challenging. She had to get back up on the bulkhead in order to access the stairs to get back to the house. Climbing back up the slick logs was obviously not an option. <br />
<br />
On the other side of the boathouse there was a jumble of rocks and logs that had ridden in on a high tide and stayed there. They formed a rough ladder that she managed to scramble up. With that task behind her, she steeled herself for the hardest part - walking along the eight inch concrete wall in front of the boathouse. Several seasons worth of high tides had long since washed the sand away between the concrete wall and the building, making the crossing treacherous, even in the best of circumstances. She paused and let Barley go ahead of her – she was feeling unstable enough and didn’t need a wet impatient dog pushing her from behind. <br />
<br />
She braced herself with her hands against the weathered double doors and cautiously side stepped the distance that was no more than fifteen feet but seemed like half a mile. She made it and buoyed by her successful crossing, she began the ascent of the final 85 feet with marked dispatch. She thought it would be harder than it actually was and before she knew it she ‘summitted’. Along the way, she employed whatever technique seemed to work - in some places, she could pull herself along, hand over hand using the railing. Where the stairs were the steepest, she crawled on all fours, crab-like. It wasn’t until afterwards when people would ask her how she did it that appreciated the difficulty.<br />
<br />
“I didn’t have any options – and of course, I was in shock,” became her stock reply.<br />
<br />
Later, after she was long gone from the hospital, she learned that medically speaking ‘shock’ was not the correct term. It was her hypothalamus that saved her by signaling the pituitary, which signaled the adrenals to send out the advance party in the ‘fight or flight’ reaction, that motley crew of hormones that came into their own at a more primitive time and fortunately can still be called into service to suppress pain and boost energy – at least temporarily. <br />
<br />
<br />
Mary decided to make tea before Janey arrived. The electric kettle was in the kitchen, one short step up from where she now stood and she found she couldn’t manage it. In hindsight, it is quite likely that the prospect of facing the rest of the day without tea is what finally brought her to her senses. <br />
<br />
“I don’t think I can <em>get into</em> your car Janey,” Mary told her, as she hung over the barstool, to take the weight off her hips. Comfortable positions were becoming scarce. <br />
“I’ll call 911. What do you think?” Mary didn’t say anything while Janey picked up the phone and placed the call. <br />
Then Mary said, “I need to call Kate and leave a message that I won’t be home this afternoon.” Kate had promised a chat that afternoon when she got home from work. Kate was a third year anesthesiology resident and the weekly phone call that Mary unapologetically lived for required considerable advance planning. <br />
She punched in the number and spoke to their answering machine, advising Kate and her husband that she had ‘taken a spill’ at the beach that day and was popping over to the hospital to have it checked out. <br />
“Don’t worry; I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I’ll call when I get back home this afternoon and let you know what I find out.” Before she could sign off, she heard the wail of the emergency vehicle careening around the corner. Most likely their answering machine heard it as well.<br />
“Oh shit!” she said and hung up the phone. <br />
<br />
Janey followed the emergency vehicle to the hospital and sat with her in the ER. There was a shortage of gurneys in the emergency room but no shortage of emergencies, so Mary was offered a wheel chair instead. She knew she couldn’t sit in it but with her legs stretched out in front of her and her back where her bottom ordinarily would be, she was reasonably comfortable. <br />
<br />
<em>I have been moving around like a crab all day</em>, she thought to herself as she rolled into the cubicle marked ‘admissions’ where the woman asked for her medical insurance card. After that she crab-walked her way to an examining room. X-rays followed. During the interval, she thought about calling her daughter but was told that cell phones didn’t work in that part of the hospital. <em>Just as well</em>, she thought as she still didn’t have much to report.<br />
<br />
The young ER doctor who introduced himself to her in the examination room returned - ashen after seeing the x-rays - and informed her that the ball of her femur had broken off, and was floating around in her hip. She imagined a golf ball, bouncing back and forth between her femur and her pelvis. She winced at the image. <br />
<br />
“You’re probably experiencing significant pain,” he volunteered, nodding as he did so.<br />
<br />
“Yes I am.” She spoke deliberately but she tried not to sound cranky. After all, none of this was his fault. “Please call my daughter and explain this to her. You speak the same language.” She handed him her cell phone. By now, even if reception was possible, she didn’t want to make the call. He took the phone and left the room.<br />
<br />
<br />
She left the examining room herself shortly after that and was taken to the sixth floor of the hospital, the orthopedic wing she remembered from last year’s knee replacement. Sometime, after the doctor’s first visit and the nurse’s second that introduced morphine to her system, Kate called.<br />
<br />
“I’m flying out tomorrow morning and should be there by early afternoon.”<br />
“Oh honey, you don’t need to come. I’ll be fine.”<br />
“I’m sure you will be mom, but I am coming anyway. Where’s dad?” she added.<br />
“He flew to Texas a few days ago, in order to go to Padre Island and Port Aransas.”<br />
“What’s the attraction?” Kate asked.<br />
“Spoonbills and whooping cranes. They winter there, I guess. By now, he ought to be in Belize.” When Mary and Barley returned from the beach that morning, there was a message from Fred calling from the Dallas – Fort Worth airport, en route to Belize. <br />
“Does he know you are in the hospital?”<br />
“Gosh no – and I really don’t want him to!” Mary paused; actually, she didn’t know if there was a way to call him. Mary and Fred were appalling casual about that kind of information, much to their friends’ and family’s frustration. <br />
“I really don’t want dad to know about this. Promise me you won’t tell him.” It was Kate’s turn to pause. <br />
“Okay,” she finally said. “I won’t.” They chatted a bit longer and then rung off with “see you tomorrow.”<br />
<br />
As it turned out, she wasn’t taken into surgery until close to seven the next evening so Kate was able to be with her in the pre-op room. “I’m sorry you felt had to come," Mary said as she held her daughter’s slender hand, “but I am glad you’re here.” Mary looked over; Kate’s eyes were brimming with tears.<br />
“Oh honey, don’t worry about mom. You know how tough I am. Everything is going to be fine.” Even while she said it she realized that her daughter’s perspective would be altered by their relationship as well as her work. Kate bit her lip and nodded but the tears still spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, sniffed and then laughed at herself.<br />
The nurse arrived to take Mary into the surgery room. Kate kissed her cheek and followed the nurse’s directions to the waiting room. <br />
<br />
The procedure went smoothly and by the time Mary was brought back to her room Kate was there waiting for her with a smile on her face. <br />
“How do you feel?” she asked her mother.<br />
“Great. I feel great!”Mary waved her hand to emphasize her point.<br />
Kate confirmed that they had given her mother a regional block in addition to the general anesthetic. “You should be pretty comfortable for the next twelve hours, maybe longer if you’re lucky.”<br />
“I don’t expect my luck to run out anytime soon.”<br />
“Dad called a little while ago from the airport. He should be here in half an hour or so.”<br />
Mary’s eyes took on that hard look that signaled her displeasure.<br />
“You promised you wouldn’t call him!”<br />
“I didn’t. Somebody else did.” Kate looked away and then back at her mother. "I told them to."<br />
“He’s going to be mad that I ruined his dive trip.”<br />
Kate rolled her eyes. “Not as mad as he’d be if he hadn’t been told!”<br />
<br />
<br />
Three days later she was discharged from the hospital, not to a rehab facility but to home. Fred and Kate had put an extra mattress on the Murphy bed in the computer room so that she could get in and out of bed without lowering her hip below her knees. Kate worked up a spread sheet for ‘Mary Care’ assigning friends to drive her to physical therapy and doctor appointments until she could drive herself. <br />
<br />
In the days and weeks that followed, Mary retold the story many times, shamelessly basking in the wonderment of her audience. “Necessity fueled by adrenalin makes heroes of us all!” she often concluded, pleased with that particular turn of phrase. Kate informed her that ‘epinephrine’ was another word for adrenalin. <em>Epinephrine – epinephrine</em>. She liked the sound of it, the way it rolled off her tongue. <br />
<br />
Over time, she came to realize something about the heroes of the story as well as the extent of her indebtedness. Of course there were the medical heroes –not just the surgeon and the folks at the hospital, but the surgical pioneers who had figured out how to do this procedure in the first place. <em>If this had happened thirty years ago, I’d never walk again!</em> she reminded herself.<br />
<br />
Most of her heroes, however, were closer to home; they were the friends and family members who looked out for her; who ignored her when she told them to stay away. <br />
<br />
They were her girlfriends who met Kate in the surgery waiting room, took her to dinner then stayed with her, distracting her with laughter and stories until Dr. McKay arrived to tell her that her mother was out of surgery. Then the friends went home; they hadn’t come to see Mary - they had come to be with Kate. <br />
<br />
“How did they know I was even in the hospital?” Mary asked her when Kate told her about it. <br />
“Oh mom, this is Olympia. Everybody knows!”<br />
<br />
Maureen and Don were special heroes; they sat with Mary in her room, and fixed her tea or found saltines for her if she asked for them. But mainly, they just sat quietly, bringing serenity in with them, like a cashmere throw over her shoulders. <br />
<br />
Fred was a hero as well, for when she apologized for ruining his dive trip, he smiled and shrugged. “I didn’t miss much. The storm had stirred up the water so the visibility would have been lousy.”<br />
<br />
Epinephrine may have made Mary look like a hero, at least momentarily; but it was the unfailing loyalty of her noble family and friends that made her feel like one.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-81535113874774174802012-05-07T06:59:00.002-07:002012-05-07T08:24:08.470-07:00<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Dust Mites</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">"Couldn’t you hire someone to do this?”Fred was standing in
the bedroom doorway watching his wife rip up the carpet. She had that
determined look that was all too familiar to him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Nope. I tried. Everyone I talked to either said they were
too busy or it sounded like too much work.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Last night, he had helped her dismantle the bed and move the
dresser and bed out of the guest room so she could start taking out the carpet
first thing this morning. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s wrong with
the carpet anyway?” She gave him an incredulous look, by way of reply.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I just wondered. It still looks pretty good to me.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It’s old,” she said as she ran an Exacto knife along a
seam. “And dirty.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Not that old, is it?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Twenty-six years,” she paused, “and four dogs.” She pointed
to a greenish stain in the tan carpet that faded to yellow in the center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking up at him she said. “That’s 182 dog
years in case you are wondering. Besides, this carpet is infested with dust
mites!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">He looked more closely at the carpet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Dust mites?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Oh, you can’t see ‘em but, trust me, they’re there.” She
sat back on her heels. “They’re gross looking. I bet you’ve seen pictures of
them in the Sunday supplement. They look like lobsters. ” She rocked forward
and went back to work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Oh, and they’re
really bad for anyone with allergies.” That pointed remark was intended for
him; he had allergies and she didn’t.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">So throughout the weekend, the dust mite driven project
continued apace until the three upstairs bedrooms had been stripped of the
carpet, along with the pad and the wooden strips filled with sharp staples.
Fred made three trips to the land fill and each time he returned to find
another pile of carpet or padding on the ground waiting to be hauled off.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">On Saturday evening he said. “You work harder than any woman
I know!” It was true and he meant it as a compliment but he immediately
regretted saying it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Is that so?” Her eyes narrowed as she fixed him with a
penetrating look. “Well just name me one <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">man</b>
you know who would take this on.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">She was right and that was part of the problem. Actually, it
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">was</b> the problem - with the project
specifically and with his wife in general. Once she made up her mind there was
no dissuading her. If he brought up the matter of expense, he knew she would
dismiss it by informing him that one’s children and one’s home were the best
investments you could make. Frankly, though he’d never admit it to her, he
wasn’t really sure he agreed; still he knew it would be churlish to suggest
that a nice vacation and some well chosen toys should be right up there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Mary was as strong as she was fearless – qualities that he
couldn’t help but admire. It was just that sometimes he wished he could admire
these qualities at more of a distance - say in somebody else’s wife. Besides,
all her work made him feel guilty. He <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">really</b>
didn’t like that. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">On Sunday, after the second run to the landfill, he stopped
by the marina to commiserate with his friends. It was Labor Day weekend, warm
and sunny – perfect conditions for fishing or sailing or just hanging out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Where’s Mary?” someone asked. “Is she still taking out
carpet?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Yah. When I left, she had started on the master bedroom.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“You camping out tonight, Fred?” Everyone laughed. His
wife’s affinity for projects was the stuff of local legend. Everyone in the
neighborhood knew of the time the contractor came out to confer with her on
repairing the flat roof over the family room and they ended up with a major
remodel. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Well,” Mary later explained, “when he told me he wouldn’t
guarantee his work on a flat roof it only made sense to go up.” So up they went
with a new bedroom over the family room that now was part of a fully renovated
kitchen, topped off with a new roof that matched the pitch on the other half of
the house. </span><o:p><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">By Monday afternoon all vestiges of the carpet were gone,
exposing the plywood subfloor. On Tuesday, they both went back to work, and the
following weekend Fred packed up his truck and headed down to Death Valley on
what Mary referred to as his ‘fall migration.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When he returned ten days later, cork flooring that mimicked burled
maple had been installed. The new floor felt cold when he padded into the
bathroom in the morning in his bare feet. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“This isn’t a criticism, but I just wondered why we didn’t
just put down new carpet?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Dust mites. Cork is hypo-allergenic and it will last
forever.” She brought him a cup of coffee, then enlightened him further. “You
know, there are wineries in Italy and France where the cork floors have been
down over a hundred years.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Well, I don’t expect to be here another hundred years but
in the meantime, I am going to have cold feet in the mornings.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Wear your slippers.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Fred sighed and returned to the Sudoku. In most respects he
knew they were compatible. Everything would be great if it weren’t for her
penchant for projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it was, he
could never fully relax, knowing that just when it seemed that there was
nothing left for her to tamper with, he would come home and be met by workers.
Several times he had tried to talk to her about it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I really like change,” she always told him. “I think it’s
fun and exciting.” When he pressed her on this, she replied. “Of course, I
don’t want to make major changes – don’t want a new house, don’t want to switch
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">you </b>out. But when it comes to the
“little stuff “– well, it seems as if there is always some room for
improvement.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Naturally, he was relieved that she didn’t have him on her
‘punch list.’ Of course, he didn’t want to move or get remarried either, though
if he had to choose, marriage would be preferable, provided he could stay put!
He admitted he didn’t like change. He couldn’t think of anyone, except Mary,
who did. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ carried the day for him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Once these projects were over with and the workers had gone
home, he always came around. Further, he made a point of telling her how much
he liked the end results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But getting
there was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">so</b> painful – the mess, the
delays, the hammering and digging that often was still going on when he got
home from work. That was by far the worst part. It threw his routine off and
made him feel guilty to boot, like he should grab a hammer and join them when
what he wanted to do was put on his shorts, crack a beer and sit in the front
yard and read <u>Sports Illustrated</u>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Besides, he took issue with her idea of what constituted
‘the little stuff.’ Surely the new roof/remodel couldn’t be classified as
‘little stuff’ nor could the front yard renovation that followed the Nisqually
Earthquake. ‘Sod to Slate’ he had dubbed the undertaking. The quake left cracks
in the basement retaining wall which seemingly could only be repaired by
digging up a large part of the front yard. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Are you sure?” she frowned as she looked at the flower bed
whose days were evidently numbered. “What a pain,” as she dug up the lilies and
peonies and put them in pots until they could be replanted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">One evening before the anticipated digging had begun, she
came out to where he sat<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You know I’ve been thinking . . .”she
began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that, an alarm went off and
Fred closed his eyes, as if that might block out her voice. Pretending not to
hear her was a ruse he’d employed in the past with limited success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When making her case, Mary never hesitated to
repeat herself if she suspected she didn’t have his undivided attention. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I’ve been thinking that while we are at it, we might as
well take out all of the grass.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“So, what would we have in place of grass? Asphalt? A deck?”
She ignored his attempted joke with the asphalt and went right on to the deck. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Well, I considered a deck but I don’t think it would look
right. Too modern looking for this old house. Besides, decks get slicker than
snot when wet and we both know it’s wet a lot of the time.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Well,
that’s a relief,</i> he thought to himself. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I’m thinking about putting down flagstones.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">With that, she set a couple of books in front of him with
pictures of patios and terraces created with large flat stones. They looked
heavy and were referred to as “hardscape” he learned as she turned the pages,
showing him more designs. “Hmm. That’s interesting,” he said wishing he could
just get back to <u>SI </u>and the NBA. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">The contractor and his crew showed up a few days later to
tackle the wall repair. That night Fred got home from work first and was
informed that it wouldn’t be necessary to dig up the front yard after all. Once
the men got into it, they discovered they could manage the repair working from
the inside. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wow! For once, a reprieve</i>.
He could hardly believe it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No real mess
involved and they promised to be in and out in a couple of days. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“That’s great!” Mary said when Fred gave her the good news.
He could hardly believe his ears. At last, a project she would back away from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“But the grass is history. I’ve just talked to Mark Osborn
and we’ve got a plan. He’s never done flagstones before – just pavers, but is
willing to give it a try. I know it will look great.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">As an afterthought she added. “It will be a lot of work to
install the slate but once it’s in place, it will be really low maintenance.
