Hardlife

The third week of July. Triple digit temperatues. No air-conditioning.  I'm a camp counselor/arts and crafts director. Hardlife was one of the oldest boys at the camp, which was surrounded by Illinois cornfields. He was too old, too restless and too young for where life was taking him.  And I don't know what happened to him. My sharpest image of Hardlife is of his arm. From elbow to wrist, "Tonya" was etched into his tanned skin. Rough, jagged, deep enough to hurt, and permanent. Even in this, I thought, Hardlife's luck is hard. Tonya is not a name to quit carving before it's complete. Hardlife's three siblings attended camp, too. His young sister Sunny belonged to my group. She loved to talk. She told us stories about her 17 cats that she loved, and a story about her dad, whom she didn't love. He ran away with someone he met on the internet. Sunny didn't tell us about her mom's illness. I found that out from Sunnymom when she picked up her children at the end of camp. Hollow-eyed and head-scarved, she thanked me. This week, on Valentine's Day, nephew Footloose texted me from New York City. He wants a tattoo, and as the keeper of the family history, he needed a date. 1883, I told him, that being as far back as one name goes. I envied Footloose wandering New York, looking for a foothold in the banking industry. But I thought what I always do when I hear of a tattoo. Don't carve, ink or etch anything you aren't willing to see through to the very last letter. Life is hard with Tonya. It's even harder with Tony, unless that is the name you meant it to be.

Happy Valentine's Day, Big Guy

I remember my first Valentine's Day with Big Guy. I baked a pecan pie for my sweetie. In the process, I learned why it's not advisable to crack eggs directly into the Karo syrup/sugar/butter mix. The second egg I cracked turned out to be rotten. Big Guy recieved the second pie of the day. Together we have celebrated a lot of Valentine's Days since that first pie. Many, but not all of them, have included a pecan pie. A few of them included black moments, followed by apologies for not-bought cards or gifts. In recent years, most of my card offerings have been lovingly recycled ones--with Big Guy's name scratched out as the "sender." And sometimes "Happy Birthday" scratched out also. Today, Big Guy sprang for the big bucks Valentine, by Big Guy standards: Fresh flowers and chocolates. And what will Big Guy receive?  Ta! Da! A fresh card, with no scratch-outs and the promise of a pecan pie to be baked with fresh eggs, at a future date. I, too, am feeling generous.  Happy Valentine's Day, Big Guy.

Not Gonna Crucify Kay, Today

I came within the width of a cat whisker of joining a movement to villify a local shop owner. Her name is Kay. She sells fancy gifts. A mother with a four-year-old came into Kay's shop. Her child uses a walker. Kay asked the woman and her child to leave, apparently because of the walker. The mother explained that her child moves fine with the walker and didn't want to leave. The shop owner pressed her point. The pair left, mad. Like a public relations nightmare, the story spread on Facebook: A cute four-year-old gets kicked out of store due to disability. When I read about it, I felt the rage of the wronged mother. Then I remembered the jar of applesauce. Four-year-old Birdie broke it at Dierbergs. I was with her, but not watching her. The proof lay in the spilt applesauce and jagged bits of glass. I reported the broken jar to the courtesy counter clerk, but I didn't pay for it. I told Big Guy that the grocery store was at fault. The jar shouldn't have been where Birdie could reach it. I was wrong. And so is the woman out to crucify Kay. No four-year-old belongs in a fancy shop full of breakable items. While a parent may think her child will never tumble into a fragile display, it happens.  And often someone else is left to clean up the mess. I applaud Kay for running a local business. I admire her for spotting the four-year-old and trying to encourage the mother to leave. Obviously, Kay needs a lesson in tact. But perhaps the mother needs a lesson in commonsense. Don't bring children into stores where they don't belong. In stores where four-year-olds belong, everyone should welcome them, no matter how they're packaged.  And usually, that is what happens. What shouldn't come from all of this mess is for a local business to go under. But it could happen. There are a lot of moms taking up this angry mother's cause. On that long ago day at Dierbergs, if a store employee had spoken to me about my wandering daughters, I might have taken offense or even moved my business to the rival Schnucks. But I also might have watched them as carefully as Dierbergs deserved.

Jesus Bees

I told Big Guy that his Jesus Bee trap was wobbling. I pointed at the edge of the trap hung from the roof outside the screen porch. One carpenter bee carcass lies curled on its side in an upside down water bottle, part of the trap. Big Guy assured me that the trap was fine. It perplexes him that I call carpenter bees "Jesus Bees," but who except Jesus the carpenter could cut such perfect circles? I rarely refer to Jesus or ask for things in His Name as so often I've heard others spout Jesus or Mohammad or Allah with the certainty that they alone know what Jesus or another Holy One would want. My Jesus, or by whatever other name a deity exists, simply wants carpenter bees to be carpenter bees. I also think he, she or whomever, wants poor people to be thought about, families to be right-sized and healthy, and women to be treated with respect. But those are bigger issues than Jesus bees. And they, I might add, have their own set of problems to worry about. Big Guy's got a trap. And one Jesus bee found out the hard way, it works.

Bacon Weave

Two years ago, at Christmas, Big Guy--one of the most ardent lovers of bacon--gifted the I Love Bacon cookbook to one of the world's greatest cooks Mom, who doesn't eat bacon. That she doesn't eat it never entered Big Guy's gift-giving strategy. That she could, and would, cook bacon did. Much to Big Guy's disappointment, Mom hasn't used I Love Bacon as anything more than a paperweight. But I know she can't flip over a one-pound package of Oscar Mayer's best without thinking of her son-in-law. Recently, Big Guy received a letter from Mom. Inside, a recipe ripped from a local southern newspaper, headlined: Bacon Explosion For Super Bowl Parties. Handwritten across the bottom, "For the bacon king in this family." Big Guy got excited, as the recipe only calls for four ingredients: 2 lbs. thick cut bacon, 1 1/2 lb. Italian sausage, barbecue rub and barbecue sauce. Then he quit reading, probably figuring I would take up the bacon cause on his behalf. I didn't. But I did enjoy reading the recipe. It starts, "Using 10 slices of bacon, weave a square lattice." The instructions then call for frying the rest of the bacon, cooking the sausage, then rolling up the cooked slab of cholesterol inside the tightly woven bacon lattice, and dipping it in barbecue sauce.  I don't know if a bacon lover or an artistically challenged cook developed this bacon bomb. I am sure it was a Southerner. And should Big Guy choose to try the Bacon Explosion, he'll be the one weaving the strips.

Eyes of the Beholder

Being beautiful takes work. Or so I've heard. But the beautiful people aren't pounding on the treadmills and stair-steppers at the YMCA. That is what I thought as I perched and pedaled on the stationary bike in a room full of jiggly sweat. Then I looked to my left, at Birdie. She perched and pedaled on a similar machine, while reading a paperback book. To my annoyance, I noticed she was racking up more miles at a faster pace than me. So I looked for Big Guy. I cranked my head a bit to the right to peer around the column blocking my view. I caught a fleeting glimpse of him flailing on a grasshopper-like ski machine. He appeared to be covering a lot of miles or at least beating the machine to death. I found my beautiful people, I recognized. Then in a moment of largesse, I gave myself credit, too. I upped to three the number of the beautiful people at the Y.