You’ll see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No more mowing.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It only takes Wes ten minutes to mow the grass now.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Wes is getting too old to mow.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Surely we could find somebody younger then,” he said to her
back as she went into the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
by then it was too late and he knew it; he was just pissing into the wind. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">And so the sod came out, the yard was scraped and leveled, a
drain system installed and then gravel mixed with sand was smoothed across the
surface. Finally, the slabs of Montana Blue slate were put in place. For the
rest of the summer Mary spent most every evening and weekend, kneeling on the
stones planting moss, thyme, and Corsican mint between the cracks as well as
other plants whose names he promptly forgot. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It’s given me a new appreciation of the term ‘stoop
labor’,” she told him one evening at the end of the summer when the planting
was complete. By this time, new flower beds had emerged around the perimeter of
the slate patio and colorful ceramic pots were placed strategically along the
fence and by the front porch. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It looks great, honey,” he said as he took her hand while
they surveyed the front yard. “But you have to admit it took a helluva long
time and a lot of work to get here.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“So did the Sistine Chapel.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">And she was right - it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">was</b>
more practical than grass, where the legs of the lawn chair always sunk in and
the picnic table cut deep ruts. But when it came to her claim of low
maintenance, she was off the mark. The first year the slate had to be watered
regularly to insure that everything took off. From then on it required annual
power washing and whenever they threw a party, it had to be ‘vacuumed’ with the
blower set on reverse. </span><o:p><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">A couple of weeks ago, she picked him up and they drove out
to the mall. “Tell me again why we’re here?” he asked as she led him past the
sofas and entertainment centers<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the
mattress section at Macy’s.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“We’re getting a new mattress.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s wrong with
the one we have?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It’s old,” she replied as they turned the corner and were
met by a saleswoman who introduced herself as Elizabeth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“So? Not that old. It was an expensive mattress, I seem to
recall.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Elizabeth smiled at the two of them. Most likely she had
heard this conversation before. “You really should replace your mattress every
twelve to fifteen years.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Our mattress can’t be <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">that</b>
old. Is it?” He looked first at Elizabeth and then at Mary.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Twice that,” Mary informed him as she kicked off her shoes
and stretched out on one of the mattresses. “It is old and saggy and probably
full of dust mites!”</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">A few days later, the new mattress arrived. They both had
trouble sleeping that night though neither was sure if they could blame it on
the new mattress. It was comfortable enough – it just felt different. As he lay
there, getting drowsy, he thought about the dust mites and concluded that they
were a lot like his wife’s projects- invisible and stealthy, in equal parts.
Just because he couldn’t see them, didn’t mean they weren’t there, poised and
ready for attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On that uncomfortable
thought, he rolled over, resigned himself to the inevitable and went to sleep.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br /></div>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-87399915044007871472012-05-07T06:34:00.004-07:002012-05-07T06:34:31.801-07:00<strong>Long Hair Like Abby</strong><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">It’s not fair!” she said as she climbed into the back seat
and pulled the door shut a little harder than necessary.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Pardon me?” her mother said, catching her eye in the
rearview mirror as they drove out of the school parking lot. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Fairness was something Katie understood, even if she was
only seven. Fairness was when a grownup said that if you <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">did</b> something or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">quit doing</b>
something then something <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">good</b> would
happen. Unfairness was when you did the something you were supposed to do and
the grownup forgot all about it.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Just yesterday her mother had told her that she couldn’t
have long hair until she stopped dawdling in the morning. So, this morning she
got right up, dressed and came downstairs before anyone even knew she was
awake. She pulled on her socks and her cords and her turtle neck, which she had
to take off and put back on again because the first time she got it on
backwards. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">But now they were on their way to see Dee to get a haircut! </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Mom, why are we going to Dee’s?” </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It’s time for a haircut. Your bangs are too long for one
thing. Remember last week when you went swimming? You told me that the reason
you lost every race to Michael was because your hair was in your eyes.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I know.” Katie wished she’d never told her mother that, but
she was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mad</b> about losing. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I know I said that, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">last
week, </b>but, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">yesterday</b> you said if
I quit dawdling in the morning I could grow my hair out . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and this morning I didn’t dawdle. I got up
and got dressed and came downstairs right away.” She paused, then wrinkling her
forehead and looking at her mother in the mirror she continued. “Remember? You
said you were proud of me.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I was proud of you.” Her mother smiled at her in the
mirror. “’One swallow does not a summer make,’ my dear. Besides, I made this appointment
weeks ago.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Katie stared at the back of her mother’s head. Some of the
things her mother said didn’t make sense. “I am not talking about birds. I am
talking about having long hair. Like Abby.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Abby and her cousin Shannon both had long hair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes they wore it in a pony tail, and
sometimes their mothers braided it. And sometimes it was just parted in the
middle. That’s the way Katie liked it the best because when they bent their
heads over a worksheet or spelling paper, it fell down on either side and hid
their faces. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Katie did have another friend with short hair: Jocelyn. She
and Jocelyn often talked about growing their hair out. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Jocelyn says she’s
going to grow her hair out so long that it comes down to her feet.” Katie
reported to her mom, who rolled her eyes. “That’ll be the day.” </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I just want my hair to be long enough so that when I swing
my head from side to side, it swishes back and forth.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">The haircut proceeded as planned. After Dee cut her hair,
Katie swung her head from side to side and back and forth and nothing happened.
Her hair just stayed put.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“It looks nice honey” said her mom. Katie gave her a wary
look. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">They got back into the car and drove to the swimming pool.
Katie’s mother just didn’t like long hair. Every morning while she was growing
up she had had to sit on a stool while her own mother braided her hair. She
told her it was braided so tight that it hurt but she couldn’t move or it would
mess up the braids. The first time she went to scout camp, her counselor couldn’t
braid, so by the end of the week, her hair was a snarled mess and she didn’t
get to go back to camp for a long time. Finally, when she was twelve, she was
allowed to get her hair cut. Now it seemed like Katie would have to wait until <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">she </b>was twelve before she could have
long hair. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twelve</i>, Katie thought. She
didn’t even know anybody who was twelve. The oldest kid in her school was only
eleven. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">When they got to the swimming pool, Michael was waiting for
her. “Wanna race?” he asked. Michael always wanted to race and last week he won
every time. This time, her hair didn’t get in her eyes and she didn’t have to
stop even once. She won two of the races, Michael won one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I got there first!” Michael insisted after the fourth race,
but his mother called it a tie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How
come you were so fast today?” Michael asked her as they left the pool. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">The next day when she got to school, Jocelyn and Shannon
were talking to a new girl – with short hair. Katie put her book bag in her
cubby and ran right over. The new girl turned to Katie and smiled.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“Abby, Abby, what happened to your hair?”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">“I got the end of one of my braids caught in my parka zipper
so I cut it off to get it out. Then I cut the other one so they would be even.
When my mom saw what I had done, she took me to the beauty college. I told the
girl that I wanted it real short like yours so I could go swimming!”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style;">Abby ran her hand through her short brown hair, and then
swung her head from side to side, and her hair didn’t move. Katie was stunned;
then she smiled and did the same.</span></div>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-8720799857718703602012-04-16T07:26:00.002-07:002012-04-16T08:10:54.547-07:00EpiphanyIn the abstract, the “ah ha” moments in one’s life arrive with dramatic fanfare, lights flashing and Beethoven’s Fifth playing in the background. Yet, if my own experience is in any way typical, nothing could be further from the truth. Unannounced, they slip stealthily into the room through a door inadvertently left ajar. <br /><br />The first of these realizations that I recall with any clarity occurred when I was twenty-two; legally an adult, just not a practicing one. I have always been a decisive person and at that time in my life, if ever I decided to do something, “wild horses,” could not avert me from the course. Some might have considered me stubborn, but I prefer to think of myself as determined. In any case, once uttered, my decisions were edicts, etched in stone. And, since I rarely had a thought that I didn’t express, the stonecutters were kept preternaturally busy. <br /><br />It was the summer before I got married and instead of my usual job as a camp counselor, I was engaged in Summer Theatre at the University of Idaho. This weekend, I had come home to confer with my mother on various matters wedding related and to pick up the invitations. At some point during the course of the weekend, I had announced my intention to return on Sunday night. We had finished eating and my parents were settling in for the evening.<br /><br />“Are you sure you have to go back tonight? Why not get up early and drive back in the morning, after you’re rested?” Dad stood in the kitchen doorway on his way to bed. He would be out of the house early the next day, in order to ensure that all the cattle, sheep, and swine that had come into the stockyards over the weekend were in the proper holding pens in preparation for the weekly auction.<br /><br />“I’ll wake you up when I leave in the morning and you can be to Moscow by 8:00.” It was a reasonable suggestion and he waited for my response with his head cocked to one side, a gesture I knew well. <br /><br />“No dad. I gotta go back - now.” I answered without making eye contact. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. I didn’t have a rehearsal until 3:00 the next afternoon, but I was antsy and just needed to move. “I’ll call when I get there if you want. Don’t worry.” This last I tossed off as I zipped out the door, clutching my purse and a bag of clean laundry, careful not to let the screen door slam behind me.<br /><br />“Don’t drive too fast.” Mom called after me from the living room where she sat in her chair reading. <br /><br />It was still light when I drove out our long drive way, apple trees bearing fruit lining one side and roses and peonies with spent blossoms on the other. The distance ahead of me was about ninety miles, a drive that in summer is neither difficult nor dangerous. The route was a familiar one, as most of my mother’s extended family, both living and dead, could be found either farming or buried somewhere in the Palouse. <br /><br />At the first intersection, I turned left onto Sullivan, drove past my old high school, and soon the primarily residential areas were replaced by fenced fields, some of them full of corn and cantaloupe others with alfalfa. There was one large dairy farm along the route, flanked by pastures with a few head of cattle and horses still grazing lazily. In a few years, this pastoral landscape would be converted to housing developments, some of them designed by guys I had gone to high school with. But in the summer of 1965, it looked much the way it always had when my brother and I rode our horses out to Saltine Flats or drove my Uncle Alfred’s green Chevrolet out to cut down a Christmas tree and collect pine boughs to make swag for the front door. <br /><br />At 32nd I turned west and drove another couple of miles until the road intersected with Highway 27, which I would stay on until I got to Rockford, where I would cross into Idaho and eventually turn south on to highway 95 following it all the way to Moscow. On this occasion, I didn’t get that far; I didn’t even get to Rockford, for by the time I reached Mica, about five miles south on highway 27, I turned around and started back. In the twenty minutes I’d spent behind the wheel, I had calmed down enough to realize that I really was tired and the drive ahead of me, which would be sunny and pleasant in the morning promised to be dark and lonely tonight. And so I turned around and drove back home.<br /><br />“I’m back.” I called as I walked through the kitchen and into the living room. <br /><br />Mom looked up from her book and held her glass out to me. “Top this up and fix yourself one and come sit with me.”<br /><br />I took the glass from her hand, and then stopped by their bedroom door on my way to the kitchen, listening to see if my dad was asleep. <br /><br />“Hi Honey.” He said clearing his throat. <br /><br />“Sorry if I woke you up.”<br /><br />“I saw the car lights as you drove in. I wasn’t asleep yet anyway.” He paused. “I’ll wake you in the morning.”<br /><br />“Thanks dad. Good night. See you then.”<br /><br />I went into the kitchen and poured a little Johnny Walker into a tumbler then added ice, water and more Scotch into mother’s glass then returned to the living room. I handed mom her drink, then sat down across from her in dad’s chair. <br /><br />“Thanks.” She smiled and looked at me for a moment. “I’m glad you came back.” Then returned to her book. <br /><br />“Me too.” I pushed back in the chair so the foot rest came up and closed my eyes.<br /><br /> <br />I wish I could report that I never again felt compelled to blindly follow some rule or convention, mine or someone else’s. Sadly, that hasn’t been the case. Nonetheless, it has been instructive, and occasionally it saves me from barreling down a path I have set out to take for no other reason than the preconception that it is what <em>has</em> to be done. <br /><br />For instance, several years later the memory surfaced when my daughter and I were in a department store. I don’t recall the mission we were on, though it is safe to assume that it was something specific as I rarely undertake shopping unless I have to. Having paid for my purchases, I turned to see Katie, who was three at the time, holding a baby doll. I watched her for a moment, as she cradled the doll in her arms. She must have sensed me looking at her for she looked up, smiling sweetly.<br /><br />I knelt down to eye level. “That’s a nice little baby, isn’t it?” <br /><br />“Can we buy it?” I shook my head. <br /><br />“No honey, we can’t. Now put it back.” <br /><br />“But why?” She asked as she gently returned it to its display stroller.<br /><br /><em>Oh honey!, </em>I thought to myself, <em>if only you knew!</em> Because, of course I knew - knew if you <strong>ever</strong> gave in, <strong>even once</strong>, when a child asked for something, it would never end. That a <strong>‘given into child’</strong> would morph into a manipulative, spoiled teenager, destined to go straight into juvenile detention. Worse, all of the havoc wrecked along the way would be traced back to the mother who took the line of least resistance and caved to the demands of the child. I was already skating on thin ice as an older mother of an only child. This was one of the principles of parenting that was most certainly engraved in my library of stone tablets. <br /><br />All this I said to myself as we bustled out of the store into the parking lot. Once at the car, Katie waited by the backseat door while I put the packages into the trunk of my red Dasher. <em>Maybe I would get the doll for her for Christmas or her next birthday.</em> I reasoned. <em>After all, it was exactly the kind of doll that I wanted her to have. A baby doll, without a lot of bells and whistles. The eyes opened and shut but other than that, it was just a sweet little doll, perfect for a three year old. </em>Still – I knew the rules. Everyone did. <br /><br />When I opened the car door to help her into her car seat, I could see she was crying; silently, holding her body still, and biting her lip while tears welled up in her eyes. I stood there looking at her for a moment. “Let’s go.” I said and she started to climb into the car. I took her hand and pulled her out. <br /><br />“No. This way.” <br /><br />“Where are we going?” She asked looking up at me. <br /><br />“Don’t you think we had better go back and get that baby before someone else takes her home?” <br /><br />Her eyes widened with surprise and cautious delight. <br /><br />Together we sprinted though the rain and back into the store. She named the doll Elizabeth after the baby sister of her friend Megan. Katie took good care of all of her dolls, but Elizabeth always received a measure of special attention. She slept in the little blue cradle that grandpa had made and was routinely tucked in with a poem or a song. And Katie turned out fine as well. Didn’t throw tantrums. Didn’t end up in “juvie” and I don’t recall that she ever again asked for anything.<br /><br />I confess that I still find rules and routine attractive, but I realize they don’t have to be sacred. They often simplify things, “Monday – wash day, Tuesday - Ironing,” helps establish a welcomed rhythm to my life. And there are simply some things that might never get done if they weren’t obsessively observed. Running comes to mind. Inspired one New Year’s Eve by a friend, who told me she had run a five mile race at that day, I got up the next morning, determined to be a runner myself. Once I made the decision, I never again asked myself if it was something I wanted to do; if it was too cold, or too dark, or too rainy. I just got up every morning, laced up my shoes and ran out the door.<br /><br />Still, that evening in July of 1965, when I managed to throw that stone tablet out the window and turn around, marked a turning point. I realized I could change my mind and my world would not collapse. I marvel at my parents’ wisdom and forbearance – they didn’t know I would pull U-turn and come home on that particular night, but they were willing to let me discover when I was ready to bend my own rules. I will never stop being a decisive and determined person, but as the years go by, I’ve come to value flexibility right alongside structure. Defining oneself and then acting accordingly is a fallacy; it is through our experiences and actions that we truly come to know ourselves.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-69689426569499490772012-04-16T07:10:00.001-07:002012-04-16T07:11:41.514-07:00FredJo and I paid for our beers and crossed to the empty table we had spotted when we came into the bar. Soon we were joined by Benjamin and Fred, two 3rd year law students I knew only by reputation. Jo and Benjamin were soon engrossed in a conversation about her former boyfriend and Fred and I were left to get acquainted. He asked about my spring vacation and I regaled him with a martyred account of preparing Easter dinner for the family when mother took to her bed. We must have talked about something else, but I don’t recall what it might have been. It was peanut night at Mort’s, so any conversational lulls could easily have been filled with cracking and chomping. What riveted my attention were the laugh lines on either side of his eyes. I counted them more than once. Ten in all, with deep grooves in the center fading to light #4 pencil lines at the edges. A few weeks later when I told my friends we were getting married, they gaped. “How do you know he is Mr. Right?” Nearly fifty years later, the question has been altered but the answer is the same. “Laugh lines!” I tell them with a smile.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-1986907089711887902012-04-12T07:10:00.002-07:002012-04-12T07:19:36.147-07:00Aunt Mary Knows Best!<em>Clayann Lankford and Colin Peeples are getting married next week in San Francisco. It is a small family affair which will take place at the courthouse. In August, they are planning to have a party in our yard. In the meantime, Colin’s Aunt Bonnie hosted a bridal shower this week. I have known Colin since he was a baby and I only wish I had known Clayann that long as well. I love them both dearly, which I am sure you will agree justifies the following unsolicited advice I gave them to accompany a gift they didn’t ask for!</em><br /><br />Dear Clayann & Colin: When I checked out your wish list I discovered that towels were on the list. White towels to be precise. I am giving you towels but not white towels – indeed these towels, coffee bean brown and sea foam blue, are at the other end of the color spectrum. Well, there is a reason and a story behind it of course.<br /> <br />Six years ago when Kate and Micaiah got married they put towels on their wish list. Just like you, they thought white towels would be nice. As a consequence they received a set of very nice white towels, which are still in good shape – no fraying at the hem or worn spots in the center; however, within six months, they took on a gray patina and six years later, even when they came fresh out of the washer or off the line, they were revolting. Stained and dirty looking, even though they were clean. Not at all the sort of towel you wanted to dry your bum with let alone bury your face in!<br /><br />So, last Christmas I replaced those towels with colored towels like the ones that I am now giving you and after they raved about them, I got some for us and another set for them. Yesterday, I got this set for you. <br /><br />Here is the deal on white towels my dears. They are just great in fancy hotels, where despite the rather self-serving notices strategically placed in the bathroom, that the company is “greener than grass” and a "great friend to the environment," in truth those towels are regularly washed in hot water and routinely soaked in bleach, which ultimately breaks them down and wears them out at which time they pitch them. In the meantime, their fluffy feel and pristine appearance fools you into thinking they would look nice on your towel rack. <br /><br />In the event that you still want white towels I am including the sales slip so that you can take these back and exchange them as white is an option with this particular model.<br /><br />In the alternative, maybe one of your other friends will accede to your wishes and give you the white towels that you asked for and then you can trade these in on one of the gardening items on your wish list. Just don’t dry your hands on the white towels after you come in from turning your compost pile!<br /><br />So there you have it – the latest installment in the ongoing saga of why Aunt Mary (and all your other aunts for crying out loud) knows best!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-12145114175127711002012-04-01T06:23:00.002-07:002012-04-01T10:20:13.015-07:00Primal FearThere I was, perched at a perilous height, with the deafening roar of a tractor coming straight at me, and the barn collapsing before my eyes. It was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself screaming. The sheer terror of the moment is the only thing I remember with certainty. The rest of the story has been fleshed out with time and retelling. My family insists that I am wrong, that I misunderstood, that it couldn’t have happened this way. “Don’t you see?” they would say. “The barn is still standing.” That may be. Still, however factually implausible my narrative is, it is emotionally true and counts as my first recorded memory. I might have been three, still small enough that when I walked with a grownup and held their hand, my arm was up in the air. My parents, my older brother and I were spending a few days with my Aunt Josephine and her husband Clyde on their ranch in Cottonwood, Idaho. The term “ranch” is used advisedly, for their spread was little more than a few hard scrabble acres of arable land devoted to alfalfa, in an arid mountainous region dominated by Cottonwood and White Pine. Still Clyde, lanky and slightly bow-legged, was a cowboy and not a farmer, so it follows that his place was a ranch and not a farm. Adults may not realize that an unintended consequence of children “being seen and not heard” is that children do a lot of listening, accompanied by their own unfettered and unfiltered interpretation. This practice was, in truth, the source of my undoing. Among the many snippets of conversation overheard during the few days of our visit, which surely included such benign topics as remaking a winter coat or the recipe for tomato soup cake, was the mention of pushing over the barn. It is at this juncture that my family takes issue with my memory. They claim there never was any such discussion. Be that as it may. By anyone’s standard, barns are large structures, and barns remembered from childhood are immense. Uncle Clyde’s barn was two stories high, grayed with exposure, with a door on the second story into the hay loft and a ground level sliding door, wide enough to accommodate a truck or tractor. A circular corral made of peeled poles was attached to the barn, which was entered through a wide gate. That day I had accompanied the men out to the corral, very possibly without an invitation. I don’t know what project they had in mind that morning, but it is safe to assume it was unsuitable for a three year old. As a consequence, someone set me up on the fence, to keep me out of harm’s way. The picture I call to mind is taken from a long way off, peering across the corral. I am perched high up in the air, on the gate post. No doubt, the height of my perch is greatly exaggerated, but relative to my own height, it is stratospheric! I imagine that I liked it at first - heights have never been a problem for me. Soon, however, I realize that I am alone. The men along with my brother had all wandered off. Somewhere out of sight I hear the explosive sound of a tractor starting. The noise increases as the machine rounds the corner of the barn, heading in my direction. In that moment, the raucous presence of the tractor coalesces with my belief that the barn is about to be pushed over. There I am, unable to get down or be heard over the noise of the tractor. Panic ensues. But that is where it ends. The barn didn’t collapse. Someone rescued me from the post. For most of my life I assumed that the source of my terror was the imminent collapse of the barn accompanied by the deafening noise of the tractor. Upon reflection, I suspect that there may have been a more primal fear at work – the fear of being forgotten. I had been placed on the fence post for my protection, but had subsequently been forgotten, like a ring placed on a window sill over the sink for safe keeping and never returned for. Surely this is a universal fear? Years later when I was late to pick up my own daughter, I explained that I got involved in a project and forgot all about her. “You forgot me?” Her lip quivering, her eyes wide in disbelief. “But, how could you?” How indeed.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-14021611489620436152011-11-13T20:03:00.000-08:002011-11-13T20:11:56.886-08:00My Mother's DaughterI recently returned from closing up the cabin for the season. It will be at least seven months before I get back there, and the leave taking is always bittersweet. On the one hand I like thinking that I have tidied things up and tucked the place in for the winter; on the other hand, closing up the cabin also means saying good-bye to my parents. In truth, mom and dad passed away nearly twenty years ago, yet at the cabin, they live on. <br /><br />My parents acquired this cabin, located in a small mill town in the Idaho panhandle, after my brother and I were launched; at least we had both finished college and married and were no longer looking to mom and dad for financial support. The building itself was an old logging camp cook shack, and at the start it only had three rooms. It served as both a vacation spot and a repository for all things from our family’s past. My parents had been storing anything that might be given a second life in their barn for years, so it was no surprise when the kitchen cupboards, the wood stove and the round oak kitchen table that had been resting in the barn since an early remodel, made their way to the cabin. <br /><br />Let your eyes wander around the few rooms of the cabin and it will become apparent that long before the practice became popular or the word became a household term, my parents were recyclers. Everything from the light fixtures to the rocking chairs, started out as something else. Like many of their generation, the notion to “waste not/want not” was part of their DNA. Living by that edict satisfied their practical interests and simultaneously sparked their creativity. <br /><br />Early on, mother’s recycling forte was clothing and her knack for renovation grew out of necessity. Her large extended family was populated primarily by aunts and female cousins. According to mother, though none of them were wealthy, most had more “wherewithal” than mother’s immediate family. A visit to or from any of them was accompanied by a variety of hand me downs – coats, sweaters, and the occasional party dress. I don’t know how my aunts felt about it, but mother reveled in the prospect of rummaging through this treasure trove and finding something to make over. <br /><br />A full length coat with a ragged hem and worn cuffs was shortened to three-quarter length. With the collar and cuffs removed the coat might be trimmed in velvet or plush corduroy and dressed up with new buttons. Once Peter and I arrived, these coats would be made into snow suits. Sometimes mom took the coat apart and turned it inside out before she re-cut it, so the fabric looked like new. If the front of the original coat wasn’t too shabby, she would try to re-cut it in such a way to utilize the existing buttonholes. Failing this, the alternative was to bind new buttonholes by hand with embroidery thread or painstakingly make bound buttonholes. Every photo of me and my brother taken in the winter until we were about ten years old shows us in jackets, pants and little hats our mother made out of material that started life out as something else. <br /><br />Today, the cabin is home to the original sofa and accompanying chairs bought for their first home in Spokane. They are covered with quilts made out of squares of corduroy each with their own story. The red corduroy comes from my first grade Christmas jumper and the royal blue squares were once part of my junior high cheer leading skirt. The salt and pepper cords that Peter wore throughout grade school are alongside forest green squares from dad’s favorite LLBean shirt. <br /><br />In large part the cabin is a testament to my parents’ great collaborative relationship. If mom had an idea, dad could give it a form. He made swing rockers from wooden wheel chairs salvaged from the Edgecliff T B sanitarium. Mother was un-phased by raised eye brows and unbridled laughter when she fashioned lamp shades out of yellow foam egg cartons, which, by the way are still in service to this day. <br /><br />Last summer, when I cleaned out the storage room in the attic of the cabin, I threw out the remainder of the stuff that they had saved for future projects. One bag held remnants of wool and corduroy, some of it cut up and ready to sew into yet another quilt. When I looked into a second bag, I was initially baffled for it appeared to be a collection of plastic bread bags. You may remember the time when only bread came in plastic bags and groceries came home in a paper sack or a cardboard box. In the bottom of the bag, I found the beginning of a crocheted rug, fashioned from strips of the bread bags. I had to laugh as I put them in the trash. “Really mom, this is a stretch even for you!” <br /><br />Fast forward one year later, and who’s laughing now? Here I am industriously knitting new rugs for the cabin kitchen out of loops I have cut from old T-shirts and connected with a slip knot. I just know they will be the perfect complement to the egg carton lampshades. An added bonus to this project is the fact that the next time Fred looks in his T-shirt drawer and asks me if I have <em>thrown </em>out any of his favorites, for once, I will be able to say no without blinking. <br /><br />If the T-shirt recycle project goes as well as I think it will, when I open up the cabin next June, I may just cut up the plastic grocery bags that have taken over the broom closet and knit them into – well, who knows what? Placemats? A hammock? You name it. Anything is possible when you are my mother’s daughter! (And perhaps to my own daughter’s dismay, it appears more and more likely that this recycling behavior may in fact be part of our genes!)Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-35177830432212866392011-10-30T20:03:00.000-07:002011-10-30T20:17:20.217-07:00Just DesertsYou don’t deserve a friend like Malbec.” I said to Barley as I put him into a “Down/Stay” in the corner of the family room. Malbec had just returned after a month’s hiatus and Barley had welcomed him home with a curled lip and growl, modulated somewhat by the tennis ball and hedgehog in his mouth. We have attempted to temper his predisposition for inhospitable behavior toward other dogs by insisting that Barley sits and waits for Malbec to enter the house or get into the car. At meal time, Barley sits and waits in front of his own food dish until Malbec has been fed. Actually, Barley generally performs these tasks with alacrity, often without prompting, which, to the uninitiated might suggest that he is willing to share the throne or even to take turns. Alas, that would be a false assumption, a fantasy known universally to the mothers’ of naughty boys. If breed were any real indicator of dominance, Malbec, the Rhodesian ridgeback/boxer mix, who is taller and heavier, should be calling the shots for Barley, the runt of his golden retriever litter. No amount of Pavlovian parlor tricks or “down time” is going to alter Barley’s perception of himself as “top dog,” and the rest of us might as well get used to it, as Malbec obviously has.<br /><br />On this day, while Barley put in his time in “the penalty box” – first looking around and then nodding off in a nap – Malbec inspected the house to insure that I had things arranged to his liking. Malbec likes to have things orderly, or at least he likes a particular order to things. For example, given that he never walks but always dashes, he likes to have a rug between the door and his bed so that he doesn’t slip and slide on the wood floor when making his entrance. “His” water dish must be on the floor in the computer room- he never drinks out of any other dish, though Barley freely helps himself to water wherever he finds it. His secondary bed should be placed between the wing back chair and the TV where he can not only enjoy the warmth of the wood stove but also keep his eye on the squirrels cavorting in the front yard. <br /><br />Driven in large part by their perceived place in the pack, these two have developed a rather elaborate set of rules that informs their behavior as predictably as any prescribed liturgical practice. When we head down to the beach in the evenings, they engage in a dance with little or no variation. Barley gets the lunker or the float first and runs with it to the gate where he drops it. Malbec picks it up. Barley waits at the gate until one of us arrives to open it. Then Malbec drops it and Barley retrieves it, and then pushes down the stairs in the lead. Once the dogs get to the beach or the bulkhead, if the tide is in, Barley drops the lunker and waits until someone gets down there to throw it in water (as far out as possible, thank you very much!) Except for a narrow window of tunnel vision, Barley is virtually blind, so the lunker we use is a large acid green sausage shape with a rope attached. It floats high up in the water and makes a big splash when it lands. Don’t ask what it costs; the company has quit making them, but with the aid of the folks at The Granary (the local pet store), I have six more in reserve.<br /><br />Of late, if the dogs perceive that we are dawdling and don’t get to the beach fast enough, Malbec has taken to picking up the lunker, wading out in the water and dropping it for Barley. This new variation of the game was going on by the time Fred and I arrived at the beach on Malbec’s inaugural return visit. Barley staggered around for a few minutes, unable to find it, so Malbec picked it up and dropped it again, this time right in front of Barley, who lunged for it and then ran up onto the beach with it in his mouth, triumphant as any gladiator!<br /><br />Malbec is anxious by nature and when he first came to stay with us, he was afraid of getting too close to the water. Of course, growing up, as it were, in Albuquerque, his only exposure to water was what was put in his dish. At first he approached the edge of the water tentatively, coming close to the edge and then darting away if it lapped against his feet. Even now, if a boat goes by and leaves a sizeable wake, he will chase the waves down the beach, as if they were prey that he needed to grab by the neck and shake. On his first actual plunge into the water, he resembled a prancing pony, his feet lifted high into the air – as if he thought he might be able to swim without getting his feet wet. Despite this inauspicious beginning, within a few days he hit his stride and is now a very powerful swimmer. He is able to launch his body about ten feet into the water, and then with his head down, pulls strong and steadily on target, frequently reaching the lunker before Barley has figured out exactly where it is. Barley frequently cheats, heading out into the water before it is even thrown, giving him an edge, assuming he gets lucky and swims in the right direction. No matter which dog gets there first and brings it back to shore, Barley brings it across the finish line, as this is part of the sacrosanct ritual they observe. Malbec swims in until he can stand up and then drops it, whereupon Barley swoops in like a feral beast and trots triumphantly up the beach with it in his mouth, head and tail held high. <br /><br />One day last week when we were down there, the tide was all the way up to the bulkhead, so in order to bring it home, Barley either needed to swim to the end of the bulk head where the steps are located, or climb up over the rocks at the other end. He is an experienced “up climber” so this was not a problem; however, when I launched the lunker from that end of the bulkhead, he was less sure about how to get into the water over the rocks. I encouraged Malbec to “go for it” as he had a sure opportunity of beating Barley to the kill. Meanwhile, Barley frantically tried to find a way to confidently get in the water. No matter how often I encouraged Malbec to “go get it” he held fast – pacing back and forth in front of Barley, as if encouraging him to take the plunge. Finally, that is exactly what Barley did – threw himself off the bulkhead, into the water, and the race was on, with both dogs heading for the target. <br /><br />“You don’t deserve a friend like Malbec!” I repeated for the umpteenth time as Barley pushed past me on his way up the stairs with the lunker in his mouth. Fortunately for Barley, in Malbec he got the friend he needed instead of the one he deserved. Upon reflection, maybe that is true for all of us—at least I think it is true for me. Like Malbec, my friends are loyal and steadfast, despite my sometimes cavalier behavior. I rarely initiate phone calls and never “drop by.” I am vague about birthdays and anniversaries, congratulating myself if I happen to recall the month or even the “quarter” of the year the event falls in. I’m endowed with broad shoulders that have been called into service more often to move a piano than for comfort or solace. Still, my friends hang in with me. I guess it is about time I quit admonishing Barley and admitted that we are both fortunate to get what we need rather than something else entirely. <br /><br /><em>A postscript. <strong>“Just Deserts</strong>” may well seem an odd title for this piece. For starters, the correct spelling is a matter of debate. Google it and you will learn that even though it is pronounced as if it were referring to Black Forrest dark chocolate raspberry torte, it is spelled as if referring to a vast, arid place - think Mojave. The word is an archaic form of “deserve” and the expression, loosely translated, means that the punishment fits the crime. So where, you may reasonably ask, is the “punishment” piece in Malbec’s unfailingly genial treatment of Barley? To get there, you must embrace the notion that the best way to deal with difficult people is to “kill ‘em with kindness.” The efficacy of this philosophy, at least as applied to me and Barley, is open to debate. As far as Barley is concerned, if he is experiencing any twinges of conscience, they don’t appear to be keeping him awake nights—or days either—for that matter. </em>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-34839779464584464342011-08-28T21:31:00.000-07:002011-08-28T21:40:51.565-07:00I'd know you anywhere!A couple of weekends ago, I attended Central Valley High School’s 50 year reunion, <span style="font-weight:bold;">not</span> as someone’s guest but as a member of the class of 1961! It is hard enough for me to believe I might <span style="font-weight:bold;">know</span> someone old enough to attend one of these celebrations let alone be one of the celebrants myself. But I did and it was fun and one of the highlights of the evening was a visit with one of our teachers who had graduated from CV about 15 years ahead of us. Del Muse taught physics and chemistry to those of us with the courage to enroll. He continues to educate today by coaching folks studying to take the GED. At our reunion, he could easily have been mistaken for a classmate.
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<br />Reunions are a funny business. Our expectations are decidedly mixed. We want to reconnect with friends we may have lost contact with, laugh at some of the antics that occupied our youth, and celebrate the fact that we can still “come to play.” And, if we are entirely honest, the possibility that there will be someone there more out of shape motivates many of us. It’s called the “gloat factor” – its appeal should not be underestimated. While I was in the process of becoming reacquainted with friends I hadn’t seen in many years, it became clear that the person I really needed to get reacquainted with was myself, for as you will see in what follows, I was <span style="font-weight:bold;">not</span> the person that others remembered.
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<br />There were over 300 in our class and about 125 of us made it to the reunion. A handful were having surgeries and sent their regrets, others simply chose to make themselves scarce, and for another 50 or so, attending regrettably wasn’t an option. Though I have never been a part of the cadre of dedicated folks who track down addresses and organize the reunion, I believe that the internet made locating people considerably easier. Many of us got “re-friended” on Facebook in the course of the past two years. Several classmates who at previous reunions had been listed as "unable to locate" were present, seemingly happy to be found. The award for the person who came the greatest distance went to Jim Dahl who flew in from New Zealand. Another classmate, Gary Kahler, who for the past 25years had been listed as deceased was discovered was found alive and kicking on Facebook and made it to the reunion. Coming back from the dead gets the prize in my book.
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<br />In general, I would say that the women fared better than the men, at least as far as appearances go. Of course, in large part that observation can be attributed to the hair migration many men experience, as it leaves the top of their head and relocates in various places on their face. Additionally, women have the benefit of clothing that helps hide some of the ravages visited upon us all by gravity. Women can float around in caftans while such garments for men are generally limited to those who have entered religious orders. Still at fifty years, simply “showing up” trumps appearances every time.
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<br />More than one person remarked that I looked “exactly the same” as I did when we graduated. The remark was meant as a compliment and I took it as such, but trust me, I know what I looked like when I graduated and a little alteration wouldn’t have gone amiss. As the reunion wore on, this rather benign bit of flattery took on a decidedly ironic twist.
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<br />The reunion kicked off with a cruise on Coeur D’Alene Lake on Friday night. It was a beautiful evening following a day with temperatures in the nineties. The cruise boat had a bar and buffet table on the main floor with rows of tables and chairs, set up cafeteria style. On the top of the boat there was an open deck. I started the evening out upstairs moving from table to table visiting with folks. After about an hour up there, I made my way down to the bar. While I was waiting for my glass of wine, a guy behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said. "Mary Gladhart - you haven’t changed a bit! I’d know you anywhere.” I turned to look at him and obviously he had changed as I was clueless to put a name with face smiling back at me. While I tried to discreetly peek at his name tag, he continued.
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<br />“You probably don't realize this, but I have been in love with you since the 6th grade."
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<br />“No you haven't." I replied with absolute confidence.
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<br />"No it’s true! I used to walk by your place up on 8th and Evergreen, just hoping you would step outside and see me." Bingo. Wrong person.
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<br />"Oh, you must mean Melissa Jones. She lived on 8th and Evergreen not me."
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<br />"Oh, you're right - it was Melissa.” At this point, the poor fellow had the grace to look embarrassed.
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<br />“Is she here?"
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<br />I point Melissa out to him; he squints and asks me if I am sure. I am sure and pick up my glass of wine and move along to visit with someone else who, believe or not, launches into a similar routine about his seventh grade crush on me, how he'd know me anywhere, and how I lived just three blocks away from him on – you guessed it - 8th and Evergreen.
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<br />"That was Melissa." I told him with a sigh. So much for looking the same. The same as whom? After that, I primarily struck up conversations with women.
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<br />The next night was a dinner at the Coeur d’Alene Casino. As I was standing in line to pick up my ticket, I struck up a conversation with Joe Simmons who claimed he remembered beating me in a spelling bee our sophomore year. This was obviously still a source of pride for him so I didn’t have the heart to tell him what a hollow victory that was. I was generally the last person chosen to be on a spelling bee team – never the last man standing. Besides, I was pretty sure he had me mixed up with someone else. For all I knew Melissa might have been a champion speller along with a world class heart throb. I was getting a little nervous about then; afraid the Joe might ask me to spell the word I missed, just to prove a point, when he said something even more startling.
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<br />“You were first in our class, weren’t you?” Hastily I looked around, hoping that none of the really smart kids were standing close enough to hear this and then assured him that I wasn’t even in the running.
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<br />“Well, if you weren’t – who was?”
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<br />“Beats me.” I replied. There were a lot of very bright kids in our class and I could think of a number of contenders. When it comes to remembering class rankings, I am of the opinion, than unless you <span style="font-weight:bold;">were</span> number one or, one of the nine people next in line, you are not going to know, or care, for that matter.
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<br />Really, have you ever heard anyone announce that they were 17th in their class? Well, maybe someone who was 17 in a class of 17 and then became the CEO of a Fortune Five Hundred company might like point out of how little academic standing had mattered in “the real world.” Otherwise, it is pretty much a dead topic. Not so for Joe, it seems, as he brought it up again at the end of the evening as I was leaving.
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<br /> “Are you sure you weren’t number one?”
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<br />So once again I find myself mired in an identity crisis. To think that at my age, I could be someone entirely different - a Nordic beauty or a Brainiac; a heartthrob or a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Wonder if I could be both?
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<br />In truth, Melissa and I actually had a lot in common – Girl Scouts, church choir, Rainbow girls and later on we were both teachers. Still, with all of that, we never looked alike. For starters, she was and still is tall, slim, and blonde and whereas the blonde part is easy, “tall and slim” require a mixture of genetics and will power that have managed to elude me. As for the brainy business, thankfully my older brother Peter had a corner on that, which relieved me of the responsibility. The perception of my academic prowess may well have benefitted from a little brainy blow back from my brother, but surely not enough to catapult me to the head of the class.
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<br />Tempting as reinventing myself might seem, I think for now I’ll just stick to the me I have been getting to know for the past 68 years and hope for the best. After all, if I started to act like someone else, it might just appear that dementia had set in, and my family would seize upon the opportunity to have me committed and there I would be drooling out the rest of my days in some care center and be among the “unable to locate” at my next reunion.
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<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose!<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> I’ve always thought that there was a lot of truth to that remark, but now I am not so sure. Evidently, it depends on whose memory you are relying on. And memory, as I have recently learned, is a fickle friend, unreliable and obdurate at best.
<br />Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-15922552379055811642011-08-17T14:26:00.000-07:002011-08-17T16:09:12.822-07:00What once was lost . . .There are few aggravations in life that I hate more than losing or misplacing stuff. Of course in the grand scheme of things, I recognize there are calamities of greater import – floods and famine, to name but two. But in my little world of personal disasters, losing something gets the prize. For one thing, it pushes all of my OCD buttons, so that I am flailing around, tracing and retracing my steps, opening cupboards and drawers, emptying out purses and backpacks, all the while muttering to myself.”How could you be so stupid, careless, lame-brained, etc?” My daughter will testify to the occasions when I came into her bed room after she had gone to bed and riffled through her drawers in search of a missing sports bra or a shin guard. “Mom, I am trying to go to sleep.” “Forget it mom! It doesn’t matter.” All of this falling on deaf ears as I admonished her to just ignore me, assuring her that I’d only be a minute and would be quiet as a mouse.
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<br />My most recent case of loss followed by self-flagellation occurred when I got home from a 12 hour flight from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands in February only to discover that I had lost my little jewelry case, at least I thought I had. It was a small flowered Clinique bag, designed I suppose to hold a lip stick, a car key and a tissue, but I had found it the perfect size for the two necklaces and three pair of earrings that I felt I needed to take along. This was a scuba diving trip, so the clothing requirements consist of swimsuits in the water, fleece on the boat, and sun dresses for evening wear. When packing for the return flight, I made a conscious decision to put my jewelry in my back pack rather than my checked bag.
<br />I flew home on a red eye and in the course of the next twelve hours, was in and out of the back pack numerous times, pulling out pillows and Advil, books and granola bars, creating the perfect opportunity to dislodge my little flowered jewelry case. The jewelry was not expensive but that isn’t the same as saying it wasn’t valuable, because to me it was. Every piece had a story and most were acquired while traveling: two pair of earrings were from Shanghai; a necklace that was made entirely of seed pods found on Little Corn Island, off the coast of Nicaragua; another necklace made of silver beads and jasper Fred acquired from a local guide in Death Valley. Also in the bag were my opal earrings which I have worn for nearly thirty years, a gift one Christmas from Fred and dad.
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<br />For five months I have been grinding my teeth over this debacle. I missed all of these pieces but refused to seek out replacements, determined to punish myself appropriately for my carelessness. Last weekend I started on a purge of the “travel closet” where I keep our suitcases, back packs, and all the little bottles of shampoo and lotion, mosquito repellent and sun block that I tuck into our bags when we take a trip. Some things made their way to the bag destined for the Goodwill and others “did not pass go” but went right into the trash. I opened every suit case and back pack, clearing out stray socks and a hairbrush, Purell and toothpaste, as well as boarding passes and ball point pens. And, miracle of miracles, floating around inside my back pack was the little flowered case with all the missing jewelry!
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<br />I was elated to say the least. I put the opal earrings on and haven’t taken them off since. This great finder’s event put me in mind of a number of other times when I have been sure that I lost something only to discover it, sometimes years later. When I was in law school, the large jade stone from the ring I wore constantly disappeared. I bought that ring in Peurto Villarta at a time when I still thought I should ask Fred for permission to spend $40 on a piece of jewelry. I was sure I must have lost it in the parking lot and enlisted my friends to help with the search which turned out to be futile. At home that night when I was unloading my book bag, I found it. No doubt I slammed my hand just right against some heavy legal tome and dislodged it and it fell into the book bag.
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<br />On another occasion, I thought that I had lost a necklace of Venetian trading beads that I fell in love with in the little resort gift shop in Antigua. Naïve as I was in those days, I still was aware there were no bargains to be had at the resort gift bar. Still these were the beads that I wanted and so I bought them. Once the exchange rate was sorted out, I think that once again I ventured into the $40.00 range. Though by this time, I by-passed the permission step.
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<br />I wore those beads a lot – both for work and casually. They were predominantly red and blue and graduated, so that the center bead was larger than all of the others. The summer that my parents moved over here from Spokane, I made monthly trips back and forth to help with the packing and of course, I wore the beads. Once my parents arrived in Olympia, I never saw them again. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them – had they fallen off at a rest stop? Surely not. I would have heard them hit the floor if they had come apart. My mother felt badly about it and found a similar looking set of beads from a museum gift store catalogue, for I am sure twice what I had paid for the original. They were nice but they simply weren’t the same.
<br />After my mother died, I found them in what seemed to me a very unlikely place. When we visited my parents in Spokane, one of Kate's favorite playthings was my old doll buggy with a large doll that Katie called "grandma baby" - a name that defies logic unless you understood that this doll, that once was mine, now lived with grandma. The doll buggy and grandma baby were one of the last things to be loaded for the move, as they had provided a welcome distraction for a seven year old while the rest of us were boxing and packing. So now, several years later as I was going through things in my parent’s home, sending some directly to the dumpster and others to the Good Will, I came upon grandma baby and the buggy and a miscellany of odds and ends including a plastic bag that appeared to be full of dust rags. I was on the verge of consigning them to the dumpster when I paused to look inside, and there, quite incredulously, I found the little jewelry box with my favorite beads.
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<br />I could go on about my amazing luck in finding things; or maybe, it is my amazing knack for thinking that something is lost that really isn’t. I feel as if I should be taking some lesson out of this. That perhaps, if I were able to channel Saint Anthony he would tell me that from now on, I am on my own! That he has saved me and my stuff for the last time. Maybe if I really tried harder, I would become a “place for everything and everything in its place” kind of person. But I know better than to hold my breath on that idea. Maybe what you do with good luck is just be grateful and let go of it. Just relax and move on. It is a tempting notion. Still, on this next trip, I have a plan for my jewelry case – I have pasted an address label to the inside and plan to pin the case to the inside of one of the many zip pockets in my back pack that I rarely get into! That should do it and I can leave the old hair shirt hanging in the closet when I get home. Provided, of course, that once I get where I am going, I can remember where I have hidden it!
<br />Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-8346225688732853962011-06-21T15:16:00.000-07:002011-06-21T15:23:40.979-07:00Finding myself and then someIntrospection is one of those things, like red wine, that we are told is good for us – in moderation, of course. I’d like to think that I have always been somewhat introspective, recognizing that the unexamined life is, if not empty, at best less than it might otherwise be. At the same time, I have avoided over analyzing myself because, well for starters, it is boring and there has always been something more pressing if not interesting to do – like cleaning the toilets!” Even so, no amount of talk or drug therapy would have led to the most recent “discoveries” about myself. I am both amazed and amused. Hope you are too. <br /><br />Having lived at the end of the road in the same house for 44 years with the same person, I have more or less taken it for granted that at least some part of my identity was common knowledge. We consider ourselves “old timers” in Boston Harbor, part of the landscape much like the big leaf maples that populate Burfoot Park. When I learned recently that some of my neighbors “knew” quite a different me, it caught me off guard. Here’s how the story unfolds. <br /><br />A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday evening Fred and I dropped in on the 50th birthday party of a friend and neighbor. We had an earlier commitment so the party was well underway by the time we arrived. As is often the case at these large neighborhood gatherings, I knew most but not all of the attendees. While I was standing in the kitchen, taking in the view of the marina back lit by the fading sunlight, a guy I had never seen before limped over to me and said that he wished he could walk every day like I did but he had bad knees. I told him that I used to have bad knees myself – at least one bad knee – but I had surgery a few years ago, and now I am better than new! He smirked and allowed as how he didn’t like surgeons – they had knives. To which I replied that the prospect of the scalpel was less frightening to me than the prospect of the “Lazy Boy” and my only regret was that I hadn’t gone under the knife sooner! <br /><br />Well, we tossed injuries and surgeries back and forth a bit longer and then I asked them where they lived. By this time the guy’s wife had joined the conversation.<br /><br /> “We live right next to you, on 76th!” The wife offered. <br /><br />“You live in the judges’ house.” Said the husband, simultaneously.<br /> <br />“Well, actually I don’t. I live at the end of the road.” <br /><br />“You’re married to the judges’ son.” They went on. <br /><br />“Chris? Chris Hamilton? No. Chris and I are good friends but we’re not married. I am married to Fred.” And I pointed to my husband who was standing out on the deck, drinking a beer and visiting with friends.<br /><br />“Maybe you’re not married and just live with the guy who lives in the judges’ house.” The wife interposed while I continued to point to my husband. “We don’t mind. We live in the ‘gossip’ house.’ ” She offered, giggling. I knew that ‘gossip house’ referred to the place where Kim and Wes lived until Kim and the neighbor became an item, Wes moved out and then Kim and “whatshisname” lived in the house.<br /> <br />“Oh, now I know who you are.” The man interjected. “You’re the one with the kids who are always trying to sell me something. Your son told me that his mom was the one who walked the dogs.” <br /><br />Now I was baffled. My daughter and son in law now live in Seattle. Both have gone to some pain to convince me that they were extremely busy with work and studies. If I find out now that they have been hanging out in the neighborhood selling candy bars and magazines without so much as stopping by, I will be miffed! <br /><br />“No, actually, I think that must be someone else.” I concluded as I excused myself in order to find a bathroom. Clearly this conversation was going nowhere and I decided that there really wasn’t much point in trying to convince this couple otherwise. They were pretty satisfied with their version of ‘my’ story, and I could tell I was just boring them with my facts. <br /><br />Amusing as this encounter was, it wasn’t the first time that a neighbor had created a new identity for me, one that was once again linked with Chris Hamilton. A couple of years ago I was in town walking Barley around Capitol Lake and saw a woman from our neighborhood that I knew only as someone I wave to when I am driving by. As Barley and I approached her, she called out. “You’re Chris Hamilton’s mother, aren’t you?” <br />“Actually no. I’m not his mother.”<br /><br />“Well, I have seen you driving his car.”<br /><br />“Really? I have never driven his car. We both have red cars.”I conceded.<br /><br />“Well, it was when I saw you driving his car, that I decided you must be his mother.”<br /><br />“Nope. Must have been someone else.” <br /><br />We exchanged a few remarks about our respective dogs and then moved on in opposite directions. As we parted, I wasn’t entirely sure that she believed me. If I were to have a son, Chris wouldn’t be a bad choice. He is kind and helpful and reliably cheerful. He is the “go to” guy in the neighborhood when anyone has computer problems. As a practical consideration in this progenitorial conundrum, I am older than Chris, to be sure. Still at <span style="font-weight:bold;">five</span> I wasn’t that precocious!<br /><br />It is startling the way in which folks will stick to the story they have concocted despite irrefutable testimony to the contrary. I wish I could inform you that I had never engaged in such specious speculation myself, that my unwavering commitment to the truth had unfailingly guided me to the high road. Alas, the following example from my childhood is illustrative of my own penchant for filling up the void. <br /><br />Along a route that our family routinely took when we visited our grandmother, there was a partially completed house. The basement had been dug and finished so that there was a row of windows at ground level, with the ceiling of the basement room forming the floor of what would ultimately be the main floor of the house. When we first noticed it, we all assumed that shortly the rest of the house would be framed out and finished. But time went on and nothing more was done. Fall and winter came and passed – too wet and cold to be building. Then spring and summer with no activity and then another year went by. <br /><br />Once we recognized that the house was not going to be completed, at least not any time soon, the speculation began. The most obvious conclusion was that they owners had somehow run out of money to complete the project. Death or divorce were likely considerations, but they lacked sufficient novelty to really grab our imagination. Ultimately, we concocted the story that we could stick with and enthusiastically add to as time went on. I believe mother was the primary author of the narrative. <br /><br />The wife, having grown tired of living under ground like a mole and convinced that her slacker husband was never going to finish the job, simply bailed. One morning after the kids had gone off to school, she packed a bag and walked to the bus stop and was never seen again. Chilling, when you think about. And though our father was the polar opposite of the putative father in the story, it did give me pause that our own mother might consider such an option under similar circumstances. <br /> <br />We never met the family who lived there, indeed we never saw anyone on the premises that I recall. Still we populated the story with the familiar – kids, pets, and parents – even a mother in law. For all I know, a man lived there alone, with no intention of ever building a story above ground. Maybe he was a “survivalist,” getting his bomb shelter kitted out for the inevitable. (See, here I go again!) You can bet that if I had ever met someone who lived there, I would have asked about the mother. <br /><br />A few minutes with the news on any given day serves as a healthy reminder that whereas are all entitled to our own opinions we are not entitled to our own facts. Still, that doesn’t keep them at bay. “WMD’s” and “Birthers” are but a couple unsettling examples of our penchant for filling a void with “facts” to fit our presumptions. Obviously, nature is not the only force that hates a vacuum. <br /><br />In my case, to date the factual misconceptions of my neighbors have served me well. After a couple of years of haranguing Chris about my expectations of him as my son, he did his duty this year, bringing me a fuchsia basket for my birthday. Now that I am not only his mother but his putative spouse, the guilt induced performance arena has expanded exponentially.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-10368339585828479452011-06-16T18:20:00.000-07:002011-06-16T18:28:47.902-07:00A moose by any other name . . .I just returned from the annual trip to our cabin in Calder, Idaho to open it up for the season. The cabin itself is a repository of the “stuff” that invokes memories, some of which go back to my childhood. Likewise, the journey there and back elicits innumerable flashbacks to previous trips. So, it was not surprising as I was driving up the St. Joe river within a few miles of the cabin, that I recalled a time about twenty years ago when Kate and I were returning to the cabin from a shopping trip to town. All of a sudden, in the bend of the road, we saw a moose, standing in classic moose pose, up to its belly in water.<br /><br />“Wow – that was a moose! I’ve never seen one before.” Me neither, I said. We both got pretty excited with the prospect of breaking the news to “the boys” that evening. The boys being my dad and Fred who were off whipping the water in Marble Creek that afternoon in pursuit of the wily cut throat. It wasn’t long before they rolled up the driveway in dad’s pickup.<br /><br />“Guess what we saw today?” Katie burst out the door. “A moose!” <br /><br />“No you didn’t. It must have been an elk, or maybe a horse. I bet it was a mule.” <br /><br />“No. It was a moose! I saw it. So did mom.” <br /><br />“Have you ever seen a moose before?”<br /><br />“Well, no, but I have seen pictures. I know what they look like.”She placed her hands by the side of her head to indicate the shape and size of their antlers.<br /><br />“Well, your mother hasn’t seen a moose either and it couldn’t have been a moose you saw because there aren’t any moose in this area.”<br /><br />There was much back and forth and mutual eye rolling on this topic for the rest of the evening and the next couple of days. I just thought that the boys were being stubborn along with another adjective that starts with an “s.” Katie, however, was offended. For her, this was the first time that either her father or her grandfather had questioned her knowledge or her truthfulness. Plus, she knew that they were wrong and that was equally disquieting.<br /><br />The following day, I had occasion to drive back to Saint Maries, passing the creek where the dubious moose sighting had occurred. No moose today but I got out of the car to look around and discovered that the creek actually had a name: <span style="font-weight:bold;">Moose Creek</span>.<br /><br />That evening when I brought this bit of evidentiary information forward, it was met with blank looks and a stony silence. So much for Plaintiff’s Exhibit A. <br /><br />A few days later, the boys came back from an outing with Bill Carter, our cabin neighbor and the local game warden. That night at dinner, one of them informed the family that there were moose along the river, as though this was brand new information. <br /><br />“Did you see one?”<br /><br />“No. But Bill did.”<br /><br />Now it was our turn to respond with stony looks and silence. <br />Several years later our friends Janie and Tony came up to the cabin to spend a couple of days with us. When they arrived, they were both eager to share their river sightings. Janie, riding in the passenger seat, had looked up to see a beautiful great blue heron poised to take off in flight. At the same moment, Tony had spotted a moose in the creek, off to the left of the highway.<br /> <br />Both were congratulated and, furthermore, believed. I couldn’t help but observe that it was a good thing that the respective locations of the moose and the heron hadn’t been reversed or else the story would have had a very different reception. <br /><br />The cabin is not only the repository of the family’s collective memories it is also the origin of stories, some of which ultimately become legends. Occasionally, these legends contain unambiguous, universal truths. Hence - <br /><br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">If a man sees it, it’s a moose!</span>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-25970071117053319522011-04-24T12:38:00.000-07:002011-04-24T18:56:41.074-07:00You Take the Cake!Me, I’d rather have bread – and lots of it! There was a time when Katie was little that I made all of our bread. I enjoyed making it, we all enjoyed eating it, and, well, is the sort of thing that I assumed good mothers did. Regrettably, my hopes for garnering the MOTY award (mother of the year) for all this bread making were dashed when Katie came home from her first Daisy Scout meeting and informed that Abby’s mother served them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the jelly came out of a jar with a picture of a grape on it and the bread came sliced, right out of the bag!<br /><br />At that time, I limited my lawyering to three days a week and on those days, I donned my suit, tied a bow at the neck of my button down shirt, slipped into my high heels, and left Katie at home with Mrs. Tallent. In my office I crafted wills for my clients, counseled them regarding financial uncertainties and tried to help them cope with the angst that comes with family bickering and disappointing children. The other two days, I pulled on a turtle neck and sweats, slipped into an old pair of running shoes and stayed home with my daughter. And on one of those days we made bread.<br /><br />Kneading the bread took a while and also took muscle, as Katie was fond of observing. Standing on a stool beside me at the counter, she worked on a small mound of bread while I handled the larger portion. It was a great time to visit. Katie took seriously her responsibility for a large family of dolls and bears, many of whom were often in need of medical attention or simply coddling. Thankfully, as a result of her concern and ministrations, most had recovered sufficiently by afternoon to share in tea and toast, made with our freshly baked bread. <br /><br />Occasionally one of those hot button topics such as “where babies came from” made its way into the conversation. When I offered an explanation equating the process of baby begetting to making bread, I was rewarded with a sideways look of skepticism. Even at three, she wasn’t about to buy into something that silly. Now that she is a fully fledged physician working at a Children’s hospital, I am prepared for the inevitable lecture on the ill effects visited upon children by parents who take the easy way out by talking nonsense to their offspring. (Yet another blow to the coveted MOTY award!)<br /><br />Making bread is time consuming and that was part of the beauty of the project – we simply had to stay put and hang around home in order to cover all the steps. Mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough, letting it rise, then forming the loaves and waiting for them to rise and finally baking the bread could eat up half of the day. Having heard of someone who was getting his wife a bread maker for Christmas, Fred inquired if I thought I would like one. I scuttled that suggestion quickly and probably not very diplomatically. “No! No! I like all the fuss and bother of making bread and kneading the dough is the part I like the best!” <br /><br />One day my friend and neighbor Maureen informed me that there was free swim every Thursday morning from 10:00 to 11:00 at the local indoor pool. Maureen was a teacher who like me was working part time while her son Michael was still at home. Of course, I thought that was a great idea. I had grown up swimming in the local lakes and a large irrigation canal (aka ‘the ditch’) located about a mile from our house. Besides, at this time I hadn’t yet thrown in the towel in my quest to be “mother of the year” and I was confident that taking kids swimming would garner me some points in that unspoken competition. The only problem was that Thursday was our bread making day, so we would have to get creative. <br /><br />As it turned out, combining bread making and swimming was surprisingly easy. Once the bread was mixed up, kneaded and placed in a buttered bowl, we covered the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and set it in the trunk of our red VW Dasher. The sunlight coming through the back window created a warm slightly steamy place without getting too hot. We picked up Michael and Maureen and drove to the pool. After swimming and showering, we returned to the car, punched the bread down, shaped it into loaves, covered them with a towel and drove to Big Tom’s for grilled cheese sandwiches and a lot of bragging about our aquatic accomplishments. By the time we got home, the kids were ready for a nap and the bread was ready to go into the oven.<br /><br />Despite the fact that making bread has routinely been in the top ten of my yearly list of things I promise myself I will finally get around to, until quite recently, I hadn’t made bread on a regular basis for many years. In the meantime, I have devoted a great deal of time to finding the perfect bread to buy, sometimes travelling a great distance to check out a bakery that is rumored to be good. I have been a devotee ever since the new Great Harvest Bakery was opened on the west side of town, right next to Trader Joe’s. <br /><br />All of this changed about two weeks ago, when my copy of <span style="font-weight:bold;">Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day</span> by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois arrived in the mail. I didn’t stumble on to this recipe book on my own. Once again I have my friend Julie to thank, the same friend who shamed me into mitered corners. She raved about how much fun she was having making this bread and then how easy it was. Finally, she served me some and I was hooked! The bread was incredible – crusty and toothsome, just the way I liked it! <br /><br />And even though the title sounds like one of those unlikely boasts that are so common to weight loss and exercise programs, in this case the claim is true. Getting this bread ready to bake takes no time at all. And while the bread is baking, the kitchen smells heavenly. Once it comes out of the oven, the sight of it on the cutting board transports me to another time and place. This technique which features very wet dough requires a few pieces of equipment - a baking stone and pizza peel are necessary for the baking process and plastic tubs with lids that are not air tight are needed for mixing and storing the dough. When I went on line to order the mixing and storing tubs, I realized that I had just become part of a bread making movement that had been going on for a number of years. <br /><br />I started with the master recipe which the authors describe as an “. . . artisan free-form loaf called the French boule. . .” From there, I went on to try the roasted garlic and potato bread followed by the oatmeal bread. The first time around, I tried to follow the recipes to the letter. Following directions is pretty hard for me because I nearly always think that I have a better idea! I made up the oatmeal bread last week following the recipe, pretty much. I didn’t have wheat bran so I used some wheat germ in its place. It produced very tasty bread that was great toasted for breakfast. Remembering a favorite oatmeal bread from the past, this week I made up a batch substituting molasses for maple syrup and added some toasted sesame seeds. It was as good as I remembered. Not necessarily better than the recipe in the book but a tasty alternative. Yesterday I baked out three loaves of granola bread, to rave reviews. <br /><br />So here I am, baking bread as if my very life depended on it, with none of the attendant fuss and bother that I once deemed essential to my enjoyment. Of course, in my former life it was necessary to scheme in order to justify staying at home; now that I am a full time homebody, with career ambitions culminating in a long walk with the dogs, I no longer need an excuse. <br /><br />Recently my friend Steve told me that his dinner club hosted an evening where everyone brought what they would want for their last meal. I know exactly what mine would be -crusty bread, Havarti cheese, an apple, and a glass or two of red wine. Nothing hard about that decision. Of course, I now realize that if I don’t quit treating every meal as if it were my last, they may have to find a piano box to bury me in! In the meantime, I am doing my best to dispel the notion that man, or woman in this case, can’t live by bread alone. Give me <span style="font-weight:bold;">Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day</span> and I will give it my best shot! <br /><br /><br /><a href='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pxrgtLpgSpg/TbR8MUXnxEI/AAAAAAAAARg/A7EF0s6nOL4/s1600/IMG_1395.JPG'><img src='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pxrgtLpgSpg/TbR8MUXnxEI/AAAAAAAAARg/A7EF0s6nOL4/s320/IMG_1395.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> <div style='clear:both; text-align:NONE'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-29724040760573744492011-04-04T21:00:00.000-07:002011-04-04T21:17:24.538-07:00My Friend Bob<font></font><i>In mid February, our dear friend Bob Funkhouser died. Fred and I were both asked to speak at his memorial a month later and below is a transcript of my remarks. Even though this was written for a particular friend and a specific friendship, the elements of joy and pathos, humor and resiliency are common to all great friendships.So I decided to share it hoping that it resonates with others. </i><br /><br /><br />Figuring out where to begin on a life as rich as Bob’s is something of a challenge. An even more difficult task is knowing when to end. As Fred mentioned, Bob was an exceptional listener, one who could hold his tongue longer than most. When he did speak, he was generally economical with words. I will try to take a page from the Bob Funkhouser playbook, and not prattle on. <div><br />One of the first times we were in the Funkhouser’s home, in the course of snooping around, I came upon a picture that I had grown up with – a photo taken at the Junior Livestock Show in Spokane, when Harry Truman was making a whistle stop campaign tour of the country. There were three men on a podium – my dad, Harry Truman, and some other guy. When I asked Bob what he was doing with a picture of my father in his house, he replied – “we always wondered who that other fellow was.” Turns out that the third person in the picture was Bob’s uncle, Frank Funkhouser, who Bob visited one summer that later prompted him to leave Indiana and settle in Washington. That picture hangs in the small bathroom off their back porch, which I consider “my bathroom” whenever I am there. That picture that our two families shared was the beginning of an enduring friendship.<br /><br />Bob and Coke’s gift for hospitality is legendary. Susan and Karen both brought home their friends from kindergarten through college, many of whom considered 826 Percival their home away from home, and no doubt a few of them, wished it had been their real home. I expect that nearly everyone in this room has enjoyed a meal at their dining room table or coffee on their deck, drinking in the amazing view of Mount Rainier and the Capital Dome.<br /><br />For many years, Bob and Coke acted as the unofficial medical welcome wagon, inviting all the new physicians who came to Olympia to their home to get acquainted and settle into the community. Many of us here will remember Bob’s 40th birthday party with the beer Keg in the trunk of the Falcon. It wasn’t the first time I had drunk beer out of the back of a car – Fred and I met at the University of Idaho, for crying out loud. But it was the first time I had been to someone’s 40th birthday party and I was amazed that I could actually know someone that old! Of course now, the only 40 year olds I know are my friend’s kids, and many of them won’t see 40 again. Time does have a way of moving on.<br /><br />I am sure I am not the only one who refused to recognize that Bob had retired, just because he was no longer at the MedArts building. I continued to chat him up on all maladies, real and imagined, knowing that he would want to be in on the front end of some new medical discovery. One memorable examination came about when I managed to ram a lavender stem into my eye. It was late fall and I had been in the garden cutting back the lavender – any of you who have tackled that project will know that when lavender stems dry on the stalk, they become hard and sharp – much like bailing wire. This occurred not long after Bob’s mishap on the garage roof that Chris alluded to earlier. With broken bones in both legs, Bob was getting around in a wheel chair. He decided that the best place to perform this examination was the bathroom, with me on the commode and Coke standing to my left holding a large flash light. Bob rolled in the door directly in front of me. What made the examination doubly difficult was the fact that we were all laughing so hard, we couldn’t hold still. Eventually, he was able to get a good look at my eye and confirm that I had scratched it – translate, I wasn’t just making this up – but that the injury didn’t look permanent, thus dispelling any fantasy I might be entertaining of becoming a romantic figure with an eye patch. We adjourned to the living room and he poured me a glass of red wine as a pain killer. One of many glasses he served me through the years.<br /><br />Not only did I count on Bob for all things medical, but he became my personal “go to” guy for shopping. I am a terrible shopper – buying is the part of that equation that I excel at. I lack the patience to check out multiple sites in order to find just the right, whatever. As my family can attest, through the years I have had numerous bouts of organization mania, where everything gets thrown out of the cupboards and closets and then returned in a manner that confounds anyone else who is looking for an item in its former home. On this occasion, I decided that what I really needed were some of those wire racks that attach to the back of a cupboard door to hold cleansers, and brushes and cleaning rags. I hadn’t clue where to begin and so, naturally, I called Bob. He not only directed me to the store but told me the aisle and shelf where I could find them! <br /><br />One day last December when Fred and Bob were having coffee Fred mentioned that we were thinking about getting me a new car. Well, shopper Bob came through again recommended that we look into buying it through “Costco”. (And to think, we thought they only sold Salsa and Worcestershire sauce by the gallon!) And so we did. I drove directly from the car dealership to Bob & Coke’s so that they could see and smell my new car. Bob allowed as how he felt like a “godparent” to the car and from that day on, I have called my lovely new cheerful red Outback “Bob.”<br /><br />We are all familiar with the notion of leaving a legacy, something for our family or community to mark our lives, to remember us by. Not a day goes by that we aren’t asked, even badgered at times, to consider the “gift that keeps on giving.” And that is not a bad thing. But as I have been thinking about Bob these past several weeks, I have come to realize that the real legacy we leave is the life we live, and Bob “lived his life well.” His was a life of intelligence combined with intention; a life of problem solving and caring; a life of love,and laughter and good humor.<br /><br />It is hard when a good friend dies not to feel a wave of sadness when you recall something you did together – a trip, a meal, a quiet moment. You find yourself picking up the phone to call and tell them about something, or cutting out an article you are sure would pique their interest. We have all done that, I am sure. But I have decided it is blessing, a kind of ongoing grace that survives. And so I am making a point of doing something every day that reminds me of him. Just something small, done without a lot of fuss and bother or fan fair, but something that invariably brings a smile or nod of remembrance. I call it “doing a Bob.” I invite you to do the same.<br /><br />And so I return to the beginning. My “Bob” for today will be to quit talking and take my seat. It was a privilege and an honor to be asked to be part of this remembrance and Fred and I thank the family for that. It was an even greater privilege and honor to be Bob's friend. It was a lot of fun as well!<br /></div>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-17404690342798238402011-04-04T20:48:00.000-07:002011-04-04T20:57:01.971-07:00GOGGrowing old gracefully. Gracefully growing old. Growing gracefully older. Hum – no matter how I turn it around, it still seems out of reach. Pity that, as the phrase has such a nice ring to it; sounds so beguilingly simple. Something that anyone who put their mind to it might achieve. Of course it can only be regarded as simple if in fact it is something that a person really wants to do. And therein lies the rub.<br /><br />We none of us want to grow old, but there is little that we can do about that. I suspect that everyone who graduated from high school in 1961 is hoping to put this whole process on hold at least for the next six months. This August I will attend my fiftieth high school reunion where I see myself standing around (well, maybe sitting around) with a lot of people I haven’t seen in 50 years, each of us telling the other how good we look, all the while assuring ourselves that we couldn’t possibly look as old as the other guy. (The hotel could surely charge an enhanced rate at these events if they promised to remove all of the mirrors!)<br /><br />So, it is a given that it is impossible to escape the first part of the equation – the growing old part – oddly enough, if anything the graceful part is more difficult because it requires an “attitude adjustment” that is pretty hard to get my head around. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think it is in the cards. As a consequence I am getting a little worn out with all the press the notion manages to generate. Yesterday I got an email from a friend informing me that she has cleared out her closets, sold the house she has lived in for forty years and moved across the country into a one bedroom efficiency apartment close to her kids. With annoying regularity marketing materials from one of the local assisted living facilities show up in my mail box informing me that I can take the stress out of my life and that of my family, if I just sign up. Much as I might give lip service to admiring the selfless acts of friends who downsize and relocate to facility that offers a continuum of care, I don’t see myself handing the keys to the car over any time soon, “I’d rather give them to you now than to have you take them away later!” Not too likely. <br /><br />In my case, getting the right attitude about it is only half the battle. Achieving a state of physical grace is equally elusive. If recent events are any indication, not only will I “not go quietly” but I won’t go “upright” either. A case in point. A couple of weeks ago, I topped off a great walk with ‘the boys’ – Barley and Malbec –with a face plant. I’ve been perfecting face plants on the ski slopes for years but this was the first time I had tried out my technique on the pavement. Without overstating the obvious, there is a vast difference between snow and asphalt, particularly when you lead with your lips. The interaction between my two leashed dogs and a friendly lab on “voice leash” was the direct cause of my shift from vertical to horizontal. Beyond that, the details are fuzzy. <br /><br />With blood dripping onto my coat and hands the boys and I made it home. Within the hour, my upper lip looked like a bratwurst. Later on that day I was in the grocery store and made a point of telling anyone who even glanced in my direction exactly what I had done. I’d much prefer to be thought of as clumsy as vane. Without an explanation, I was sure to be pegged as “Botox gone bad.” Fred got a little nervous when folks looked from me to him, even though I assured him that if he’d bring me a bouquet of flowers I would tell anyone who listen that he didn’t mean to do it! <br /><br />Before the day was over, it became obvious that I’d had a slight concussion – nausea and chills were my first clue. I should know; again, I am no stranger to that phenomenon. I have putting my skull to the test ever since I was about five and stood on the top of a fruit picking ladder, only to have the ladder go to the left while I flew to the right. The strongest evidence on that occasion that I had hurt my head was the fact that my brother, who had suggested I climb to the top of the ladder in the first place, convinced me that telling mother about it was a bad idea. “It would only upset her.”<br /><br />So for a couple of days I had a fat lip, an abrasion or two on my face and a swollen and tender hand. As is often the case in my life, it could have been a lot worse. This fall that could have/should have resulted in a broken wrist or nose, chipped teeth and stitches, to say nothing about having to replace my expensive new glasses, left me with a fat lip and nothing more! So there’s no take away here about being more careful in the future; rather, it is cause for celebration. A high five for good luck and strong bones! <br /><br />A few days later, I loaded my red metal wheel barrow up with tools and rolled it down to Shipwreck Corner to help with a neighborhood work party. As long as our local garden club, the Sewer Sisters, has been maintaining the landscaping on the corner, I have reported for duty on the business end of my wheelbarrow. The following day, I woke up “old” – no graceful, no gradual about it. Every movement was painful. My neck was so stiff that I had to rotate my entire body if I wanted to look at something over my shoulder. I took the stairs slowly, one at a time. I ached – all over. Flu type aches minus the flu.<br /><br />A few days later I discussed all this body stuff at length with Swede, my trainer. I generally confer with him before I call my doctor partly because Swede doesn’t preface his remarks with prepositional phrases such as “at your age. . .” I suppose he is an enabler of sorts, as he generally advises me to get back in the game. His theory was that since my body had suffered a significant trauma from the face plant a few days earlier, the added strain of hauling my wheel barrow a mile and a half was overload and my body said, enough already. We focused on stretching exercises for a couple of days, I had a great massage thanks to Mary Beth, and well – I am back at it, wheel barrow and all. <br /><br />So, here I am at what could be an opportune time to evaluate my life and decide which activities I might forgo in the days ahead. Create a “been there, done that” list of things I really don’t need to do anymore. Starting with face plants! Of course, I don’t really want to repeat on that, but reinventing myself as careful and cautious sounds boring at best. <br /><br />Intellectually, I am quite aware of the inherent tension that accompanies life at this stage of the continuum as a good part of my professional career was consumed with helping clients and their families cope with the vicissitudes of aging. Certainly, I don’t want to make life more difficult than necessary for my family. On the other hand, now that my body is back to normal I think that I will stay in denial a little bit longer. Like Scarlet O’Hara, I’ll worry about it tomorrow! Maybe then I will consider living gracefully and all that might entail. It is just that right now, I am not ready to commit!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-74340512960092407602011-02-06T08:21:00.000-08:002011-02-06T08:27:05.751-08:00Keeping Track of MyselfFor Christmas this year, Fred got me a “pedometer.” Not my first, but it could well be the last. It is probably the fifth or sixth device of this type that I have owned in the past 30 years, and in my estimation, it is clearly the best. All the previous iterations of this device that I have owned have been duds. Price seemingly had no bearing on functionality. Five dollars or fifty, they all were abandoned within a week or two, because, for the most part, they were too friggin fussy to figure out. A couple of years ago I ask a geeky young friend (perhaps that is redundant) to help me get one set up and working. He assured me that he would sort it out and provide me with a tutorial in a day or two. When he was likewise stymied, I threw the device in the trash and decided to just forget about it. Really, if they can put a man on the moon, you’d think that someone could invent a pedometer that didn’t require the user to hold down two buttons at once, while advancing a third! Who are they making these things for? Monkeys? Well, I have news for you. Finally they have.<br /><br />Fast forward to Christmas, 2010, and my <strong>OMRON, Pocket Pedometer, Model HJ-112</strong>, and I have arrived at statistical nirvana. I drop this light weight device into my pocket first thing in the morning, where it rides around keeping track of me until the last thing at night, when I remove it, record the day’s results and then smugly trundle off to bed. If I happen to don something without pockets, such as the skirt I will be wearing later on today to a funeral, there is a clip that attaches the pedometer to my waist. It makes me look a little like a physician on call, but that’s not all bad, especially since I am neither. There is of course the risk that someone will spot me in the church parking lot, assume I am a doctor and expect me to get someone breathing again. <br /><br />In the course of the day my pedometer records every step I take and then separately keeps track of the number of aerobic steps and the time in which those steps were taken. For example, yesterday I logged in 11719 aerobic steps in 100 minutes. Speaking of yesterday, it was something of a record day for me and the pedometer. My tally for steps of any kind was 19,250 which equated to 8.50 miles. My average daily mileage for the past 30 days is 6.76 miles. Are you asleep yet?<br />If not, there is more and it gets worse. This device also tells me how many calories I have burned along with kilograms of fat. Yesterday, the day I logged my all time high mileage, I managed to burn a measly 580 calories and 41.3 grams of fat. I bet I shot through that number with the first fistful of cracked pepper kettle chips and glass of wine, including the few extra calories expended getting the darn chip bag open. How depressing!<br /><br />So, who cares about this kind of information? I mean, who else other than me? Even I don’t delude myself with the thought that when a neighbor stops me on the road and asks what is new that they are really wanting to know which “step” I am on at the moment or where I was at this time yesterday, “stepwise.” I think that in order to have information like this matter, you have to possess the <strong>C</strong> chromosome. Never heard of it? Well, that would be <strong>C,</strong> as in competitive. And, competitive in this context may simply be code for compulsive. Neither of these qualities is intrinsically bad in and of itself. Indeed, there are situations where it serves a useful purpose. A friend of mine who has an estate and tax planning law practice says that what she is really looking for when she interviews a potential hire is some evidence that they are just a little OCD. Unfortunately, she has yet to figure out a question that would elicit the desired response without being sued for discrimination. <br /><br />So, why does all of this keeping track really matter? Am I really a better person because I know how many steps I took on any given day? I am certainly more boring but is that a necessary component to improved cardio-vascular health? Probably not but it does tend to be a motivator. Keeping track, that is; not being boring. My friend Mary Ellen got a pedometer for Christmas as well. Hers features a touch screen, which I am sure would frustrate me no end. But then, Mary Ellen is a higher tech than I am. Once a week, we meet at Capitol Lake and walk and talk and discuss our data. Well, of course we do talk about other things – books and food and the dogs we are walking. But at the end of the walk we compare our numbers. Her pedometer always says we have walked further than mine which may be the pay off for being able to operate a touch screen, I don’t know. <br /><br />We have agreed that there is a point of no return with all this keeping track. If I walk 8.5 miles one day, do I walk 9 the next? And then, set a goal to double that in three months? So, if I walked 47.32 miles last week, how hard would it be to walk 50 this week and if I am going to walk 50 miles in a week, why don’t I just walk to Seattle and be done with it? After that, maybe I will walk to the Canadian border and see Jane. And, if I did make it to British Columbia, would I burn enough calories to add a slice or two of salami to my chips and wine? This is crazy making and I seem to be a willing actor in the drama. <br /><br />Right now I need to end this circular discussion so that I can get my walking shoes on and get out the door. After all, if I intend to best yesterday’s record and get back in time to clean up for the funeral, I need to get going. On the other hand, St. Michael’s church, my destination for the funeral, is only about nine miles from here, so maybe I should just walk there!<br /><br />If you read in the paper about a befuddled middle aged woman found wandering around muttering to herself and counting her steps, well it just might be me. If the article goes on to say that she was arrested for accosting the officer who tried to take her pedometer away, BINGO! Until that happens, to paraphrase Rick Steves, I guess I will just keep on tracking!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-38889977120211469202010-12-11T09:28:00.000-08:002010-12-11T09:35:27.655-08:00Mitered CornersFor many years, I have made napkins for friends and family members when occasions such as weddings or birthdays called for a gift. When we were first married and I had considerably more time than money, I regularly sifted through the remnant table at fabric stores looking for suitable material. Generally, I chose remnants that would produce at least two nice sized napkins to be part of a set of six or eight. If possible, this collection would be related by color or pattern. That someone might prefer a set of napkins that all looked alike never crossed my mind. <br /><br />Through the years things changed including fabric. The advent of polyester in the seventies made finding nice 100% cotton cloth difficult. It also seemed that an emphasis in color over thread count came along as part of the craft movement. On my end, there was a realignment of resources. I now had more funds in my checking account than time on my clock. As a result, a soup pot frequently replaced a set of mismatched napkins as my standard wedding gift. <br /><br />A few years ago I got back into the napkin making business. This shift was inspired by the discovery of a great fabric store in Saint Maries, the closest metropolis to our cabin in Idaho. Whether I am making curtains or mending jeans, the cabin is my favorite place to sew. My mother’s wonderful Bernina is there and the fact that when I am at the cabin, there aren’t really many other claims on my time, makes sewing over there a real delight. <br /><br />Every summer I make a pilgrimage into <span style="font-style:italic;">Mrs. Sew and Sew</span> in Saint Maries looking for fabric. Most of her customers are quilters and her inventory of high quality cloth is amazing. I get excited when I come upon a bolt that seems to have a friend’s name written on it. One such find featured a pattern of black berries that were nearly identical to my friend Coke’s china pattern. <br /><br />Making napkins is not a particularly challenging undertaking. It pretty much requires cutting, pressing, and sewing in a straight line. At least, that is all it required until my friend Julie – and the word <span style="font-style:italic;">friend</span> is used advisedly as you will see as this unfolds – told me about someone she knew who always mitered the corners on the napkins she made. Mitered corners – incredible! I could only imagine how impressive they might be. <br /><br />Contemplating it, however, sent me into a tailspin. On the one hand, napkins with mitered corners would be something to really crow about. On the other hand, now that I knew better, what should I do about all of those “fold over corner” napkins I had blithely gifted in the past. Should I send out a recall notice? Maybe sneak into friends’ linen closets while their backs were turned and take them back? Suddenly, my little hobby had become a knotty moral quandary. <br /><br />Even though I had never actually mitered anything before, I knew what a mitered corner should look like and felt confident that I could figure it out. Still, I found that visualizing the end product and sorting out how to get there was an exercise that taxed my spatial reasoning skills to the max. The most difficult part was calculating the angle and the number of stitches required to produce a folded corner that would lay flat once it was sewn. Folding - pressing-clipping – stitching – cursing! The results improved as I went along so that the final two or three were something I could actually be proud of. Still, it was a Sisyphean exercise every time I started on a new batch.<br /> <br />Everything changed for the better this summer when I engaged in a bit of “strategic whining” in the presence of a professional seamstress. After I explained my frustration to Loraine, she tore off a square of paper from a post it note pad and folded down two of the sides a quarter of an inch. Then she opened the paper back up and folded the corner of the square toward the middle, producing an isosceles triangle with side angles of 45 degrees. This triangle was clipped off along the base, and then folded toward the center one quarter of an inch. She refolded the sides along the original crease and then folded the paper a second time. Have I lost you? Very possibly as this is truly a case of pictures surpassing words. Trust me. The napkins produced using the pattern are the ones I have been dreaming about for years. It should come as no surprise that when not in use, I keep this pattern in my safety deposit box! <br /><br />I experienced another one of these “mitered moments” the day before Thanksgiving when I was preparing to make the pies. The crusts, which I had mixed up the day before, were waiting to be rolled out in the fridge, four plump discs wrapped in waxed paper. As I placed the can of pumpkin and the two cans of evaporated milk next to the mixer, I glanced at <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cook’s Illustrated </span>which was open on the counter. Recklessly, I wondered if they had anything to say about pumpkin pie. Of course they did. If you have ever consulted <span style="font-weight:bold;">Cook’s Illustrated</span> you know that have something to say about just about everything culinary. <br /><br />For starters they nattered on about the fact that the traditional method of preparing pumpkin pie invariably resulted in a soggy crust. Of course, I had to agree but since I’d never known anything different – my mother and grandmother and I all followed the directions on the Libby can – I didn’t consider it an issue. Well, it doesn’t have to be soggy and if you are willing to add the few extra steps required for prebaking the pie shell, you can serve up pumpkin pie with a crisp and flaky bottom. <br /><br />Though it adds a little more time, this step isn’t all that complicated. It requires lining the crust with foil and weighting it to keep the crust from shrinking, then baking it for about fifteen minutes, then removing the foil and weights and baking the crust another ten minutes or so. Fussy as all this sounds, I was willing to go the extra mile because from my perspective, <span style="font-weight:bold;">the crust is the pie</span>. The filling is secondary at best. I have unapologetically served any number of runny berry or peach pies through the years, confident that the crust would carry the day. <br /><br />Nonetheless, convinced as I was that the true test of the pie, or let’s be honest here, <span style="font-weight:bold;">the pie maker</span>, was the crust, I plunged ahead and considered their suggestions for the filling. Under their tutelage I heated the pumpkin puree in a sauce pan with brown sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt. Once that concoction bubbled, I removed it from the heat and added the dairy. When I say “dairy” please note that we are now talking about heavy cream and whole milk. (Just take those cans of evaporated milk to the food bank.)Well beaten eggs are added last. Since I was more or less doubling the recipe, I ended up with seven large eggs! <br /><br />Try as I might to follow their directions to the letter, I fell down when it came to “making sure to pour the filling into the pie shell while it is still hot!” My shell had cooled for about fifteen minutes before I got around to filling it. Obviously, those “laboratory cooks” don’t ever have to go to the bathroom, or answer the phone or throw the ball for a dog! <br /><br />When I did pour the filling into the shell, there was considerably more pumpkin than the shells would accommodate. The directions contemplated this and calmly assured me this was nothing to worry about. Once the pies had baked for a “few” minutes in a 425 degree oven and the filling had begun to set up, I was directed to open the oven door, stick my head into that 425 degree oven (think Hansel and Gretel) and add the surplus to the partially baked pie. Well, as it turns out, I could also add it to the floor, the bottom of the oven, and my apron! Fortunately, I had put off doing the floors until after the pie preparation. <br /><br />Of course, the seminal question floating out there is, does all this produce a better pie. Well, yes, damn it, it does! The crust is better – crisp and flaky and frankly, the filling tastes better as well. Of course, with whipping cream, whole milk and twice as many eggs, it should taste better – we are talking calories after all! Will I do it again next year? Need you ask? Of course I will. The obvious lessons that a more reasonable person might take away from all this, are lost on me. I am defenseless against the siren song that merely <span style="font-style:italic;">suggests</span> that harder <span style="font-style:italic;">might</span> be better; any assurance in black and white that it is so , and I’m a goner. Once you’ve mitered a corner, there is no turning back!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-75555746671013878762010-11-22T12:47:00.000-08:002010-11-22T12:54:26.787-08:00Talking My WalkIt is with no small degree of trepidation that I launch myself into this topic, knowing full well that it might come back and bite me in the future as “Exhibit A” in a commitment proceeding brought by Fred and Kate as a last but necessary resort in dealing with the old lady. Still, it is what is currently in my craw, so I will foolishly rush in, quivering angels be damned.<br /><br />Even though we all may not embrace the concept with equal dedication, we all know that exercise is good for us. It is a difficult bit of information to avoid knowing since the message is ubiquitous – on line, in print, and long ago replaced astrological signs as an ice breaker at parties. Often after a numbing comparative analysis of the aerobic benefits of one form of exercise or another, the author concedes that walking is the best choice for most people. It is easy and doesn’t require a lot of fancy equipment or a membership in gym. People can walk in all sorts of places and in all kinds of weather, provided they have the right clothing. Where I live, gortex is de rigueur about six months of the year. <br /><br />Dr. Fay tells me that walking is good for my heart and my blood pressure. My jeans tell me that it is good for my fanny as well. Not surprisingly perhaps, it turns out that walking is also good for dogs. Cesar Milan, the “dog whisperer,” observes that to be healthy, happy, and well behaved, dogs need three things: exercise, discipline, and affection. When I read that, I concluded that his prescription for dogs pretty much covered my needs as well and I embraced his admonition with the obsession of a zealot. Dogs not only add companionship to the daily slog, they bring guilt to the equation, which goes a long way to making sure I hit the road every day.<br /> <br />As a consequence, I now look upon these daily dog walks as my job, something that <span style="font-weight:bold;">must</span> be done, rather than a choice I make if there isn’t anything else going on. All things considered it is “nice work if you can get it!” Where else might I find employment that I can wrap up in a couple of hours spent out of doors in the company of pleasant co-workers. This walking time also is prime talking time and the dogs provide a nice foil for this. If a passerby catches me gesticulating to emphasize a point, I simply point to the dog. None of the locals would assume I was schizophrenic. In my neighborhood, you are suspect if you don’t have a dog and I am pretty sure most of my friends enjoy similar canine conversations. For sure, they are missing out if they don’t. <br /><br />After a couple hours of chatting myself up, I can’t help but marvel at my brilliance. How insightful, how witty, how amazingly astute! From time to time I break this scintillating silence to confer with the dogs in order to discern their opinion. Invariably, they signal their concurrence with a wag while fixing me with an expectant look. That is my cue to turn the conversation to something they particularly enjoy with a remark like – “Aren’t you the best dogs in the world? Don’t you think you have a treat coming?” On cue, they sit and look at me, and I dig a little something out of my pocket, once again confirming that we are in total accord.<br /> <br />Then we set off again. Walk. Talk. Talk. Walk. By the time we get back to the house, the dogs are ready for a nap and I have the tough choice of deciding whether to sit by the fire and read, or clean up the kitchen. We are relaxed from the exercise and rejuvenated from our long mutually satisfying conversation. Is it any wonder that it never occurs to me to pick up the phone and call someone for a chat let alone drop by for visit? Some of my friends have suggested that my failure to do so indicates that I am becoming a reclusive, antisocial crank – well, no one has used those exact terms, but I can read between the lines. “I haven’t heard from you in such a long time, what have you been up to?” “Has your phone been out of order?” “I swear we saw more of you when you were working!”<br /><br />I was starting to think that there might be some truth to that reclusive crank assessment until I realized that after spending a couple of hours every day talking to myself, I didn’t really need to talk to anyone else. <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Been there. Done that</span></span>. Besides having experienced the joy of talking to myself, conversing with another person would surely tax me. First of all, I’d have to let them talk at least some of the time. I can’t think of a single friend who wouldn’t demand equal air time. Then there is the very real possibility that they might not agree with me on all points, resulting in some inevitable relationship angst. Finally, as if all of this isn’t enough, there is the certainty that they will want to talk about something other than me – themselves or their children or their own dogs, for crying out loud. Who needs that? <br /><br />We are pretty happy with things the way they are, so for now we are sticking to our present regimen. Provided, that is that I quit being a slacker and get a move on. Indeed, at this very moment, if I am interpreting their wags and wiggles correctly, they are admonishing me to turn off the computer, get off my fanny, and, in a word, <span style="font-weight:bold;">walk my talk</span>!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-45418765039406743592010-11-08T21:13:00.000-08:002010-12-12T17:26:31.604-08:00On A RollI made a trip to the cabin the last week in September. Fred wasn’t able to go so I invited a couple of girl friends to join me. Bonnie and Linda were promised several days of rest and relaxation, punctuated with long walks along the river or on forested logging roads, ample quiet time to sit and read by the woodstove, along with food and beverage in abundance, though not gourmet. You can tell that I got my marketing ideas straight out of the Personal Ads. Well, they bought it and realized too late that all of this was just code language for come on over and I will put you to work and maybe if you are lucky offer you a cold beer at the end of the day. <br /><br />Buoyed by my recent triumph behind the dryer and the piano, I added the cabin to my cleanup agenda. The cabin purge began with a large storage area which is accessed by a ladder going up to the second story from a deck on the back side of the cabin. Next to the door is a large wooden sign placed there by my father, which reads “Odds End.” I smile whenever I think of it as it is so quintessentially my parents. More than anything else, they enjoyed a play on words, and “Odds End” qualifies on many levels. <br />The cabin itself is pretty much a collection of odds and ends, from the initial structure to the recycled cupboards and furniture. Just as it was the end of the line for much of what comprises the structure as well as the furnishings of the cabin, so it was the final place of fun for a pair of “odd ducks” like my parents. (Their self description, not mine.) As it turned out, it is also the final resting place for their ashes, and though I doubt that they considered it at the time, I am confident that the cabin is where they would most like to be. <br /><br />The “Odds End” storage area is a place that I had never really ventured into before. Of course I knew it was there and I recall climbing up and taking a quick peek upon occasion but I know for certain, I never before garnered the courage to go face to face with the spiders and wasps that I assumed had claimed it for their own. Whatever was up there could simply stay as far as I was concerned. After all, “out of sight, out of mind” had worked pretty well so far. <br /><br />What prompted me in September to abandon this laissez- faire attitude and embark on an unprecedented foray into the unknown, was the vague belief that an extra screen door might be lurking somewhere in the detritus of flotation devices, extra plywood, and discarded mattresses. The new closed in sleeping porch that was under construction needed a screen door and the options I had checked out in town the day before were a little too upscale for the cabin. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer – no screen door emerged. No real surprise there. But in the course of confirming this, I decided a purge was called for. <br /><br />My parents weren’t exactly pack rats or “hoarders,” at least not in the pathological sense that we hear about these days and that I often witnessed among my clients as well as a few relatives that will remain nameless for the time being. Since we share a common gene pool, I prefer to think of them as pioneer recyclers. Dad never encountered a piece of wood that he didn’t think he might use in some fashion or other later on and mother could never let go of a piece of fabric that might prove useful in a quilt or a rug. Mom didn’t stop at making rugs from fabric as I discovered when I opened a large black garbage bag and found a collection of colored plastic bread bags and a two foot oval rug that was a work in progress. <br />Having competent and energetic help at the ready, I started pitching things out of the door at a feverish pace. My friends, waiting below, hauled and sorted stuff into two piles - one destined for the burn pile and the other for the dumpster. Richard the resident handy man was then deployed to dispose of the collection, which he did with admirable dispatch. Before you let yourself feel too sorry for my friends who I readily admit I hookwinked into this project, you should know that they are both closet “neatniks” and I suspect felt as if they were saving a soul by doing the heavy lifting for this undertaking. Two “treasures” Bonnie and Linda insisted had to be salvaged from this purging included a “bathinette” and a wooden shipping box for Black & White Scotch whiskey.<br /><br /> The “bathinette” is a baby bathing device undoubtedly acquired in 1940, in anticipation of my brother Peter’s arrival. A pink tag was still attached which read: “The BATHINETTE of course! Your friends will look for the name like sterling on silver.” The rubber bathtub, which by the way is more than “hospital” rubber attaches by a hose to the sink water supply as well as the drain. Once the baby has been bathed, the tub converts to a changing table. By simply by stepping on a foot pedal a sturdy cotton cloth stretched between two dowels comes up and locks into place over the tub. The freshly bathed infant is placed on the changing table and for added security, a strip of fabric about five inches wide with holes for his arms can be fastened over the child, so that there is no chance the wee one will fly off the table while the changer is looking for a safety pin. Disposable diapers were as remote at the time of the “bathinette” as a landing on the moon. <br /><br />I had seen the Scotch box before and was delighted to find it still intact. Frankly, I have a bit of a thing for boxes myself and confess to having trouble parting with them, especially if they are made of wood. The fact that scotch had originally made its way across the Atlantic in the box coupled with an inherited fondness for the stuff, moved this treasure into the keeper category. It is now screwed onto the wall in the kitchen, next to the old wooden telephone, where is serves as a mini bar. There are wooden dividers at both ends that accommodate and secure six bottles. In the center, there are removable slats with rounds cut out the size of the neck of a bottle that slide into the middle of the box to hold them in place. <br /><br />While I was occupied cleaning out “Odds End” at the cabin, Fred was busying himself at home cleaning out the garage. Now this is a task that I have been talking about for a good part of the 43 years we have lived here. And though he has never outright denied that a good cleaning might be called for, whenever I brought it up as a possible activity for the weekend, he chose instead to characterize it as a “rainy day” project thereby putting it off for some yet to be identified time in the future. Given that we live in “rainy day country” you might suppose that the rainy day list, no matter how extensive, would be completed in any one season. In Fred’s case, he manages to be gone during a great deal of the rainy season, so what appears on the surface to be a legitimate effort to prioritize work, has evolved into a great avoidance technique. Oh gosh, fooled me! <br /><br />Though at 6:00 a.m. on a very rainy Sunday when I left for the cabin I didn’t know of his plan to tackle the garage, I did learn about it during the day, somewhere east of Ephrata. While I was stopped in a wheat field to give the dogs a run my cell phone rang. Fred was calling from the land fill to advise me that he had just dropped off 600 pounds of stuff that up until that morning, one of us at least didn’t think we couldn’t part with. He confessed that he was motivated more by the fact that he had decided to jump start a weight loss resolve by fasting and drinking only water that day than by the encroaching clutter at the work bench. Staying out of the kitchen and staying busy made this resolution easier to keep.<br /><br />With those inroads made in the garage area, I came home and threw myself into the potting shed and greenhouse. What a pig sty! The potting shed was a virtual maze of buckets and wire, cluttered with countless discarded plant pots and overlaid with a patina of filth! You will be spared the details largely because I have some embarrassment about publicly acknowledging them. Suffice it to say that it is a project that I am still working on; despite the fact that I keep moving the “finish” date back, great strides have been made. So far, in addition to sorting and cleaning and culling the pot collection down to a manageable number, I have scrubbed the greenhouse with a bleach solution, tackled the fly nests and spider eggs, and placed a moratorium on Fred’s penchant for stopping at garage sales on the lookout for something that he might use as a planter or a tray. <br /><br />We are on a roll around here that I am determined to keep the momentum going. Really all this getting rid of stuff is pretty heady. Fred managed to lose some weight in the process and I feel lighter, just knowing I have gotten rid of a lot of crap. Still, don’t expect to see a photo montage of either the garage or the potting shed with the Christmas letter. Nor should you anticipate being entertained there any time soon. These areas may be clean and tidy by “Gentry standards” but that is several notches below anything that might pass inspection with the health department let alone meet the hospitality level worthy of our friends.Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-66184575969249745912010-10-14T13:38:00.000-07:002010-10-14T16:19:56.714-07:00Blind LuckMonday, Barley and I spent the better part of the morning in the offices of Penni Cooley, DVM who specializes in pet ophthalmology. She didn’t have an eye chart for him to read, but otherwise the lights and lenses that she used to examine his eyes were similar to what my eye doctor relies upon. After she finished examining him with her sophisticated equipment, she threw cotton balls in front of his face to test his response. Finally, she had her assistant create a maze between the examining room and her office out of a series of waste baskets and other plastic containers. I stood at the far end and called him. This exercise was repeated with the lights off. With the lights on, he was able to knock over the waste basket that was directly in front of him and wind his way to where I stood. In the dark, he didn’t even try. <br /><br />No use beating around the bush. Barley is going blind. There – I have said it. His condition is known as “progressive retinal atrophy” or, PRA, and is a result of a defect in an enzyme in the photoreceptors of the retina that prevent damage from light. In case you don’t have an anatomy book in front of you, the retina is the cup like structure that forms the back of the eye. The photoreceptors die over time, with the rod cells that are responsible for dim light vision or night vision the first to go followed by the cone cells leading to complete blindness. The cells simply atrophy or shrink. It is classified as a recessive gene disorder for which there is no therapy or treatment. <br /><br />I don’t know exactly when we first noticed that he didn’t seem to see as well as he should but I’d bet that it first became evident when someone threw a ball and he missed it. As in any condition that is finally ‘out of the closet’ and given a name, I have been thinking back to when the last time was that he could catch a ball on the fly. Did he ever do that? I think so but now I’m not so sure. Certainly, last summer he could be counted on to chase the ball to earth no matter how far down the driveway it was lobbed. From time to time, he would have to spend extra time running it to ground, but he always found it. When did the exception become the rule? Certainly, this summer no fly balls have made their way into his glove. He often runs in circles around the ball before locating it. “Silly dog – it’s right there!” we say, not comprehending his condition. When he does locate it, I suspect he has “sees” it first with his nose. <br /><br />With shorter days, our first and last walk of the day is now in the dark and that has brought about several noticeable changes. For starters, he doesn’t charge down the driveway full bore as he does during day light hours; instead he stays close to me, proceeding with a tentative gate. Also, he bumps into or stumbles over structures that are well known to him. A couple of weeks ago, he walked right into the neighbor’s pile of beauty bark. Since it had only been delivered the day before I tried to dismiss it as something out of the ordinary. The next night, he collided with the curb by the garage that has been there forever. Denial was no longer an option. <br /><br />Over the past five months, Kate and Micaiah’s dog Malbec, has stayed with us off and on, often for two to three weeks at a time. Initially, he wasn’t much interested in chasing a ball. After all, he considers himself primarily a guard dog and a lover. But once he saw that it was a fun game with the anticipated rewards of praise and petting, he threw himself into it. He is powerful runner, so at first he often overran the ball, necessitating doubling back to pick it up thereby giving Barley a second chance at getting the ball in his mouth first. Unfortunately, Barley was rarely able to take advantage of Malbec’s fumble. As the game wore on, Barley’s expression changed from eager anticipation to one of decided frustration – after all, he was the retriever! Didn’t he own this game? Malbec, the Boxer/Ridgeback meritage was an interloper of the first order!<br /><br />Frequently once Malbec had the ball in his mouth, he dropped it, often right in front of Barley. One likely explanation of this behavior is that Malbec is either intimidated by Barley or that he simply lost interest in the ball once he had it in his mouth; however, I prefer to think that he dropped it intentionally to give Barley another chance. Malbec is smart and sensitive and fully capable of recognizing Barley’s limitations as well as his psychological need to be first. Despite the fact that Malbec could clean Barley’s clock if he were so inclined, he accepts Barley as the pack leader and defers to him. Besides, for better or worse they are family now and family looks out for one another.<br /><br />So where do we go from here. For starters, I have to get over feeling sad about it. Barley is his same cheerful hardy self and doesn’t need a maudlin mistress for company. Invariably he “comes to play” with an enviable energetic focus at the mere hint of a ball game or the mention of the beach. Being congenitally inclined to live in the future rather than the present I can learn a lot from him about living in the moment. Heaven knows I will need a mentor to navigate the maze of compromised skills and abilities, which will require adaptation and acceptance. <br /><br />I don’t consider myself a total control freak but in all honesty the hardest part of all of this is recognizing that there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t even justify a good guilty wallow. No “if only” or “why didn’t I?” in this scenario. I really have no option but to buck up, act like an adult and as AA teaches, accept what is, correct those things I can correct and accept those I cannot. <br /><br />So there you have it. Blind luck. Not the unexpected good fortune often associated with that phrase but on the other hand, luck is just that - luck. This morning on our long walk, we talked about it and decided that all things considered, when it came right down to it, mainly we had good luck and we had it in abundance. After all, we did have each other!Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-11370656832038035822010-09-23T14:39:00.001-07:002010-09-24T07:15:11.955-07:00Zucchini Season<p class="MsoNormal">Fall is upon us - the season known for longer nights, cooler mornings, and garden bounty.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This time of year, if the <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>motion light goes off in the wee hours it is more likely my neighbor, Peter, than a would be prowler. He dashes around at dawn in his striped bathrobe, leaving grocery bags of zucchini at the door, like May baskets. Our own garden history with zucchini is decidedly mixed. This year, we seem to have just about the right amount though I am reluctant to publish that information, because, well if the word gets out to Peter and he shows up in his bathrobe, I will have more than enough. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">With the advent of my new planter boxes that run the along the back of the deck next to the house, I turned the raised bed over to Fred to grow dahlias, with the request that he plant squash around the perimeter. Winter squash seems to benefit from running out along the warm river rocks between the raised bed and the deck. Fred and I are not of one mind when it comes to squash – I love it, especially winter varieties, like Butternut and Delicata. He tolerates it but prefers the summer types, like spaghetti squash, which in past years has been the dominant crop. I have little patience with spaghetti squash, so most of it ends up in the compost pile. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This summer, only four squash plants made it into production mode – all of them zucchini. One produces the slim green variety routinely sold in the grocery store and the others are bulbous and variegated. They are extremely fast growers; what at first light is about the size of my fist morphs into garden clogs by dinner time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I didn’t grow up with zucchini. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My parents, particularly my father who was in charge of planting, didn’t believe in growing something that had to be “doctored up” in order to be “gotten down.” In later years, once they no longer had a garden of their own but relied on the bounty of their neighbors, they discovered that zucchini could be used to make “watermelon pickles,” and they preserved great quantities of the stuff despite the fact that the only time a jar made it off the shelf was at Thanksgiving. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I suspect that there are more recipes for what to do with zucchini than just about any other vegetable. For one thing, if you have <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">any</b> you generally have a lot. Further, no matter how dedicated one might be to eating their veggies, there is a limit to how much a family can consume in one sitting, raw or otherwise. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A favorite recipe of mine, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Pasticcio di Zucchini</b>, was given to me by my friend, Diane, who is equally gifted in the kitchen and the garden. Thinly sliced squash and tomato are layered in a dish with mozzarella cheese, fresh herbs, and bread crumbs and then bound together with a few beaten eggs. One week in August, I prepared this a half a dozen times, for home consumption as well as sharing at neighborhood potlucks. It is versatile; equally good hot or cold, it can be served as the entry or as an hors’doeuvre.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Rainy days are often baking days for me and since we have had quite a bit of rain lately, the bread pans and muffin tins have been in constant use. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the past couple of weeks, I have produced several loaves of zucchini/carrot bread with whole wheat flour and bran, at least four dozen zucchini/pineapple muffins, and three loaves of zucchini/chocolate bread. I confess that I had to overcome some bias no doubt acquired in my childhood to try out that recipe. Chocolate is something to be found in cookies, pudding and cake but not in bread! Well, I am glad that I finally loosened up on this as the results are great. I confess that I am not all the way cured of my bias as the other day I served some to my neighbor and called it ‘cake.’</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My all time favorite zucchini recipe, however, is for zucchini patties, found in Volume II of Joan Moody’s cookbook, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Pantry Patter</b>, published in 1978. For many years, Joan wrote a weekly column in the Daily Olympian called “Joan’s Pantry Patter.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The hallmark of most of her recipes is that they are easy to follow and rely upon ingredients that are readily available. If she did include something exotic, like “slivered almonds” she always suggested a low cost substitute or gave permission to leave it out entirely. Her cookie recipes routinely produce 8 – 10 dozen while her casseroles are hearty and flavorful, and come with an admonition to make two - one to bake now and one to freeze for later. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Joan died a few years ago, after what is often referred to in the obituaries to as a valiant battle with cancer. Certainly if cancer could be driven off by sheer force of will, Joan would be here today. As it was, she experienced many periods of remission during which time she seemingly bounced back to her characteristic high level of performance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I contemplate the legacies that a person might leave for family and friends, a series of great recipes is pretty hard to beat. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Zucchini Patties</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The following proportions make four patties about three inches in diameter. I generally cook these in a small electric frying pan, but any frying pan would work equally well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><u>Ingredients:<o:p></o:p></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">1 cup grated zucchini</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">1 cup coarsely crumbled crackers. (Use crumbled saltines, not prepared bread or cracker crumbs.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">2 tablespoons chopped onion</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">1 beaten egg</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">½ teas salt</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Garlic to taste</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">½ cup parmesan cheese</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Oil for skillet (2 tablespoons)</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u>Directions:</u> Heat skillet with oil on medium heat. Combine all ingredients in bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Spoon into the hot oil and pat out flat. After 2 -3 minutes, check to see if underside is brown. If so, turn patties and cook until brown. Sometimes I turn these a couple of times, particularly if I have the skillet at a lower temperature. We think these go well with just about anything. Last night I served them with pork medallions and mushrooms to rave reviews.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There you have it. Next time the motion light goes off, just relax and go back to sleep, knowing that you can fix Zucchini patties for supper! </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-25883406991203233252010-09-10T09:50:00.000-07:002010-09-10T09:54:14.038-07:00A Scary Place<p class="MsoNormal">A couple of days ago, I went where no man has dared to go before, at least no man in this house. Well, to be honest, no woman either. I got behind the clothes dryer! </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For several weeks, months actually, I had noticed that whenever I had the dryer on, the temperature in the room rose to levels required for an egg incubator.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It occurred to me that I might do well to get some fertilized eggs and hatch out a clutch of chicks in on the washing machine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, it was a passing thought; off the table before it really got traction. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, I had peered over the back of the dryer to see if it was venting to the outside and it looked okay. I even asked “Mr. Fixit” if he would check it out, explaining that sometimes it got so hot in the room that the smoke alarm came on. “Looks fine to me.” He pronounced following his inspection. With this cursory investigation behind me, I felt justified in mentioning it to an electrician who had come out to give me an estimate on a small rewiring project in the living room. He promised to thoroughly examine it when he came back in a few days and I began to fantasize about a new dryer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Barley eats in the laundry room. A week ago, after I fed him, I turned the dryer on, shut the door, and then wandered outside where I became engaged in a conversation with my neighbor Kim. By the time I made it back into the house, Barley was barking frantically while the smoke alarm did its thing – emitting an insistent cacophony, at once irritating and frightening. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Having stressed out the dog, I was now galvanized to get serious with this dryer situation. I explored some more exotic explanations for what might be ailing my dryer – a faulty thermostat as an example. Finally, I concluded that the most obvious explanation was that the machine wasn’t properly venting. First I tackled cleaning out the vent from the outside and replaced the existing trap with a piece of panty hose. Then I moved inside. I pulled the dryer all the way out from the wall and discovered that the duct tape was not doing its job. Appearances are so unreliable. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What a scary place the backside of a clothes dryer is, particularly one that has been the final resting place for bleach bottle lids, clothes pins, gum wrappers and old tooth brushes, all cocooned in enough dryer lint to fill an ottoman. This odd collection of detritus can be understood only if one accepts that my laundry room/pantry is the place of last refuge for many items that originally lived someplace else in the house. We don’t brush our teeth in the laundry room but I never throw away a used tooth brush because they are the perfect tool for reaming out crud filled crevices. Of course, as long as they are hanging out under the dryer, the crud continues to accumulate. Regrettably, none of the mates to the solo socks that I am holding onto made an appearance.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Once I shimmied under the utility sink, cleaned off the floor and the back of the dryer, it was clear that there was a gaping wound in the duct tape, allowing heat and lint to escape into the room at large. I cleaned it out, found a wire spring loop to put over the pipe and the outside vent, and then wrapped new duct tape around the connection. I moved the dryer back in place, put in a load of towels, set the dial for “heavy duty/all cotton” and watched with some trepidation to see if my “fix” would hold. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well it did and the accomplishment made me giddy! Buoyed by my success, the next day I moved the piano away from the wall in the living room. It was so dark back there that I needed a flash light to really appreciate the collective horror the move revealed. What kind of slob lives here, I asked myself as I probed with the vacuum cleaner, sucking up dead Christmas cactus blossoms, fly carcasses, tooth picks, and other stuff I didn’t bother to catalogue. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now I peek behind the piano whenever I go into the living room and, when I sit down to play, I am convinced that it even sounds better, though that may be the product of an over active imagination coupled with my <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“exceptional hearing.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are other scary places just waiting for my attack, I am on a roll now and plan to tackle a few more before the winter lethargy sets in and the motivation is lost. I have to watch myself, however, as cleaning behind the piano is the very sort of task I tend to take on when I know that guests are on the way and what I really should be doing is plumping up the sofa pillows and clearing off the coffee table. Still, I live by the motto to “do it now” because even though the mess will be there tomorrow, I know that the impetus is ephemeral.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Be advised. If you come to see me, don’t take offense if I entertain you in the pantry or seat you behind the piano. Right now, they just happen to be the most pristine places in the house. On the other hand, if you show up and can’t find me, try looking under the sink. It’s next on the list for reconnaissance. </p>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-73660720075084643272010-08-08T06:10:00.000-07:002010-12-12T17:31:41.140-08:00Pulling weeds or pulling words - a summer conundrum<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Summer is at last upon us and as a consequence, my writing has taken an unintended sabbatical. Every time I sit down at the computer, I can hear the weeds in my perennial bed snickering and chortling about getting the better of me. (I did tell you about my perfect hearing, didn’t I?) Of course, the matter of what gets done and what doesn’t is complicated by the fact that I want to do absolutely everything I love in the morning because, well I am a morning person and that is when morning people do their stuff! </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Walking the dogs is high on the morning list and a chore that can easily eat up one to two hours. I confess to being compulsive about this as, well when I walk the dogs, I walk myself and we are all better off because of it. It also helps justify some of the other favorite morning tasks, such as sitting and reading the paper and drinking tea. Morning is the time of day I like to start any baking project as well as the best time for me to pay bills and scrub the floor. Obviously, bill paying and floor scrubbing are not “fun favorite” things to do, but the euphoric feeling that follows their completion keeps them vying for my attention, to say nothing of my energy, on a regular basis.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Finally and most importantly, morning is the time I like to write, but I somehow need to have the house to myself in order to do that. So, that enterprise must of necessity take place between the time that Fred leaves for work and before anyone else shows up. On any given day, the “anyone else” could be a gardener, carpenter, plumber, or heaven forbid, some friend who just wants to chat!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In the summer, this ever shrinking sacred time is also the best time to work in the garden. Even non morning people know that the early part of the day is the best time to be weeding and watering before things heat up and dry out. In our climate, our best summer weather is often characterized by cool overcast mornings that burn off sometime between eleven and two. In the two or three hours before the sun breaks through, I can generally get a lot of weeding and dead heading done, assuming I get out there and get after it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Of course, since I am the one who “makes the rules” on how I spend my day, if I would just lighten up and decide to tackle some of these tasks in the afternoon, I might not feel so pressed for time. On the other hand, I am in the downhill slide by 3:00 and, my competency as well as my motivation responds to the gravitational pull downward. By this time of day, if I haven’t figured out dinner, I need to be thinking about that and there is just an outside possibility that in all my scooting around to deal with the morning, I have neglected to clean off the kitchen counters. You know, I have friends whose kitchen counters are always clean and I am baffled at how they manage that. Maybe they cook in the basement behind a locked door!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Yesterday someone asked me which season was my favorite. With the nearly perfect summer weather we have had of late, I was tempted to give summer two thumbs up. But then, when I thought about my “to do” list and the fact that before I even get around to checking something off, three or four “must do’s, asap” have elbowed their way on to the list, those long grey days of winter that cry out for a fire and a book and of course a pot of tea sounded pretty inviting. Of course, the long days of summer complicate the matter. Those days we yearn for around Thanksgiving when daylight is but a faint memory by the time the turkey is served. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Years ago I somehow internalized the maxim to “make hay while the sun shines.” Well, I can tell you – I am about ready for haying season to be over!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;line-height: 200%"><o:p> </o:p></p>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602979505173235831.post-86008004927695547322010-06-13T19:16:00.000-07:002010-07-01T14:56:49.264-07:00Barley and Malbec<div style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255); MARGIN: 0px 6px; MIN-HEIGHT: 1100px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; COUNTER-RESET: __goog_page__ 0; COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)font-size:12pt;" align="justify" ><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">“Barley and Malbec” sounds like the title of an article extolling the virtues of grains and grapes. Indeed, w</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">ithout much pushing, I could wax</span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">eloquent</span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">on the topic</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> -</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> well, if </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">not eloquent at least effusive. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">When it comes to red wine – something that I come to most every evening, Malbec is </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">near</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> at the top. I didn’t know about it until I met Micaiah, my son in law, and now I don’t know how I ever lived without it. I feel much the same way about Micaiah.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Barley is hands down my favorite grain. I like it in soup, as a side dish sautéed with onions and herbs, or for breakfast with a little brown sugar. But the Malbec and Barley of this particular piece </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">refers to the two dogs </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">who are presently</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> my constant companions. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">As I write, Barley is sharing the ottoman with my feet and Malbec is on a large pillow beside my chair. We have just </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">returned from a couple hour slog</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> in the rain and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">the boys will be out for a good hour before they rouse me for a round of “three ball.”</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">It would difficult to find two dogs more different in appearance and temperament. Malbec has short hair the color of buttered toast. His face is classic boxer </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">–</span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">big sad e</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">yes, wrinkled brow and black muzz</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">le. He</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> may look</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> intimidating but in truth he is pretty much a scaredy cat until he gets to know you and then watch out for his tail – it can raise wel</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">ts when he really gets excited. A</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> formidable looking muscle dog</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, he </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">has been Kate’s regular running companion in Albuquerque the past four years</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> and anyone who might have considered doing her harm would have </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">dropped the idea, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">once he got a good look at Malbec.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Barley </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">is a </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">golden retriever and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">small for his breed, with honey colored coat and lots of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">platinum</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> feathers on his legs and tail. While one look at Malbec sitting on the front porch will keep most door to door salesmen at bay, Barley has the kind of sweet good looks that prompt folks </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">to rush up,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> kneel down, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">scratch hi</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">s ear. I am not alone in thinking </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">he is one of the cutest dogs </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">around</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, one </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">who could </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">probably </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">finance a post graduate degree by </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">posing for calendars. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">When he and Fred travel together, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">he is a </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">proven</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> “chick magnet” inspiring attractive women to </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">bend over, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">throw their arms around him</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">and mutter sweet nothings </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">while he </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">pokes his nose in</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">to</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> their </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">perfumed </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">cleavage.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Both dogs are great people dogs which makes them easy to hang out with. They both like parties – both the socialization and the clean up. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Nonetheless, as we all know, looks can be deceiving. For though Barley is well behaved with people of all ages and infirmities, when it comes to other dogs, his social skills are </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">decidedly </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">lacking. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">H</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">e can move from naughty to n</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">ice and back again in a tail wag</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. Though various professionals as well as </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">other d</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">og owner</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">s</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> have told me that they </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">don’t </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">think he </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">is</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> truly aggressive, just a little full of himself, I am </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">baffled. Maybe he has a split personality </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">- Barley and Snarly.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Malbec is </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">temporarily </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">living with us until Kate and Micaiah finish their residencies in Albuquerque and move to Seattle. Selling a house with a dog in it poses challenges, not least of which is keeping </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">the</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> floor</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> clean</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. I have known that Malbec would be moving in with us for </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">the past</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> couple of years and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">the prospect of how Barley would react to this has had me </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">on the verge of cardiac arrest whenever I thought about it. I have </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">devoured </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">just about every book written on dog training</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, specifically those chapters devoted to “dog on dog aggression</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">; I have watched countless segments of “The Dog Whisper” and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">even </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">engaged the services of a “dog shrink.” Together</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, Barley and I have participated in multiple training </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">classes</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">, with </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">provocative titles </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">like, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">“</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Reactive R</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">over</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">”</span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">and “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Just </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Cool It.” </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Finally, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">we worked with a trai</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">ner who specializes in training</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> German s</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">hepherds </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">as protection </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">dogs. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">From him I learned two very important things – the value of the command “down” and the reality that I might be able to control Barley’s behavior but I probably wasn’t going to cure him.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">When I started on this piece a </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">couple of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">days ago </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">I intended to tell you at this point that all of my sleepless nights and fretting had </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">been for</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> naught</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. After a rather tense initial 24 hours where Fred and I kept Barley on leash and under “strict surveillance” things had really mellowed out quite nicely. The dogs walked side by side every day on leash for an hour or more, they rode in the backseat of my car </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">with their heads next to each other</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. They play</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">ed ball, ra</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">n on the beach and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">took </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">turns with treats</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. In general they </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">co-existed without incident. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Regrettably, as is often the case, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">my </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">smugness settled in a little too soon. On Monday night, when Fred arrived home from a Tacoma Rainiers game, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">the two dogs ran to the door to great him, taking their toys to show him and diving between his legs for attention and pets. All seemed to be proceeding normally, when out of the blue, Barley nailed Malbec on the ear.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">I put Barley in a down and proceeded to mete out punishment in the way that only a mother can do when she is both angry and humiliated by the behavior of her child. Then I turned my attention to Malbec, who had not really reacted to the fracas, at least not vocally. Much to my horror, I discovered that Malbec was missing part of his ear – a small part, a sliver along the bottom corner, but still, his left ear was no longer a match for the right.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">I will skip ahead and spare you the details that might only be of interest to a forensic pathologist. Suffice it to say that the computer room where Malbec spent the night looked as if it had been decorated by Jackson Pollock during a temper tantrum. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Finally, I succeeded in getting enough duct tape around his ear to stanch the bleeding. Anyone who remembers the movie, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Cat Balou</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> and recalls the hired gun slinger with the silver nose played by Lee Marvin will appreciate that we dubbed Malbec, “Silver Ear” while he sported the duct tape bandage. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Fred insists on calling him </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Evander </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Holyfield</span></b></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">and Barley </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Mike Tyson</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> – an appropriate but rather disconcerting reference, as far as I am concerned. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">He</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> has since been to the vet and now has a much more pedestrian looking bandage, along with antibiotics and pain pills.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">The clean up occupied me for a good three hours and I continue to find dark spots in the most unexpected places. Malbec appears to be unfazed by the whole thing. He is a real trooper about taking his medicine particularly since he “takes” it in a hot dog. Barley has finally “forgiven” me</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> for punishing him</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">. You read that right. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">A</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">t first I thought his </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">chastened</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> behavior was prompted by </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">remorse – what a nice idea. Alas, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">I am</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> a wiser woman than I wish I were</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Tom</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">orrow, we are loading up the truck with dog </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">crates, kibbles and the chucker and heading down to Sun River for the annual meeting of Fred’s investment club. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">When I thought about how complicated it would be to explain all of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">my house</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"> rules for the dogs to a house sitter, taking them </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">along was </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">by far the easiest choice. Besides, what on earth would I do with my time otherwise – </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">sit around and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">read books and drink wine? Fred has golf and tennis to occupy him, but when you are a woman who “walks with dogs” well, that is what you need to do. Besides, they seem to enjoy my company and in that respect, they are unique. There is an outside possibility that this enforced socialization will have a salutary effect on Barley; that he will trade in a curled lip for friendly nudge. But as I said – I am a wiser woman now and am not holding my breath. I encourage you to exhale as well. Surely, you will be the first to know if </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">there is a miraculous conversion.</span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Bookman Old Style';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div>Mary Gentryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09670893558752957298noreply@blogger.com3